For most of us, our commitments are not limited to things that fill up our calendars. They extend to the many habits we use to escape, cope, and numb ourselves from our burnout: alcohol, nicotine, cannabis, social media scrolling, sugar, fast food, binge-watching TV, binge shopping, porn, etc. Modern society offers a near-endless supply of them, always beckoning from our phones or the local gas station.
To be very clear, these activities are not inherently bad or morally wrong. Such thinking just adds to our sense of shame, which becomes a distraction and drain in and of itself.
But these addictive habits are often quite draining. They give us a quick hit of dopamine, a temporary sense of pleasure or relief at the cost of our long-term peace and well-being — especially when one of life’s occasional pleasures curdles into compulsive habit.
Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke, in her book Dopamine Nation, explains that dopamine doesn’t just govern pleasure — it governs motivation and drive. In one striking study she cites, mice with depleted dopamine lost all motivation to eat, even with food placed directly in front of them. Some starved to death rather than reach for what was right there. Dopamine depletion can hollow out our will to act at all, even toward the things that would clearly help us. This is why our strategies for managing burnout so often reinforce, exacerbate, and deepen it. They give us a momentary respite, but eat away at the internal drives that keep us inspired and engaged.
Many of us simply cannot remove many of our practical commitments from our calendars. We are not going to stop parenting, doing what is necessary to keep our jobs, or being meaningful contributors to our communities.
Because of this, often, our best lever for managing burnout is managing our coping strategies, all the subtle ways we undermine our long-term peace and well-being in the name of temporary relief.
Antiheroes learn to reduce, even minimize, these energetic drains, while resisting the urge to be heroically absolutist about it.
You probably won’t eliminate all your addictions or vices today, or ever. But maybe there is one in particular that could create a lot more spaciousness and ease in your system if you could just let go.
