How to Overcome Chronic Stress and Burnout
What does burnout actually look like?
Burnout is different for everybody. Some people might experience symptoms of exhaustion and fatigue, or even a lack of apathy when it comes to work. There’s a five-stage model that I use with clients that really helps them determine where they’re at, in this chronic stress/ burnout cycle.
This five-stage model is:
Honeymoon Phase – when you’re first starting a new job, you’re really excited about it, and you’re enthusiastic about the work,
Stress – it is normal for people to experience stress, and we can usually bounce back pretty quickly from stress. In this phase, it starts to feel a little bit like stagnation or maybe you’re feeling stuck.
Chronic Stress – chronic stress really looks like frustration and agitation, and you’re starting to isolate a little bit at work and with friends, spending a lot of time working on whatever project so it can be at home. You can experience job burnout, and you can experience burnout related to your work in the home if you’re a stay-at-home parent.
Burnout – burnout looks like apathy, you’ll start feeling disconnected from your work, and waking up after eight hours of sleep, and still feeling exhausted.
Habitual Burnout – habitual burnout really requires an event intervention at this stage. Usually, once you’re in habitual burnout, you’ll notice that people really have to leave the job to be able to take time out to recover. So really the aim is to help people prevent becoming habitually burnout. Another big indicator of habitual burnout is usually some type of substance to numb.
How Do I Know Where I’m At In The Five-Stage Model?
Whenever I’m working with clients, I ask them a series of questions to know if they’re moving towards burnout. I also have a list of symptoms for each of the stages (you can get this too, more information will be below!).
To help people determine what stage they might be in, the questions to ask to know where you’re at on that five-stage model really depends on the number of symptoms you’re experiencing, and the level of severity of the symptoms.
The questions to ask are:
- Do you wake up and still feel exhausted?
- Do you find it hard to concentrate?
- Do you lack satisfaction from your achievements?
- Are you using some form of addiction? It could be food, drugs, alcohol, gambling, to feel better, or to simply not feel and have your sleep habits changed?
- Do you drag yourself to work or have trouble getting started in the morning?
- Do you lack the energy to be productive?
- Have you become irritable or impatient with coworkers or customers or clients or your family?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might be experiencing burnout. However, it’s really important that you consider talking to your doctor or psychologist because the symptoms can also be related to health conditions such as depression. Burnout, by definition, is depression-like symptoms. So it’s good to be able to look at that and know where you’re at and seek guidance from your healthcare provider.
I’m Experiencing Many Of The Signs Of Burnout, What Do I Do Next?
After I look at the symptoms with a client, then we look at the causes of stress and burnout. And there are both internal and external factors that can cause and contribute to somebody experiencing burnout. Once we know the cause, the great thing is that then we can actually set goals to address those causes.
Some of the causes of stress and burnout are when we think about internal factors. So those are factors that are related to the personality characteristics of the person, and are, do you have a strong need for recognition and need to feel validated from others, that can be a big cause for burnout.
The Importance Of Boundaries When Overcoming Burnout
It’s a process of setting boundaries because you’re learning what are the things that make you contract and the things that make you anxious and the things that make you not be able to experience flow in your day, and those are the things that you really want to set boundaries around so that you can start to lift the burnout feeling that occurs.
External factors in the workplace also contribute heavily. Having a heavy workload where you never feel like tasks are finished and you never feel like you have a break before moving on to the next huge project, working long hours, and so on. Those are big red flags and contributing factors for job burnout. You might quickly notice that you’re experiencing burnout.
Those are just some of the causes of burnout. Once we know those things, we can reflect on what you’re experiencing at work, or if boundaries need to be established, we start to dive deeper into making a plan around addressing that.
My Journey With Burnout In My Career And How It Has Affected My Life
My battle with burnout years ago is what makes me passionate about helping people identify where they’re at in this stress burnout cycle. If we are able to identify that early, then there doesn’t have to be these long-term effects. However, if you are in burnout, there are things that we can do to support you to recover from burnout.
AIt took me a long time to research on my own to find out how to recover cognitively from the impact of burnout. There are a lot of studies showing that chronic stress affects your memory and your ability to focus and concentrate. Another study showed that if you had burnout, you had lower levels of neurotransmitters that are needed to grow new brain cells. So learning and being agile in your thinking is really difficult when you’re experiencing stress and burnout, and especially regulating your emotions because your emotional centers of the brain are kind of blown whenever you’re in that state.
I’ve taught myself different ways to regulate my emotions whenever difficult situations arise. Things like mindful movement, meditation, and connection and support from friends or family is what can help you start to retrain and reset your brain after experiencing burnout.
However, I’m not saying that we should all sit in meditation 24 hours a day, the idea is that we experience stress, and then we are able to do things to recover from stress, such as exercise, spending time with friends, laughing with friends, expressing your emotions, and to come back to a place of calm whenever you experience stress.
A lot of advice around burnout is if you’re experiencing burnout do less, and I actually say it’s to do more of what you enjoy doing. So more of the movement that you enjoy, and more of the outdoor activities that you enjoy whatever it is that lights you up cooking, gardening, knitting, surfing, whatever, do more of that. Now, if you are in a place of habitual burnout, and you’re there, there are points where you actually just need to go and sit on a beach for two months. And not everybody can do that. That’s the stage that I was in. So I was in stage five of burnout, yes, about my experience, and I’ll share a bit about that is when you really have to not only start doing things that you enjoy, and really that’s all that you can do because that will help motivate you to do more. Once you’ve kind of scaled-down your to-do list to absolutely necessary items.
Once you establish your foundational habits, you can build from there; it’s just like a house, if you don’t have the foundational habits and the foundations are sturdy, then whenever a storm comes through, the house will blow down. That’s what happened to me. I didn’t know those foundational habits were important, I meditated, exercised, and so on, but as soon as something big would come up at work, I would let all that go. Those things kind of have to be in place.
I also developed different mindset habits and self-care routines around being intentional and reflective. So to make sure I’m asking myself questions like “What am I avoiding? What conversation Do I need to have? What is taking up a lot of my time that I couldn’t delegate or delete? Or do later what actually has to happen right now.” The value of reflecting and journaling cannot be overstated.
The Importance Of Reflection
When you take the time to reflect on what part of your day brings you joy, or what activities can you add in that can bring joy throughout your day. For everyone that can look different.
For me, it’s going for a quick walk during the day and taking walk breaks, even just like five-minute walking breaks, or going to the gym in the morning, getting some exercise, and connecting with friends throughout the day.
How Do You Recommend Moving From Burnout Or Habitual Burnout Into Feeling Good Again?
This really depends on what phase of burnout you’re in. Overall, if you’ve been feeling chronic stress, or feeling exhausted, emotionally depleted, and disconnected from your work, whether that be at home, or in the office, these are the steps that will kind of help you get reflective and intentional and start to feel better.
So the first way to get reflective, as I had mentioned previously, is having a regular practice of asking yourself questions and writing out your response in a journal. Whenever you feel that you’ve got too much going on, you’re overwhelmed, or however you are feeling; Write out what you are overwhelmed about, what conversation do you need to have, what can you delegate, and what are you avoiding. Asking yourself those simple questions is really going to help you take a step in the right direction.
Adding in science-supported self-care habits into your day can help start to feel a boost in your mood and your energy. The key is getting your sleep and wake cycles synced to what you’re doing. So even if you are working night shift, still getting your sleep and wake cycles so that you’re getting eight hours of sleep, that you’re getting exposure to the sun, either at sunset or sunrise is really going to help with that because that helps improve your quality of sleep. While you’re sleeping, you will be able to experience all the rejuvenating aspects of the sleep cycle. Also, exercise and meditation or a mindful breath breathing practice is really important. Also, picking one thing that brings you joy each day that you can do whether or not it’s getting going for a walking meeting and walking while you’re speaking so that you’re getting outside and you’re getting moving or listening to your favorite podcast or reading a book I know and I was burnout I couldn’t really read I just was not something that I was able to do. The third thing is connection and support of others is fundamental. When I’m moved to a new city, the first thing I do is make sure that I am connecting with friends and people who have similar interests, so that I can build my support system, because that is really going to be what holds you together. Even if you’re just connecting with your barista, or the grocery checkout person, making sure you’re getting connection time and with people face to face each day.
