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I am a person who can take a lot of pressure. At some point in my past life AF (before feminism) I used to say it proudly, like a little medal, because being able to work under pressure and hold on without saying anything was a highly valued skill in the corporate and wildly capitalistic work world I moved in. Maybe I even wrote it on my LinkedIn. And in spaces that believe in meritocracy, calling oneself a “workaholic” was something -perhaps still is- plausible and even desirable, just as living busy was an unmistakable sign of success. From all that the world of work taught me, I was left with that and an enormous difficulty in setting limits.
So, burnout is no stranger to me. I started working in large multinationals as soon as I finished college (16 years ago) and it took me a long time to be able to name several of the behaviors and bad practices that led me to quit those jobs (some self-inflicted as a defense mechanism to survive in that world), so I know burnout from before, even if we didn’t call it that. Hello, burnout my old friend… And it has been the last red flag to leave those places.
Now with more self-care tools, I know that this progressive physical and emotional exhaustion or chronic “work stress” that left me physically and emotionally drained and ended up extinguishing any flame of motivation was burnout. The huge budgets I had to manage, the trips, the reports, the vertical chains of command that almost always ended in some mediocre guy, absurd schedules, meetings that could be an e-mail, the mandatory and often meaningless attendance, but above all, the competitiveness ended up burning me and taking away huge amounts of vital energy that, over the years, was becoming more precious and valuable for other things than filling the pockets of the owners of those corporations. Now it is easier to identify burnout and it is more common to resign from the first network flag (of course, if you have certain class privileges that allow you to do so), but not before and in that world, much less. On the contrary, to endure many years in the same company until retirement was the measure of success of the generation that preceded mine.
Today there is already a whole conversation on the subject and there is talk of burnout syndrome or “burned-out worker syndrome” and its causes and effects on the life and mental health of those who suffer from it are known. There is even talk of effects on personality and self-esteem and, like everything else, it has to be seen through different lenses and intersections of gender, race, class and neurodivergence. The burnout experienced by neurotypical people is not the same as the burnout experienced, for example, by people with depression or other diagnoses. Just as burnout is not the same in men and women, we now know that burnout affects women disproportionately due to several factors, but fundamentally because of the unpaid care work that has been socially assigned to us and that is added to paid work. But I want to add one more aspect, activism, particularly feminism, which is the one that crosses me and that I can talk about.
Then I left that corporate world, came to feminism and changed most of the practices in my life, even at work, I was more aware of my well-being, then came the pandemic and it caught up with me in my last office job that, although alternative and pseudo-independent, with my friends we baptized CHERNOBYL.
Chernobyl was the cool space, where many people wanted to work and even today some of them are proud to have worked there and put it in their bios. 50% media, 50% creative agency, possibly two of the biggest breeding grounds for burnout in the work spectrum. I am well aware that I arrived in its least toxic season, with a bit more tools to react -thanks, feminism- and with the fortune of coinciding there with some wonderful people and saviors, but the burnout was total, I had my biggest crisis moment, cried in the boardroom (thanks for the containment ex Chernobyl colleagues) and said, “never again”.
I said, “never again” thinking that working only in feminist spaces, created by and for us, would solve the burnout problem. And although I was able to migrate from the corporate world to jobs where I could take advantage of all my previous training and experience in issues directly related to the defense of human and feminist rights, do it in decent conditions -which is not the rule either-, improve my conditions in terms of mental health and well-being, and above all, work with a motive that mobilizes me much more than lining the pockets of some foreign millionaire, at the end of this year, when I wake up, the burnout is still there.
WHY, IF I ALREADY DID EVERYTHING I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO IN ORDER NOT TO RELAPSE? My conclusion, after giving it a lot of thought and talking about it with many colleagues, is that, in my case as in the case of many, it is no longer a labor burnout resulting from capitalist corporativism, but a feminist burnout that, unfortunately, is also impacted directly or indirectly by practices inherited from the systems that we know and still dominate the world (if you are reading this on a cell phone or computer and you got it through a social network, I am sorry to tell you that we are in the same loop).
Feminists talk about self-care all the time, but when it comes to exercising it, many of us crack. We talk about the importance of setting limits and perhaps this is what is most difficult for some of us, and when we finally decide to do it, we are branded as selfish and unempathetic. Because feminists have to be available for everything and everyone, at all times and with humility. Limits? That’s power and we can’t have it. It is frowned upon. In addition to our paid jobs, many of us voluntarily take part in collectives, movements, and organizations, of course, dedicating time, energy, and above all emotional work to the causes that move us deeply. However, that time, that energy and that emotional work are resources, it is work and although it is voluntary, it is not free, someone is paying for it, each one of us is paying for it. So we make our balance sheets, we render accounts to ourselves and some accounts do not give. And I’m not talking about money, I’m talking about wellbeing, mental health and physical health. Many leave so much behind that they are left behind too. And it’s painful to watch and pretend it doesn’t happen, that there are no aches and pains and exhaustion, that we’re not tired of having to pretend we’re not tired. It is painful and costly.
I sit down to take stock at the end of the year, to give an account to the mirror. I see in retrospect that we did a lot, that we achieved a lot of things collectively, but at what cost to the individual? How many compañeras gave up the fight, how many relationships were broken, how many lost mental health along the way, how many abandoned spaces for self-care, how many were broken a little or a lot and how many times we stopped celebrating because we had to run away to fight other battles or because they simply took away the possibility of celebrating? And I speak only of this year, knowing that there were worse, that many have been going on for decades and that for many others there is no other option. Perhaps the accounts are not enough and will never be enough because we demand from ourselves more than our capacities and possibilities. Because many feminists have the terrible habit of taking everything personally and taking on all the responsibilities as our own, thinking that if we do not do the work, no one else will do it. And so we end up feeling responsible for things as complex as electing a president and as abstract as overthrowing the patriarchy.
There is a lot of guilt in all this, but also false expectations and constant scrutiny of what we do. The classic “ where are the feminists?” every time something happens in the world is not exclusive to incels and misogynists; more than a question, it is a constant demand for heroism also within the movements. The amount of cases of violence that we receive daily exceeds the capacity of many of us, no one ever asks you if they can send you a case that can trigger many things, they just send it to you without warning because you are a feminist. The number of times you are added to group chats to support, manage or give your opinion, without asking if you want to be or have the time to be, because if you are a feminist it is assumed that it corresponds to you. It is forgotten that those of us on the other side of the screen, on the other side of the phone, are people with our own lives, emotions and relationships that we must also attend to, and that our attention and capacity for emotional management is a limited resource, and we do not owe it unconditionally to anyone.
We are dehumanized and demanded as if we were perfect and infinite, and we are not. We were not before the pandemic, much less now, when we have only just begun to dimension – and I think still very superficially – the marks left on us as individuals and societies. In addition to the pandemic and the economic crisis that followed, and a social explosion that left the pains of so many inequalities raw, this year’s elections took away much of the energy, mental health and emotional management that we had been able to safeguard. It was a particularly demanding election for feminists and for activists of other causes, as the stakes were high for attention to a human rights crisis that could not stand another term in the anti-rights camp. It was a pressure cooker with us in it and many of us didn’t realize it until it burst, we burst, and some of us are still picking up the pieces.
That is why I moved away from spaces that taught me a lot and that I carry in my heart, but that demanded a time and energy that I no longer had, maybe I will come back later, but this year it was not. That’s why I deactivated most of the notifications of my social networks, and maybe I didn’t see that message or that mention and I didn’t answer it not for lack of interest but because I had to set limits to the little that I can control. That’s why I didn’t go to most of the events I was invited to that year, and prioritized rest and whatever would bring me tranquility and bliss. That is why I was not as emotionally available as I used to be, because I had to take care of managing my own emotions that were not as good as they used to be, and I set limits and preferred to stay away from people who demand more than what I can give now. Maybe I needed to set those boundaries earlier, but better late than never, and these are self-care mechanisms that I didn’t have before.
I want to be able to remain hopeful in what we do, I want to be able to celebrate each step calmly and enjoy it without guilt, I want to live under my own expectations and not those of others because I will never be good enough feminist, or intersectional, or emotionally responsible, for the feministometer (the feminist esmad ) or the external gaze that ignores the process itself, I am not interested in meeting impossible standards, that utopian idealization is, in large part, the cause of this burnout. But above all, I want to continue in the struggle, which is what moves my soul, without burning myself in the attempt.
But what about those who have not been able to stop even a little? Those who cannot afford it because their contexts are different? Because it is not the same to work/militate from a capital city than from the rural areas or from places where poverty and other territorial violence do not give truce. It is necessary to understand burnout as an issue that responds to structural cracks, but also to a cultural view inherited from those bad practices of self-sufficiency and individualism of capitalism. This idea that if we stop, the world will fall, which makes us so reluctant to think about the possibility of slowing down and the theories of degrowth. That also damaging idea that successful women carry and can handle anything, of echaleganism and self-improvement, of the Judeo-Christian wonder woman, good wife, good mother, businesswoman, unconditional friend and exemplary feminist. UNSUSTAINABLE.
Can we inhabit feminism without burning ourselves and leaving the ashes in it?
Several feminist teachers agree in saying that feminism is a relay race, and for this, trust and communication are fundamental.
We cannot speak of a defense of human rights without taking into account the impact on physical, mental and emotional health that it entails. We are affected by injustice and reality, as well as the pressure for a perfect activism that, realistically speaking, we will never be able to achieve because it does not exist. I am not interested in “dying with my boots on”, I am interested in all of us having a good and dignified life. We urgently need to break that mandate of perfection and those patriarchal patterns that for so long conditioned our lives, not to perpetuate them within our movements; we urgently need to set limits and say I cannot do this or I am not able to do this now, I need a relief. And that costs us a lot.
Nor do I believe in suffering as an activist banner. We are not heroines or saviors, nor perfect, nor infallible, our bodies, minds and emotions have limits and we need to be aware of them and of what affects us. And we need to lower our blames, too. Perhaps we need to review these ideas that romanticize sacrifice and the martyr hero and the idealization of strength and rethink if it would not be much better to try to be well to be able to do more because otherwise, this is not sustainable for anyone. We cannot cover everything, we do not have the gift of ubiquity, many of us work double and even triple shifts, many of us are mothers, many of us do unpaid care work.
How many hours do you think feminist days are?
Self-care should be both an individual and collective strategy and commitment. Self-care as a political tool, as a collective commitment and as a transgressive weapon. Well-being, the enjoyment of activism, enjoyment, pleasure and satisfaction should also be an ethical commitment. The bet to be well in order to be more useful to the struggles. This is also political and revolutionary. Self-care, in a society that wants us weak and exhausted, is an act of rebellion*. But self-care also has limits, and it is also work, so it can depend not only on us, we need public policies on mental health, labor guarantees to perform any work in decent conditions, and we also need to stop believing that everything depends on us because it does not.
In 2019, the French collective against digital violence Collectif Féministes contre le cyberharcèlement denounced its burnout and added “We can no longer do the work of the state at our own expense. Our activism exhausts us, and the contempt of the authorities in charge of care and access to justice puts us in danger.” .
WE ARE NOT THE STATE. And yet, it is feminist organizations that end up doing the work that falls to the state, many of them without consistent resources to ensure some stability for their members. State expectations with self-managed resources or intermittent funding. Nothing and nobody sustains itself in this way, at least not well, and to survive is not to live well. The precariousness of the work of many feminists is an issue that adds to the inequality gaps.
Rather than complaining, I want to let off steam and call for self-criticism for the sake of our own sustainability. I blame the discourse of empowerment because it does not serve us, on the contrary, it individually burdens us with more demands and measures of success. And yes, I will blame patriarchy and capitalism for this as well, because in the end the burden of dismantling the systems that oppress us ends up being ours and traversed by them.
Att: a tired feminist.
*This article contains excerpts from the book “Que el privilegio no te nuble la empatía” written by Ita María and published in 2020 by Editorial Planeta.
