How do you deal with bad cyclic burnout?

NikkiNikkiNikki@kbin.social to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 69 points –

For some odd reason I burnout very frequently, or more like I get so brain dead that I literally cannot even come up with an Idea of what to do, let alone act on it. It feels like when I even try to start I get so exhausted that I have to lay down.

It always happens after I'm the most productive, but my down time feels so much longer than the time I get to create. I'd say I have at least 4 days to a week of productivity, and about 2 - 3 weeks of burnout. It's nuts.

The cycle repeats, though it can vary wildly in how long each part is.

I'm starting to get hella annoyed since I haven't drawn a thing in over a year and I was finally getting back into the groove at least doodling daily, just to be derailed hard.

I was thinking that I just lack creativity, but it became this catch-22 of "I have to actually draw with purpose and make things that I enjoy" and "I am so fucking tired that even opening a sketchbook or cleaning makes me want to take a nap / drop into a dead sleep".

What are your thoughts?

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Not to diagnose you, but have you considered that this may actually be due to bipolar disorder? Burnout and depression share a lot of symptoms, after all.

Well I was diagnosed years ago with it actually haha. Though it was never this severe. The way it manifested back then was far more emotional, it usually never fucked with my motivation or energy this hard, I would just have a week or two of awful venting and bad sketches, then all was well after that.

For a good 2 years I had no symptoms at all, and I had stopped taking the medication a little before that since I felt that it wasn't needed?

Anyhow it seems really odd for it to come back in a completely different, and somehow more debilitating way.

Yeah in that case I would go back to the doctor who first diagnosed you. Sometimes the brain just needs a bit of help to regulate itself properly, just like any other organ.

Bipolar disorder generally gets worse with time, it's a degenerative illness

That's fun to know haha, I always thought that it was constant and some people just had it worse

Some people do have it worse, that's true.

But each episode increases the risk and potency of new episodes, especially when unmedicated

Maybe also have a look into adhd, it’s getting commonly misdiagnosed as bipolar