This article was originally written by Julie de Azevedo Hanks for LDS Living. The following is an excerpt.
A recent LDSLiving.com article, “What to Do When You’re Overwhelmed at Church,” ended with a simple survey. It asked one question: Have you ever experienced spiritual fatigue or burnout? Over 1,900 people took the online survey, and a whopping 95% said that they had experienced burnout.
Ninety-five percent! Houston, we have a problem.
But why is it so easy for Latter-day Saints to get to the point of burnout when it comes to their faith? A lot is expected of us—donating one-tenth of our income, hours of service in our callings, the expectation to “multiply and replenish the earth” and not delay marriage, three hours (minimum) of church attendance on Sunday, not to mention leadership meetings, activities, daily scripture study and prayer, journal writing, food storage, humanitarian work, missionary work… the list goes on and on.
And we expect a lot of ourselves; we want to serve God and serve each other. We want to be obedient. But sadly, a failure to live up to these ideals can elicit feelings of worthlessness, discouragement, and shame.
The Cause of Our Burnout and Unhappiness
In her book Daring Greatly, best-selling author Brené Brown, PhD, defines shame as an intensely painful feeling of being unworthy of love and belonging. She also identifies it as a core human emotion. Guilt says “I did something bad,” whereas shame says “I am bad.”
Read the full article at LDSliving.com.
