Career and Crayons: a Working Mother's Struggle Through Job Challenges
Job, boss, husband, children, and other factors that contribute to burnout
Last week I wrote about working mother burnout in general. To illustrate the key features of working mother burnout, this week I want to share my personal story. My first episode of working mother burnout began when I was forty-two years old, a mother of three children, ages two-, six-, and nine-years-old, working full-time for a medical school I did not like and a boss I could not stand.
We had moved away from Houston to a new city for new jobs, a great one for my husband, and an average one for me. He became a division chief and vice chair of the department, and loved his job, because he worked with any number of talented support nurses, a bright, efficient secretary, and three younger partners. He became a big fish in a small pond.
In contrast, I was a shark confined to a bathtub. I was outspoken about certain outdated practices in my new NICU. I did not agree with my boss’ concept of our inflexible NICU schedule. When on-service, we were to make rounds every day for one solid month - work thirty days in a row without a break. I had to leave my children’s care to the nanny and my husband every single day. Working thirty days in a row felt like submarine duty.
In addition to this unbearable schedule, I took plenty of night call in the hospital (two or three nights per month), and as a result I began to feel physical exhaustion. I found it difficult to work for a boss I did not respect. He thought things in “his” NICU were better than ever, even though they were not modern, or evidence based. He was a hapless leader who did not keep up with the medical literature. I requested that we conduct some quality improvement studies of certain clinical issues in the NICU, and he assigned me one token issue to study.
I began to have trouble sleeping, with early morning awakening and difficulty falling asleep at days’ end because I worried and ruminated about all the stress in my life. My appetite declined. My resentment of my husband skyrocketed, simply because his new job was easier than mine. I did not understand why his having such an easy time made me feel worse, since I was having such a hard time, but it did.
About our household and childcare chores, I handled the entire family schedule. I participated in all school events, teacher meetings, and arranged for sports and team practices and uniforms, coordinated medical and dental appointments, scheduled play dates and sleep overs, and directed everything having to do with childcare and household chores performed by our nanny, including her pay. Since my husband liked to cook and I did not, he did the grocery shopping and cooked most of our dinner meals. I was fortunate to be off the hook for meal planning and prep.
As I became more and more unhappy, frustrated, overwhelmed, and exhausted, I experienced frequent headaches while at work. There were two other women in my division who did not seem to like me. They were unsympathetic to my questions, so I began to distance myself from them and from several of the nurses with whom I worked most often. I saw my best friend infrequently, so during this time I felt totally alone and misunderstood. Moreover, I felt like I was no longer doing a good job as an academic physician, and I certainly did not feel fulfilled in my work caring for patients.
One of my male partners was very involved in his daughter’s school life. Because our children attended the same school, Rob and I talked together at work often. His wife was a psychiatrist working full-time, so he was sympathetic to all my issues. I shared my feelings with this kind, understanding doctor who felt the same way I did about our boss. He never expressed these feelings to anyone but me. In the hospital cafeteria, one day at lunch, Rob suggested that I might be depressed. (No one talked about “burnout” back then in the mid-1990’s.)
Rob was astute when he suggested that I seek psychotherapy and recommended that I see a colleague of his wife’s. My working with a psychiatrist helped me tremendously. We focused on my work, my boss, my work colleagues, my husband, my children, and all their activities. We talked about all the factors that led to my burnout and depression. With anti-depressant medication and weekly therapy sessions, I slowly began to improve.
The psychiatrist helped me to focus on the things in my life that I could change – my job, my husband’s willingness to help me, my lack of women friends (no social support network), as well as my expectations of being more present for my children. She also insisted that I recognize those things that I could not change. I found this process to be very worthwhile, however it took nearly two years of effort.
Finally, I was able to “cure” my working mother burnout by requesting help from my husband when needed, finding needed support from my best friend, devoting more free time to my children, and taking some time for myself to exercise and enjoy hobbies. I changed the things that could be changed, and I learned to accept what could not be changed.
My issues with my work schedule and my boss were problems that could not be changed without a job change, and I was finally able to accomplish that. The job change improved things immensely and gave me a new perspective on my working mother life that helped me for years to come.
Hello Susan! I appreciate your article on mom burnout and likening it to duty on a submarine! ….While I’ve never been on a sub (hats off to our service men & women!) I totally get it and can relate…as a mom in a doctoral program for clinical psych, I get home on weekdays and my brain feels so water-logged. Thanks for sharing about this important topic, because burn-out is real, and we can work on changing that together.