Astrology of Burn Out
If you have been following me on Instagram, you may have caught wind of the happenings of my life over the past few months. The chaos of this year truly peaked for me when multiple planets joined my fallen Saturn in Aries in my 6th house of toil and labor. Long story short, I burned out from my career of teaching after 3 short years (which began during the cardinal covid mess of 2020) and so I quit my job and moved to a new city. The move happened during the Mars/Saturn opposition which activated a whole bunch of my planets. Then, I began a new job when the north node entered my 6th house and Venus began her shadow period and eventual retrograde in my 10th house of career and life path.
Both astrology and my art/knitting practice are my true loves and joys, but they do not pay the bills and they do not provide me with health care. So both of these loves and passions were put on hold during the chaos of quitting my job, finding a new job, moving, and moving again.
As you may have surmised, these experiences have led me to create the special new offering mentioned above which is a reading focusing on burn out. For me, I know that my burn out reached a fever pitch while Jupiter and the Sun were co-mingling with my Saturn in Aries in the 6th. Maybe you can relate to this. Maybe you’ve had some heavy 6th house transits that culminated in burn out through physical illness. (Fun fact my stress induced thumb nail dents have still not healed!!) Or maybe you had a pile up in your 12th house and you had to check yourself in to an institution to receive mental health care. Maybe the ruler of your second house was afflicted by a transit and you needed to receive mutual aid to stay afloat after leaving a difficult situation. Whatever your case may be, I hope we can delve into it together and use astrology to ensure that the next time a similar transit happens, you are prepared for it with coping skills and foresight.
Why do we keep talking about burn out?
As a society, burn out has become a major buzzword throughout the genre of discussions on things like quiet quitting, the great resignation, and work/life boundaries while working from home. Beyond this, much of the population has been experiencing some form of pandemic fatigue over the past few years, brought upon by seeing their friends or family members sick, being sick themselves, or just having less social interactions and dealing with a changing social sphere. Many have also been afflicted by long covid and experiencing chronic fatigue as a consequence of this. All of these stellar circumstances have incubated in the astrological circumstances to bring us a recognition of the fact that we are being exploited constantly. That reminder brings constant exhaustion to the things that have once brought us joy and excitement.
While the idea of “quiet quitting” and the recognition of chronic burnout is something that seems new to older generations, it is only necessary because of the changing ecosystem of work in this country. Over the past few years, we have simultaneously begun to see more jobs that work from home and the pressure of working as an “essential worker” has increased while may has remained stagnant. Of course this is all compounded by rising inflation and high costs of living. Many workers are content to work at home but it also presents the conflict of being able to turn off work when work is over. Now workers are required to have slack or teams and there is a precedent set that workers should be on call. The lines are blurred which makes it more difficult to set a clear demarcation of a place for work and a place for relaxation.
All this to say, the concept and discussion of burn out that is taking place at the current moment is happening because it is highly common and because of the circumstances we as a society have set up to incubate it. So many people are dealing with this phenomena because there are structures in place that generate this issue.
What does burn out look and feel like?
Burn out symptoms can be very similar to symptoms of stress, fatigue, and depression. When all of these are happening compounded and over a period of time, it translates into burn out. One of the most succinct ways to explain it is just extreme apathy. You are uninterested in those things that once brought you excitement, and even problems may roll over you because you do not have the capacity or energy to deal with them. This can make it difficult to drag yourself out of your position because you have trouble envisioning a better circumstance for yourself. In her book Fried, Joan Borysenko says “The hope that you can create a meaningful life fizzles out, and you find yourself sitting in the ashes of your dreams.”
This can be a difficult state to find yourself out of because your passions don’t have the ability to pull you out of a slump and you lose the concentration and drive to do any of the things you’d find enjoyable.
How can astrology help with this?
One of the first steps to pulling yourself out of burn out is recognizing what is happening to you. If you can notice that you are trapped in a difficult mindset with little to find joy in, you can also find what is causing that stress and eliminate it from your life. That can be as drastic as quitting your job, moving to a new place, meeting new friends, and leaving many behind all in month. Or it can be as simple as leaving work earlier and shutting off notifications for work apps. Through the Astrology of Burn out reading, we first identify what areas of life are causing the most distress. This requires an identification of when the exhaustion or depression turned into burn out. When we identify a time frame, we can look for what areas of your chart were activated during that time. For me, I noticed that the peak of my burnout climaxed in March and April of 2023 when there were multiple planets in Aries in my 6th house. This activation point will look different for everyone based on your chart and the dignity of the planets there.
What areas of my chart might point to burn out?
Undignified Malefics: Mars & Saturn
Although the malefics are not always causing horrible things to happen to you, their significations can relate in tightly with the feelings of burn out. For one thing, the words burn out are very martial, and specifically debilitated martial. These words give the visual of a flame losing energy and dying. People with Mars in Cancer or Libra can be prone to burn out because they need to work harder than mars with more dignity to achieve the same type of inertia. Any planet that is lacking dignity needs to finds ways to push forward that are outside of the box. Mars in Cancer can feel like running through water, which gets tiring and difficult quickly. Planets that lack dignity also need to often take the long way around. When you are already having difficulty staying motivated in your day to day life, these extra weights can feel heavier. If you have healthy boundaries and balance in your life, these planets that lack dignity may provide a unique way of getting things done. But when you are dealing with depression or stress, the round about way of achieving goals that debilitated planets have can be another weight on the pile.
Mars in our charts is meant to bring us movement and motivation. But when mars is struggling or does not have all of the tools it needs, we may lack motivation, feel irritable or quick to anger and frustration. We may feel angry with ourselves at the apathy that develops when we don’t have the power and drive to deal with issues as they come up.
In addition to mars, Saturn is another malefic who’s significations relate to many of the symptoms of burn out. Saturn can represent restriction, exhaustion, responsibilities, and depression. Saturn feels like achy bones of old age. When Saturn is functioning well, it looks like maturity, patience, and taking things with stride. Saturn is in its fall in Aries and it is in its detriment in Cancer. In these areas, Saturn can feel impatient and crabby when you have trouble keeping up with your responsibilities. It can feel as though you don’t have the right mechanisms for keeping control of the structures you’ve put in place for your life. Instead of feeling supportive and stable, these structures might begin to rupture when Saturn is challenged.
Too Much of a Good Thing: Benefics and Burn out
Benefics can also be the instigators of burn out too. Although benefics are known for the good things in life, sometimes too much of a good thing can be symptoms of the problem. For example, some of my worst habits at the peak of my burnout were binging shows without getting off the couch and ordering takeout because I had no spoons to cook for myself. Neither of these were healthy habits, but they were all I had the energy for. One of the primary transits during my burnout period was Jupiter going over my Saturn and through my 6th house. While Jupiter can signify things like luck and growth, I didn’t feel like I needed any more growth in my 6th house. Growth in my 6th house ended up feeling like more work than I could handle. Growth felt like excess and expansion in an area I didn’t want to expand.
This square between Jupiter and Venus over the summer may have been a part of that. This could have felt like creative frustration compounding with areas in your life where you’ve been enabling bad habits that lead to a lack of balance in your life. Benefics in moderation and with the right tools can also help you to pull yourself out of the apathy and frustration that brought you into burn out in the first place
Areas in Your Life: Houses
The houses in your chart can all be areas where you experience burn out but there are some areas that seem to act more like hot spots than others. As I’ve mentioned previously here, my hot spot was absolutely the 6th house. The 6th house can be a major hot spot for many people because it is the space where you experience exploitative labor experiences, as well as physical illness. Both of these can be major causes of burn out because it is an area where your labor depletes your physical vitality. Not only that, but chronic illness and dealing with the symptoms of illnesses can be a major source of burn out. Because of this, the 6th house is the first one I check to determine any afflictions related to burn out.
In addition to the maladies of the 6th house, the 2nd and 8th houses can also become hot spots of burn out due to their significations related to finances and inheritance upon death. The 8th house may involve death of relatives or family members. Dealing with the emotional fall out from death and grief can be a catalyst for burn out, particularly when you area dealing with compounding stressors. The 2nd house of finances may be one of those compounding stressors. Your financial situation can be the unstable surface upon which other stressors are built. You may need to get a job you don’t enjoy to have enough money to pay for medical procedures or dependents.
The last hot spot for houses that may contribute to or relate to burn out is the 12th house. The 12th house is where we find isolation, hospitalization, or institutionalization. All of these significations can be byproducts of an intense and difficult burn out period. In addition, the 12th house can relate to our sleep cycles and dreaming as well as our subconscious and therefore it can show where our daily stressors affect our subconscious processing and debriefing. The 12th house is also the joy of Saturn and can be the area of your life where you need to exercise solitary patience in order to protect and shield your energy from stressors.
What in my chart can indicate solutions to burn out?
Some areas in your chart can provide relief points for the areas of burn out. Some examples of this that I have seen are houses ruled by benefics which are in a trine or sextile aspect with the house where burn out is centered. Another example is a dignified planet which is in aspect to the ruler of the planet in burn out. Both of these types of planetary relationships provide support and connection to a planet that may be debilitated or afflicted.
Solutions via Transits
Transits to your chart can also indicate a time when you will receive relief from your burn out or find a way out of the stress and depression caused by burn out. You can use transits to attempt to determine an ending point for the difficulties you are encountering. For example, maybe your burn out period began when your Saturn return began. In this case, we can use Saturn’s transit through that sign as an ending point. Once Saturn moves into the next sign, you should expect to find some relief and can plan accordingly. Maybe the solution appears once Saturn moves out of your return sign, or maybe you plan to create a change when that period ends.
