Letter to 20yo Overachiever Past Me From Me After Burnout

“I’m so dead”.

“I’m so tired already when I wake up”.

You’ve heard “Shouldn’t you just rest if it affects you that badly?” so often you already anticipate it. It just feels like mockery even if probably isn’t.

Deep down you know that resting isn’t the solution to the problem, but you don’t know why it wouldn’t work and you don’t have any better solution to it either. Thus it’s hard to say anything to the well-meaning friends, family and girlfriend.

So, you try to rest and it helps after a week. Only to descent back to the soul crushing exhaustion before the second week of school and work starts. Who would’ve guessed. 🙄

That’s because resting doesn’t help unless you fix the root cause of the exhaustion.

You face the same exhaustion, because nothing has changed in your work and study habits nor your environment.

Well, Tell me How can I fix the exhaustion

List your work and study tasks at hand, and ask yourself with each what would happen if you just, you know, didn’t do it. What would be the worst case if you just dropped it and never continued it, or even never started it?

In school, what would be the worst that happens if you complete courses at a slower pace than others?

At work, what would happen if the task assigned to you was dropped or completed at a later date?

Think about it.

In reality, nothing bad happens. Those will just be finished a bit later. Or maybe no one even cares if they never finish.

In school, take less courses from the get-go and focus on having energy to experiment with your interests.

At work, ask the team what would the worst case scenario if your task never completes.

You running out of energy and burning out will make you drop them all regardless. You will run out of energy, and nothing bad actually happens.

In short, your perfectionism is pushing you to do way more than your energy levels allow you to.

In hindsight, overworking itself is a symptom of unprocessed beliefs and thoughts.

What makes you think I got unprocessed thoughts?

You run away from uncomfortable feelings built in the past.

You tried to solve them, but they never were actually resolved.

You tie your self-worth to what you achieve whether at work or at school. Barely passing high school didn’t help with the self-worth either.

You fear that no one actually enjoys being with you. Not finding like-minded people to bond and be open with, or that you feel you can trust, certainly doesn’t help.

You doubt whether you ever find something enjoyable to do in life other than games, which you often don’t even enjoy.

Yes, these problems stem from the bullying when you were 10 years old, but you can’t change the reality that it did happen.

But you can get through those thoughts and let them go if you so wish. And things you’ve tried in higher quantities aren’t the answer.

Alcohol? Yeah, those fuckers can swim. Alcohol with friends is fun, but it doesn’t fix your problems.

Games? Having no energy to spare makes you just annoyed, because you can’t improve in competitive games at the pace you’d like. In reality, it’s the high of learning a cool skill you crave, and games are just the easiest thing that provides you that.

Girlfriend? The exhaustion prevents you from being present with her, which eventually makes you both resent each other. Having butterflies for someone is amazing, but it only distracts you from your own problems for a while.

Moving to a new place? Your exhaustion problems follow you because they stem from your overly curious nature and tendency to overachieve. Moving to bigger cities is worth it, it just doesn’t solve your repressed feelings.

Ignoring the problems? You’ve already done that for years. Facing them is the only solution even if a difficult one.

Okay smartass, How do you actually tackle the problems then?

Sit down, read Byron Katie’s “Loving What Is” and “I Need Your Love – Is That True?”, write down your problems and process them.

Not just read the book and glance at the techniques. Properly sit down, write your thoughts down on paper or computer, and do the full four questions with turnarounds on each of them.

It might take long, but do a statement a day. Go through the list of thoughts statement by statement however long it takes.

Nothing else worked, so try it.

And yes, those books’ techniques probably hit so hard only after trying so many other ways to handle the problems.

When you work your thoughts and have excess energy, you realize you actually enjoy activities that you think you are incapable of learning like photography or too out of the norm like shibari.

But you overwork your energy away. Fix the root cause, process your limiting beliefs, and find things you actually enjoy in life.