Can we talk about Burnout....

There is a lot of talk about burnout and I believe many people are feeling the effects of burnout. What I don’t see is conversations about how to recognise what lead to your personal burnout and how to recognise when it starts to happen again.

What is burnout?

According to Webster’s dictionary burnout is “exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration”.

Burnout is where you are depleted of energy and have no motivation to go to work, take care of yourself, or even do the things that use to bring you joy. Most people with burnout just want to sleep all of the time. There can be no real sense of a way forward where people feel trapped in survival mode waiting for the external to get better.

Signs of burnout

·Sense of failure and self-doubt

·Feeling helpless, trapped, and defeated

·Detachment from friend and family, feeling alone in the world

·Loss of motivation

·Increasingly cynical and negative outlook

·Decreased satisfaction and sense of accomplishment

·Exhaustion and/or insomnia

·Dependency of drugs, alcohol or food as a way of coping

·Physical illness, getting sick more often

· Emotional deregulation

How do you bounce back from Burnout? 

Firstly a deflated ball does not bounce so you will need to patch your holes and allow yourself to fill back up. It may have taken you years to deplete yourself so don’t think you will be cured overnight. Anyone who promises you a cure in a workshop or with one simple trick is lying to you or at least over simplifying the human condition. Now, I do want to assure you that small steps you take today are not pointless, they will be the foundation for huge changes down the road. Don’t give up on yourself. Recovery from burnout is a long term game that you need to play, and it will get easier over time. 

First step - give yourself the space to rest and reflect. There is a great book called “Sacred Rest” by Saundra Dalton-Smith, MD. I heard about her through a Brene Brown Podcast. In her book she points out that that Sleep is not rest. Often we think a good night’s sleep will cure us, but physical rest is only one of the seven types of rest that she identifies: Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, social, sensory, and creative. Getting clear on what areas of your life you need to rest or have more support is a great place to start.

·         Physical - Are you physically rested? Is your schedule over booked? Are you physically active all day every day? Conversely are you getting enough exercise?

·         Mental – Are you thinking all of the time? Do you have control of your thoughts or do they control you?

·         Emotional – Do you allow yourself to feel all of your emotions? Are you aware of the feelings that come up in your body? Do you have control of your emotions or do they control you?

·         Spiritual – do you have a life purpose or passion that motivates you? Big picture thinking, universal connectedness, connected to hope, positive outlook on life

·         Social – do you have good quality relationships? This is about being seen and building deep connections with other people.

·         Sensory – do you have music or the TV on all of the time? Is your house/office cluttered? Do you ever get out in nature where there are no distractions?

·         Creative – do you ever allow yourself to play? Do you only force creativity?

A lot of times these areas of our lives are connected and what helps with one area will often help another. I really like how Dalton-Smith unpacks rest so we can see all the little pieces that seem small but actually play a big role in self care and our overall mental health. When you are burnt out it is hard to gather the energy to do much, by breaking down rest into small areas you can start to see small manageable steps forward

Second step understand your values. There are lots of reasons why people burnout, but one important piece is that they are not aligned with their true strengths and values.

Do you know what your values are? Community, money, happiness, efficiency, courage, peace, and trust are all values. You can find lists of values on line or take values quizzes. These are great places to start to help you sort out your values from values you think you should have. Some people get burnt out trying to live up others values and never reflect on what lights them up.  

Reflecting on what brought you to your knees will help you become aware of what values and boundaries were ignored. This will also allow you to recognize early stages of burnout in the future. There can be a lot of elements coming together to cause your burnout making it difficult to tease apart. Becoming aware of what caused your burnout may take some time and you don’t have to figure it all out in one sitting. You just need to start making tiny adjustments and things will start to become clearer. Remember your values will change over time and you need to be aware of these changes and let go of attachments to values that no longer serve you.

Third step is to look at your goals. Often we set goals that are not aligned to our true wants and needs. What we think we want is often influenced by our ego and our need to fit in, but also our family and culture.

The Ego is always judging through the five senses and deciding on what and who you need to be in order to survive. When goals are made from the ego they are based solely on the external world, not the internal world.  The ego does not take notice of the internal world, which leaves blind spots or holes in your goals. This is why when you obtain ego based goals they do not bring you satisfaction so you set goals on getting more; more money, more weight loss, more things, more power, more, more, more…

It is really hard to set goals not based on material desires; after all we have five senses to experience these types of goals. And it is not wrong to set ego based goals; it’s just that something is missing so our goals don’t always hit the target. Instead of ego goals, I want you to focus on the feeling you will have when the goal is achieved, the feeling becomes the goal and you can loosen the attachment to the external goal and focus on the internal goal, I like to call these Soul Goals.

Having soul goals are great when you are burnt out and not sure what you want, you just know you don’t have it yet. Sometimes you may want something different but are not sure what that even looks like.  If you focus on the feeling you stay open to the external experience that will give you that feeling and not get lost in trying to figure out all of the details. So really embody the feeling of achieving the goal, use that as the guiding principal. Remember you goals will change and shift overtime and you need to allow yourself to be flexible enough to re-orientate towards the highest potential.

Fourth step is to address happiness and mindset. There is a lot about happiness and mindset out there, which can be helpful and confusing at the same time. Happiness and mindset are not about being positive all of the time. It’s not pushing away the negative thoughts and emotions, but sitting with the discomfort and learning from them. When you are able to sit with your thoughts and emotions you can get really clear on what actually makes you happy opposed to what you think should make you happy. Bringing awareness to what truly brings you joy or what does not excite you will help you choose a new way forward

So start to take notice about what truly brings you joy, these things are your acts of self care. Sometimes the activity may not bring you joy but the after affects lift you up, like exercise, some days I hate getting off the couch but after working out, or making a home cooked meal I feel so much better. If you know you are going to regret doing something then you really need to fight for yourself to do the thing that you know will make you feel better! This is resistance showing up, acknowledge it for what is it.

Self care is an interesting term because it gets sold to us in the form of experiences and products, but it is so much more. Self care is also discipline, organizing meal plans, creating a financial spread sheet to track spending, having difficult conversations with loved ones, asking for a raise/time off/help. Sometimes being hard on yourself for the right reasons is the best self care, because it’s addressing long term gains not immediate satisfaction or giving in to resistance.

There are lots of different self care things you can do to support your mental health, the key is finding what works for you and introducing these changes slowly into your life. It is much harder to integrate a whole new way of being when you are depleted so go easy on yourself.

·         Meditation – sitting, active, guided, chanting, silent, with others

·         Exercise – running, biking, walking, gym, swimming, outdoors, group fitness

·         Healthy diet – what does your body need, what foods bring you joy (different from comfort)

·         Journaling – journal prompts, dream interpretation, gratitude, poetry, sketching, etc.  all help with self reflection and to work through your struggles and resistance

·         Counselling – paid professional, life coach, personal development workshops, friend group

·         What activities bring you joy – spa day, volunteering, camping, cleaning, being creative, movie night, gardening, gaming with friends, pushing your limits, etc.

·         Deeping relationships has been found to be the number 1 thing to increase happiness. It’s not about having more friends, but quality relationships where you can be vulnerable and support each other. So reach out when times are good as strong connections make it easier to connect when things are bad.

Now you might be wondering how to figure all of this out. If you knew any of these answers then you wouldn’t be burnt out in the first palce?

This is tricky because you do know the answers, but they are buried in your unconscious mind. We all operate from our conscious mind, our ego, and there are lots of things we are not aware of. This is where shadow work comes into play.

Shadow work is the term giving to looking at the disowned parts of ourselves and sitting with the discomfort to understand them so that we can integrate them back into our way of being. Once you are aware of the belief or patterns that lead to your burnout, you will need to sit with them and get curious. You will need to ask yourself lots of questions to dig deep into the fear that was driving you forward and into the ground.

On my website I have a free Intro to Shadow Work workshop that you can watch to get more information. Scroll to the bottom and sign up.

Just know that bouncing back from burnout is all about self reflection and getting to know what truly makes you tick and separating that from what you think you like or need to do. This is your life and your goal is to discover how you want to live it!

Don’t forget to play

Nikki