Rising From The Ashes of Burnout

January shook the world in a number of ways, and I seemed to come out the other side unscathed and still in good spirits. February, was a completely different story. In the last half of February and in the first half of March I was stopped in my tracks with a condition I had never experienced before; condition being: burnout. 

Alike any condition, no two people's experience, symptoms or timeline will be the same. My burnout experience had me remain in a high functioning state - but debilitated my creative brain and stopped in my tracks from a place of "only being able to give so much". My brain then shut down to be desensitized, fatigued, foggy and mildly depressed. I say minor fog and it felt thick at the time. For someone who is naturally high energy and needs to burn energy during the day more than the average person, I barely had the energy to walk my dogs. It was WILD. 

One thing I will say: exhaustion and fatigue from this state of burnout varied from the type of exhaustion and fatigue that I experienced with the initial stages of my concussion (tbi) and experience ongoing with long post concussion symptoms. 

Once the mental, emotional and physical fatigue symptoms lifted it actually felt like a PTSD response to re-emerge into tip-toeing outside the parameters I knew would keep me outside of the burnout I'd just been engulfed by. Wherever I was the past month - mentally, emotionally, and physically, as a result of burnout, is not somewhere I ever want to be again. Burnout is a phrase that I think a lot of people use but don't actually know what it means. It is very different than 'plain old exhaustion' from doing the work and by work, I mean life. Burnout exhaustion (for me) was laced with the absorption of outside emotions that sucked my essence dry - pair in mild depression without reason. Regular exhaustion (to me) can be restored by proper nutrition, rest, and sleep. This burnout exhaustion took more than nutrition, rest and sleep to recover from. 

All this to say, I very much empathize with anyone who has ever experienced burnout or who experiences it repeatedly. With that, I want to share some things that I knew before, that I clearly did not practise in the moment preceding this experience and that consequently led me down the path of burnout when these guidelines were breached.

First, let me share a few of the characteristics of burnout: mental, emotional and physical exhaustion, headaches, difficulty concentrating, inability to be productive, lowered immune system, insomnia, withdrawn behaviour, neglect for personal hygiene, loss of motivation, feeling trapped, helped or anxious, and spinning off from some of these symptoms into the possibility of depression. Not everyone will experience all symptoms**.

Note: burnout doesn't just come from work. It can come from a combination of areas of your life: emotional topics (and people) you are dealing with, legal matters, etc. 

The most important reminder/guidelines to preventing burnout, per yours truly: 

1. Know your limits and the mental, emotional and physical spend associated with whatever the task is that could potentially cause burnout. Become consciously aware of your limits around the input, output and attention you are giving whatever the thing, person or task is. Pay attention to how much of your cognitive load is allocated to tasks that require mental-emotional engagement and/or you needing to absorb someone else's "big emotions". Too many hours within the environment that links to that which is mentally or emotionally taxing or draining is what will cause depletion and burnout. Learn your threshold. Maybe you can withstand an hour of this type of engagement, but not multiple hours in a row, multiple days in a row. 
2. Make time for yourself daily, schedule it. Do things that bring you joy. Nourish your body with health food, nourish your mind with healthy thoughts. Connect with others daily who nourish your soul. You may have to schedule yourself time in your calendar for yourself - and it will be worth it. Neglecting the nourishment of your physical, mental and emotional, vessel is detrimental - and it's easy to get caught up letting one or all of these areas slide. 
3. Learn to say no. Preventing burnout will likely require you to learn to say no at times. When you find yourself in a situation that requires you draw on your mental-emotional in excess of what's reasonable, you will have to say no, draw a line, or create parameters that protect you. This may not seem easy at first, but - once you realize you're burnt out, in my experience, the changing of parameters becomes easier because you just don't want to feel horrible and at a loss for being able to function. 
4. Protect yourself energetically. No one can harm you unless you allow it, and - when your guard is down, you are more susceptible to letting outside forces creep in that can affect you. 

Have you ever experienced burnout? Is there anything or anyone in your environment that contributes to mental, physical or emotional depletion? If you are in need of recovering from burnout I highly suggest focusing on healing your brain, body and any stuck emotions in your sleep. Sleep and lucid dreaming were the top healing modalities that supported me speeding my recovery process up when I was living with PTSD. I can support you with this inside the studio through the mindfulness practises and yoga nidras that you will find in there. Your first 7 days are free. Separately, I have a few extras that I coach. Find them here and ask me anything, any time at: sloan@lereveonilnestudio.com or DM me on Instagram. I've got you.