Burnout risk? Some tools you can use today.

All kinds of problems at work or challenges in personal life can be burdensome. One can even run oneself into overtraining and end up in bed rest. Burnout is usually caused by a load that accumulates slowly over time and is not released—living in a constant state of threat. Difficult relationships, vague goals and demands, fears of mistakes and failures, etc.—all of these are fundamentally connected to a sense of insecurity.

Stress is the activation of the autonomic nervous system in danger. First, we usually try to flee (avoidance, withdrawal), then we fight (problem-solving or conflict), in prolonged overload we drift toward burnout (“I cannot succeed, I cannot get to safety”), and at the extreme, paralysis (“I’m sure I’m going to die”). We are built to tolerate and even benefit from stress peaks, but not from continuous stress—which is like driving 130 km/h in third gear. Everyone has some weak spot that will eventually give in.

One of my clients’ catastrophic thought chains sounded like this: “No one will ever buy from the company again, it will go bankrupt, I’ll lose my job, we’ll run out of money, my partner will leave me, and I’ll die lonely and homeless.” The drama and complete improbability of the vision made him laugh too, but this was the kind of threat scenario his brain was narrating. Is it any wonder, then, that the weak sales in the previous quarter stressed him out and every following workday began to feel overwhelming?

The most important thing is to learn to release the load before it accumulates and starts to make you ill. When you learn to let go of stress in time, you can benefit from the energy peaks, but your body also gets to rest in between and remember what a healthy, normal state feels like. Here are some thoughts from the perspective of self-care, especially if you cannot change the situation very quickly.

The Necessity of Pausing With Yourself

You can think of exhaustion as the result of losing connection with yourself for too long. It is important to take care of healthy habits (sleep, meals, exercise, quiet time, and doing things you love). Having worked with burnout prevention and recovery for over 15 years as a supervisor, and over 10 as a psychotherapist, I’ve seen time and again how stress and anxiety creep in when we sidestep our authentic self. Try to pause regularly to listen to yourself, to challenge the automatic streams of thoughts, and to examine the reasoning behind the emotions they trigger. Preferably every day.

There’s a lot of talk about boundaries and their violation. I like to think of boundaries as national borders. If someone crosses them without permission, the borders don’t disappear. Your self does not vanish, even if your workload is too much for the time available—when you make a conscious choice in your mind about how much you will or will not stretch. The worst source of stress, however, is difficult relationships. Even fear of mistakes and failures circles back to what others might think. (Read my blog on interaction culture.)

Disrespectful and unfriendly interaction is a real danger for humans, and the whole body signals it. Even a mild sense of social rejection shows up in the brain in the same areas as physical pain. Helpless individuals left alone were more likely to be eaten. That’s why in heroic stories the lone hero, bloodied and exhausted, still manages to save the world. Good relationships are absolutely central to endurance. At work, you cannot choose your colleagues, but everyone’s self-preservation instinct should say that basic friendliness would help everyone feel better. In private life, you can choose your friends. Above all—stay awake. Nurture your close relationships and actively repair disconnections.

How Do You Notice When the Load Has Started to Spin in Your Mind and Body?

You may have drifted into performing your life. When you “perform life,” you shift into autopilot. You repeat the same life the next day. In routines, conscious self-guidance and thought guidance are reduced. Your thoughts generate your emotions, and your emotions push you to react. Then your brain feeds you more thoughts that maintain the feeling. And the cycle spins.

Your brain filters the flood of information and tries to warn you of everything that could go wrong. Anxiety is a perfectly normal, healthy feeling, but in prolonged overload it starts to take up too much space. Preparing is a good thing, but the worrier ends up living through every potential catastrophe already in imagination and in the body. At its worst, anxiety becomes the body’s default state, without even a clear reason to attach it to.

Many of my clients are energetic, conscientious, often quite perfectionist. Or, on the contrary, they get anxious precisely about their distractibility and difficulty concentrating. Either way, they catch themselves doing more and more—and waiting for the next day with increasing anxiety. Have you stopped enjoying good moments? Do you find yourself rushing frantically even when nothing is on fire?

Are you already anticipating the next challenge or obstacle? And if you tie your ability to overcome them to your value as a human being, how well do you sleep? Of course, being careless and indifferent isn’t a great option either, but think carefully: what is your measuring stick? How do you assess your performance? How does your employer/partner/child assess it? How do you know you have done well enough—or even your very best? Clients who haven’t paused with themselves often find it difficult to suddenly articulate precise self-assessment criteria.

What we are not aware of, we cannot regulate. Many notice they have overlooked several signs over a long period by the time they realize they are spinning, thinking negatively first thing, snapping at others, being tired even on weekends, etc. When the same feeling lingers for days, it becomes a mood. You don’t immediately notice it yourself.

The Help Is NOT in Emptying Your Mind

The reason some people cope with stress longer than others has a lot to do with their ability to observe what their mind and body are feeding into awareness—and to evaluate it from a helicopter perspective. They know how to think about their thoughts and even argue back to themselves. They also consciously and kindly give themselves permission to rest, and in doing so they quiet their mind from worries.

So pause every day for a moment with yourself. This is not about emptying your mind but about listening to yourself. Going for a walk is healthy, but it doesn’t replace consciously reviewing the day’s events. Listen with curiosity: which moments does your mind bring up? They may hold something positive or negative. Organize them preferably with pen and paper, so your prefrontal cortex—your thinking brain—stays online. Swirling, bouncing thoughts in a tired mind easily slip off track.

Debate with yourself using facts, and focus on what you can influence. Separate yourself from what you cannot—like the weather. In a storm, all you can do is drop anchor and wait for it to pass.

In a calm moment, you can make a list of your stressors and analyze each one separately:

• What can I influence? How?
• Why does this stressor bother me? What does it connect to? If it’s about fear of losing control, what exactly am I trying to control? Ask yourself, why? Is it about feeling disrespected or treated unfairly? What is the underlying fear—the worst-case scenario your mind is feeding you?

Learn to steer your body into healthier state

• Anxiety is the mind guessing. The mind feeds us a movie of some dreadful future scenario and adds the emotions to match. But it’s only a hypothesis of one possible future. The brain doesn’t know what will actually happen! Pretty absurd to experience all the misery before it even maybe happens, isn’t it?
• In such a moment, close your eyes and imagine a situation where everything is fine, nothing bad has happened, and the problem is gone. Imagine how you feel. Savor that good feeling deeply! If your mind tries to sneak in “but…” sentences, firmly push them aside and return to your happy image. Where are you? With whom? What are you doing? What is the weather like?
• How does the problem your mind was feeding you feel now? A little smaller? If not, do the exercise again—you are teaching your brain and body a new pathway on the map.
• Once you’ve shifted your emotional state and calmed yourself, you can think about the first steps you could take toward that good alternative and future.

Try Dr. Joe Dispenza’s meditations on YouTube and relax at least for the night. When I feel sad or anxious, I do the meditation linked below and imagine myself one day in the Serengeti with my grandchildren when they are a bit older. We are watching the wildlife and landscapes together. I am filled with love and gratitude, and my worrying thoughts and the knot in my stomach vanish. I feel at home and remember who I am and why. The feeling is so pleasant that I do the same meditation on most evenings, even when I feel fine!

InnerFlo is an app based on the latest neuroscience research, including work at Yale University. It contains breathing exercises and music composed to change brainwave patterns in order to release stress and anxiety. Have a look online.

Gratitude, compassion, helping others, and a sense of awe are powerful antidotes to stress. Treasure them. And read about MindGuard Coaching—often just 2–3 meetings, flexibly online, are enough to release accumulated load and give you practical tools to carry forward!

I am currently putting together a self-study course on how to prevent burnout and how to recover from it. Send us a message through the contact form if you’d like to be informed when it goes online.

In the meantime, this Dr. Joe Dispenza video will guide you into a state of pure awareness and help you practice a sense of well-being in your mind and body—as if you were already there.

Let us know how we can support you!