When Everyday Life Collapses
What happens with routines when life simply becomes ‘too much’, as flow turns into friction and stress mounts at work or at home? In the early years of the twenty-first century discussions about a new form of stress-related disease was very much in the forefront in Sweden, often called ‘burnout syndrome’, defined as a personal collapse caused by overwork and/or emotional overload. What interests us in this context is how people describe themselves (or are described by others) as cases of burnout and overload.
Our material consists of interviews with people who have lived through this kind of crisis situation and ended up on long-term sick-leave, trying to get back to a normal life (see Löfgren and Palm 2005). In the past, excess was not a problem for them. It was their pride that ‘no’ was not an answer. They were gluttons at work, stretching themselves thin, living an accelerating life that in retrospect often had a manic streak in it. Lars, who had built up a small electronic factory from scratch, described himself like this: ‘Haven’t been able to say no. I always thought: speed up and it will be OK. I could walk through the factory and make twenty decisions in two minutes. I felt in full control, it was almost compulsive: what the hell, I could make anything work!’ People like Lars had never or rarely been on sick-leave before. As the stress mounted they felt irritable, had problems with sleep and woke up early thinking about everything that needed to be done. Work had invaded most of their life. The road to the breakdown was often long, a slowly growing overload. Many describe this phase of stress as a mounting insensitivity. You ignored the signals from the body and didn’t listen to the warnings or admonitions from others until the crash landing occurred. It is often a dramatic change of scene that is described.
All of a sudden everyday life at work and at home became chaotic, just ‘too much’. They found themselves sent home on long-term sick-leave. When Lars broke down he couldn’t go near the factory; even the family became too much and he spent long periods alone in a summer cottage out in the woods, staring at the walls.
The flow of everyday life had turned into friction, order into chaos, and it became obvious how important the autopilot had been in dealing with work and home. Now you were at home on sick-leave with all the time in the world on your hands, but in a domestic world that also had become ‘too much’. Many everyday routines became Herculean tasks. ‘It could be a full day’s work just to take a shower and wash my hair,’ one woman said. You have to make decisions about even the most trivial acts that were earlier handled by autopilot: ‘I remember staring at a flowerpot for hours, trying to make up my mind if I should water it or not.
Routines – Made and Unmade
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