Where Everybody's Crazy

Is your job killing you? Over the past few week, I've felt that mine is. So today, I did three things. I scheduled a meeting with my boss to try to talk about my workload. Second, I got lots and lots of sleep. Third, I re-read a paper produced by one of my All Nations classmates about burnout. It was good, and it reminded me to get a copy of "Honourably Wounded" by Marjory Foyle.

The good news is that now I know I'm not burning out yet. The good and bad news is that I recognise I have a problem and want to take steps to stop it from turning into burnout. I suspect that unless I make radical changes to my workload and my attitude, I won't survive beyond two or three months.

I could say a lot about burnout. I noticed both here and in the IT department at WEC UK that burnout actually requires the active co-operation of a lot of actors. When someone calls you up late at night for the fifth time that week and wants to tell you about their computer problem, they're failing to respect your time. If you don't tell them, in strong terms if necessarily, that they should go away, you're contributing to your own demise. When someone asks me if I can teach their English lesson on my day off, they're showing a disregard for my well-being and my private life. But if I feel that I can't set a boundary, I'm showing a similar disregard for my own well-being.

When pastors, church workers, field leaders and other people in the mission pour obligations on to me, they are doing so because they do not care about my well-being. They just see me as someone to do their work for them. That's kind of shocking, but it's important to grasp. Once I grasp that, it makes it easier for me to say no to some of those obligations. The problem is not that they really want me to work seven days a week and tire myself out. If I asked them if they wanted that, they would say no. They're not malicious people. It's just that it honestly hasn't occurred to them that I need time to myself.

As an example of this, the WEC UK conference. In the session before lunch I had just given a plea to stop abusing our IT staff and to start treating them with respect, and particularly to respect their private time. That was just before lunch. In the lunch queue, someone who was in the meeting comes up to me and asks me about their computer problem. It's not that they're malicious. It's just that they fundamentally don't care. They had a problem, I'm the person who can fix it, and my well-being just wasn't important to them. What's perhaps more important, they couldn't see that they were going to be the straw that broke the camel's back. I said some rather rude words to them.

This is hard to grasp because missionaries are meant to care about each other; we're just not there yet. And because other people don't care, the obligation is more on us to set our own boundaries. That does not, however, excuse the abuse that we suffer at the hands of others. Maybe I should start saying no to things (although as I pointed out earlier, the culture of obligation makes that very difficult, and no, things aren't any better in the church) but also maybe people ought to start showing a bit more concern for my limitations.

Another important point: what might be a reasonable workload becomes unreasonable when it takes place in the context of language stress and culture stress. Maybe that means that my workload is OK, once I settle down here. But maybe it means that it isn't OK right now.

And those well-meaning people who say that they will pray for me, that God will give me supernatural strength, really piss me off. It's like giving someone painkillers so they'll be able to walk on a broken leg. Stress is a sign that something is wrong with my workload. I don't want to be able to cope with the workload; I want the workload to change. Something has to give, but nobody wants it to be their thing that gives. So they just want me to be able to soldier on and try to do everything. That's not showing love, folks.

One last thing: burnout is particularly a problem for high achievers. To put it another way, this wouldn't be a problem if I weren't so damned good. Because I can preach, teach English, play the piano, fix computers, and whatever, I get asked to do all these things and more at every possible occasion. If I were incompetent, I'd have a much quieter life.

But I am still seeing the positive side to this. I need to find a solution to dealing with stress not just for my own well-being, but also because I (still) have a future goal of teaching leadership to Japanese businessmen. And one problem that Japanese businessmen have is forming an appropriate response to stress and burnout. (I'm assuming, from a Christian perspective, that heavy drinking, pornography and/or suicide are not appropriate responses.) So if I crack this for me, hopefully I can crack it for others too.

Update: I met with my boss last night; we adjusted my workload and pulled me out of a couple of commitments, but he also added a wise warning - during this time of establishing myself, I can respond to stress and let off steam in either productive or self-destructive ways, (even more self-destructive than bitching about it here...) and the self-destructive ways can highlight potential problem areas in my character and integrity. In other words, when I'm under pressure I'm subject to more temptations, and, as the UK WEC director puts it, when you squeeze the orange, you get to see what's inside it.

There is no stress-free job, but going through stress - with appropriate adjustments if things are going seriously badly - can be a helpful insight into our own character issues.