Wellness expert faces diagnosis of burnout
Corporate wellbeing expert Sarah McGuinness knew the email giving her feedback on her business was fine and rational and logical.
It didn’t stop her from closing her laptop and collapsing on her couch sobbing. The psychologist was so sleep-deprived and anxious that she could not apply the years of knowledge she had accumulated on wellbeing to herself. She called the 1737 Helpline, which told her to take a break for the day.
Giving staff time off when they were feeling overwhelmed might be something she routinely advised her clients to do, but for herself it was a ‘‘completely foreign concept’’.
McGuinness works with human resource managers from the likes of Chorus, New Zealand Post, the NHS and Weta to help their staff avoid burnout.
After years as a corporate wellbeing consultant, she launched a network called Revolutionaries of Wellbeing for leaders to access and share resources last year. It has grown to 250 members from 190 organisations around the world – but this rapid growth came at a high personal cost for McGuinness.
The helpline episode at the end of last year should have been a clear warning sign that she needed to stop. But McGuinness had already tried repeatedly to get help through her GP. She said she had been quickly dismissed as a ‘‘tired, hormonal mother’’ and prescribed sleep tablets. So she soldiered on with her business, her two young children and a move from Gisborne to Queenstown in January.
After the move, she could barely get out of bed for three weeks. She was so ill her new GP thought she had lymphoma. A battery of tests and appointments with two rheumatologists later, McGuinness was finally diagnosed with fibromyalgia and burnout.
Fibromyalgia causes widespread muscle pain and tenderness in the body, fatigue and altered sleep, memory and mood. The neurological condition no doubt contributed to McGuinness’ burnout, but she said she also kept going until reaching breaking point to address her workload. ‘‘No-one is immune,’’ she said. Burnout. It is everywhere at the moment. One in two of our frontline doctors are experiencing high levels of it. Three-quarters of our lawyers have experienced anxiety, stress and burnout.
An AUT study, released last month, found Kiwi workers are more at risk of burnout compared to international employees. The
2020 survey of 1000 employees found
11 per cent had burnout.
For McGuinness, the cure had been ‘‘horribly expensive’’. She was seeing a physiotherapist, a nutritionist and a psychologist privately. ‘‘If you were a single parent, with no support at home, an unsupportive workplace and bills to pay, I don’t know how you would get well.’’
That was why she had been vocal about her story. She said the response had been overwhelmingly positive, with many contacting her to reveal they had struggled with burnout too after she posted about her experience on LinkedIn.
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