Burnt out? Me too. Why we are all burnt out and how to recover.
Burn out has become a popular term for a reason – we’re all feeling it. But a lot of the discourse around burnout focuses on the things that we can buy to get us out of the stress cycle, and glamorizes the recovery phase as something that should be quick and aesthetically pleasing. This can lead us to thinking we don’t have enough money, resources or time to recover. I’m here to tell you that your recovery from burnout, as with all of your inner journeys, is your own process. It will be unique as you are and it doesn’t haven’t to look a certain way. And I am sorry to say, it won’t always feel nice or comfortable either. True recovery comes from looking at the beliefs you hold that are driving you towards the behavior that causes burnout and requires us to reconnect to our bodies again. This process will inevitably bring some discomfort along the way, but if you are like me and searching for real peace, read on!
What is burnout?
Burn out is a colloquial term used to explain the symptoms associated with adrenal fatigue. It occurs when we’ve been stuck in a state of overwhelm for too long and have been operating from a place of fight, flight, freeze or fawn. We fall into this state because our bodies have determined a threat. When this happens stress hormones are released from our adrenal glands and our sympathetic nervous system is activated. This system shuts down functions that are not needed when we are encountering a threat, such as higher levels of thinking and digestion. In the past, we would have fought or run away from the danger and completed the stress cycle. However, in our modern lives it doesn’t normally work like this because the sources of “danger” interpreted by our brains persist and we never get to complete the stress cycle. For example, if our work is the stress trigger, day after day our bodies tell us we are in danger but the threat never goes away. Continuous exposure to the activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the ensuing stress hormone flood leads to adrenal fatigue and burnout. This burnout can feel different for everyone, but common feelings include brain fog, inability to focus, problems with sleep, feeling like you just can’t turn off, extreme fatigue and lack of motivation. Sound familiar?
So how do we heal?
Most of us arrive at burn out because we have missed important signals from our bodies telling us to stop. We are disconnected from our ourselves because habituation and socialisation teaches us to ignore our gut feelings and simply “get on with it”. Healing burnout ultimately is about reconnecting to your body and listening to your gut signals again. There isn’t a quick fix, but it is a vital journey to make because prolonged exposure to stress doesn’t just feel bad, it is making us sick. Research shows that high levels of stress are correlated with many of the chronic diseases many of us suffer from. The healing journey requires us to get in touch with our inner world, and it is because of this that healing burnout should look different for everyone. During this process we also need to cultivate the ability to act on this intuition, to answer the ask with an action. This might include setting a boundary, asking for a need or saying no to a request. These sound like simple things to do, but anyone who has tried will know how hard it is. In the process of trying to set a boundary or ask for a need, we tend meet the thoughts and beliefs that have been keeping us in a state of fight flight all this time, perpetuating the stress.
Chinese Medicine plays a beautiful role in this journey of recovering from burnout because it acts on the hormonal axis and nervous system to modulate the release of cortisol, moving the body from a state of fight and flight back to a calm state. It also helps facilitate the process of coming to know oneself again, feeling back into the body and into safety. By bringing your body further towards a state of balance, you naturally become more in touch with your inner self. You begin to tune into your intuition and are able to notice and act on warning signs earlier. You spend less of your days in fight flight, trying to “do”, and more time in rest and digest, simply “being”.
Does this sound like where you’d rather be? Are you ready to reconnect to your body again? Book in with me to begin your journey back to yourself.
