Let me be clear. Burnout is a systems error – a systemic failure in how we have organised ourselves in 21st century living. We are gone past the point of debate in this. The research is clear and thankfully there are some changes emerging in our work culture, and in how we understand what it is to be a healthy human in our over connected yet increasingly isolating world. This work is my passion – alerting us to the reality that as humans we have amazing choice and agency, and we can use the advantages of all that the 21st century offers us to better manage stress and to live with more ease – to remember that we are human beings – not just human doings.
A lot of my day to day work though is focussed on supporting women leaders in human services who are right now over stressed, and perhaps concerned about burnout.
I know that with some awareness, and small intentional actions the stress load can be better managed and resilience increased. In this article I speak directly to this woman who is carrying too much stress for too long, and offer some steps to address the slide towards burnout. We do need to keep working on the bigger picture – recovering ourselves as human beings and rebalancing our way of being in the world, but for every individual experiencing too much stress we can also offer some evidence based routes to better wellbeing and inner calm.
I write this from two unrelated experiences recently. The first is former client of mine really taught me something of great value when she shared with me how impossible she is finding it to selfcare, to take the well known steps to rebuild calm, balance and wellbeing from a place of deep depletion and burnout. Even taking a few intentional breaths seems too much. And I also recently listened again to a radio interview with Dr Chris Luke a leader in emergency medicine in Ireland about his experience which he has written about ‘A life in Trauma: Memoirs of an Emergency Physician’. His essential story is that he built his whole career on being kind, then experienced burnout, from which at the time of the interview he was still recovering. During the interview we were invited into his world of early trauma, and amazing skills and achievement in emergency medicine. We met his vulnerability and bravery as he spoke of living in and distracting himself from his burnout for years, and now recovering though still vulnerable and shedding tears as he connected with this while speaking with the skilled interviewer.
Let’s Normalise The Reality Of Burnout
Burnout is a systems failure and needs to be addressed form the level of systems and culture. I am committed to raising awareness, and contributing to the considerable research and responses to this reality as we negotiate how to live well as 21st century humans. So if you are experiencing chronic stress or burnout there is no moral judgement here. It’s not your fault or some kind of failing. Burnout is simply carrying too much stress for too long. My concern here though is supporting the individual woman who is carrying to much stress to recognise that though you cannot address the systemic failure that underpins the conditions in which burnout thrives and might even be normalised, you can save yourself with increased awareness, and some tiny actions built into your already over-busy everyday.
For people with high-stress jobs — maybe you’re a nurse, doctor, or paramedic, social worker, therapist or teacher firefighter or in any one of a myriad of other ways supporting vulnerable people — there are times where your adrenaline is pumping, you feel really alert and you’re very productive. But if you stay on this high stress response over a period of time without giving your nervous system a rest, you will burn out. If you are a woman working in these high stress professions we know now that you respond to stress differently- you are likely to respond later, and to pay a higher price in terms of health issues. My own work is in this space – alerting women working across human care services to this reality and teaching simple evidence based micro steps that will bring us away from burnout towards hard core resilience, mindful leadership which always begins with self regulation and wellbeing.
Burnout Always Surprises
Burnout as a consequence of chronic stress totally blindsides us. We can usually see its trajectory and trace its increasing hold on us as we look back. We can see easily enough in retrospect our dramatic loss of self-esteem, and collapse of confidence.
We notice how:
– We were tired.
– We could not concentrate.
– We were acting cold and callous toward people we really care about.
– We wondered why we hate this career that we know we love.
– We were constantly having our buttons pressed-reacting rather than responding from our wisest self
– We forced ourselves to work harder
– We took our work to bed with us
– We lost all balance- started freaking out.
Women who are the most susceptible to burnout, and compassion fatigue are often those of us who are naturally compassionate, skilled, often leaders in their professions ,experienced, competent and committed. If you are such a woman experiencing some symptoms of burnout or wondering how you might better cope with increasing chronic stress I want you to know that take your own micro it is possible to stop the slide with some understanding of what is happening and some tiny micro steps that help even in the moment of deep depletion.
Self Regulation ( Stress Management) Begins With Understanding The Stress Respons
Self-regulation — the ability to respond to and manage stress even in the face of trauma — is the foundation of resilience. When we sense danger, the brain activates our sympathetic nervous system, triggering a fight-or-flight response; other parts of the brain shut down so we can cope with the stress in front of us. Imagine if you will a zebra lazily grazing contentedly on the wide open grassy plains. All is well. Then a lion…stalking and waiting to pounce comes into view. The zebra takes off at speed, literally running for her life. She escapes the danger and then with relative ease she can relax again and resume her lazy grazing with a fully relaxed body. She has completed the stress cycle. The human equivalent of that is the way the parasympathetic nervous system shifts our human bodies back into relaxation mode when we sense we’re no longer in danger. Very often as 21st century humans we do not complete this old brain activated stress cycle. We stay slightly (or alarmingly) wired- geared up in full fight or flight mode, when in fact there is no lion. There is an imaginary lion ( our minds cannot distinguish what we think or imagine from reality). By staying stuck on the stress response and not completing the stress cycle we move from a healthy stress response to danger or threat, to living with chronic stress with all of its known impact on our physical and mental health.
Micro Steps To Manage Stress
Micro Step One – the power of the pause
You can begin to close the gap, and give yourself a chance to respond more wisely within seconds’ When you are in the height of it, facing a new or familiar stressor, a deadline, a toxic work situation or a challenging family member, get into the habit of taking just 5 to 10 seconds to scan from the top of your head to your toes and relaxing all the muscles in your body.
Micro Step Two – a nod towards acceptance and surrender ‘ You can only change what you have control of, you can’t change what you don’t have control of.’ When faced with a challenge take a pen and paper. Put a line down the middle and a heading on each half of the page-What I can control here, what I cannot control here. Brain dump. Choose one thing you can do-take action on this. Sometimes the action wil be to surrender to that which you cannot control, or to be kind to yourself in that moment.
Micro Step Three ‘ It is just as important to learn how to practice self-care quickly in the moment when you get triggered by something stressful.’ Distractions — whatever gets you in that relaxation mode — are good for your mental health. One of the biggest causes of burnout is repetition of boring or routine responsibilities where we feel trapped. So it’s helpful to turn your focus toward something you can lose time in and get sent to another place for even a short time. Do you already know what your flow activities are? Flow activities are any sort of activity that when we are doing them we naturally relax, we are in the flow, not worried about the future or ruminating about something that has already happened. We don’t have to tell ourselves to relax. We are just naturally in the moment. It is not possible to be both stressed and in a state of flow at the same time. So bring to mind some activities that naturally bring you into this state of flow. Make a list and practise one every day – even if it’s just for a few minutes. As these flow activities become part of your daily routine you will find you are building your resilience, and investing in your wellbeing so that the spectre of chromic stress and/ or burnout vastly diminish. You are more in touch with your own inner calm.
If You Are Stressed Right Now -Take Your Time
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