*excerpted and adapted from Women Overcoming O-Syndrome: Real, Raw, Unapologetic by Theresa M. Robinson & CollabHERators (August 1, 2018)
When I sat down to interview Jade, a married mother of two in her forties, the first thing I noticed was her glow. It blew me away! She was radiating from both the inside and outside. Coming from Jade, this was a most surprising and curious development especially because when I first met her years ago, she couldn’t have been more different. Before we started talking about the book project, I had to find out the source of her radically different appearance.
“When I look at you, Jade, I notice that everything about you is different—your hair, your face, your smile, your essence. Everything. You’re so different. You look ten times happier than when I first met you in Phoenix. There was something about you in Phoenix that was so—how do I say this—so sad, dark, empty, deflated. Today, you radiate a certain light, a certain glow, and it’s more than hair and makeup!”
Smiling even more, Jade opened up. “I’ve been on this journey since we first met. Right now, I’m in a place where I’m more relaxed for sure. I started to learn there are things that I do to myself that lead to me feeling overdone in a lot of areas. And I’ve started to forgive myself. Initially, I thought I shouldn’t even say that to myself because I didn’t know that I need forgiveness. But I realized that I was holding myself to such a high standard that was sometimes too hard to meet. I was always in this cycle of ‘I’m not enough’ or ‘I’m not doing this’ or ‘I’m not doing that.’ I was focusing on the things I’m not rather than focusing on the things I am. So, my outlook now is different.”
Jade continued, “I was telling somebody at work yesterday who was complaining about stress that I’m not going to allow work to stress me out to the point where it’s impacting my health and my well-being, because I’ve been there. I’ve been at the point where because of the demands at work, combined with the demands of home, along with my own expectations of myself, it put me on the edge every day of trying to get through the day and not being able to appreciate the wonderful things that I have or enjoy the moment. Maybe it’s the maturing process.”
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Get Real
For my generation, the boomers, there were less options then. We worked our tails off, and we did it earlier in our career more than later. That’s what you did. You didn’t have a choice. Well, okay, everyone has a choice. But you kept your head down, and you worked with your head down. Now we’ve got this whole generation of millennials coming in and they’re saying, “Whoa, this sucks. This is nuts.” Why can’t we be happy for that sentiment that we’ve wanted to say all along? But it’s coming from them. Why can’t we be happy for that? How can we be productive or capable of our full potential when we’re exhausted, burned out, and unhappy? There’s so much that I think we can learn from millennials, and I truly believe we are living in an interesting time because within the current movements there is also unique stirrings amongst gen Xers and boomers who are saying, “You know what, those millennials are on to something. I’m not doing this, and I’m not waiting for change. I can go and create change for myself.” I’m not saying it’s easy.
— Beverly, a collabHERator
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Jade’s change in outlook is due in large part to her sabbatical from work. She had reached a point of fatigue such that she needed a time-out from work for a length of time such that a simple vacation just wouldn’t do.
“Work was very stressful. More than the normal stress of work. Our business wasn’t performing so there was just a lot of stress in general. We had gone through a couple of restructurings, and I was right in the center of it. It was a lot of work. Hard work. It’s not fun work. So I’m working really long hours to the point of getting up early. Whereas I used to get up early and work out and then go to work, I was getting up early and working and then going to work. The cycle was take my kids to school, go to work, work, come home and have dinner with my family, work, get little sleep, wake up, work. It went on like that long term. It got to the point where it started to affect my health. At the time I didn’t know that stress was the cause of the health issues, but I started having these mysterious and chronic health issues.”
This part of Jade’s story may sound familiar to those who struggle with exhaustion and fatigue, to those who’ve considered that a two to four week vacation is better than nothing. But what about when our well-being has reached a critical stage? For those who want the courage to ask for a sabbatical, I asked Jade to provide insight on how she was able to negotiate a year-long sabbatical from her job and then return without any detriment to her career mobility. Yes, you read that right! She snagged a year-long sabbatical with the blessing of her company!
“First thing, my husband and I had a conversation to ensure we were both on the same page about this being something we were going to pursue. When I went in to have the conversation with my leadership, I positioned it as a win-win. I was prepared. If leadership had come back with ‘A,’ I was coming back with ‘B.’ If they had then said ‘C,’ I’d have come back with ‘D.’”
“I put a lot of preparation into how the dialogue could go. It never got to the point where it was ever a ‘no’ from leadership, but I would’ve been ready. My husband and I had decided in advance that we wouldn’t accept ‘no.’ It was basically me saying that I’m taking this sabbatical, and so let’s work together to make it happen. I went into the conversation with the target of taking a sabbatical in three and a half months. I ended up taking my sabbatical in six months, due to us needing to work through the transition and everything. Those six months were easier because we all knew my end date at work.”
“Key things for me during the process were a supportive husband, a well thought out plan, predetermined options, and a supportive boss. I was very clear to communicate to my boss the reason for the request, which I think we should provide because companies or company representatives worry that sabbatical is code for ‘I don’t like my job anymore, and I want to find another one.’”
“I explained that I was having various health issues and needed to take time off to address them and then would return, that I really needed some time for myself to figure out what’s going on, and that I would love to just have some quality time with my kids because they’re growing so fast. Once I put a human face on the sabbatical, the support was immediate. I realize though that not everyone will have the support I had.”
“Even if you hate your job, don’t let your lead-in be ‘I hate this place.’ That usually doesn’t go over very well. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to explain that over the course of a forty-plus-year total career, it’s very natural, at some points along the way, to need a substantial break.”
Jade’s comments got me and other collabHERators thinking more about breaks inserted during a stretch of work, or even during a stretch of learning. For example, during the first twenty-something years of our life when most of us went from primary school, to middle school, to high school, to college, there were three-month summer breaks, multi-week winter breaks, and a week-long spring break.
College professors take sabbaticals.
Athletes get an off-season.
Actors are on hiatus from taping.
Military forces personnel take leave.
In the corporate arena, what do we get? I’ll tell you what we get. We get the wish factor. I wish I could take time off, but I can’t afford to (again, not in the monetary way). If we do take time off, most of us settle for a two-week counterfeit vacation in which we’re still putting in the work and can’t fully separate ourselves from the office. We think we can continue at the same pace continuously without a reset. Some of us snatch the opportunity for a reset when we transition to a new job. We agree on a start date for our new job by building in a few weeks or longer for ourselves. During those weeks, we experience a much-needed break because we shut down everything from the old job, and the new one hasn’t started yet. Zero baggage to carry.
I agree with Jade that it’s unrealistic to think that we won’t need an extended break. A genuine break. If we’re in tune with our life rhythms, we can figure out our off-season and create a win-win around that. We might not secure a year-long sabbatical or even a three-month sabbatical, but we can make an impact on our well-being by being more deliberate about our weekends, our evenings, and that hour we might have to ourselves.
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With how many of these aspects of O-Syndrome have you struggled in the past year?
- Overachieve: not only to strive for success above and beyond the standard or expected level, often at the detriment to yourself and your relationships, but also to feel compelled to do so due to feelings of unrelenting, self-imposed pressure
- Overcommit: to excessively obligate yourself beyond your ability or capacity to fulfill, often to please others or to prove and re-prove yourself to others
- Overaccommodate: to obsessively provide services or favors and make adjustments, whether requested of you or not, for the convenience and comfort of others, even at the inconvenience or expense of yourself, oftentimes accompanied by overapologizing
- Over isolate: to deliberately or inadvertently separate and insulate yourself from the help and support of others due to the faulty thinking that a strong and successful woman with help and support may be perceived as incapable
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