Burnouts leading to Breakups: Getting Caught in the Web of Dysregulation

The past few months have been such a struggle for me: moving, full-time grad school, full-time job, complicated relationship dynamics. It’s no wonder I found myself caught in a web of dysregulation. My dysfunction looks like social over-functioning, losing control of my filters, and feeling like it’s impossible to slow down. When I get into this state it can have some harsh impacts on my relationships with others, and recently it has. 

I use writing these blog posts as one strategy of processing my experiences. I am someone who thinks and communicates much more clearly through written word than verbal, even with myself. I’ve been struggling to write about my experiences over the last year because I hold expectations around what I ‘should’ be writing about, how my personal commentary about Relationship Anarchy and authentic relating ‘should’ come across, and what sort of vibe I ‘ought’ to portray for those reading. Also, this has been a very confusing time for me with the start of grad school and the way my program asks me to deeply reflect on and question myself all the time.

This piece is a little different. This time, I’m not here to give advice or insight. I’m here to share an experience where my cycle of over-functioning gifted me with hard lessons to sit with. This piece is a reflection of me sitting with these lessons. 

I’m exposing myself for the flawed individual that I am. I don’t have it all together, and this process isn’t complete… but then again, is it ever?

What happened?

I lost my sense of intention in important relationships, and I took my beloveds for granted. I leaned on them for more support than I leaned on myself for, and essentially asked them to bear the weight of my stress and anxiety with me. I especially did this to my core partner. I didn’t mean to do this. It happened because I found myself activated from old trauma, struggling with a lot of big adjustments (as a neurodiverse person who struggles with the smallest adjustment), and I forgot to take moments to breathe and check in with myself. 

Essentially, I hit severe burnout, and I stayed there for about 2 months. 

This looked like me falling into reactive patterns regarding a metamour, expressing self-negativity, bringing my partners into the fold of my mental back-and-forth between my desire to be in ethically non-monogamous, intentional relationships and retreating to monogamy out of fear, insecurity, and activation. It looked like me calling my core partner almost daily to process my stress when they had other things going on. It looked like me using them as a distraction from sitting with my own discomfort and addressing my burnout.

What a mess, right?

I try to hold myself with some compassion around this, though. When school and work lives demand so much intense output, it’s hard to shut one’s brain off in personal time. When there’s no personal time, it’s hard to process and re-regulate before interfacing with others. This cycle put strain on my core partner to the point where a rift formed. They chose to take back space for themself, and I don’t blame them for their choice. 

“Don’t Forget Me After the Sun Sets” 2018

I’m grieving so much from this turn of events. Not only the loss of a beautiful relationship that had so much potential, but to see in hindsight all the ways I could’ve made a different choice. Instead of jumping into reactivity, I could’ve taken a moment to slow down and use mindfulness to re-contextualize the situation. I could’ve asked for more time to process something. I could’ve been writing for Love is the Action and reminding myself of all that I believe in relationally through that simple practice. 

How to move forward?

The consequences are hard to sit with. The lessons are humbling. What I find the hardest part of this all is to accept myself for all of these choices I made with deep love, compassion, and understanding. Whenever I am in conflict, I try my best to learn from my mistakes and grow. I reframe the situation in a way that allows me to foster acceptance and gratitude. This time it has been really hard.

Instead of saying to myself: “I regret every time I made a sarcastic comment about waiting for them to leave me,” (which, let’s be real, I totally do regret), I’m trying to say “I am grateful for this deep lesson the consequences of my choice is gifting me.” Instead of falling victim to the stress of my life, I’m using this experience as a wake-up call to shift things around and create more space and time for myself and for spontaneity in my life, something which I’ve learned is extremely important for my mental health. 

I’m also recognizing that I’m at a place in my life where things are just harder. I’m putting myself through a rigorous grad school program that demands a lot of introspective and creative reflection and output. I am also working to support myself through it. It makes sense why I’d get caught in the web of my dysfunction, and it’s okay that I did. 

It doesn’t make the grief and loss easier, but I am so glad for all the lessons that came from this. The ways to gauge myself and my regulatory state, new ways of communicating boundaries with myself and others, learning what’s important to me and what my personal needs are while being a grad student. This experience finally helped me solidify the morning routine I’ve been trying to nail down for years. These lessons will all serve me greatly when I become an eco-art therapist. 

“Pervading Loveliness & Exquisite Jubilation” 2020

The loss of my core partner means I gain opportunities to practice radical self-reliance. As much as I will miss the beauty of our walks and spontaneous trips to go stargazing, and as much as I grieve for all the plans we made that may not ever come to fruition, I also know that these are still things that I enjoy as an individual. I can continue to enjoy walks, stopping to smell the roses, and talking to all the plants in the old growth forest on my own. The sense of freedom and empowerment that comes from this is so deep, and now when I go to do these things, I will think of them and the ways they re-sparked so many things for me in our time together … and who knows? Maybe someday we will be able to do all these things together again, in whatever context makes sense. 

I will hold the lessons with deep gratitude and humility, and vow to never forget them so that next time I cross paths with a connection as rare and valuable as the one I just lost, I will not take it for granted regardless of how crazy my life becomes. Thank you so much, beloved, for the beauty you’ve brought to my life in so many ways. 

Thank you for reading.

— Emily Lichtenberg

Living Freely (Thoughts on Authentic Relating)

Note: This post is a reflection of my personal thoughts and perspectives. I do not claim to be an expert on Relationship Anarchy, and I acknowledge that other folks experience RA in different and equally valid ways. 

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What does it mean to live freely? For me, it means being able to be my authentic self in all moments of my life. This includes when I’m at home, at work, at school, alone, with friends, etc. Through my experiences as a neurodivergent person and a person who walks a non-traditional life path, I find modern US-American society a culture which promotes inauthentic existence through materialism, ‘playing games’ in relationships, and masking. People use these tactics to avoid revealing their authentic selves, as if that’s the goal. People wonder why they’re depressed and don’t feel fulfilled in their lives. 

Using relationship anarchy for self-liberation

For me, Relationship Anarchy (RA) has been a tool to learn how to deconstruct these ingrained patterns and behaviors of inauthentic connecting. By learning how to become attuned to myself, my needs & wants, and my state of mind/heart/body/soul at a given moment, I am also learning how to share that outward with those I interact with. The result is my inner self feeling more at peace because I am not masking for the first time.

“Liberation” (2020)

RA is an ideological framework that prioritizes one’s relationship to themself first. From here, a person expands outward and builds intentional relationships with others.

This takes on a horizontal/landscape view, rather than a hierarchical/vertical one. Relationships with others can be seen as on a landscape or continuum, rather than a ladder. Ranks are replaced with contextual proximity, and static dynamics become fluid and ever-changing (just as life is!). 

how it shows up for me

I let my neurodivergence shine through Radical Transparency practices, and my relationships are more aligned with my needs and wants because I integrate agreement-making practices into the structure of my relationships. 

The practice of making agreements and building intentional relationships also helps me learn who in my life can fully accept me and how certain people want to show up in my life. As a lifetime recovering people-pleaser, I find this extremely valueable. Establishing these structures of relationship building not only put boundaries for others, they also provide me with self-boundaries to help me say within my authetnicity and not fall into trauma-based patterns of conformity and appeasement for the sake of maintaining connection.

Allowing others to choose how the want to show up in our dynamic, and standing my ground on where I am willing to meet them, gives me a foundation where my energy is reserved for what and who I want.

Taking competition out of the picture gives us room to be our authentic selves. Without the need to fill a societally predetermined role, impress others, or climb a social ladder, we are more able to share ourselves with others without fear of judgment.

This, of course, doesn’t mean judgment won’t enter our lives, whether self- or other-imposed, but we are less likely to base our inner conversations and inward/outward actions on these insecurities. When insecurities arise, which for me is quite often, I do my best to lean into them and and myself why this is coming up. Often times I find that my insecurities (feelings of inadequacy, jealousy, fear of being alone) are trying to tell me something. Sometimes it has to do with my relationships to others, but most of the time I can trace it back to the basics: sustainance, hydration, physical activity, and/or rest.

When our identities are not tied to an external status, we are able to examine our experience with genuine curiosity and find these deeper inner truths.

Learning to live an authentic lifestyle is a lifelong journey. New things come up, old things resurface, I forget the path and then experience something that brings me right back to it. It’s all a cycle, and there is no ‘right’ way.

Thank you for reading!

-Emily Lichtenberg