Wintering

16 Oct Wintering

Wintering and Burnout

I saw this book everywhere last year but never picked it up. I think its popularity turned me off.  I finally gave in and bought it on a recent trip to Wales, where I knew I was going to be holed up for a week, and needed something to read.

The premise is that we all go through winters in our life, metaphorically speaking, These may be times of illness, recovery, depression, bereavement, overwhelm and, of course, burnout. Far from looking at these as failures, we can see them as winters, times of transition when we need to lie fallow until we are ready to emerge again. Many of my own clients are wintering themselves and, for many, whilst it feels like they are only just surviving, it can be a useful approach to reposition this as wintering.

Winter is not barren

It’s not the case that nothing happens during winter. Far from it. Winter can be a time of intense rest and then recovery, even growth beneath the surface, allowing us to emerge onec again, hopefully even more resilient.

Winter can also be a time of shedding. Clients who have had cancer or find their world severely reduced by chronic ilnness, are often very open about how many freinds and family have fallen by the wayside. Unable to deal with what’s happening to my clients, those friends have dropped away. Of course it hurts, but in time, many people see it as a shedding of those people who are only around for the good times.

My own wintering

I’ve had winterings of my own.  Break-ups that left me wonderring who exactly I was anymore. Bereavements that left me forever scarred.  Burnout that I refused to acknowledge until I had no choice. Even just periods of time where, for no obvious reason, I needed to slow down or even stop and take stock.

I’m not a natural winterer. I push through. I’m not proud to admit this but when my father died at the start of lockdown I took no time off. Instead, I threw myself into a work project telling myself it would distract me and that I was lucky to have the work when so many didn’t. In truth, the work was good for me at that time, but a wintering might have been better.

Wintering and burnout

And so to the book. It is packed with stories, research and anecdotes around how people get through the darkness of winters, both in their world and in their lives. There’s a lot around food and light, and hope, of course. It’s ideal for anyone who is resisting the type of rest that we need to recover from burnout. For while we may not be able to stop outright, we do need to dial things down, to step into some kind of self-imposed winter, to come out the other side.

Hope is one of the biggest things I can give my own clients. When people feel like they have no choice but to keep on pushing even though they have nothing left, I give them hope that we can find some changes that will help. When people feel like they are unravelling, I can share some hope that they will find a way through.  We plough through the winter, knowing that spring will come.

If you feel like you’re in the depths, or even teetering on the edge of a winter, and would like some coaching as support, you can contact me here to arrange a chat.