Burn-out, or professional exhaustion syndrome, results in physical, emotional and mental exhaustion linked to overwork at work. How do you experience such exhaustion when you are a top athlete? Our journalist met the swimmer Camille Lacourtmultiple world and European champion, who speaks regarding this syndrome on the occasion of mental health research week with the Foundation for Medical Research. The article below is largely the transcript of the associated video interview.
When did you burn out?
It happened to me in 2012 in London. At the Olympic Games, the competition that all athletes expect. I came fourth. I was broken. In this situation we are completely disappointed in ourselves. We have no self-esteem, we feel like we’ve lost everything : to have lost time, to have lost honor, strength of character. And when I got home, it was super complicated.
What were the symptoms of this burnout?
I think you can almost approach depression: no desire to get up in the morning, I who had a fairly square life or I got up at a specific time, I ate at a specific time and very correctly. There, it was really big nonsense. I felt like everything I had done before was a waste of time. It’s really hard to tell yourself that we did things right for nothing. Whereas in reality, it was not for nothing because followingwards we grow up and we are stronger. But when we’re in this burnout, in this no man’s land where there’s nothing that gets to us, one has the impression of having a tasteless life. I was very lucky, I was very well surrounded, be it my friends, my family. But when we’re in a moment like this, we’re alone, no matter what. You can feel all the love above, but in fact, it’s superficial. It’s like having a deep burn and putting cream on it. It’s below that it burns and it’s painful.
Who can burnout happen to?
At the beginning, I believe that this burn-out was really considered a disease of the weak and in the end, we see that it is totally the opposite. I think people who burn out and go through these very difficult times in their lives are mentally strong people. These are people who have always pushed their limits, thinking they might accept more than the rest of the world or the rest of the company. And at some point, it doesn’t work anymore. We are a somewhat typical example because there is also the relationship to the body. There is this physical fatigue. But in truth, when there is a burn-out in an athlete, it’s not the physical that cracks first.
How did you deal with this burnout?
At first, I suffered. I didn’t know where it was going to end. But I felt like I was falling, to have no branch to hold me back. And one morning, I said to myself: enough is enough. Today is when I hit the ground. I accept that I took this failure head-on. I accept to have been human and to have cracked mentally, it’s part of the game. Now I get up and even if I have another failure I will always take it on the positive side. When you have big ambitions, there are big downfalls, all the time. There is a sentence that I really like:
the great champions are not those who do not fall, but those who get up quickly.
It’s not being a sports champion, it is to be a champion of one’s life. Everyone falls, but everyone gets up and everyone learns. Failure is just the start of a new thing and not the end of something.
