Two ways nurses burn out....no one talks about the second one

Two Ways to Burn Out

Nobody talks about the second one.

The first one is easier to spot.

She's checked out. Moving through the shift inside a bubble she built to survive it.

The CNA is there to be delegated to. The shuttle driver is background noise. The patient is a med rec, a matching, timed, signed, dated informed consent, and a 7:30 on-time start.

She's not cruel. She's not lazy. She's exhausted, and she sealed herself off from the very thing that might have saved her because the system took too much and she had nothing left to give.

She's waiting for better staffing to feel something again.

It won't come that way.

But I understand her. I see her. And I'm not here to shame her.

The second one is harder to see.

From the outside, she looks like the ideal nurse.

She knows every CNA's name. She chats with the shuttle driver. She pauses at the curtain before she walks in. She asks the real question. The one that isn't on the checklist. She sees the woman behind the colostomy. The person inside the procedure code.

Her patients feel seen. Her colleagues feel supported. Her managers think she's fine.

She thinks she's fine.

She's not fine. 

Because somewhere in all of that generous presence, she forgot to be present for herself.

She gave everyone her humanity and kept none for her own.

She's not sealed off from connection. She's drowning in it. Endlessly available. Endlessly giving. Endlessly showing up for every human being in that building except the one who needed it most.

This one was me.

I never checked out. I never dumped on a CNA. I never stopped asking the real questions.

I just slowly disappeared from myself while showing up beautifully for everyone else.

And from the outside, everything looked fine.

Right up until my body sent a seizure to a hospital floor to get my attention because nothing else had worked.

Two nurses. Two kinds of burnout. Both lonely. Both trying to survive the same impossible system in opposite directions. 

One sealed herself off from connection to protect what was left.

One poured connection into everyone around her and forgot she was allowed to receive it too.

Neither one is wrong. Neither one is fine. Both are exhausted. Both deserve more than what the system offers.

And both need the same thing.

Not better staffing. Not a spa day. Not another certification or a lateral move to somewhere less hard.

They need to come back to themselves.

One needs to look up and let people back in. One needs to look inward and remember she exists too.

That's what Barely Balanced Nurses is for.

Both of them.

Which one are you?