Burnout
What it is. How you got here. What to do about it.
What is BURNOUT?
Burnout is state of mental, physical and emotional exhaustion that can occur after long periods of stress. Stress can come from persistent heavy workloads, unrelenting care giving responsibilities or chronic stress from emotional strain or trauma. Burnout is a clinically recognised health condition, and not simply feeling tired after a big week at work. It’s a slow process of survival that your body creates in order to stop your brain from shrinking… It’s true! During acute stress, your adrenal glands produce cortisol which helps your body cope with stress. Cortisol mobilises your energy reserves (increasing blood sugar levels) in order to fuel up for a stressful battle, as well as temporarily suppressing some of the energy heavy systems like your immune system and digestive system. Totally fine and useful for short periods.
However, you can probably guess that over long periods of time, this isn’t a great strategy. Prolonged exposure to cortisol can alter the structure of your brain and limit mental function and the brain’s ability to repair itself. Specifically, excess cortisol shrinks the dendrites in your brain and impairs the generation of neurons, and this affects your memory, attention, learning, emotional regulation and overall executive functioning. It also affects your immune system, sleep patterns, blood pressure, and can cause weight gain and heightened emotional reactivity.
So your body does a great and kind thing to preserve your beautiful brain and bodily systems. It dials down the amount of cortisol being released. What a great solution! Oh but wait… now we have a “dysfunctional” system as a result. This is where exhaustion kicks in, causing symptoms of chronic fatigue, brain fog, low blood pressure, decreased libido and a difficulty in coping with stress. It also affects your reproductive system.
Does it affect my nervous system too?
Yes, it does. Your autonomic nervous system (ANS) is in charge of regulating your involuntary processes - things you don’t have to think about like your heart beating, digesting your food and also your physiological response to stress. It has two main arms that are delicately balanced like a graceful dancer – the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). During long periods of stress, your SNS can become overactive causing that fight, flight or freeze reaction to happen way more than what would be helpful or necessary. You know when someone walks into the room unexpectedly and scares the living daylight out of you? ‘Heightened alertness’ it’s called.
Then the PNS is your ‘rest and digest’ manager. I bet you can guess what happens to it during long periods of stress. Difficulties unwinding, poor sleep quality, a range of digestive issues and impaired immune function are the result.
Sadly for the professional dancing arms of the ANS, once burnout kicks in, these arms can go a bit rogue and become a little less graceful. While the SNS flails about overreacting and the PNS flops limp to one side, a burnt-out individual is left with chronic stress, impaired recovery and a heightened risk of developing a range of mental and physical health issues, not to mention a severe dance career setback.
Summing it up – the changes that occur in your body during prolonged stress and burnout leave your body susceptible to chronic illness, chronic inflammation, cardiometabolic disease risk like type two diabetes, and an impaired immune system. So… it’s time to change the way you’re doing things…hey.
How you most likely got here:
Up until recently, only professionals in stressful jobs were recognised as those experiencing burnout. However, we now know that parents and primary caregivers experience burnout too.
We also know that certain personality types and traits are more prone to burnout. Can you guess any traits? Are you ready to stand in front of your mirror?
Crusaders
Perfectionists.
Over-accommodators.
Fixers.
YES people.
The overly compassionate.
You don’t have to give up being a beautiful, lovely and good person in order to recover from burnout. However, you do need to re-prioritise how much you give out compared with how much you keep for yourself. It’s time to start taking some of those lovely YES’s you give away and redirect them towards yourself.
Should I have a long bath tonight? Yes. Should I go for a 20min walk in the local bushland before I get my day started? Yes. Should I turn off the lights and dance passionately around the lounge room to my favourite song? Absolutely, yes.
Where to begin in your recovery.
Understanding you’re suffering burnout is the first step.
The second step is to remove any stigmatisation of burnout you may be carrying. You are not weak. This is a physiological dysfunction. Your incredible hard work and endurance has most likely got you here, along with your dedication to those around you.
But now it’s time for some boundaries. You can only give what you have, so if you don’t fill your cup, you won’t have anything to give.
It’s time to stop, reflect upon your journey and identify how you got here and what you can change in order to stop giving out all your energy to the people around you or situations causing you stress. It’s time to implement some healthy ways to create strong boundaries, prioritise yourself and find time to breathe. It might also be a good time to recruit a good counsellor to help along the way.
Recover with herbal medicine.
This is is a great point in your journey to get a little naturopathic assistance. Herbal medicine has a unique and powerful role in the recovery of burnout, having the ability to restore adrenal and nervous system dysregulation. Some herbs have a well-established ability to help the body adapt to stressful situations and reduce the over production of cortisol. They can improve adrenal function and also regulate the autonomic nervous system, making recovery far less of a battle. As a naturopath, I can assess your symptoms and formulate a herbal tonic for you that addresses your specific needs. For example, with herbs, I could help regulate your reactivity to stress, your mood, digestion and immune all in one bottle. I can make sedative herbs for a better night’s sleep. I can address both anxiety and depression through herbal medicine and reduce feelings of overwhelm and exhaustion.
Nutrition is also important and there’s a few key elements I will often prescribe, along with my recommendations for selecting nourishing foods that will become your ‘food as medicine.’
Give yourself time and patience in your recovery. It’s a journey now to rebuild the new and improved you that has energy to spare, with strong boundaries, empathy and understanding, the know-how to develop strategies, take responsibility, be involved and interactive and have the ability to form healthy professional detachment.
Be gentle but consistent. Safeguard your time and space. Learn to rest – not quit.
Menu of cup fillers:
This is NOT another thing to add to your plate. This is a menu to guide you towards balance. You must reduce your current responsibilities with healthy boundaries and time management in order to create space for these cup filling activities. It’s not an easy or quick process - it takes time and dedication.
Create your list in advance so that when you get those spare moments, your tired mind doesn’t have to think. My advice is to begin with choosing 3 things from your list, with at least 2 from my MUST DO’s. You can add something of your own too like a hobby or an activity that is healthy and nourishing. Please be gentle with yourself, but consistent. Schedule time for yourself daily – 5mins to one hour… or a whole day a week!
MUST DO’s:
Breathing and/or Meditation. Either breathe with intention as part of a meditation, do some breathwork classes, or just take 3 deep breaths every hour. However you choose to incorporate breathing, it has a POWERFUL and rather fast affect on reducing your cortisol, adrenaline and soothing your overactive nervous system.
Meditation has also been proven to be another incredibly effective approach to burnout recovery. There’s some excellent free apps to help you plug into guided meditations.
Improve your resilience to stress by getting comfortable with the uncomfortable. Breath work, meditation, cold showers or saunas are all positive stress on the body that builds resilience.
Box Breathing. Wim Hof Breathing. Insight Timer meditation app.
Sleep. 7-9 hours is best for burnout recovery. Try to go to sleep at the same time each night and really prioritise it. I mean really. Get off your screens, and go to sleep… before midnight! Also try and wake at the same time each morning - early enough to fit in some breathing and/or meditation. If you need help with your sleep quality, be sure to mention this to me in your consult with me.
Check out my sleep blog here.
Restorative movement with joy. Or exercise… it’s all about perspective. If the word ‘exercise’ makes you slump, try ‘movement’ instead. The best thing to do for burnout recovery is gentle movement like walking in nature, yin yoga, qi gong or a cruisy bike ride. Start with 20mins 2-3 times a week and build from there.
Mindset and stress perception. If you’re willing to focus on changing the way you perceive stress, you will recover faster and stay recovered. A recent study of a mere 186 million participants reported that it’s your perception of stress that causes disease, not stress itself. In fact, individuals who felt that stress affects their health were shown to have a 43% increased risk of premature death (seriously, read that sentence again…).
So next time you’re feeling that stressful surge of adrenaline or cortisol, thank your body for protecting you! And next time you’re stuck in traffic on the way to work, see it as an opportunity to have a mindful moment, call a friend or listen to a podcast!
In summary…
Burnout recovery is a lifestyle and perception change, and it might take some time. I’m talking months. But every positive change you make will help you regain the energised version of yourself that you undoubtedly miss!
Herbs really do help, so I highly recommend you book in and order a bottle from me to begin your recovery.