A lot has been written about burnout. And yet, when I was in the middle of it, no one seemed to be able to tell me exactly what to do best for a quick burnout recovery.
Correction: well-meaning advice galore, but then why did I stay so tired even after months of inactivity?
I finally found the answers I needed in an article by Dutch psychotherapist Sonja Van Zweden. And I would like to share them with you so that there will be more understanding of the sometimes long recovery process. Primarily for the burnout sufferers themselves, so that they would see that the pressure they often put on themselves to recover as quickly as possible brings about the opposite....
Flat battery
Sufficient rest and good quality sleep are necessary to recover from efforts of the (work) day. It is the prerequisite to function well the following day. If normal rest and sleep are no longer sufficient to fully recover from the exertion, you are overworked.
This seems like an open door, but many people consumed more energy daily in the period leading up to their burnout than they could recover. The body does give signals of increasing fatigue and overload, but they are often ignored.
Emergency generator takes over
When, despite your fatigue, you continue to work hard, your body is not given enough chance to recover. This is how a "recovery debt" grows . Your energy supply is then insufficiently replenished and, as a solution to your fatigue, the stress system will automatically work even harder to provide your body with the necessary energy. It is like an 'emergency generator' that kicks in. You recognize it: first you were tired and suddenly you feel energetic again.
And although you don't experience this as stress, for your body this is indeed a stress response. The activation of the "emergency generator" causes changes in physiological systems. In fact, to cope with the abundance of stress hormones, some organs begin to adapt. Some parts of our brain become so occupied by the stress hormones that they can no longer perform their normal functions properly. Among other things, the hippocampus, which plays a role in processing new information and lowering cortisol levels after stressful experiences, becomes smaller and less sensitive.
The complaints and symptoms can range from concentration or memory problems, emotions, immune system failure to heart or digestive problems. At this stage, it takes more than rest alone to turn the tide.
Until the system bites its own tail and gets stuck
This process keeps itself going, like a vicious circle, and continues until the stress mechanism itself falls flat: 'suddenly' it is no longer possible. You are emotionally completely off the map, can sleep for 12 hours without recovering, reading a book or magazine is impossible and simple things like shopping become too much of a task.
Experience shows that recovery for people who have reached this tipping point takes disproportionately longer than for people who have not yet (just) decompensated, even though they are very close to the tipping point.
From energy consumption to energy accumulation
To get rid of stress symptoms, the body, which for a time was focused only on energy consumption, must learn to build energy again . To do this, the neurohormonal balance must be restored so that the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems can once again alternate in a healthy way.
The sympathetic and parasympathetic are two regulatory systems of the autonomic nervous system, each with opposite effects:
- The sympathetic (your body's gas pedal) is the part that is activated when stressed and prompts us to ACTION such as fight, flight or performance. Your blood pressure rises, your heart rate increases, you start breathing faster, more blood goes to the leg, arm and shoulder muscles.
- The parasympathetic (the brake pedal and "battery charger" of your body) is the counterpart of the sympathetic, and is responsible for RECOVERY, repair, build-up and physical relaxation. Your blood pressure drops, your heart rate decreases and your breathing becomes calmer. So it is important for the parasympathetic to work properly after a stressful situation to regain the necessary calm.
When you are healthy and your nervous system is in balance, your 'action' and 'recovery' are well balanced. However, when the 'emergency generator' is triggered, the sympathic is switched on too often and for too long (unconsciously!), preventing you from switching it off. At the same time, the parasympathetic is turned off too often, so it cannot provide sufficient counterbalance. Your autonomic nervous system is not under the influence of your will so you cannot influence it. No matter how you do your best to shake off the stress, you continue to feel rushed and worked up.
Techniques for burnout recovery
So the trick is to quiet the sympathetic, allowing you to sink to an authentic calm that is necessary for recovery. This can be done by alternating (light) exertion and relaxation. Effective ways to relax are:
- Massages, especially shiatsu has proven to be very effective for me, because there it works actively on the ortho/para switch of the autonomic nervous system
- Yoga, meditation
- Go for a half-hour walk a day, preferably in a natural environment
- By extension: things you enjoy doing that get you out of your head (for me, cooking and then enjoying the food has proven very effective)
- Unwind in an incentive-free space
Only when a person has rebuilt sufficient capacity through true recovery is it appropriate to also take a closer look at the factors that led to the burnout.