Burned Out Already? Self-Care for High Achieving Intuitive People (And How to Tell If You Are One)
Tell me if this sounds familiar:
You woke up on January 1 with a fire in your belly and your eyes on the prize. “This is the year that [insert that big, delicious dream] actually happens.” Ashé, baby.
Maybe you started the year out with meticulous spreadsheets, organized checklists, and by-when dates to accomplish your goals. You woke up early, put in late hours, had a clean and empty inbox.
But now it’s like, five weeks later, and you’re cooked. Le tired. Tu es fatigue. And not only does January 1st feel like 17 years ago, the aspirations that got you so excited also feel like they’re orbiting a distant planet. Which is to say, they feel impossibly out of reach unless you somehow hit the Elon Musk jackpot.
Bro, I hear you. Burnout is real, especially if you are a highly empathic or intuitive person. And in my experience, burnout doesn’t happen just once to highly intuitive people — it happens over and over again as they continue to level up and need to learn how to manage their energy.
Are You Highly Intuitive?
You can take a look at this article to learn if you’re a highly sensitive person, empath, or intuitive person, but some general signs that you’re intuitive are:
You can tell when people are lying or are obscuring the truth
You can easily connect to the energy or feelings of other people
You get overwhelmed in large crowds or where the energy is high
You may have food allergies or intolerances
You eat/drink/sleep to escape your feelings (or you have in the past)
You know things before they are going to happen
You’re in touch with your guides or feel guidance
You experience any of the five clairs or clairvoyance
You’re afraid of your intuition (or have been in the past)
You have physical symptoms of things like anxiety, i.e., skin rashes, stomach aches, migraines, dizziness, nausea, seizures
You need time alone in order to reset yourself, even if you are a very social and extroverted person
You’re easily affected by alcohol or other substances
Why Highly Intuitive People Burn Out Quickly
Listen, we’re all intuitive beings, but if you said YES to at least six items on this list, you’re likely a highly intuitive person. In my experience, highly intuitive people are more susceptible to burnout. Not only are we often gifted with brilliant ideas that are energized by an inspired vision for the future (which can eclipse everything else in our lives), highly intuitive people feel things very deeply, for better or worse. Learning to manage the waves of our emotions is a lifelong process, and very often, the high-highs and low-lows of, I don’t know, being a human being trying to exist within the patriarchy can be overwhelming and exhausting.
On top of all that, most of the highly intuitive people I know are ALSO high achievers. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s because highly intuitive people can literally see a better world around them, and they understand that as very gifted people, they are the ones who can make that better world happen if they use their skills and put in the work.
High achieving highly intuitives believe that hard work = change = success. They’ll work themselves into the ground to fulfill their vision for a better world. Ha ha, no pressure! Just the weight of the world on your shoulders! NBD!
Along with that overwhelming feeling of responsibility, tack on the pressures of running a business, or launching a creative project, or starting a social movement, or raising a family, and hello, you’ve got a nice little equation for burn out.
So, OK, maybe you’re a highly intuitive being who’s feeling burnt out. And that’s a problem because:
Mental burnout eventually leads to physical exhaustion, which is much harder to recover from. Tap on the door of mental burnout too many times, and ultimately, adrenal fatigue, autoimmune disease, and chronic illness will answer instead.
If you’re constantly battling burnout, it’s harder to get things done long term and get momentum. Change happens over months and years, not weeks. Momentum is like a snowball rolling downhill; it starts small and needs a push at the beginning, but eventually, it grows in size and velocity all by itself.
Well, what now? It’s time to commit to acknowledging burnout and taking the necessary steps to prevent it. RAISE THE ROOF, because this will be fun.
Step One: Review Your List of “Musts”
In the book, Patriarchy Stress Disorder, Dr. Valerie Rein says, “Stress-related conditions and trauma are directly connected. Stress is a trauma adaptation for the nervous system, keeping us in a state of hypervigilance and hyperactivation to make sure we’re always aware of unsafe conditions that surround us. What’s more, we often don’t even feel we’re stressed: because we were born in the prison, we’ve inherited this trauma adaptation. High stress feels normal until our health begins to crack.”
To her point, many of the musts that high achieving highly intuitive people take on are actually trauma adaptations to stress — we put ourselves in stressful situations to keep ourselves safe. Feeling overwhelmed and burnt out feels safer than being relaxed, present, and calm.
Look at the goals or the items on your Must-Do list. What’s on there, and why? Ask yourself, “Is this what I authentically desire, or is this something that I’ve been conditioned by society or the people around me to want?”
It might take you a few days or weeks to figure out whether a belief really belongs to you, or if it’s something you think you must do because someone else told you so.
For example, I remember adding to my list of goals long ago that I wanted to be a speaker at SXSW because I thought that would be a cool milestone to achieve. Truthfully, though, I have zero attachment to the actual experience, and while it would certainly be cool, orienting my life around trying to accomplish getting on stage at SXSW would ultimately be unfulfilling ... and actually checking that item off my list would probably feel pretty empty.
Step Two: Rewrite Your Aligned Musts
Now that you’ve isolated which line items are maybe not so in alignment with your authentic desires, I want you to look at them. Don’t just erase them in embarrassment! Really look at them — they have a lot to tell you.
What are your old goals or Must-Dos?
“I want to double my income and make $100k this year.”
“I want to grow to X followers.”
“I want to take 30 meetings with podcasters.”
“I want to publish three blog posts a week.”
“I want to be featured in Goop.”
Cool. What do these line items represent?
Maybe making $100k really means paying off your student loans, or coming up with the downpayment for a house. (Can you simply focus on saving more while increasing your salary by 25%, which would likely get you to your outcome?)
Maybe growing your follower count represents getting more people to acknowledge your work and believe in you. (Can you instead focus on getting ten superfans to believe in you and what you do, and share it with their communities?)
Maybe taking 30 meetings means making valuable connections with people who you can learn from. (Can you find a mentor, guide, or course that will teach you the same thing with less effort?)
Maybe publishing three blog posts means consistently showing up for your business. (Can you put in one more hour a week to focus on a key area of your business, like improving revenue?)
Maybe being featured in a publication like Goop means being acknowledged as an expert in your space. (Who are experts you admire? How did they get to be considered as experts)
Reminder: You don’t have to do things the way everyone else does them.
And especially for intuitives and empaths, we always have an option to do things more creatively and in a different way than the rest of the world. The roots of these desires can totally be fulfilled in a way that provides more ease for you.
Review your list, and rewrite your new and aligned musts down.
Step Three: Recover From Burnout and Prevent Future Overwhelm
Recovering from burnout is a two-part process — first, rewire yourself to be able to accept relaxation and reject stress as your baseline emotion.
Then, you have to be able to make choices that support running your life in a way that’s healthy for you. Get off the hamster wheel, fam. There are some things that we cannot control (systemic oppression that makes it harder for marginalized groups to get ahead and find success is traditional workplaces, for example), but there are still many things that we do have a choice over.
Decide what in your life you need to do in order to fulfill your life’s vision, and recognize that anything that doesn’t directly feed into that vision is taking energy from you and holding you back.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to getting started healing and growing:
Focus on your nervous system and being in your body. Highly intuitive people can be overwhelmed by sensation and retreat to their higher chakras in avoidance. Those who have experienced trauma (all of us, especially marginalized groups) learned that being in their bodies is inherently unsafe. Practice being in your body by taking deep breaths, doing yoga, and taking walks without a phone or distractions. Notice what is happening around you — how do the trees look? What does the air smell like? What can you hear on the breeze? Notice and stop yourself when you try to escape your feeling with distraction or busyness.
Get clear on your vision, mission, and value proposition. It’s so much easier to get clear on what your business or project or life needs when you’re clear on your WHY. Vision = the overarching 100-year goal of your company / project / life. Mission = what you or your company do. Value Proposition = what people pay you to do (literally. that’s it, that’s your value proposition)
Review your why for every goal or task on your list. Look at every Must-do task on your list. Do they all speak directly to your mission or value proposition?
Cut out the things that do not directly impact the goals in the four pillars of your business. Yep, it will be hard. But cutting out the stuff that is unnecessary will help you save more time and energy for the things that DO matter. Which means ... no burnout! Ruthlessly protect your energy from things that are not high value
Know that after you recover from burnout, you can add any of these things back onto your plate. Not a big deal. You can also hire someone else to do them for you. Also not a big deal.
Conclusion
I do very much believe that intuitive entrepreneurship is the way of the future. I also fully believe that just because everyone is doing something one way doesn’t mean it’s the only way. My advice to you: There is always a more creative way. If you don’t resonate with the tactics that others use, guess what? You don’t have to use them! You, with that brilliant, beautiful brain of yours, can figure out new ways.
Ways that are dimensional, fulfilling, and delightful — just like you.