In Pieces

For some, burnout feels like an unravelling - a slow, creeping dissolution where the threads of your life and identity loosen and fray until you are completely undone.

For others, it’s a breaking point - a sharp, sudden, collapse where everything shatters all at once. It doesn’t just kill physical vitality it also guts the entire internal mechanism of us. Like lifting the hood off a car and finding no engine. There’s nothing, a void, which feels very shameful and fragile to those who have defined themselves by performance and always had the ability to bounce back.

Driven by extensive rumination both burnout and shame thrive in silence.

Stories are often how we create shape from the mess, they turn shame into something softer; something shared. They are how we make sense of the world, and often how we survive it. Giving us the power to hold what feels unholdable and ultimately creating a space where someone else can say, “me too”.

And sometimes what is required isn’t the courage to keep it all together, but to surrender and come apart.

Recovery is messy, non-linear but also deeply creative.

This is where the feature maker Hana Walker-Brown finds herself in this tender and intimate programme, sifting through the fragments, the scattered pieces of a life upended, considering how to start putting it back together.

With contributions from Luca and Theo Walker-Brown, Hana’s swimming companions Zoë and Gabby, Dr Sophie Mort, Dr Aaron Balick, Andrew Tobert and Services Director for Calm Wendy Robinson.

With thanks to Kenwood Ladies Pond and Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM)

Featuring the use of "Prayer" by PJ Harvey

Produced and presented by Hana Walker-Brown

Sound design and original music by Hana Walker-Brown

Executive Producer: Anishka Sharma

Mix and Mastering: Peregrine Andrews

A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4