Who's afraid of big bad burnout?
“You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Remember the nursery rhyme, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" Well, burnout is a great deal scarier than the bite of a wolf. As psychotherapist Chris Warren-Dickins explained in their book Beyond Your Confines:
“Research shows that burnout can thin the gray matter of your prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain that is responsible for important functions such as reasoning and decision-making), and it can enlarge the amygdala (the brain’s alarm system).”
What this means is that your brain constantly senses a threat because the alarm system is in overdrive. When your amygdala is in overdrive, your sympathetic nervous system (the fight-or-flight response) is activated, and this results in more stress hormones. Studies show that elevated levels of cortisol and epinephrine can damage blood vessels and arteries, raise blood pressure, and cause an increase in fat tissue.
Burnout is when you are emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted due to exposure to prolonged stress. Burnout was originally recognized as being a workplace issue, but studies show that it can apply equally to stress in personal situations such as parenting, families, and friendships. Our obligations have become endless. At work and at home, there are constant encroachments on our time and energy, and it is exceptionally difficult to erect and maintain healthy boundaries. Difficult but, with the right help, and with a bit of assertive communication, it isn’t impossible.
One of the biggest issues that can lead to burnout is a lack of self-esteem. If you don’t value yourself, it can be exceptionally hard to maintain those boundaries and communicate assertively. If you believe your value is conditional on your career or your role in the family or the favors given to your friends or family, you can quickly end up feeling depleted and resentful.
When we work with our clients, often we hear the following descriptions of burnout:
“When I experience burnout, I get to the point when I just don’t care.”
“I know when I have reached burnout because none of the things I used to enjoy seem to do it for me anymore.”
“Burnout is when my anxiety has become so bad that I am jumpy about everything, and everyone drives me nuts. I can’t stand the feeling.”
“There are too many thoughts racing round my head, and that’s when I know I’m in trouble.”
“I know now that burnout is when I feel nothing. My feelings, my capacity for happiness, any joy has literally been burned out of me. It really isn’t a nice way to live.”
“I can now pinpoint every time my depression has gotten really bad, and that’s when I’ve been overdoing it, when I’ve been burning myself out and not even realizing it.”
“I screamed at my kids for the smallest thing, and that’s when I realized I was going on empty. I’d been in that state for too long, so I knew something had to change.”
“I never used to like the word ‘burnout’ but now I realize I didn’t like it because it applied to me. I wanted to be super-human, without any need for rest or disconnection from work. But that just isn’t sustainable.”
“There is so much to do, so much to think about, that my mind goes blank.”
For some, burnout can come as a huge surprise. Up until the moment things start to break down, they have been told to keep going, work harder, take on more tasks, and so it never occurred to them that this could be extremely damaging to their mental and physical health.
Burnout and the social rewards
We aren’t encouraged to rest and digest. Even though this is a biological necessity, society would far prefer we remained in the sympathetic state of fight-or-flight, so we can produce more, and more efficiently. The trouble is, this is not sustainable and, if you adopt a purely economic perspective, we are going to end up producing less and less until we collapse.
Take this moment to give yourself permission to pause, take those breaths, and plan how you are going to carve out, on a daily basis, time to prevent burnout. Sometimes you need someone else to give you permission to do this, and until you have adopted the voice of the ‘inner therapist,’ that permission might be given in your weekly sessions at Explore Transform.
Burnout and the old habits from age-old messages
To keep burnout at bay, you might need to dig into your past a little, so you can see if there are some unhelpful messages that have been given to you that perpetuate equally unhelpful habits. For example, you might have been led to believe that your self-worth depends on your productivity, or you might have been led to believe that you are not safe unless you are constantly vigilant and working hard (in your work life as much as your personal life). It might take time to identify and reality-test these messages but eventually you will be able to gain some perspective on what is right for you, not just what you have been conditioned to believe.
Burnout and technology
We never escape from our cell phones, and so this increases the likelihood of burnout in our work or home life. Bosses, colleagues, friends, and family members expect our constant vigilance and immediate reply, an expectation that is unhelpful to everyone. It also cheapens the value of the connection we enjoy with each other, reducing interactions to a handful of words or emojis instead of benefiting from eye contact, encouraging vocal tones, and other such calming body language. As we work using Polyvagal theory, we can help you to understand the value of these important aspects of communication, helping our nervous system to feel safe and calm before our developed brain has realized this. In turn, our interactions can feel more nourishing and fulfilling.
Burnout, stress, and anxiety
Burnout rarely occurs as a result of one thing. Usually it is an accumulation of stressful circumstances, and this can lead to anxiety as much as depression. Adopting a Polyvagal perspective, when someone experiences stress and anxiety, they are often in the sympathetic state of fight-or-flight, where you experience racing thoughts, breathlessness, a rapid heartrate, and many more symptoms that relate to your nervous system’s attempt to flee or fight the dangers you sense.
Burnout and depression
Adopting a Polyvagal perspective, if you end up shutting down, or feel detached, or you feel numb in response to the stressors that are leading to burnout, then you are in the shutdown state of the dorsal vagal response. As a result, this can lead to depression, which is a serious mental health condition. If you have any concerns about depression, please reach out so you can speak to an experienced licensed clinician.
Burnout and trauma
For survivors of trauma, burnout can occur when we overly focus on something to distract ourselves from our trauma. This excessive focus can also give us a sense of power and control to counterbalance the feelings of powerlessness or helplessness that we might still experience since the trauma. This excessive focus could be on work issues, personal relationships, or even hobbies that have become more of an obsession than an enjoyable pastime.
For years, we have been working with survivors of trauma using EMDR and Polyvagal theory. On this page, you will find a great deal of information about Polyvagal theory and EMDR.
Parental burnout
When it comes to the mental health of your children, it might be that they are fine. They are benefiting from a wide range of research from neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and psychologists, much of which is probably informing their social and emotional learning at school. But what about your own mental health? As psychotherapists and parents, we have worked with many people who have experienced parental burnout.
As parents, we have struggled through a pandemic, and technology has presented unique challenges to parenting. Forget "good enough" parenting, we have had to respond to increasing pressures to adopt a "do more" parenting approach. In our work, we have seen this lead to parents experiencing anxiety, depression, and a deterioration of symptoms relating to historic trauma.
Yet here's the trap: Because we are parents, it can be hard to prioritize our own mental health. For some of the people we've worked with, it has helped them to remember that we are helping our kids when we tend to our own mental health needs. We wouldn't drive a car full of our kids if we had no sleep or too much alcohol to drink, so we need to avoid parental burnout if we are to offer our children a safe and calm home.
Are you experiencing burnout?
Questionnaires are a useful starting point for you to think about your own experiences. You might be on the way to experiencing burnout, you might already be in the midst of burnout, or you might know of someone in either of these scenarios.
Consider the questions below but don’t accept them as a substitute for a full clinical assessment. Use the scale of 0 to 10 where 0 is “not at all” and 10 is “always”:
The relationship between burnout, loneliness and powerlessness
If you have read our pages on loneliness or powerlessness, you may see that there is a fair bit of overlap between those two issues and burnout. All three of these issues are closely related and all three can increase the likelihood or severity of mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. As a result, we have chosen to specialize in those three areas. There is hope in this overlap: If you work on one (for example, burnout), it is highly likely that you will manage to improve the situation with the other two issues (loneliness and powerlessness).
If you like, you can book a free ten-minute telephone consultation. You can book this online here.
Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist at Explore Transform
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Remember the nursery rhyme, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" Well, burnout is a great deal scarier than the bite of a wolf. As psychotherapist Chris Warren-Dickins explained in their book Beyond Your Confines:
“Research shows that burnout can thin the gray matter of your prefrontal cortex (the part of your brain that is responsible for important functions such as reasoning and decision-making), and it can enlarge the amygdala (the brain’s alarm system).”
What this means is that your brain constantly senses a threat because the alarm system is in overdrive. When your amygdala is in overdrive, your sympathetic nervous system (the fight-or-flight response) is activated, and this results in more stress hormones. Studies show that elevated levels of cortisol and epinephrine can damage blood vessels and arteries, raise blood pressure, and cause an increase in fat tissue.
Burnout is when you are emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted due to exposure to prolonged stress. Burnout was originally recognized as being a workplace issue, but studies show that it can apply equally to stress in personal situations such as parenting, families, and friendships. Our obligations have become endless. At work and at home, there are constant encroachments on our time and energy, and it is exceptionally difficult to erect and maintain healthy boundaries. Difficult but, with the right help, and with a bit of assertive communication, it isn’t impossible.
One of the biggest issues that can lead to burnout is a lack of self-esteem. If you don’t value yourself, it can be exceptionally hard to maintain those boundaries and communicate assertively. If you believe your value is conditional on your career or your role in the family or the favors given to your friends or family, you can quickly end up feeling depleted and resentful.
When we work with our clients, often we hear the following descriptions of burnout:
“When I experience burnout, I get to the point when I just don’t care.”
“I know when I have reached burnout because none of the things I used to enjoy seem to do it for me anymore.”
“Burnout is when my anxiety has become so bad that I am jumpy about everything, and everyone drives me nuts. I can’t stand the feeling.”
“There are too many thoughts racing round my head, and that’s when I know I’m in trouble.”
“I know now that burnout is when I feel nothing. My feelings, my capacity for happiness, any joy has literally been burned out of me. It really isn’t a nice way to live.”
“I can now pinpoint every time my depression has gotten really bad, and that’s when I’ve been overdoing it, when I’ve been burning myself out and not even realizing it.”
“I screamed at my kids for the smallest thing, and that’s when I realized I was going on empty. I’d been in that state for too long, so I knew something had to change.”
“I never used to like the word ‘burnout’ but now I realize I didn’t like it because it applied to me. I wanted to be super-human, without any need for rest or disconnection from work. But that just isn’t sustainable.”
“There is so much to do, so much to think about, that my mind goes blank.”
For some, burnout can come as a huge surprise. Up until the moment things start to break down, they have been told to keep going, work harder, take on more tasks, and so it never occurred to them that this could be extremely damaging to their mental and physical health.
Burnout and the social rewards
We aren’t encouraged to rest and digest. Even though this is a biological necessity, society would far prefer we remained in the sympathetic state of fight-or-flight, so we can produce more, and more efficiently. The trouble is, this is not sustainable and, if you adopt a purely economic perspective, we are going to end up producing less and less until we collapse.
Take this moment to give yourself permission to pause, take those breaths, and plan how you are going to carve out, on a daily basis, time to prevent burnout. Sometimes you need someone else to give you permission to do this, and until you have adopted the voice of the ‘inner therapist,’ that permission might be given in your weekly sessions at Explore Transform.
Burnout and the old habits from age-old messages
To keep burnout at bay, you might need to dig into your past a little, so you can see if there are some unhelpful messages that have been given to you that perpetuate equally unhelpful habits. For example, you might have been led to believe that your self-worth depends on your productivity, or you might have been led to believe that you are not safe unless you are constantly vigilant and working hard (in your work life as much as your personal life). It might take time to identify and reality-test these messages but eventually you will be able to gain some perspective on what is right for you, not just what you have been conditioned to believe.
Burnout and technology
We never escape from our cell phones, and so this increases the likelihood of burnout in our work or home life. Bosses, colleagues, friends, and family members expect our constant vigilance and immediate reply, an expectation that is unhelpful to everyone. It also cheapens the value of the connection we enjoy with each other, reducing interactions to a handful of words or emojis instead of benefiting from eye contact, encouraging vocal tones, and other such calming body language. As we work using Polyvagal theory, we can help you to understand the value of these important aspects of communication, helping our nervous system to feel safe and calm before our developed brain has realized this. In turn, our interactions can feel more nourishing and fulfilling.
Burnout, stress, and anxiety
Burnout rarely occurs as a result of one thing. Usually it is an accumulation of stressful circumstances, and this can lead to anxiety as much as depression. Adopting a Polyvagal perspective, when someone experiences stress and anxiety, they are often in the sympathetic state of fight-or-flight, where you experience racing thoughts, breathlessness, a rapid heartrate, and many more symptoms that relate to your nervous system’s attempt to flee or fight the dangers you sense.
Burnout and depression
Adopting a Polyvagal perspective, if you end up shutting down, or feel detached, or you feel numb in response to the stressors that are leading to burnout, then you are in the shutdown state of the dorsal vagal response. As a result, this can lead to depression, which is a serious mental health condition. If you have any concerns about depression, please reach out so you can speak to an experienced licensed clinician.
Burnout and trauma
For survivors of trauma, burnout can occur when we overly focus on something to distract ourselves from our trauma. This excessive focus can also give us a sense of power and control to counterbalance the feelings of powerlessness or helplessness that we might still experience since the trauma. This excessive focus could be on work issues, personal relationships, or even hobbies that have become more of an obsession than an enjoyable pastime.
For years, we have been working with survivors of trauma using EMDR and Polyvagal theory. On this page, you will find a great deal of information about Polyvagal theory and EMDR.
Parental burnout
When it comes to the mental health of your children, it might be that they are fine. They are benefiting from a wide range of research from neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and psychologists, much of which is probably informing their social and emotional learning at school. But what about your own mental health? As psychotherapists and parents, we have worked with many people who have experienced parental burnout.
As parents, we have struggled through a pandemic, and technology has presented unique challenges to parenting. Forget "good enough" parenting, we have had to respond to increasing pressures to adopt a "do more" parenting approach. In our work, we have seen this lead to parents experiencing anxiety, depression, and a deterioration of symptoms relating to historic trauma.
Yet here's the trap: Because we are parents, it can be hard to prioritize our own mental health. For some of the people we've worked with, it has helped them to remember that we are helping our kids when we tend to our own mental health needs. We wouldn't drive a car full of our kids if we had no sleep or too much alcohol to drink, so we need to avoid parental burnout if we are to offer our children a safe and calm home.
Are you experiencing burnout?
Questionnaires are a useful starting point for you to think about your own experiences. You might be on the way to experiencing burnout, you might already be in the midst of burnout, or you might know of someone in either of these scenarios.
Consider the questions below but don’t accept them as a substitute for a full clinical assessment. Use the scale of 0 to 10 where 0 is “not at all” and 10 is “always”:
- You feel exhausted and restless.
- You feel apathetic about the things that you used to feel energized about.
- You have had trouble sleeping, or you have been sleeping too much.
- You have been thinking about walking out on a job or a personal situation, even though you know this might make things worse.
- You have been feeling helpless in a situation at work or at home.
- You have been breathless, short of breath, or dizzy.
- You feel that no matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to keep up with your demands.
- You have been more irritable and angrier of late.
- You have become cynical and unable to find any positive side to things.
- You have been less able to concentrate at work or in your personal relationships.
The relationship between burnout, loneliness and powerlessness
If you have read our pages on loneliness or powerlessness, you may see that there is a fair bit of overlap between those two issues and burnout. All three of these issues are closely related and all three can increase the likelihood or severity of mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. As a result, we have chosen to specialize in those three areas. There is hope in this overlap: If you work on one (for example, burnout), it is highly likely that you will manage to improve the situation with the other two issues (loneliness and powerlessness).
If you like, you can book a free ten-minute telephone consultation. You can book this online here.
Chris Warren-Dickins
Psychotherapist at Explore Transform
|
|
|
Parental burnout
Latest blog posts to help you with burnout
(and the impact on your wellbeing)
(and the impact on your wellbeing)
|
|
|
|
|
