Emotional Burnout, what is it and how to deal with it.

In this article, you will learn what burnout really is (cue: it's not a mental state), how burnout is rooted in the state of our nervous system, why not to underestimate the burnout culture and it's impact on us, and what we can do to begin the process of recovery, healing and cultivating balance and self-trust in our lives and sustain it as the burnout culture is dying. We want to live our lives being healthy, connected and fulfilled, we just need to learn how to do that by understanding what drives us and we need to start with our biology - the state we've been in.

If you're experiencing burnout or have in the past, or feel you're heading in that direction - it is not your fault! You are not alone and no matter how you feel, you can find your way to well-being. Your body is literally built to heal and thrive - give it a chance and begin exploring your nervous system health.

What burnout really is.

Burnout is not a mental state. It's a trauma state. This is a neurological fact. 'But I've never been traumatised'.

We are talking about small t trauma (childhood trauma and trans-generational trauma) rather than the big T trauma (physical trauma and ptsd).

When we are children, we are not resourced enough to regulate big and intense emotional experiences. Big and intense emotions are perfectly normal, but we need a regulated adult or caregiver to help a child regulate. This is called co-regulation. It's doesn't work on a cognitive level - we don't learn how to self-regulate, we are modelled it through co-regulation.

Most of us didn't have regulated adults. This isn't to blame our parents and caregivers. A lot of this was unintentional. As a modern western culture, we don't have healthiest relationship with emotions like anger and sadness and a lot of our parents simply didn't know how to attend to us. That lack of attunment in attachment is in our nervous systems.

The story of our dysregulated nervous systems.

We enter our adult lives unprepared and dysregulated on some level, without us having sensory experiences of our needs being met fully. That's why as adults we are disconnected from what we need and want (we can learn it!). Then we enter the world of work which is also not the healthiest in our culture. An environment that put us through a grinder is going put pressure on our bodies and brains, no matter how regulated we are. When our capacity is already lowered because of our dysregulation from earlier years, and you blend in the burnout culture and working environments that ignore our humanity, it's a recipe for burnout.

Most of us then live from that survival state, having learnt to survive through defensiveness and reactivity. Our nervous systems stuck in the state of freeze from the incomplete stress responses we experienced as children (it's very stressful for a child to not be seen, heard, and felt). When we disconnect in order to survive, it's going to show up in our physiology and our health as adults.

'I'm fine'.

One of the signs of disconnection is that we don't feel the stress that's mounting over the years. We feel 'fine'. Until our bodies start to scream at us as work and life stress adds up. We haven't been modelled how to set and create healthy boundaries and so speaking up feels really uncomfortable and we'd rather not do it. We don't have a reference in our experience for feeling our own needs and so we keep fulfilling he needs of others instead, we us being the last. Our culture and parenting trends tell us we need to take care of others, but it doesn't tell us how we need to take care of ourselves.

If you are looking to understand how to cultivate better balance that includes your needs, and healing the dysregulated nervous system, join me in my upcoming masterclass From Burnout to Balance on Friday 6 October. You will learn key principle and practical ways to help your body come out of the survival state, so you can restore energy, regulate your nervous system, and regenerate your health.

Nervous system state of freeze

When our nervous system is stuck in the freeze response (trauma), we can experience high functioning depression, no matter how much we sleep we feel tired, we're over-eating and -drinking, and seek stimulation. We can also switch between freeze and fight or flight, which can feel like experiencing manic high-intensity, high functioning anxiety, need caffeine to disconnect from tiredness, and metabolic cost. That's high blood sugar, high blood pressure, belly weight gain, digestive problems and auto-immune conditions. It's a call from our bodies to start to pay attention.

What to do about it

With a lot of self-compassion, we gently take responsibility and go on our healing journey. It may feel scary (it's normal if it is!) but it's such a worthwhile journey. You deserve so much better! This is how I help my clients and what I do day in day out. I offer a free consultation and I invite you to have a conversation with me to explore options of working together.

Join my masterclass From Burnout to Balance on Friday 6 October to learn the foundations for healing your system and to learn practical ways to help your body restore energy.

There is one final point I'd like to emphasize. While you can only fix you - you're the only one who can heal your body because you are the only one who lives in your body - we also do need systemic change. We need our leaders and managers to learn how to lead from the place of safety and trust, rather than survival states. Leadership isn't about getting people to do what you want them to do. That comes after you've created safety and trust in others.

Concluding thoughts.

Healing your nervous system is about self-leadership. When you go on this path, you will impact the health of those around you because remember - co-regulation. We need to heal by regaining our felt sense of connection, to ourselves, our bodies, others and the world around us.

Leave me a comment or a question: what resonated with you the most?