I burned out and escaped from this work forever

They shouted at me and crushed, I even hid in the toilet from the authorities. Now I have my own business

At the age of 21, Kira Kuzmenko worked at an unloved job, was afraid to once again intersect with a boss who often shouted at her and colleagues, and did not understand what was suffering from burnout. Once she simply did not return to the office, stopped answering calls and got a job in another place. Now Kuzmenko has several successful businesses and their own team. She knows how to cope with burning out environmentally and how not to bring herself and employees to a state where you want to quit and escape everything. She shared her story about the struggle with burnout with the "cold."

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In the second year of the university, when I was 21 years old, I got a job as a seller in a travel agency. I recently moved from my native Krasnodar to Moscow, did not know what I wanted to do, and grabbed at any opportunity to earn extra money and gain experience. So I decided to try to sell tours abroad. Now I would immediately understand that this work was not suitable for me, but then I was too young and inexperienced and ignored all the red flags.

I do not survive well in a corporate, rigidly regulated environment, and that work was very routine and incomprehensible. My colleagues and I had to sit for hours and “in the cold” to call strangers, inviting them to buy tours to the reserve. Our income depended on the number of sales, so I often lit up at work longer: I gained more and more new people, and they threw off the tubes and angered that I offer them all kinds of nonsense. I did not understand why to call people about whom you knowly know that they did not need a tour abroad, but I did it anyway.

Despite my diligence, the script was in no way to sell tours according to the superiors approved by the authorities. I wanted to change it somewhat, but one of the founders of the company did not allow me to do this. This man talked with everyone from the position of “I am a boss, you are fools,” often shouted at us and called him with worthless experts, fined even five -minute delays and punished for the manifestation of the initiative. The company acted an unspoken rule: "Step to the right, step to the left - execution."

At first I tried to consult with him, as if to improve my results, came with various proposals to optimize my work, but quickly realized that colleagues were not in vain discussing how to behave so that the founder screamed smallerly on us, and began to avoid him in every possible way. Even hid in the toilet when he came to the office.

At the same time, colleagues were divided into two camps: those who understood that this should not be tolerated, and flew out of this company as a cork in the first three or four days of work, and those who condemned the first. Such people did not emotionally invest in work, they were not oppressed by the routine and attacks of the founder. They even managed to sell something. They made 50 calls a day, and someone is randomly interested.

For me, such a work was a continuous pain: I did not understand why I was doing this, I did not see any sense in this and has plagued myself with constant self -eating. I thought that something was wrong with me, since I was so difficult to endure that the norm is for others. I thought that I was an incorrigible idiot and a loser.

I did not have an internal support that would allow me to say: “So, wait, guys, there is some kind of garbage. I don’t have to scream at me, I don’t like it, I’ll probably go. ” And other people could not support me in this situation. At that time, I had not yet managed to form connections in Moscow - I did not have friends and acquaintances, more experienced comrades with whom I could discuss my experiences.

In this unpleasant state, I cooked alone and trampled myself deeper into the ground. She punished herself for the lack of results, worked more and less rest and, as a result, completely burned out, having worked on this place for only six months.

Then one of my former colleagues, who just immediately realized that this travel agency was not her place, and quickly left there, called me to drink coffee. She was the only one with whom I managed to establish contact at that work - she often called me to smoke together during breaks. Therefore, without thinking twice, I agreed to meet with her and somehow told the word for the word about how much I do not like working where I work.

She said that she collaborates with the guys who sell business training, said that they are cool and flexible, that they have a good sales concept, and called for them. Like, we need creative guys in the team. It became very interesting to me, I talked with these guys, they affordably and openly told how everything was arranged for them. I realized that with such people on the way to me, and literally the next day I ran to them. I just did not come to my workplace in the travel agency and stopped answering the calls of the authorities.

I understood that it was necessary to talk to the boss, but from one thought that he was screaming at me again, I became ill, and I decided to leave everything as it is. Moreover, my departure had no consequences. I closed all my affairs, did not set up colleagues and the employer in any way, and I had no contract obligations. In the travel agency, I was arranged in black, and if anyone had anyone, then they were to me - they all could not pay my last fees.

Now, of course, I am ashamed of that my act. They don't do it. Even if you were not good at you, you are obliged to finish this story, for your part. But then I did not have enough strength for it. The boss called me three days, and then stopped. So I thought that I closed this chapter for myself, but in reality she pursued me for a long time.

At a new job, everything went the best: I liked the team, my sales went very well. So soon I was even raised to the head of the sales department. But the failure at the first work did not allow himself to forget about himself. At my last work, they constantly told me how incompetent and helpless I am, and I absorbed all these theses. For a very long time I was tormented by the most severe power of the impostor syndrome . I did not trust myself and lived in constant fear that one day this successful shell will fall and everyone will see what a loser I am.

I experienced so much guilt that six months later I set out to find one of my bosses from the old job and ask her forgiveness. I found her profile in social networks and found out that she also left that business and now works as a yoga instructor at Bali . From this awareness, it became a little easier for me: I realized that she probably also did not suit the way everything was arranged in the travel agency, since she went to look for herself in Bali. And I decided not to disturb her with her messages.

Find out what burnout is, how it is dangerous and how to cope with it from an article by psychologist Olga Sorina, and check if you have symptoms of burnout, in our test.

I checked a lot and achieved a lot in my subsequent works. At the same time, I regularly burned out, and at such moments all the same treacherous thoughts climbed into my head - that it would be good to quit and run away. In 2014, I burned out so that I could not get out of bed, and the neurologist had to come to my house. She diagnosed me with a nervous exhaustion and a depressive episode, advised me to turn to a psychologist. She said that the girls who fell to her in a similar condition sold apartments in Moscow and married the first Turks that came across. Allegedly, they had such an excess of energy and stress that their brain began to engage in some kind of garbage.

I listened to the doctor’s recommendations and came to psychotherapy in order to figure out what leads me to burnout and how to work with it. The psychologist helped me notice that the same pattern is always repeated to me. I burn out when I do what I do not see the point. So I quit the company in which I worked as a recruiter when I realized that I could no longer sell it to the candidates: I knew that they were lying to candidates, they promised what was not. And for me this is a very important point. I can’t work with the only motivation to cheat for the sake of money - it is also important for me to believe in my business.

With the help of therapy, I realized that I no longer want to work in hiring. I need a more flexible and creative environment, I no longer want to do what others tell me. I want to generate meanings myself and come up with some things. After I caught a nervous exhaustion, I have not worked for a year. Fortunately, my husband helped me a lot: he took on all expenses and provided space to search for himself. As a result, I opened my job and developed several rules that I adhere to not to burn out.

I taught myself not to ignore the needs of my body and rest more often. Previously, I had an installation: do not care what is happening - I have to get up and dry. I have grown off and now I go on a two -week vacation every year and do not work on weekends, because I understand that rest is not a whim. Recently I had in my life when I had to make an exception to this rule. I realized that I would need to work for a year without days off if I want to start a truly high-quality project in the right time. I discussed this with a psychologist, and we have developed a whole plan of how I could balance over the abyss and not burn. On the advice of the therapist, I cut the time in my working schedule to take care of myself.

For example, it helps me a lot to stay in silence, and we agreed with my husband that in some segments of time he and my daughter will walk and leave me alone. I also really rest when I bake bread. I really like the process itself and this awareness at the end that you yourself have created something warm and beautiful. Therefore, I entered into my work schedule breaks for baking bread: I literally got up at the call of the Google calendar and went to knead the dough.

Now I am unlikely to ever return to such a schedule of work, it is still difficult for me to work on weekends. And the team will not allow. I am watching that my employees do not have burnouts, I force people to go on vacation if I see that someone on vacation answers the working chat, I ask you not to do this and urge a person to rest fully-even in the background not to read anything related to work. And my team began to return the same to me, to say: "Kira, you are on vacation, get out of the chat." Here is such a concern for each other.

In general, I can say that in the fight against the burnout and syndrome of the impostor, psychotherapy helped me a lot to build a healthy atmosphere in the team. She became my powerful support, accustomed to trust herself, listen to her feelings, feelings and validate them. Previously, when something wrong was happening, when I was uncomfortable at the workplace, I ignored it, persuaded myself that it seemed to me that I misunderstood everything, and took the blame on myself. Now I trust my reactions and do not try to drown them out. If I feel bad - I feel bad; If it seems to me that a person behaves incorrectly in communication with me - I do not think.

Now that one of the guys from my team tells me: “I don’t understand why, but I feel very bad, I can’t work with this client,” I believe him. Of course, we will talk about this, try to get to the bottom of the problem and determine what exactly went wrong in communication. But I will never tell the guys that they need to take the ass in their hands and go to the dick. I do not like this approach: I know how important it is to work with people with whom you coincide on values. I went through the burnout several times and I really do not want someone from my team to face this.