If I: What Burnout and CPTSD Felt Like from the Inside
Mixed media painting by Val Cline
(Originally written in February 2025 and first shared in my Substack journal at @mysoulbasedlife)
This piece was hard to write. It’s vulnerable and real.
It captures a stretch of time when burnout, sleeplessness, and complex trauma were reshaping how I moved through the world. Not gracefully. And in a world where we’re often expected to go through such things quietly and alone.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Her chest was tight, often, almost always. Her mind was full; the words wouldn’t come. She was mad. Was she angry? She was full of rage.
She was tired, exhausted, barely alive. She walked around half-dead, looking out of dark, sunken eyes, feeling like she was on fire, burning fumes of the fuel that once nourished her…”
The whole piece explores how my body was trying to protect me and how hard it is to listen when you’re stuck in survival mode.
It marked the beginning of my understanding of burnout and CPTSD, something I haven’t been formally diagnosed with, but deeply resonate with.
