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During a recent wellbeing fair, I attended a mental health workshop on preventing burnout. Surprisingly, I learned that over half of US employees express feelings of burnout (websites below), a startling enough trend that companies are working to mitigate its effects. Some time later, while listening to Episode 24 of The Podcast with a Thousand Faces, I heard Dr. Ben Rogers, Assistant Professor of Management & Organization at Boston College, explain how his ongoing research on the psychological benefits of framing one’s life within the pattern of the Hero’s Journey could be used to help alleviate burnout (48:40-50:37). This insight stirred my curiosity. Perhaps in addition to reducing the impact of burnout on the current workforce, a mythological take on burnout could offer insight and meaning to the experience. This MythBlast is the beginnings of such an endeavor.
The call to adventure
The Hero’s Journey begins with the call to adventure, a moment that marks a change in the hero’s life. The hero can refuse the call to adventure or willingly enter into the ordeal, either way they sense that change is happening. Beyond this point everything will be different.
Soon after the call to adventure, the hero comes to the first threshold–a space that marks the end of the known domain. Beyond this crossing lies an unknown world of both promise and peril. To enter into this unchartered territory, the hero faces a threshold guardian.
Innumerable characters or elemental agents serve as threshold guardians in myth. Ogres, dragons, and monsters are some of the mythic images of threshold guardians, all of which are entities that halt the hero’s journey. Joseph Campbell states that these “custodians bound the world in the four directions–also up and down–standing for the limits of the hero’s present sphere, or life horizon” (Hero with a Thousand Faces , 64). Beyond this point is the initiation that will broaden the hero’s experience and expand the hero’s consciousness. Thus begins the transformation of the hero. But first, they must overcome the threshold guardian to prove worthy of transformation.
Burnout as a threshold guardian
If one were to characterize burnout in the Hero’s Journey, it would be a threshold guardian. Like a sorcerer transfixing the hero with the illusion of boundless assignments, burnout stops the momentum forward, halting the journey with tasks and fruitless labor.
Myths present images of what one might imagine burnout to feel like. Studies show that the stress of constant work leaves people feeling cynical, losing their sense of achievement and connection to the driving forces within (World Health Organization). People have too much to do, and thus the vitality of life has been dampened by exhaustion and overwhelm. One could see the Greek goddess Psyche feeling such overwhelm when tasked by Aphrodite to sort barrels of grain by nightfall. Cynicism and the loss of achievement could be imagined in the Greek myth of Sisyphus whose ordeal is to push a boulder up a hill until he almost reaches the top, only for the boulder to roll back down to the bottom of the hill so he can begin the endeavor all over again. The task saturation of constant work can feel like the emotional and physical weight described in these myths.
Burnout as a threshold guardian is a seemingly benevolent custodian whose snare traps the hero. The hero completes each task only for another to be placed before them, stuck in an ongoing cycle and thus not progressing on the journey.
Remedies for burnout often include stress management, diet and exercise, rest, or time away from work. While these are worthy endeavors, the root of burnout seems deeper. Even if we step away from the hamster wheel of task overload, the tasks await our return. Breaking the spell of burnout requires perspective to see the mechanisms at work in our lives in order to regain one’s center, the source of the call to life which began the adventure in the first place.
Campbell expresses in Episode 1 of the Power of Myth, “The Hero’s Adventure,” that we are all “living in terms of a system, and this is the threat to our lives, we all face it, we all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now, is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity? Or, are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes” (27:00-27:25). In other words, can we maneuver within the system enough to maintain our sense of self? If not, then it’s time to step out of the system for a time in order to find our center and regain a bird’s-eye view of the greater journey. The system has limited our growth causing us to lose the vitality of feeling alive. Burnout is the system eating you up.
Dispelling burnout’s hold
The challenge then is to first identify the burnout and recognize its hold on us. Often in the hero’s journey, threshold guardians are clearly identified as an adversary that the hero battles directly. Burnout’s secret weapon is the quiet way it consumes us. Some of the most difficult threshold guardians to pass through are the quiet and insidious ones that bind us while we aren’t even conscious of their presence. The mundane tasks that slowly drain one's energy, quietly restricting our soul in the tedium of what appears to be important, maintaining the illusion of grandeur with empty achievements–like food that doesn’t nourish or water that doesn’t alleviate thirst–the too-much-ness that life brings when we try to do it all.
Once identified, the trance of burnout is dispelled and can either be aligned with the greater human cause or slayed altogether by wielding the immense power of the word “no.” As with the Hero’s Journey, to cross the threshold into the domain of transformation, the hero has to pass the threshold guardian by strategy, wit, or strength. One can trick the guardian, or beguile them to change their ways, or slay them–whatever the encounter, something must change in order to cross the threshold.
Determining the best way to interact with this threshold guardian requires self-inquiry. Are the tasks at hand in line with the heroic endeavor, or detracting from it and allowing the system freedom to consume one’s life? For Psyche, sifting the grain is one venture of many on her journey to gain immortality. The monotonous and overwhelming task of sorting grain is a laborious task that is one step of a greater journey. For Sisyphus, however, the ordeal of pushing the boulder up the hill is never-ending. He is stuck forever in a cycle of finishing one task just to start another with no greater purpose to his labor. For Psyche, burnout is a trial; for Sisyphus it's a torment.
In the day-to-day grind, it’s challenging to see the difference between tasks that are moving us forward on the journey and tasks that have us walking in place. Fear of the unknown, societal commitments, or misplaced desire yearning for something that is not necessarily tied to the greater cause of the adventure can keep us in stasis. We lose ourselves in the endeavors of the moment rather than holding the center within us that guides us forward on our path.
Burnout then becomes a sign asking us to come back to our center to attain an outlook that encompasses the bigger story at play. Like a threshold guardian, burnout then is something to recognize and overcome. The dragon to slay, the ogre to trick, or the sleeping spell from which to awaken.
Finding meaning in the mundane
Infusing burnout with a sense of mythic meaning may not alleviate the issue at hand, but seeing our day-to-day lives mythically does have a way of pulling one out of the grind and offering perspective. The patterns at play in our lives can sometimes appear less daunting when we can place those experiences within a grand archetypal pattern understood by many.
The patterns at play in our lives can sometimes appear less daunting when we can place those experiences within a grand archetypal pattern understood by many.
Burnout, as the name suggests, snuffs out our fire, the vitality that enlivens us with the feeling of being alive. Beyond this threshold guardian is a domain in which to expand consciousness, a playground of exploration. On the other side of the threshold is a rekindling of the life-spark.
Taking the first step into this unknown realm takes a tremendous amount of strength. Many never embark on the journey because the status-quo is just too comfortable. The system whispers in our ear that it is better to deal with burnout than failure.
The call to adventure beyond the threshold is the call of the life-spark within each of us. The minute we step away from all the tasks demanding our time, someone comes in to replace us. The system will replace us. But our life is ours alone. No one can live it but us.
MythBlast authored by:
Stephanie Zajchowski, PhD is a mythologist and writer based in Texas. She serves as the Director of Operations for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and is a contributing author of Goddesses: A Skeleton Key Study Guide. Stephanie is also a co-founder of the Fates and Graces, hosting webinars and workshops for mythic readers and writers. Her work focuses on the intersection of mythology, religion, and women’s studies. For more information, visit stephaniezajchowski.com
This MythBlast was inspired by The Power of Myth Episode 6, and The Hero with a Thousand Faces
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Dr. Reedy has a Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy. Brad has broadcast over 1,300 webinars on parenting since 2007, and hosts the podcast “Finding You” He is also the author of two books on parenting and self-discovery: The Journey of the Heroic Parent and The Audacity to Be You. Brad has developed an accessible and liberating approach to adolescents, young adults, and their parents. His powerful ability to use his own story and stories from the thousands of families he has treated, offers hope to families suffering from mental health, addiction, and stage-of-life issues. Brad is a co-founder and the Executive Clinical Director of Evoke Therapy Programs, which provides therapeutic services for adolescents, young adults, parents, families, and individuals looking to gain greater intimacy in their relationships. In the conversation, he and John Bucher of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, talk about Brad’s life and work, storytelling and its role in a therapeutic setting, how myths can be used in parenting, and how Campbell’s work has been an important guide in Brad’s life.
This Week's Highlights
"All life has drudgery to it ... In Zen, however, even while you're washing the dishes, that's a meditation, that's an act of life. Sometimes the drudgery itself can become part of the hero deed. The point is not to get stuck in the drudgery, but to use it to free you."
-- Joseph Campbell
Pathways to Bliss, 156