Am I Ready? Five Reflective Questions to Know if it’s Time To Return

Hi, I'm Karina Schneider and this is Back After Burnout, a podcast dedicated to honest conversations and real strategies about returning to work after burnout.

In today's episode, we're going to confront this limbo we find ourselves in between recovery and return.

You're not where you were when you burnt out, but you're not quite sure you're ready to go back to work either.

Let's talk about what readiness really means and and how to know when it's time.

Let's meet Carla.

Her return date was four weeks away when she first reached out in tears.

She had been so committed to her recovery, did all the work to rest, mentally, switch off, get therapy.

But as soon as her return date was approaching, she started to lose sleep, have bad dreams about work, questioning all the optimism she had gathered up to that point.

After doing all the right things, Carla expected to feel energetic, sure, excited, confident.

Instead, on most days, she felt more fear and panic than anything else.

Am I crazy for feeling like this?

Will I ever feel ready?

She asked me.

In a moment, I'm going to walk you through five questions you can reflect on to assess your readiness to return.

But first I want to take a few minutes to bust a few misconceptions about it.

Misconception 1 you are either 100% ready or you're not at all.

Like many other health issues, feeling well and unwell don't operate in black and white.

Health, including mental health, operate in a continuum.

In any given week, we can have good days and bad days.

When it comes to developing a condition or illness, it typically doesn't happen overnight.

In a similar vein, we don't just switch back to feeling 100% well overnight either, and so thinking about going back to work or getting that fit.

Note to signify 100% readiness or recovery will set you up for a steep climb towards expectations that will be impossible to meet, making your return set up for struggle.

I talk about this in greater detail in a separate episode on how to look at return to Work as part of your recovery.

I'll leave the link to that in the show.

Notes Readiness is about how you feel and how you think in a given moment.

You don't say you're ready to return just because you feel like you are or because in your mind you believe it's time to go back or that you've exhausted your time off.

It's not as simple as picking out a date on the calendar based on what feels right.

A prerequisite for readiness is the existence of your support structure to help make your return as smooth and successful as possible.

This can include how much you've integrated new behavior patterns, how well you are able to respond to stress, having a care team around you.

So while there is no criteria for readiness, there are some pillars that, if established, can make you feel ready.

Even if you didn't necessarily have an extended period of absence, feeling anxious about the prospect of returning means you haven't done enough work to get better.

You can feel good about the work you've done the last month and feel generally in a healthier place, while your anxiety or doubt about the road ahead is oriented towards a situation that probably feels different or new or uncertain.

And in particular, if you are going back to a work environment that is unpleasant or embarking on a job search, it's normal to feel worried and doubtful because these come with challenges that end any healthy person may reasonably worry about, too.

So catch yourself if you're finding that you're conflating how you feel about the future with how you feel about yourself today.

In this moment, make sure you give yourself enough grace and compassion for all the work you've already done to get to this point of even reflecting on your readiness to return.

Now that we've challenged some common misconceptions about readiness, I want to offer you five reflective questions to think about.

These are not meant to be a checklist.

They won't give you a definitive yes or no.

But they will help you gather data about your body, your mind, your environment so you can make an informed decision with your healthcare provider about what your readiness timelines look like.

Let's take them one at a time.

How do your heart and mind feel about the prospect of returning?

Try to imagine if today were your first day back at work.

What emotions come up?

Do you feel a sense of curiosity?

Maybe a little excitement?

Or are you overwhelmed by dread, anxiety, or even panic like Carla was?

I probably sound like a broken record by now about this, but both can exist at the same time.

But if the distress is heavy, persistent, or growing, it might be a sign to slow down and get curious.

Not just about if you're ready, but about what needs to be in place to support your readiness.

Now check in with your thoughts.

Are you thinking, this might be good for me or I'm ready for some structure again?

Or is your mind spinning with doubts like they're expecting the old me or I don't know how I'll cope?

This emotional and cognitive data is important.

Once you understand what's underneath the thoughts and emotions, you can use These as signals to guide the next steps of your recovery and preparation.

You're not looking for total peace and confidence.

You're looking for clues that, with the right support, can help accelerate your readiness.

How stable is your energy?

Burnout often leaves people in a state of survival, so the question here is, have you moved from surviving to stabilizing?

Are your energy levels more consistent across days and not just within a single day?

Have you started reintegrating simple life activities without crashing afterwards?

And when stress arises, do you have tools or practices that help you pause and respond rather than immediately react?

One way to look at this is to start creating a test work environment for yourself.

Maybe it's giving yourself a set of tasks to accomplish each day, or maybe getting involved in volunteer work.

By starting to give yourself some structure and micro goals to your days, you can start to notice how your energy responds, how much capacity you feel you have, and how you might respond when your days don't go according to plan.

Do you have a care plan in place?

What do I mean by this?

At some point we're going to face stressful situations again.

You might be faced with triggers that will test your coping mechanisms.

A care plan can include a list of what these triggers and situations might be and what you can do immediately to respond to them before they get worse.

Once you're back at work and you're fully into the routine, it might be difficult to pull yourself out in the moment and think about course correcting.

Thinking about them in advance, planning ahead can help you create more automatic responses when you need them.

Don't forget to think about who you need around you as well during this time to support you.

Are you clear on your non negotiables for staying well?

What have you learned about what helps you stay grounded regulated?

Maybe it's needing a commute free start to the day, or limiting back to back meetings, or protecting certain breaks and therapy appointments or routines that support your nervous system.

The more you can integrate these non negotiables into your routines before starting work, the more stable they will be.

Remember, a workplace can easily eat into our personal routines if we allow them to.

So build in your non negotiables first.

Then think about how work can operate around those, not the other way around.

It's one thing to know your needs, it's another to honor them, communicate them and set up boundaries that will help you stick to them, especially in a work context.

Question number five do you understand what work will actually look like when you return?

If you're returning to your previous job?

Do you know what tasks or responsibilities you're expected to resume?

Which aspects of the role might need adjustment or phasing in who you'll be working with most closely, and how safe those relationships feel?

If you're job searching or starting something new, the same principle applies.

What kind of work is truly aligned with your current needs and limits?

Are there red flags you want to avoid?

Clarity here helps you advocate for yourself before you're swept into the current of expectations.

Of course, you probably won't know the answers to these until you have a conversation with your manager.

However, you can start giving some thought to what changes might be needed in your work to allow for an easeful start and puts you in a stronger position to discuss it with your employer.

These five questions are meant to create clarity, not pressure.

You're not aiming for perfect readiness.

You're aiming for enough insight and support to take the next step with care.

Let's go back to Carla.

We worked together to try to separate out her emotions about the prospect of returning from how much she has learned through her recovery.

We didn't ignore the emotions.

We got curious and tried to understand what was behind them.

Understandably, there was a lot of what ifs, what if I can't do my job, what if I relapse?

And so on.

By working on the five questions, Carla was able to use those insights to carry into her conversations with her therapist and together work on increasing her sense of readiness over time.

So as you listen to this episode, taking as fact that there is no Such thing as 100% ready, what do you need in place to start looking at your return with curiosity and safety instead of fear?

What signals are your thoughts and emotions giving you?

Thank you for joining me today.

I'll see you next time.