Taking Back Our Spirituality – Overcoming Spiritual Burnout

2020 has been a year that has rocked both the physical and spiritual world. I can confidently say that many of us are trudging through the effects of a changing world, political, mental, and spiritual burnout. As the months have gone by, each of us collectively has watched the proverbial tower fall whether it be on a personal or wider scale. We have all had to face skeletons and forge our own new paths with our eyes wide open. In many ways (physically, politically, socio-economically), the online spiritual and witchcraft communities have undergone significant growth and change on both personal levels and externally, on the collective level.

Spiritual workers are not exempt from burnout, especially with so many witches and pagans identifying as empaths. In times of extreme external stress, any empath can easily find themselves on the other side of their boundaries, on the fast track to burn out and stress. In order to stop our source of stress, we must be able to identify it, name it, and create a plan to get over it!

Identifying Burnout

So what exactly is ‘spiritual burn’ out? To understand spiritual burnout, we must first understand plain-Jane burnout. According to Psychology Today, burnout is classified as a state of chronic stress exhibited in three ways including:

-physical and emotional exhaustion

-cynicism and detachment

-feelings of in effectiveness and lack of accomplishment

Additionally, there are five stages of burn out which can help you identify if you are actively in burnout. The stages of burnout include:

-the honeymoon phase

-onset of stress

-chronic stress

-burn out

-chronic habitual burn out

Each of these stages are exhibited differently. The first stage (which is the honeymoon phase) is exhibited by being excited and energized about a new project or concept. This is the first stage of burn out because it is the thing that causes/precipitates the ‘burn out’. Having something we are excited about doing is fantastic- but if you are anything like me, you will throw yourself head first and hyper focus on it, quickly burning out. This behavior of almost reckless abandon doesn’t only affect me mentally, but spiritually as well.

The Breakdown

For the first category of chronic stress, physical and emotional exhaustion, there are few key symptoms and behaviors that can help identify what is going on. According to Psychology Today, these symptoms include: chronic fatigue, insomnia, forgetfulness or impaired concentration, and physical symptoms. These physical symptoms can include additional symptoms such as chest pain’s, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, gastrointestinal pain, dizziness, fainting, and headaches. If that wasn’t enough there are a few more symptoms such as decreased immunity/increased illness, loss of appetite, anxiety, depression, and anger.

The second category of chronic stress, signs of cynicism and detachment, identified by the following symptoms: loss of enjoyment (in work that can bleed into personal life), pessimism, isolation, and detachment from others in our surroundings. I think in a truly special person, the cynicism and detachment portion of chronic stress is the most harmful. This is where we see a lot of spiritual bypassing occur, and is one of the factors in the phenomenon online that we lovingly call “spiritual Karen’s”.

For those not in on the joke, a “spiritual Karen” is someone who aggressively comments on posts online that the poster is wrong and they ‘only operate in the light’ or end comments using a passive aggressive ‘love and light’ when they really mean ‘F off’. I think everyone has been guilty of being a spiritual Karen at least once, and usually it is due to bypassing from spiritual burnout. Being effected by spiritual burnout doesn’t make us any less spiritual or ascended, it makes us human.

The last major category of identifying chronic stress are signs of ineffectiveness/feelings of lack of accomplishment. This is identified by feelings of apathy and hopelessness, increased irritability, and lack of productivity/poor performance. This category is also so important, and I feel like it goes hand-in-hand with the second category because this is where we begin to see influencers and larger record teachers lose their steam online. What I mean by that, is that people who have been in touch with the Internet and students for long periods of time often past the first and second phases and landing this third box where they become bitter about the work and the teaching that they do. If our spiritual teachers and leaders are burned out, they are not giving us their best content and help. I feel like the pot calling the kettle black here, but it is extremely important to be self aware, especially if we consider (or if anyone else considers) ourselves teachers.

Spiritual Burnout and Shadow Work to Heal

So this leaves us in the spiritual burn out, and the ways in which we can begin to heal it. Spiritual burn out is not initially much different from physical burnout, in that it requires physical burnout to take place first. In the spiritual world, we can get burned out in very similar ways however this often occurs due to our own error in our own pressure. Spiritual burnout can present itself in a few different ways, but I’ve typically seen it displayed in two main ways. The first way is victimization mindset, sometimes displayed as when we feel as though our gods and guides have abandoned us and we are struggling all alone, the weight of the WHOLE world on our shoulders. The second way that I have seen spiritual burn out exhibit itself, is through extreme spiritual bypassing.

This form of bypassing is often occurring unknown to the person actually doing it. Where typical spiritual bypassing looks like glossing over the painful aspects of life and covering it with the shiny veneer of new age spirituality, spiritual burnout through bypassing is often exhibited by a total disregard of personal to craft boundaries (think Nancy from The Craft).

So, how can we begin to heal spiritual burnout? It may seem counterintuitive, but the first thing to do is to actually step back from your craft. In stepping back, we are able to look at the situation objectively. This objectivity is going to be crucial in determining how we navigate the journey towards healing. I’m using the word healing very intentionally because I don’t feel like if you are disposed to burn out, that you can ever truly “fix it”. Working past the point of exhaustion begins to be a sort of character trait. Going forward, however, you can identify the behaviors and fix them for the future.

Identifying these behaviors and changing for the future is shadow work. Shadow work is not some foreign concept, it’s a very real term that has very simple applications that we can use to address our spiritual burnout. One of the favorite ways to address spiritual burn out, (especially spiritual burnout that occurs from being on the Internet), is to actually unplug. Unplugging will look differently for everyone, but for me it looks like using manual technology such as a regular notebook or typewriter instead of my computer if I want to write something, and reading a book physically instead of digitally.

When you stop back, grab a notebook and write down how you feel and identify what is making you feel that way. If you’re feeling stressed out, figure out what is causing the stress. What can you do to lessen that load? You may find that your stress is coming from joining a new local group or coven. Figuring out how we can lessen the stress is how we can begin to target our spiritual burn out.

Often recommend that if we recognize we are in a state of burn out, just stop everything that we’re doing. We can’t perform magically if we can’t perform physically or emotionally. Our magical bodies are directly tied to our physical and emotional bodies as well. If you’re able to, find a time to carve out 15 minutes a day to focus on spirituality. This 15 minutes is ideally used to practice meditation, or other restorative techniques. By disengaging from our sources of stress, limiting what can cause stress, and carving an intentional slot of time into our day to reconnect to what is real, we allow our physical and spiritual bodies to restore themselves!