Jessica Hickman spent three and a half years in chronic burnout on a work visa, documenting it all in a diary that became her first book. She experienced repetitive strain injury, migraines, gut problems, intense anger, and dreaded Sundays marked by vomiting and fear of the work week ahead. The visa pressure combined with a demanding job and feeling solely responsible for colleagues created the perfect storm.
Chapters
that most people don't realize they're nearing burnout or they're actually in burnout until it's usually quite a long time actually before they really check in and go, wait a minute, this is not how I'm meant to be feeling, how feeling, I guess, as in the physical part, but also the mental and emotional part as well. Would you like to expand on those parts at all, your mental and emotional recall of what was happening what you were experiencing then, because you've shared with us your physical side. But what were the other parts, please, Jess?
Yeah, so look, I— we just mentioned my second book, but my first book really, um, is my diary entries. Someone gave me great advice to document the experience, and I was fortunate enough, um, to document everything that happened for the 3.5-year period, stuck on a visa, doing a job I loved, but also feeling solely responsible for the well-being of the people I cared about at work. So I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. So looking back at diary entries, early on I started to experience repetitive strain injury. So RSI, aches, pains. I remember one time my hand fully locked, and at the time I didn't make the emotional connection. It was just my body was so tense and fatigued. I suffered extensive migraines, gut health issues where the gut feels— and my body was pretty much locked tight for a long period of time. Lots of other physical issues with, you know, just suffering injuries and tears at the gym. I would try to control my emotions by sometimes even overexercising overeating, under-exercising. So over that period of time, my weight would fluctuate quite drastically depending on how I was coping. And then if I look at the emotional toll, sometimes I would feel really angry and feel like, why? I'm a good person doing a good job. Why? Why is this happening? Other times I would burst into tears, have to run out of the office, lock myself in the bathroom. And weekends pretty much looked like either excessive drinking and socializing to block out the pain. And Sunday was always hell, which was often vomiting and fear-based and unable to get out of bed at the thought of another week in hell. And, you know, that came— or I was completely emotionally or physically or psychologically fatigued that I remember spending long weekends in bed not answering any friends or family calls and just too burnt out to communicate.
