Eloise-India, better known as Elo_its_me or eloskincare on social media, is a content creator best known for her lifestyle and skincare content who launched 2 years ago. She started by creating a blog related to skin care thanks to her extensive knowledge on the subject, she will launch on TikTok where she will attract a lot of audience, particularly thanks to her sparkling personality.
“I launched myself on the networks two years ago with this idea of helping people with their skin, I didn’t really expect that it would be my personality that broke through and that today people follow me for me, my everyday life, my stories, more of that than for skin care”
At the start of 2021, she made it her job, she began to have more and more partnership requests.
“That’s when the burnout started.”
When requests for partnership came in more and more, Eloïse-India was on a work-study basis. She must write her dissertation and produce activity reports. Besides that, she also freelances in marketing for a start-up. Added to this are his social networks.
“I never stopped working, on top of that there is social life too, the influence is starting to take hold so I am invited to several events per week such as brand launches, range launches, evenings . I wanted to go to all these events because that’s how you network, but you also have to see your friends, there’s also the time you have to spend alone taking care of yourself… And sleeping, and eating Also ! In fact, I never stopped or put my mind down.”
Her burnout started with insomnia, fatigue, she was over-stimulated, had eczema…
“I didn’t understand right away that I was burned out, and then when I understood it I didn’t immediately accept it. I was exhausted, I overstimulated myself, I had eczema all over my body so it kept me from sleeping, I woke up in the night because it itched, and if I didn’t get enough sleep I had eczema was hell. I was overstimulated so I couldn’t sleep. One day I fell asleep and when I woke up I was gone.”
She went to bed, 2 hours later she woke up and realized that she wasn’t feeling well at all, she couldn’t emerge or open her eyes, she was exhausted…
“That day, I had to send a message to my boss: it took me 9 hours because I was so exhausted.”
She loved what she was doing so much that she didn’t realize it wasn’t working and that she was mentally exhausted. His doctor will prescribe 1 week of sick leave (note that today, the average time of sick leave for burnout is 3 to 24 months depending on the therapist’s opinion). However, Eloise-India decides not to take the sick leave and continues to telework, her eczema gets worse and she begins to have more physical symptoms such as tears.
“My eczema continued, and I cried all the time, about everything. I cried when someone offered me something, even though I’m not like that. I cried with joy, with sadness, with laughter, I was way too emotional”
She gradually understands that she is experiencing burnout, having no one around her who suffers from it or has suffered from it, she had no idea that it could be that.
“Today, I have a lot of friends who are burned out and it’s easier for them because they can turn to me. When it happened to me I was alone in those moments.”
The particularity of burnout is that the person who suffers from it does not necessarily realize it. In Elo’s case, it was characterized by the distancing of people who knew her best (her best friends) to the detriment of people who matched her less in terms of values. She finally reconnected with her friends after realizing her condition, she understood that they were aware of it long before her.
“I was super negative, it wasn’t going at all […] You get so lost in your identity, in your way of doing things and in your way of living that inevitably the people around you realize that it’s not how they knew you but my friends let me discover it on my own, it was in my specific case in other cases friends can tell the person that something is wrong. […] I didn’t realize anything, I had my head in my projects, I was fully involved little by little, I lost my friends and then I said to myself that there was a problem .”
Elo sees himself as a person who was not used to deconstructing things (studying what happens step by step in his life to understand the final state). Gradually she began to learn to deconstruct and by talking with her friends she ended up understanding that she was experiencing burnout.
“It was all in its time, and if I didn’t have time, so be it!”
She thinks she would never have burned out if she hadn’t worked on the networks. Qfd: being on the networks depends on the people who follow us but above all on the work and diligence we invest in it.
“Social Media, when it becomes your job, it becomes very stressful. It’s only you who can make it successful, it’s your investment that makes you successful, that makes the money come in, it’s your investment that makes the subscribers increase. I would never have been so stressed without it, you have certain videos that don’t work or that stagnate: you want to do more. Everything about working on networks is stressful. It’s so good, but it’s too much stress”
In her case, Elo was especially stressed because she didn’t just have this job.
“It’s a job to be an influencer, and if it doesn’t work you only have yourself to blame and that’s what’s terrible”
Lately, Elo has also been talking about endometriosis, which she has had for a very long time but was recently diagnosed with. She had to be diagnosed in India because in France it was not going fast enough and her symptoms were not taken into account, she had the feeling that the doctors were not listening to her.
“They didn’t listen to me. I came with the same symptoms that I presented in India to a gastroenterologist in France, he touched my stomach and noticed that I was bloated and told me to take charcoal and lose weight. All the doctors told me the same thing. I came to India with the same symptoms and they had me do all the possible tests to answer my questions. Certainly endometriosis has only really been recognized since 2020, but painful periods are not normal, and they don’t want to understand it. I have had painful periods for 11 years and it was pain that I could alleviate with ibuprofen but in my twenties it was no longer enough.”
At the age of 20, she developed cysts and following this the pain became worse and she explains that it was at this time that she was not listened to.
“In France I would never have gone to the MRI without the cysts. In India I was diagnosed in two days. In 12 years I was never told about endometriosis, in India when I assumed that, I was given the necessary tests and it was confirmed in 2 days. In France, they didn’t even bother to do these exams.”
Elo has also suffered from chronic fatigue for a very long time, again she was not taken seriously when she described her symptoms.
“I remember an appointment with a doctor in France where I explained to him that I am tired all the time and at the end of my life, we did a questionnaire, he told me that it was not normal but he didn’t never did anything or looked further. He told me “I think you’re stressed”, that would have meant that I was stressed since I was 11, that’s not possible, I’m not someone who is stressed at all basically I give him all my symptoms but for him it was just stress.”
Elo also explains that she had been diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) for years by convenience, but for her something else was wrong.
“I don’t feel like I’m alone but I feel like people weren’t listening to me when I said what was wrong. Afterwards what is not complicated for me is that I am on the networks and I just have to make a video and I know that people will respond to me and will have the same thing and it happened under a of my videos where I talked about my symptoms I had more than 1000 comments from people telling me that they had had the same problems”
Elo’s advice:
“One thing I didn’t do was not educate myself about burnout. Once you realize something is wrong: do some research. The best thing is to do some research and try to understand what’s going on. Research will help deconstruct what is going on in your life. When you are in France, whatever the doctors tell you: insist and ask for what you want. I’m the patient, I know what’s going on in my body, I know it’s not okay.”
Only you know your body, only you can know what’s going on in it and describe what’s wrong. If that doesn’t work, you can always change doctors.
And you, what’s your story?