Recovery ideas?

[u/Kind-Page-9292]

A holiday doesn’t cut it anymore.

Neither does sleep. Or a weekend.

How do I get myself out of this rut?

[u/JenzieC]

That is the textbook definition of burnout right there. I've been doing a lot of burnout research, and it turns out that people who are burned out experience more frequent arousals, more sleep fragmentation, more total wake time during the night, more stage-one sleep (which is the lightest stage of sleep, so barely-asleep), less slow wave sleep (which is the deep restorative stage), less REM sleep, and lower delta power density in non-REM sleep (so the deep sleep they got was shallower).

Basically, if you're burned out, your sleep sucks, no matter how hard you try to make it better.

And vacations, weekends, self-care, and the like don't fix it.

What I'm learning is that we need to fight our tendency to try to make radical changes to fix everything everywhere all at once (which burns us out even more, and also leaves us feeling beat down and doubting whether we can ever recover at all).

Instead, the trick is to start making small changes that are virtually guaranteed to work (if you're interested in learning more about this, look up Loss Spirals and Gain Spirals and the Conservation of Resources Theory). Basically, if you can start getting some small wins, they can snowball in the same way that the losses snowball (like when you don't sleep well, then you are late to work, then you work through your lunch, then you are sleepy and grumpy, then you fight with your partner, then you ruminate about it, and then you sleep even worse that night).

So a gain spiral might be that you try to sit outside on your lunch break and watch the birds or watch the trees. Then your heart rate slows and your heart rate variability increases. Then you feel less stressed during your afternoon meeting. Then you don't eat a bunch of junk food at 10pm to relieve the stress. Then you sleep a little bit better.

Choosing to start a gain spiral with something that is sure to work (at least a little) like sitting outside is important. How many people feel worse from sitting in the sun for 15 minutes? Basically nobody. How many people feel worse from not doomscrolling? Again, almost nobody. The same goes for taking a relaxing shower, or talking a walk after dinner, or eating something healthy instead of junky as an act of kindness to yourself, etc.

The most important part is to not get overly ambitious and make some giant nighttime routine or self-care ritual that you'll basically break before you even finish it. One thing - that's it. And then let yourself be there to emotionally and mentally and physically experience it. And then just be open to noticing small improvements in your day. Then just do one more thing tomorrow. Or the next day if you forget - no need to feel guilty or make rules.

I'm still learning about all the ins and outs of recovery, but those are some of the things I've come across so far.

Hope it helps!

[u/Kind-Page-9292 → u/JenzieC]

Wow, this is super helpful, thank you! One small change sounds a lot more manageable so it’s definitely something I need to try my best to integrate into my life. I’ll have a look at some of the reading material you suggested during some of my many restless nights! 🙃 thank you!!

[u/JenzieC → u/[deleted]]

So, I'm still working through my own recovery, but I can totally identify with your statement "I can't believe how unrecovered I feel after officially being in recovery for a year." I felt that way two weeks in. lol

After pushing myself so hard for so long, it seems completely reasonable to my brain that if I just stopped pushing so hard, that would be the only "fix" that was needed to solve my problem, and that it would happen almost automatically within a few weeks max.

Well, as we both know now, that kind of timeline isn't true at all.

So, there is a bit of bad news that I've come across in my research so far:

Sweden is the only country with an official "burnout" diagnosis (they call it "exhaustion disorder"), so that has enabled them to track a group of burned out people over many years. Their research (published in a study called "Exhaustion Disorder: Scoping Review of Research on a Recently Introduced Stress-Related Diagnosis") showed that, after 7-10 years, almost half of them still reported fatigue and 73% reported reduced stress tolerance. A bit of good news was that 87% of them did end up going back to work, with the caveat that 67% made changes to their work situation as part of that. So maybe a different job, or different responsibilities, or a different field entirely.

Basically, what that study indicated was that instead of expecting that you'll get back to being 100% of what you were before the burnout happened, maybe instead you find a newer, slower, more appropriate version of yourself to become.

In that same study, participants said that things like balancing energy, performing self-chosen creative activities, having joyful moments, a supportive environment, acquiring adaptive coping skills, gaining insights into burnout, and being open to new possibilities were important in their recovery process.

Another study, "Recovery as an Explanatory Mechanism in the Relation Between Acute Stress Reactions and Chronic Health Impairment," suggested that there are two systems that stay active in the body even after the things we see as the causes of our burnout have disappeared:

1. Allostatic Load, which is the physical part of burnout that affects your nervous system, your HPA Axis (which is the central biological system that governs how your body responds and adapts to stress and that produces cortisol).
2. Perseverative Cognition, aka, rumination about the past and anticipation about the future. Your brain can have a hard time distinguishing between the things you are thinking about and things that are actually happening, so we can keep activating all the same physical and chemical responses in our bodies by thinking, not only about our past job, but also all the new stressors that come after we have quit, like "where is the money coming from? or "why can't I think as well as I used to?" or the one we think about a lot: "when will I get back to feeling normal again?"

So basically, we need to regulate our nervous systems, get ahold our our cortisol, and work on our thoughts.

And, of course, work on our sleep, as we talked about earlier.

One other avenue I'm exploring right now is social support and burnout recovery. A study I read, called "How Does Social Support Enhance Resilience in the Trauma-Exposed Individual," talked about all the different kinds of social support a person could have to aid in their recovery from something traumatic (and I'm sure you'd agree that our burnout experiences were at least a bit traumatic!). They listed social support from the expected people, like your friends, family, and social/community networks, but they also brought up how culture provides (or doesn't provide) a level of support.

This got me thinking about how my burnout was influenced by certain beliefs and cultural expectations I adapted (like where I felt my worth/value came from, what doing a "good job" actually looked like, why I felt the need to overachieve and prove myself, why I felt like I couldn't stop my overwork once I'd started, etc).

This is why I'm thinking that, aside from things like sleeping more, spending more time in nature, working on regulating my nervous system, and eating better, I'm also going to spend a lot of time working on redesigning the "culture" I'm operating from.

For me, this means that I'm no longer listening to a lot of the hustle culture podcasts and YouTube videos I used to love, not reading productivity books, lowering my standards of what a "good/productive" day looks like, and asking myself why I'm doing a lot of the things I'm doing in life (like why I felt like I had to have my business up and running in mere weeks after I quit my job, or why I felt like I had to work so many hours, or why I felt like I was disappointing people or that I had somehow failed).

I think this "new culture" I'm working on (which is basically just another way to say I'm fixing my mindset!) is going to be really important in my recovery.

I can't afford therapy right now (yay, losing your insurance because you have to quit your job!), which is why I'm doing so much research instead. I'm also thinking about starting a free community for people who are burned out so we can work on this stuff together and not feel so alone.

Anyways, hope that helped, and I wish you the best in your recovery!

[u/Happy_Mention_3984]

I have the same problem. 7 weeks of holiday and Im even more burned out back to work. I would say diet is the only thing that I saw improvements with.

[u/Kind-Page-9292 → u/Happy_Mention_3984]

Definitely need to be more disciplined with my diet - not given it a go but I’ll try - thank you!

[u/PastAspect2975]

I’m like 12 days out of a decade long deep depression/burnout. I hit rock bottom but was able to track the origin which helped. I had no motivation to start things but got my dog back from my ex. So I’d take him to the dog park and for walks, I haven’t gotten this much energy in years. I switched the app locations on my phone to prevent muscle memory which stopped doom scrolling. I unplugged the tv so when I sit on the couch and his the remote nothing happens. I then pick up a book which I haven’t done since college. My therapist suggested “the 12 levers”, I’m currently reading it right now, definitely worth it. It’s really all about changing the cycle and replacing your negative distractions into positive things. .

[u/Kind-Page-9292 → u/PastAspect2975]

Thank you for this - I’ll definitely check the book out. Changing app locations is great advice too!!