heaviness and fatigue that doesn’t lift for months. The
slow realisation that you can’t do it any more, can’t
continue living this way. My boss encouraged me to have
time off. I took a few weeks, then tried to go back. I ended
up being signed off by a doctor. It was deathly quiet when I
was put on sick leave. I’d gone from the noise and false
importance that comes from being busy to a broken shell
of myself, unable to walk further than the end of my street.
I thought I’d go back to the office. I didn’t foresee having
to take off half a year. In the end I never went back.
At the end of last year Google search data revealed a
221 per cent increase in searches for signs of burnout.
Statistics show that burnout is on the increase for women,
while US research shows mothers in employment are
28 per cent more likely to burn out than fathers. Research
also links lower incomes to higher stress levels and worse
mental health. This modern-day exhaustion is endemic
and we have to question how we got here. “We’re in a capi-
talist society that benefits from people not feeling good
enough,” says Selina Barker. A life-design coach and
author of the book Burnt Out, she is someone who has
experienced mild burnout several times and has coached
hundreds of women through it. “It encourages us to find
our sense of self-worth in status, outward achievement,
money, possessions and popularity. We’re always going to
have an underlying feeling of shame. We’re told we can
have it all, we imagine everyone else does and that it’s just
us who can’t seem to keep up, and that forces us on in a
sense of panic and urgency.”
My aim was to be remarkable, and I’m not alone.
“I wanted to appear effortless, never showing the
cracks,” says Lydia Pang, 33. She worked in advertising
for more than a decade before founding her own crea-
tive agency, Morning Studio. “After burning out and
emigrating back from the States, shame was the feeling
I felt the most and it was the reason it took me so
long to recognise I wasn’t coping,” she continues.
“There’s this design theory about seams and how we
push for an experience to be ‘seamless’, but in
fact it’s in the mini frictions and tensions that
the beauty and connection happens — the
seams are a sign of humanity, craft and resil-
ience. I think about that a lot and how
I wanted to be infallible.”
I had the same desperate urge for flawless-
ness, and the sad thing is it paid off at first. The
literary agency I set up was thriving and I was
nominated for literary agent of the year, I got
a book deal for my novel, I had a great sociallife — hey, I even had abs! But it felt like nothing. I was
numb to joy, and little did I know I was slowly tearing at
my own seams.
I’m lucky that I wasn’t also raising a family. Amy
Cassidy, 36, is an HR director who burnt out after trying
to balance a demanding job with her marriage and
raising two children. “Women are socially conditioned
to self-sacrifice,” she says. “But suddenly I didn’t have
anything to offer: I didn’t have a job, I couldn’t cook a
meal, I wasn’t fun to be around, I didn’t even have the
capacity to hold space for the children. I just needed to
be loved and looked after without being able to offer
anything in return. I was deeply ashamed of this, of
needing people without being able to give back.”
Burnout hit me hard too. It hit me suddenly and left
me physically unable to do or produce anything. And the
reason it happened is that I couldn’t think of anything
more shameful than telling the world I couldn’t do it.
More work. More clients. More weekend trips away.
More hen-party planning. More accolades stacked up
perilously in my bio. More, more, more. The Pope blames
pets for hindering modern-day procreation; I’d argue it’s
down to an exhaustion endemic that has led to women
giving up everything they possess. We’re burnt out, how
could we possibly consider adding children into the mix?
It’s a year on from my burnout and I still tread the path
lightly, acute to those dangerous patterns creeping back
in. I battled my perfectionism in therapy and I’ve trans-
formed where I place my value. I’ve launched my own
publishing consultancy, helping published and unpub-
lished authors find their voice, and I’ve renovated my
working life. I stop when I feel tired, I’ve learnt to take
breaks and to be present in my body when it gets trig-
gered. I’ve discovered you don’t need to give 100 per cent
to every task you do. I’ve cut back on friends, keeping ties
with those who share my values.
I overcame my burnout by doing what, for me, was the
unthinkable. I came clean. I told everyone I knew about
my exhaustion, starting a lively conversation
online as many others like me gathered to
share their stories. I let go of the unreachable
expectations of society and instead met with
the compassion and softness of a community
of women. That’s the thing about shame: it’s
insidious when kept in the dark but burns to
dust when brought out into the light. ■W hat a Shame by Abigail Bergstrom is published
by Hodder & Stoughton at £14.99‘I worked for everything I had, yet lived in constant fear of it being taken away’ Abigail’s work and leisure time merged into one@abigailbergstrom
The Sunday Times Style • 25