How to Stop Burning Out and Start Coming Back to Yourself

Rest isn't fixing your burnout because burnout was never about being tired. Erin Patten shares her story and the four energy leaks to patch first.

The leaves are starting to fall. Not all at once. One leaf, then an acorn, then another leaf. A little at a time. And then one day, a few months from now, we'll look up and the trees will be completely bare.

That's what's happening with us energetically right now. Little things are falling away. People are falling out of our lives. And if you've been following the transits, you've felt it. The 10/10 portal and the new moon in Libra felt like a great reset to me, and I believe we're all operating on a whole new timeline. This past week was incredibly emotional for me, and incredibly awakening.

Autumn is the season of going in. So it's the perfect time to talk about burnout, and about how we hold onto our energy as the world slows down and falls away.

Burnout Isn't About Rest

We sleep more. We take a break. We go on vacation. And we still come back tired.

That's because burnout isn't just about rest. Burnout is about losing yourself.

When we're not honoring ourselves, when we're not honoring our truth, when we're not holding healthy boundaries, we lose ourselves. That is when burnout begins. And no amount of sleep can bring back a self you've walked away from.

The Year I Lost Myself

Nearly eight years ago, I was living in Detroit and going through what I now call my great burnout. It was also my great awakening. This Venus retrograde is mirroring 2018, so that season has been on my heart.

I was launching my first company, DāO Detroit, a plant-based beauty brand. And I was doing it in the middle of the hardest season of my life. My father passed away unexpectedly. Then my best friend was killed on a trip to Jamaica. Then, as I was launching my full product line in Macy's eight months later, my mother attempted suicide.

And I kept pushing. I kept running our Kickstarter campaign. I kept entering pitch competitions. I was trying to ignore my reality and make my business work, because I believed my business would give me all the gratification I needed.

I had also given half of that business to a man I was in a relationship with. He was living in my home and bringing nothing into it. On paper, it looked better to investors to have a man beside me. In my body, it was costing me everything.

Talk about losing myself. I was living a lie.

I can almost laugh about it now. While I was in it, it was just sad. And even sad feels like a judgment. It wasn't good and it wasn't bad. It just was what it was. And what it was doing was forcing me to take a hard look at my life, at my being, and at how far I had wandered from myself.

Winning on the Outside, Numb on the Inside

Here's what made it so hard to see. From the outside, I looked like I was winning. I was winning pitch competitions at Essence Festival in New Orleans. I stood on a Super Bowl stage. I was selling out products at hair shows. Everything looked like it was working.

Inside, it couldn't have been further from the truth.

My body was numb. I couldn't feel. I couldn't cry. All I had was a little anger every now and then, and that anger was only trying to protect me, because I didn't have healthy boundaries for myself. I was still grieving my father. My best friend was gone. My mother was in crisis. I felt like I had no one.

I got to the point where I was questioning my life purpose, and questioning whether I even needed to be alive. I was at my lowest of low. I was the definition of burnt out.

That is when I started my meditation practice and my affirmations. I needed them so badly. I couldn't feel the shift yet, but I knew it was happening. So I trusted the process.

If you've ever been there, I want you to know that season is not the end of your story. If you're in it right now, please reach out to someone you trust, or call or text 988 in the US to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

The Four Leaks

The way I started to unravel all of it was by looking at what I call the four leaks. They're the heart of my Energy Audit, and you can track your own with this week's self-audit at [ENERGY AUDIT LINK].

There are four places your energy leaks. The people in your life. The environments you surround yourself with, whether that's work, social or family. Your thought patterns. And your activities, meaning what you are actually doing all day.

Let me use my Detroit season as the case study.

The people. I was in a draining, toxic relationship where I was the breadwinner, the emotional support and the victim, all in one. I was all of it at the same time, and it was emptying me.

The environment. I was an entrepreneur, calling my own shots, so to speak. And I was working from seven in the morning until two in the morning, getting almost no sleep. I had gone from being a slave in corporate to being a slave to my own business. Networking events. Traveling here, traveling there. Run, run, run. And I wasn't making room for the grief or the heaviness at all. I was ignoring it.

The thought patterns. This one surprised me, because it's what saved me. I believe it's what kept me alive. I was exploring metaphysics for the first time, and I did a 30-day guided meditation journey that changed everything. It taught me to reformulate my thoughts. To speak mantras over my being. To journal. To find gratitude. To question the life I had built around me. In a season when everything else was draining me, my thought patterns were the one place my energy was coming back.

The activities. Here it was simple. The one thing draining me above everything else was my work. It was all I did.

Be Honest About What Drains You

When you do your own audit, look at all four. Your activities, your people, your environment and your thought patterns. And be honest with yourself. What's giving me energy? What's draining my energy?

That honesty matters, because these four decide whether you feel burned out or fulfilled. Not your schedule. Not your revenue. Not how good it all looks from the outside.

So I'll ask you the question I had to ask myself in Detroit. Have you lived a season where you were performing really well and looking really good on paper, and something was still missing? A void. A gap between what it looked like and what it felt like.

Get specific. Is it your job? Your career? Your relationship? Your family? What in your life is adding to you, and what is taking away from you?

Simply bringing awareness to that question is healing. The asking itself is a request to the universe. I want better. I want higher. I want more expansion. I want greater.

What Reconnection Looks Like on a Tuesday

Let me fast forward eight years, to today.

When I recorded this episode, it was about one o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon. I'd spent the morning doing a little work, answering emails and calls, and checking social media here and there. I also organized my bedroom and my bathroom. I did my full meditation, my toning, my tai chi, my dantian tapping and my healing wand. I pulled my own tarot reading. And then I sat down to share with you.

Back in Detroit, I gave fourteen, fifteen, sixteen hours a day to the work and maybe four or five hours to myself. And during most of those hours I was upset and unhappy. I wasn't loving myself. I wasn't honoring myself. I was barely eating. Even my home was draining me.

Today my home is the most peaceful it has ever been. I have devices that support the energy of my space, and crystals and selenite all around me. I have my own spiritual practice, hearing from my guides and doing my own readings. I check on my mom, I pray over her, I talk to her. Last night she and I did a tarot reading together for her. Yesterday evening I went to the steam room and gave my hair a deep conditioning.

I Come First

I come first.

There is no way I could do what I do without that. Every time I share with you, on this podcast or on social media, I'm giving energy. And I could never give at that level if I weren't already full. Already abundant.

I move and operate from energy overflow now. That's what I mean by going from burnout to reconnection.

Pouring into yourself first isn't selfish. It's the connection that makes everything else possible. Because when you reconnect with yourself, you reconnect with God. God flows through us. The energy that gives us life is God. It is Source. So we don't have to go somewhere to find God. We're already in it, and it's already in us. That's why I call myself a goddess. The divine is embodied in me, and it's embodied in you.

Reconnection isn't only a retreat you book, although I love those too. It's coming back to yourself intentionally. Daily. Minute by minute.

Notice, Name, Nurture

Once you can see your leaks, the people, the environment, the thought patterns and the activities, you can begin a simple practice I call Notice, Name, Nurture.

Notice. Bring awareness to what's adding to you and what's taking away.

Name. Say it plainly. It's my family life that isn't giving me the energy I need right now.

Nurture. Ask what you can bring to that area of your life that will start to give you energy.

The goal is to be nurtured and fulfilled in every area of our lives. That's work-life balance at its finest. No leakage, only energy coming back to you. And when you patch up all the leaks, that's what's called flow. Moving in flow is the ultimate alignment, and it's what we're moving toward together.

The Balance Between Work and Life

My energy today is supremely different from last week, and that's okay. Every week we're moving through our own journeys and our own waves. Last week I was clearing a lot of old wounds, especially my masculine wounding. Today I feel the balance between my masculine and my feminine.

That balance is what work-life balance really is. The work is the masculine. It's what we put our energy into, what we activate, what we want to see manifest in the physical. The life is the feminine. It's what feeds us and nurtures us.

So are you resting? Truly resting in your being? Or is your mind still running a mile a minute, even in your sleep?

Let It Fall

Sit with these questions as we move into this next season. Autumn is calling us inward, into self-reflection. And as the little things fall away, the leaves, the acorns, the people, the opportunities, let them. They're clearing space for self-love, self-nurturing and self-actualization.

Because six months from now, when spring comes back around, the bloom is going to be blooming.

Lift up light and love at all times. That is who you are, and that is what you are.

Come Back to Yourself

Your Energy Audit. Track your own four leaks with this week's self-audit at https://drive.google.com/file/d/11EkuMFrwL5YOCPvhZ0w1lO_cOG851QMg/view

The Divine Alignment Mentorship. If you're ready to come back to yourself with support, this is my five-month mentorship for women building success without leaving themselves behind. Book a consultation at erinpatten.com.

Ra Beauty. The hibiscus petal oil I wear in my hair and on my body. Find it at rabeauty.co.