Feeling Emotional Burnout? Here’s What to Do.

Published: December 17, 2024

Feeling Emotional Burnout? Here’s What to Do.

By Movieguide® Contributor

Author and “Real Life” podcast host Alyssa Bethke is sharing how to manage burnout and share your disappointment with God — because he listens.

“I feel like women today, we have so much pressure to be it all, do it all, and all at once,” Bethke shared on the “Jesus Calling” podcast. “And I think there’s a lot of pressure just to check all the boxes and make sure we’re doing all the things, you know, make sure that we’re nontoxic and that we’re eating organic and that we have a fulfilling career and that we dress really cute.”

“I think women also are wired to hold a lot of emotional weight. We carry the emotions of those in our life: our kids, our husbands, our friends. And I think the Lord made us in that way, to have that capacity to really care for others and hold things with them.”

But this can take an “unhealthy” turn if you become preoccupied with pleasing others and keeping everyone happy.

“How do we actually work through disappointments that we have as women? I think that’s a huge thing that we often don’t talk about a lot, and so we start to really neglect our heart. We stuff our feelings, we want to numb,” she explained.

“And I think sometimes it can just be all too much and we can feel like we’re coming undone. We can feel like we’re all tangled up inside and not sure of how to untangle it. What is ours to do? And it’s so discouraging when we can’t have control of things because it often can make us feel really helpless.”

Bethke believes we need to give our disappointments to God in honesty.

“And…be honest with yourself: Man, I’m really disappointed by this,” she adds. “I’m really sad. I’m really discouraged.”

“And then to talk to God about it…It’s really an invitation from the Lord. ‘Will you trust Me with this? Will you come to Me and attach yourself to Me? Will you let Me lead you and let Me guide you and give you hope and trust?’”

She points out that while many Psalms are happy, many are also laments, and it’s okay to express sadness and frustration.

“I think that as a church, we need to know how to lament, because this is such a part of being human. The authors in the Psalms, they lament, they cry out to God, they ask questions, they doubt. And then they remember who God is,” Bethke said.

“And they preach to themselves of who He is and what He’s done in the past and they trust Him. And maybe don’t feel like you trust Him. But I’ve really learned this phrase to say, like, ‘I will choose to trust you, God, in this. I choose to trust that You are good and that You know what’s best for my life and that You will redeem this or You will renew it.’”

She says that to go numb or stay in a state of disappointment is a “disservice” to the heart because it isn’t “coming fully alive.” And creates distance from God.

“If we don’t rest and if we don’t play and if we don’t really check in with our heart, then we can really get burned out, because that’s not how we’re meant to be. I think a lot of us are anxious and I think a lot of us are fearful. We don’t want to experience pain,” she said. “We don’t want to experience unease and suffering.”

“And when things aren’t going well, like, that’s not comfortable. We’ve lost the art of learning to really be present in where we are. We don’t give a lot of space to check in with our heart because we value performance over our being.”

“And so I love this quote by Dallas Willard, he says, ‘Your greatest gift in life is not your accomplishments, but it’s your transformed self that you give people.’”

One of the most important things that Behtke wants readers/listeners to know is that our value is not based on performance, but on the fact that we are image bearers of God.

“We have to go against culture because culture says that we are what we do. We are what we can show. We are our resumes. But God says, “No, you are my child.” And we’re made to do good work.”

Bethe recently wrote a book on this topic called “When Doing it All is Undoing You.”

She also shared in a thoughtful post on Instagram on Dec. 4:

We have a choice to choose joy, in the midst of our real lives, not the ones we are wishing for.

We can receive our real lives with joy because we choose to be in constant wonder at who God is and what He does.

Joy is in gratitude. Gratitude is what keeps our hearts soft in a world that wants to break us. Gratitude takes our eyes off of our circumstances and puts them on the One who is higher than them all. It allows us to notice all the ways He works and is present with us, in the big and the small, the momentous and the ordinary.