Yep

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You Might Not Recover from Burnout. Ever.

What grows from the ashes of your old life?

The data does not support the assumption that all burned out people can “recover.” And when we fully appreciate what burnout signals in the body, and where it comes from on a social, economic, and psychological level, it should become clear to us that there’s nothing beneficial in returning to an unsustainable status quo. 

The term “burned out” is sometimes used to simply mean “stressed” or “tired,” and many organizations benefit from framing the condition in such light terms. Short-term, casual burnout (like you might get after one particularly stressful work deadline, or following final exams) has a positive prognosis: within three months of enjoying a reduced workload and increased time for rest and leisure, 80% of mildly burned-out workers are able to make a full return to their jobs. 

But there’s a lot of unanswered questions lurking behind this happy statistic. For instance, how many workers in this economy actually have the ability to take three months off work to focus on burnout recovery? What happens if a mildly burnt-out person does not get that rest, and has to keep toiling away as more deadlines pile up? And what is the point of returning to work if the job is going to remain as grueling and uncontrollable as it was when it first burned the worker out? 

Burnout that is not treated swiftly can become far more severe. Clinical psychologist and burnout expert Arno van Dam writes that when left unattended (or forcibly pushed through), mild burnout can metastasize into clinical burnout, which the International Classification of Diseases defines as feelings of energy depletion, increased mental distance, and a reduced sense of personal agency. Clinically burned-out people are not only tired, they also feel detached from other people and no longer in control of their lives, in other words.

Unfortunately, clinical burnout has quite a dismal trajectory. Multiple studies by van Dam and others have found that clinical burnout sufferers may require a year or more of rest following treatment before they can feel better, and that some of burnout’s lingering effects don’t go away easily, if at all. 

In one study conducted by Anita Eskildsen, for example, burnout sufferers continued to show memory and processing speed declines one year after burnout. Their cognitive processing skills improved slightly since seeking treatment, but the experience of having been burnt out had still left them operating significantly below their non-burned-out peers or their prior self, with no signs of bouncing back. 

It took two years for subjects in one of van Dam’s studies to return to “normal” levels of involvement and competence at work. following an incident of clinical burnout. However, even after a multi-year recovery period they still performed worse than the non-burned-out control group on a cognitive task designed to test their planning and preparation abilities. Though they no longer qualified as clinically burned out, former burnout sufferers still reported greater exhaustion, fatigue, depression, and distress than controls.

In his review of the scientific literature, van Dam reports that anywhere from 25% to 50% of clinical burnout sufferers do not make a full recovery even four years after their illness. Studies generally find that burnout sufferers make most of their mental and physical health gains in the first year after treatment, but continue to underperform on neuropsychological tests for many years afterward, compared to control subjects who were never burned out. 

People who have experienced burnout report worse memories, slower reaction times, less attentiveness, lower motivation, greater exhaustion, reduced work capability, and more negative health symptoms, long after their period of overwork has stopped. It’s as if burnout sufferers have fallen off their previous life trajectory, and cannot ever climb fully back up. 

And that’s just among the people who receive some kind of treatment for their burnout and have the opportunity to rest. I found one study that followed burned-out teachers for seven years and reported over 14% of them remained highly burnt-out the entire time. These teachers continued feeling depersonalized, emotionally drained, ineffective, dizzy, sick to their stomachs, and desperate to leave their jobs for the better part of a decade. But they kept working in spite of it (or more likely, from a lack of other options), lowering their odds of ever healing all the while. 

Van Dam observes that clinical burnout patients tend to suffer from an excess of perseverance, rather than the opposite: “Patients with clinical burnout…report that they ignored stress symptoms for several years,” he writes. “Living a stressful life was a normal condition for them. Some were not even aware of the stressfulness of their lives, until they collapsed.”

Instead of seeking help for workplace problems or reducing their workload, as most people do, clinical burnout sufferers typically push themselves through unpleasant circumstances and avoid asking for help. They’re also less likely to give up when placed under frustrating circumstances, instead throttling the gas in hopes that their problems can be fixed with extra effort. They become hyperactive, unable to rest or enjoy holidays, their bodies wired to treat work as the solution to every problem. It is only after living at this unrelenting pace for years that they tumble into severe burnout. 

Among both masked Autistics and overworked employees, the people most likely to reach catastrophic, body-breaking levels of burnout are the people most primed to ignore their own physical boundaries for as long as possible. Clinical burnout sufferers work far past the point that virtually anyone else would ask for help, take a break, or stop caring about their work.

And when viewed from this perspective, we can see burnout as the saving grace of the compulsive workaholic — and the path to liberation for the masked disabled person who has nearly killed themselves trying to pass as a diligent worker bee. 

I wrote about the latest data on burnout "recovery," and the similarities and differences between Autistic burnout and conventional clinical burnout. The full piece is free to read or have narrated to you in the Substack app at drdevonprice.substack.com

The Dyeing of Theodore (DIM Happy Ace)

Yesterday I decided to buckle down and finally dye my boy tan. Even though I had dyed a doll before, I was very, very nervous, since previously I used Jacquard iDyePoly and for Theo I was determined to use RIT Dyemore. I had read that RIT Dyemore tans can come off grey—even purple—if the dye bath does not reach a certain temperature, so I waited until my water was at a rolling boil then submerged each piece for three (3) minutes. A beautiful, even tan resulted with little-to-no marbling! I’m really pleased as punch. ^^

My phone’s camera doesn’t want to pick up the dye’s true color, sadly. There is a slight copper undertone to RIT Dyemore “Sandstone” but in-person my Theo looks closer to a cross between LUTS RSB and the old Dream of Doll tan, if anyone knows the shade I’m talking about. I do want to point out two things for those folks out there hoping to dye Doll in Mind resin. First and foremost, DiM resin takes synthetic dye PERFECTLY. It absorbs color evenly and doesn’t streak as long as you keep your water super hot. (And I mean SUPER.) DiM also sands seams, so there will be some lines along the sides of the legs, etc. that absorb the dye differently. Not very noticeable, though, IMO.

But… DiM also uses some sort of glue around the wrist and ankle s-hooks that is impermeable to dye. I received a defective hand with this substance near the knuckles (that I used as a test piece since DiM was kind enough to send me a replacement), and no matter what I did, a patch of NS remained beneath it. Unfortunately, my boy’s other hand had a bit of this on his forefinger that I did not notice during my communication with DiM (thus, no replacement), so there is a small splotch there, as well. Had I seen it before dyeing, I would’ve tried sanding, even though that also would have resulted in uneven coverage.

I figure I’ll just cover his finger with a nude, doll-sized bandage. Theo apparently gets a lot of paper cuts while working late nights at the bureau, LOL. Who knew? Anyway, I hope sharing my experience helps someone! I’ll post another batch of photos once I’ve restrung him. I’m giving the resin 48 hours to cure since it was exposed to extreme heat (I don’t want to end up with any scratches or breaks).

ALSO! After trying both, I prefer RIT Dyemore to Jacquard iDyePoly. Both achieve bold colors, but RIT’s liquid format >>> Jacquard’s powder. I’m itching to dye another doll on my wishlist now. Maybe a Little Monica or a BlueFairy.

What do you folks think? Thank you all for reading! —Mint

meteor

working on a new print

I made him sit still for a photo

Woah. Timothy Zahn, are you me?

I often hear the argument that having major characters die is more realistic than having them always come through unscathed. Of course it is. But I personally don’t want my fiction to necessarily be “realistic” – I want my fiction to be entertaining. For me, that means watching engaging characters I care about get into and out of dangerous predicaments, working and thinking together in order to defeat the bad guys. While some authors (and readers) like the tension of wondering who will live and who will die, I prefer the tension of seeing how the heroes are going to think or work their ways out of each difficult or impossible situation they find themselves in. If I want realism and the deaths of people I care about, I can turn on the news.

–Timothy Zahn, interviewed by TheForce.Net, 2008

i figured it out

Alternate heads ahoy!

Alucard's open mouth noggin, Zhang's dragon head, and my (still unnamed) Fox-Boy's "human" head are here!

The boyfriends are finally together ahhh I'm so happy 😁

Next up is their faceups!

• Foxboy is a Fengxian Chanshan Head on an Arcdoll Zilang Body

• Zhang is a Dollzone x Reduce collab Yunchi head on a Loongsoul Black Dragon body

• Alucard is a 小花sp head :]

The frost is back, time will tell if we will be blessed by snow or not. Some creatures are still roaming the fields, some to hunt for food some to fuel their mind by the beauty of the frost pattern.