What to do When You Burn Out

The worst thing about burn out is that by the time it presents you’re so much of a mess that you have no idea what to do about it.

This is because burn out buries your creativity for solving your life problems under a rubble of broken expectations.

Your mind becomes consumed by the negativity of work overload and lack of control. You feel completely obliterated by the expressed emotions of others.

Your blood becomes pure cortisol and your just in this constant state of stress and tension. Fighting to survive.

When I was a teenager I used to play the fighting game ‘Dead or Alive’ on xbox. (*Because it had the best technical combat system- not because of the female characters ahem)

And in the game it had a 'survival mode' where you had to stay in the same arena and fight to beat as many consecutive opponents as you could without dieing. (My record was 49.)

This is exactly how it felt when I burnt out as a GP. Patient after patient came into the room and I had to fight them until they left.

It felt like they were busting out 11 problem combos on me, left, right and centre. They were juggling me in the air and all I could do was wait for it to stop so I could hit the ground and crawl home.

Then by the time you get home all you can do is rot on the sofa and watch people on reality TV having a worse time than you.

I know you could argue that you have to go through burn out so you can be reborn and rise like the phoenix from the ashes.

But when your higher brain functions are knocked offline by stress there’s always a risk of ending up more like a cooked chicken! 

So how do you liberate yourself from burnout and fly over the horizon into a better life?

Living in Constant Threat 

During my self improvement reading tour, the neuroscience of chronic stress has been a common topic that keeps popping up.

Most recently I’ve read ‘Becoming Supernatural’ by Dr Joe Dispenza and am currently reading ‘The Source’ by Dr Tara Swart.

It all begins with negative emotions such as anger, fear, disgust, shame and sadness.

Back in the days of early humans these were the survival emotions that kept us alive.

The associated surge of the stress hormone cortisol prepared our brain and body to respond to threat.

What’s interesting is the way in which this narrows our focus and places all our attention on the perceived threat.

The emotional part of the brain basically takes over and shuts down the part of the brain responsible for thinking. This causes you to zoom in on the threat and block out everything else.

Imagine you’re just about to lie down in bed to sleep. You turn to switch off your bed side light and see a massive spider crawling out from behind the bed.

All of a sudden your eyes are locked in on it watching its every move. Your stress response is triggered and now you have to either remove it or remove yourself because otherwise you’re not gonna get any sleep tonight.

Now imagine that you share an office with a nasty, confrontational co-worker that sits 2 metres away from you. The sound of their voice alone triggers your stress response.

But in this situation there’s no escape and you can’t put them in a glass and chuck them out the window either.

Whether the source of stress is aggressive clients, obnoxious colleagues or controlling bosses–

You’re burnt out because you can’t escape from them and fighting them would create an even worse situation.

So your stress hormones stay elevated constantly because your body feels it’s under constant threat.

And this chronic stress state cripples your ability to think about anything other than the stress. Which means your creativity to think about the life you actually want and how to make that happen is no where to be found.

This is why coaching is so helpful when you’re burnt out because you're given new perspectives to consider your life from. When you’re preoccupied with the spider in the room you may miss the most obvious solutions.

How to respond when you're burning out

Burnout typically goes one of two ways.

1)You keep doing what you’re doing and push yourself over the edge and are forced to stop by physical or mental illness.

2)You’re able to stop for temporary periods of annual leave. Your stress levels simmer down before shooting right back up just before you go back.

This usually ends up ruining the end of your holiday as well. This cycle continues until you end up in the first situation.

But there is another much healthy way out of burn out

Open your mind to new possibilities

Try the following exercise:

1. List all the aspects of your job that put you into a stress state

2. List all of your strengths and skills.

   Think about things that come easy or naturally to you that others may struggle with. These are your strengths.

3. List all the positive aspects of your job.

   Think about what you’re grateful for, write down any memories you have from work that made you feel really happy.

4. List all your interests inside and outside of work.

   All of them! Even the ones that other people might think are lame or aren't typical for someone in your profession to enjoy.

   If you love theorising over the marvel cinematic universe plotlines then you love it, put it down! If you think you only have one interest/obsession outside of work then put that down and dissect it into your favourite subtopics.

These 4 lists should start to put things in perspective. The idea is to organise all of your thoughts on paper so you can see them.

This will give you the full zoomed out 4 k picture of everything that you need to be aware of to plan your career change.

When your stress levels increase and you start narrowing in on all the shit and negativity you can look at this and zoom back out into reality.

Think of it like a door stop, doing the exercise pushes the door open so your can see a way out. Having it written down keeps the door open when you feel stressed. This allows you to continue thinking creatively about what you can do with your life.

I’d suggest you do the Door Hold exercise during those periods of leave from work. So instead of getting trapped inside of a cycle of stress and negativity, you’re giving yourself a chance to think your way out gradually over time.

You'll start to see new opportunities for change, whether that’s:

-Starting a side hustle in your outside interests

-Working on projects more aligned with your interests

-Working on projects that help improve the stressful aspect of the job for you and everyone else going through it.

I know what you’re thinking, this sounds like more work..

But try and think of it as a personal project that you’ve chosen of your own free will based on something important to you. It will not feel like work then.

More importantly when you commit to a project you gain skills outside of your comfort zone. This changes you as a person, giving you more options when it comes to creating your dream career.

Start small. Each completed project will give you confidence, make you feel in control and good about yourself.

There will still be spikes of stress along the path but as long as you’ve done the door hold exercise there will always be a way out.

Summary

-Burn out is chronic stress

-Chronic stress cripples your creativity

-Burn out requires you to think creatively. With creativity and self awareness you can find your own solution that exceeds your expectations.

-Use any periods of leave you can get to recuperate AND make a plan after completing the Door Hold exercise.

Remember nothing will change unless YOU change.

Everything you need is already inside your head, prioritise looking at it.

Stay Healthy

Lewis.