August 2011
BURNOUT: What if I'm Already There?
By Sherry L. Dudgeon, Project Coordinator
Funding Exchange, Inc.
As we learned in the lead Exchange article this month, preventing burnout makes more sense than treating burnout once it occurs. But what happens if we’ve pushed beyond our coping skills and find ourselves in the middle of burnout?
Take a Break
For many, a simple vacation will help rejuvenate and relax them enough to allow you to come back to your work refreshed and ready to take on the tasks at hand. There’s plenty of documentation showing that time off is necessary for our well being and productivity on the job. The more severe the burnout, the longer it will take to feel the stress beginning to recede.
If you can’t take a complete break away from work, try taking one day at the beginning or end of each week and create a long-term three-day weekend for awhile. While you’re off, do something completely different than your job – hiking or heavy yard work if your job is sedentary, for instance. Each day, take an extended nap if you feel tired… listen to your body.
Try personal stress reduction techniques such as a yoga class, some meditation, reading a good book unrelated to your job, work on muscle relaxation, or a therapeutic massage
Counseling is an option. If you are overwhelmed to the point that you are beginning to find yourself in a state of depression, psychotherapy or counseling will help your recovery. Some employers provide a few counseling sessions for free before your medical coverage kicks in. Therapy can reduce stress, improve morale and enhance your coping skills.
Also, physical illnesses can make you more prone to burnout and can keep you from recovering. Check with your physician and see if there are underlying physical causes that can be treated.
If you want a natural herbal or homeopathic remedy, St. John’s Wort, Passiflora incarnate, Scuttelaria laterifolia (skullcap) and Valerian are all purported to promote relaxation and provide a soothing effect.
Career Burnout
One of the major causes of career burnout is disappointment in your job or workplace. It can be caused by losing a desired position, or by having to abandon a goal or objective you had hoped to reach. When this happens, you can experience a true sense of loss of control, which causes you to feel helpless and hopeless.
Career burnout is a more severe burnout to deal with as it can affect your interpersonal relationships, your work performance and your health. Being overworked and emotionally drained can bring you to close to an emotional or physical breakdown -- it affects all our interpersonal relationships. People with burnout may begin isolating themselves from others. Some people suffering from burnout resort to addictive behaviors like substance abuse. If the root cause of the issue is not addressed, the burnout can build and the risk for serious harm grows. The steps to recovering from career burnout include:
Grieve
Take the time to grieve. You are faced with letting go of some hopes and dreams,
and they deserve your respect by taking the time to grieve the loss. Consciously giving up what you had hoped for can take a toll on your identity as well as your psyche. Find close friends that you confide in and share the feelings you have about your loss with them. Talk about it with those around you that love you and care for you. Sometimes a co-worker who has experienced burnout in the past can be a good listener and will provide the understanding that a friend or spouse cannot understand.
While grieving, find those around you who can affirm you, your dreams and aspirations. Surround yourself with positive feedback and even positive self-talk. We can be our own worst critic at times, and it may be tempting to blame yourself when you suffer a loss. Take a close look at your own internal dialogue – If your conversation with yourself is often critical, you may need to be inundated with the thoughts of someone who is a real believer in you!
Take Good Care of You
Sometimes part of the burnout we experience is caused by a long-term lack of attention to our own physical needs. We have tried for so long to meet the demands of our job and please the boss or climb the ladder to the next position that we have forgotten to keep ourselves healthy and intact.
Exercise: A key element of recovery for any type of emotional stress is exercise. The chemical release of endorphins in your body helps slow a racing mind and lift a sluggish mood. Exercise is good for occupying you when you are feeling vulnerable, when life feels uncertain or when you feel off your game. Exercise is something to look forward to…it has a beginning and an end (sometimes we look forward to the end more than the beginning!) Exercise provides a tangible sense of control and accomplishment. You feel tired afterwards, you sleep better, you eat better, and you become more alert during your waking hours. Exercise can be a routine that becomes a tool both for burnout prevention and for recovery.
Relaxation: We all need a retreat occasionally. Some of Webster’s definitions of a retreat include an act or process of withdrawing especially from what is difficult, dangerous, or disagreeable”; “ a place of privacy or safety”; or “a period of group withdrawal for prayer, meditation, study, or instruction under a director”.
Retreating allows time for you to think. As you grieve the loss of your dreams and aspirations, you need to retreat and reflect on what it is that you are missing, and to find within yourself what it is you’d like to pursue. Take time to evaluate who you are. What are your skills, talents and gifts? Has the job you are in been providing a place to grow? What is your potential? Are you growing and maturing up to your potential? Are you in over your head? Do you need to scale back, or find another position that ‘feeds’ you emotionally instead of draining you? What is your area of expertise and your knowledge? Is there something new you’d like to learn? Or some activity you’d like to return to? What are your emotional hang-ups or your learning gaps?
As you take the time to retreat and evaluate, realize that you have a clean slate in front of you. Put the past behind you and realize that tomorrow is a new day. Grieve and bury your hurts and losses, take a good look at that clean slate before you, and begin to color in your new ideas. Consciously start to structure your thoughts and potential to formulate a plan that is tangible for you to carry out.
Reading: I am not an avid reader, but, I find that when I am feeling overwhelmed with life and all the struggles, I turn to a book to temporarily escape my world and become involved in a bit of fantasy. I’m not talking about a self-help book or a book about your job or your career. Instead, read a book that makes you chuckle and helps you see the humor in life (Peanuts, Calvin and Hobbes, or -- my favorite, Maxine – are all good). A good belly laugh releases endorphins, which in turn gives your vital organs a short but vigorous internal massage. It is a wonderful thing to laugh at the absurdity and the irrationality of our own goal-oriented behavior. We can get so caught up in striving to succeed and obsessed and driven by rigid thinking that we can get stuck in a downward spiral. Use your reading to escape your goal-seeking, life-sucking behaviors and laugh a bit more! And if reading is just more than you can handle, go and rent some good laughs at your local video store! (you know…the kind with the canned laughter in them!)
Writing: Journaling is therapeutic and good for your own mind. In times of deep introspection and grief, one of the best tools we have is the honesty of ourselves applied to a clean page with a pen or keyboard. Journaling gives you the freedom to express what you’re feeling and to analyze your emotions. Many people find that writing about their thoughts and feelings helps them process their emotions. You may find yourself with a revelation about yourself or your circumstance through the writing process.
Balance is an important key to recovery, particularly because becoming out of balance is often what brought us to burnout in the first place. Be mindful of keeing everything in moderation.
Acceptance and Moving Forward
As part of your recovery, remember the stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.
A person recovering from burnout needs to take the time to go through each one of these stages, but it’s not unusual to get stuck in depression because we forget it takes forward momentum to move into acceptance. YOU have to be the one to make that leap. Do not choose to get stuck as it will only leave you stranded. Let your painful loss go, refocus to the present and pursue your new vision. Use these techniques to build that forward momentum and begin etching your new life on your clean slate.
Preventing Burnout’s Return
Once you recover from burnout, you’ll want to take a backwards look to understand how you found yourself there so you can prevent it in the future.
A good place to start is to examine your work habits. You may find that you need to establish new boundaries. What used to work for you may not be working so well and may have been your source of burnout. Say “no” to tasks that are not in your job description. If you are feeling that burnout is on your horizon, talk to your supervisor and share your concerns. You may need to communicate with the Human Resources department and see if they have programs for employees to help them adopt a more positive approach to their position and empower them to perform the tasks at hand.
Be conscious of the amount of overtime that you work. Don’t allow yourself to work long hours without breaks. You need to develop your life outside of work when work seems to be depleting all of your resources. Concentrate on finding new relationships or enriching your relationships with your co-workers and acquaintances outside the office.
Enhance your work environment. Bring in some photos of your favorite people, favorite places, or vacations. Brighten your work place with more lights or by removing shades or shutters if need be. Take small breaks and go out into the sunlight to recharge yourself.
Maybe it’s your family role that has caused burnout. (Working mothers understand this one!) Talk to your family and let them know you are experiencing stress and you NEED their help. It can be a difficult experience to ask for help. Our loved ones are usually more than willing to step up and help us in our time of need – often we just need to ask. There are seasons in life when juggling the school functions, childrens’ activities, household chores, socializing and finding balance for obligations like laundry, ironing, and sleep seem nearly impossible. Remind yourself that “this is a STAGE and will pass”.
Understand that some sort of periodic vacation is mandatory. Even if you feel it is impossible due to deadlines, or projects, or a lack of money, you MUST do this before you reach the point of collapse. Burnout is a crushing state of being and can quickly become debilitating. If you don’t take regular time for rest and relaxation, you’ll eventually be forced to rest in the form of sickness…so prevent it in the first place. If finances keep you from a vacation, at the very least schedule time away from the office to do the personal things that you have neglected (medical appointments, massage appointments, dinner out with a friend, walks in the woods, hiking, sports, or artistic endeavors) Beware, though…don’t wear yourself down on your vacation. Sleep in and take time for you! Don’t just go and go and go, or the point of relaxing will be lost.
Summary
Recovering from burnout means rebuilding your life by restructuring your thoughts, goals, and mindset. It may mean that you have to take a long break, change careers, change jobs, seek professional help, or make changes in your daily routine and your current position in order to find the balance you need to keep yourself strong and free from burnout.
As you embark upon the decisions you face, remember to consult with your trusted friends and loved ones who know you well. If you’re not strong enough to make a big decision on your own, seek good counsel. Keep in mind that the seeds of a better life are already within you and spring is just around the corner… Take whatever steps are needed to recover from burnout, then go forward in your journey and keep your life and career in balance.
Have you recovered from burnout? Have you helped another recover? Share your tips and ideas for burnout recovery with us, and we’ll post a follow-up with the best tips in a future issue.
