From Burnout to Recovery: How Human Design Helped a Projector
Once upon a time, I was a burned-out critical care Nurse on stress leave from my job. Learning my Human Design saved my future and no doubt my life. Now, I am a Human Design Specialist and coach, a relationship psychotherapist, and I am still a Registered Nurse.
I've learned a lot about how not to burnout, and now I teach people how to go from burnout to thriving using their Human Design as a roadmap. This is my story!
Brigitte Knight, Human Design Specialist & Psychotherapist
WHY I LOVE HUMAN DESIGN
Human Design is a tool that helps people figure out their life’s purpose. It tells them exactly how to make decisions to live out that purpose. There are five unique personality types or archetypal roles in Human Design, and it is important that everyone know and perform their role well because it promotes growth, respect, and unity in our communities.
The five Human Design Types are Manifestors, Manifesting Generators, Pure Generators, Projectors, and Reflectors. In 2006, I learned that I was the Projector type.
When I found out what a Projector was, I felt as if I could breathe for the first time, as if someone had lifted a heavy weight off my chest. It was such a profound feeling of relief.
Since then, I can’t help but share Human Design with everyone, especially Generators and Projectors who often think and act against their Type. In my practice, I have found that Projectors and Generators suffer the most from anxiety, depression, and burnout.
That Projector Life
I was a Neuro-trauma ICU Registered Nurse in the throes of burnout. It was a sneaky process. At first, I felt tired all the time, it was harder and harder to get going in the mornings, and I spent my free time trying to catch up on sleep. I stopped taking extra shifts, stopped hanging out with friends, took more vitamins, and felt more and more disappointed in myself for not keeping up. My hair started to fall out and I was walking around in a fog. At the time I didn’t know I was burned out, so I thought I needed to eat better, exercise, and sleep more. More exercise only made me more tired, and the more tired I was made it more difficult to actually fall asleep. So weird.
If I felt even a little bit better, I got so excited that I jumped back into my life with gusto. Talk about hard-headed. After one recovery, I started a full-time job supervising a medical advice call-center. That job was in addition to my other, just-for-fun, part-time, nursing job. If you are a nurse or a first-responder, this lifestyle will sound familiar. Helping professionals always seem to have more than one job.
One work-day morning, I was so exhausted I literally couldn’t get out of bed. I had blown through all the red flags of burnout because I’d never burned out before. Being that fatigued didn’t make any sense to a young nurse, so I just kept forcing the situation, and I pushed through.
Thankfully, a patient at one of my jobs introduced me to Human Design. I learned that I was a Projector, and boy was I relieved to hear that.
Every personality type in Human Design has a purpose and an ideal way to achieve that purpose. Projectors are here to be recognized for their counseling, guiding, and teaching skills. They are not here to work in the conventional North American sense of ‘work,’ i.e. a regular forty-hour week of high stress, physical labor, and long hours. That is what the Generator type does. If Projectors try to work that way, they gradually become tired, frustrated, ineffective, irritated, and depressed. So you can understand my relief when I was told that I was not designed to live my life the way I had been living.
From that moment on, I was all about that chill Projector lifestyle. Without shame, I set about developing a life where I could still support myself, but work in a way that didn’t burn me out every other year.
At first, practicing my Human Design felt strange because all my life I thought I was a Generator. Whenever I reverted to old habits or resisted being a Projector, my old burnout symptoms came back. I hated feeling lethargic, achy, and exhausted, especially after sleeping for upto 18 hours or more.
It took time to learn that I felt better when I followed my Projector strategy. The feel better part motivated me to surrender and put conscious thought and effort into living as a Projector. I’ve kept at it all these years because I love how much happier I am compared to years ago. I refuse to go back to the way I used to live. My Projector-ness rules!
“Not all of us are designed to work, work, and then work some more. Some of us work towards resting and recharging.”
WHO I HELP
I know that there are a lot of burned-out professionals and caregivers out there. They are just trying to get through the day so they can go home and get some sleep. Teachers, nurses, first-responders, and counselors absorb and carry a lot of other people's emotional and mental pain. They also have their own worries. What do they do with all of it? Nothing. - They push it far away, out of their conscious thought, and they keep going. Some do this out of necessity and others do it because the culture of their profession, family, and society taught then that quitting is not an option.
People attracted to the helping professions naturally run toward the fire not away from it. They look for people to help and problems to solve. They leave it all on the field and are rewarded with praise for their selflessness, and compassion. Not wanting to disappoint anyone or be seen as weak, they keep going even when they are mentally, emotionally, and physically hurting. They know they have options, but they are afraid to entertain or try them out. They are afraid of being judged as malingering, fragile, or losers.
If and when one of these professional warriors does reach out for help, they have already been knocked on their ass not once, but several times. By the time I meet them, they have tried everything to heal themselves and their emotional state and their bodies are severely compromised. — I know their story well.
I grew up in the age of multitasking and was admired for being able to think critically, problem-solve, and work longer and harder than others. I couldn’t imagine not doing what I was doing because I enjoyed it. — Well, my mental health and body didn’t enjoy it, and it shut me down.
Thanks to Human Design and The Artist’s Way by the great Julia Cameron, I was thrown a lifeline. Together they gave me options I didn’t know I had a right to, and I truly believe it saved my life.
I learned that not all of us are designed to work, work, and then work some more. Being addicted to work, exercise, and socializing is energizing to some people, but it’s a disaster to others. -- A small minority of people are at their very best when they ‘work to rest', not work, to work some more.
These people are Projectors, and they are mindful about organizing their job, relationships, and activities so they have enough space and time to recharge. If they don’t do that, their adrenals become overworked, depleted, and they eventually burnout. This type of crash results in lost health, career, income, and time. One day, you just can’t get out of bed, you can’t stop crying, and your body aches. You feel like a failure, and you feel judged.
Living a lifestyle, or a Human Design profile, that is not yours is a recipe for disappointment, general anxiety, depression, autoimmune diseases, and burnout. For example, living as a Generator who is energized by work, when you are really a Projector who is energized by rest, is living a life that is not yours. Projectors and Generators are the most confused about how to live a burnout-free life, and they are the people I help.
MY PURPOSE
1. To Help Generators and Projectors
I experienced a huge sigh of relief when I learned that I was a Projector, and I want to offer the same experience to as many burned-out Generators and Projectors as I can. I want them to experience the same feeling of relief that I did. I want them to know that they have choices. Knowing their Human Design and having a sense of security when making consequential life decisions is empowering.
2. To Help the Children
My driving passion is to educate as many parents, and parents-to-be, about the importance of knowing their children's Human Design. For a long time, I lived like a Generator because everyone in my immediate family is one. No one knew about Human Design, or that I was a Projector, so along with everyone else, I learned to value and aspire to the “just do it,” multitasking lifestyle.
Projectors can “just do it” for short periods of time, but if they make it a lifestyle, they will burn out.
Some Projectors know this intuitively and/or had intuitive caregivers that recognized and nurtured them as they were. The Projector’s wisdom, ability to know people deeply, and deftly manage them can be seen from a young age. Innocently they can be steered towards activities, careers, and lifestyles that are incompatible with their need for mindful and intentional rest.
I am looking for adult Projectors and Generators, and the parents of young children from all the Human Design types.
CONCLUSION
So that’s my burnout story. Mind you, not everyone burns out as spectacularly as I did. But let me tell you, if I knew then what I know now, I would have saved myself a lot of time and pain.
Learning that I was a Projector and living my strategy seems like a small fix. It’s not. However, the payoff for the make-over was huge. Now I can see the burnout trap coming a mile away and I make a hard turn away from it using my new HD skills.
If you are new to Human Design, I recommend that learn all you can about your Design. Also, develop the mindset of self-care, self-love, and self-trust.
Human Design gives you the tools to take care of yourself, it’s up to you to use them.
Brigitte Knight is a Human Design educator and mentor as well as a Human Design informed counselor. She loves teaching people to use their Designs to improve their relationships.
She helps former Mormons, Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others manage religious trauma, anxiety, guilt, loneliness, and depression.
Her life’s experience as a Registered Nurse, therapist, ex-Jehovah’s Witness, and Human Design practitioner since 2006 can help you start living your best life.