Burnout Resources

This page accompanies my burnout story. It offers more information on some of the tools and resources I mentioned I have used and/or am still using to deal with and recover from my burnout. This is not an exhaustive list of burnout resources.

I might write more about some of these in the future. For now, this page merely serves to explain some of the things I touched upon in my burnout store.

Therapy

Before I burned out, I’d already done a year of coaching – mostly around business mindset and imposter syndrome – and about a year of EMDR therapy. I’d recommend the latter for disconnecting the emotional load from specific events.

Once I’d crashed, I started working with a talk therapist. She was more of an emergency solution and after about three months I stopped working with her. We weren’t the best match and I also felt I needed a different approach.

Remembering how much progress I’d made with EMDR therapy but not wanting to go back to my old therapist, I started working with a brainspotting therapist. Brainspotting is supposed to be the newer version of EMDR and my therapist offered a combination of brainspotting and talk therapy.

I’m not sure how impactful my work with her was, but it was supportive.

I came to a point, though, where I realized that I’d gotten as far as I could go by tackling things with my brain. I’d always been pretty analytical but there is only so much you can think your way out of.

So I started…

Somatic Experiencing

Somatic experiencing focuses on processing trauma by focusing on bodily sensations. It trains and requires awareness of what is going on in our bodies rather than asking us to share our thoughts.

I already had some somatic practice through the Primal Trust Program I was in (more about that later), but it’s very different to have someone guide you and create a safe space for you.

Working with a somatic practitioner made me realize just how much emotions and trauma get stuck in the body. I’m convinced that you can’t really do “The Work” as long as you avoid getting into your body.

Primal Trust and Nervous System Regulation Practices

After reading my article, someone asked me what I meant with “nervous system regulation practices” and what it looks like for me, concretely, to spend at least an hour a day on them.

I am not qualified to explain the workings of the nervous system and doing so would require a whole blog post of its own. In an extremely simplified way, let’s just say that the nervous system either feels safe or not safe, and when it doesn’t feel safe, it will have a fight, flight, fawn, or freeze response. That means you’ll either be on high alert and reactive or feel shut down, immobile, disconnected, etc.

We are not meant to feel relaxed and safe the whole time. If something stressful happens to us, it’s normal to feel stressed. What is not okay, is if we stay stuck in the stress response.

When I burned out, I learned that I had mostly been in fight, flight, or freeze most of the time, and this for years. Rare were the moments my body was truly relaxed or when I was feeling social without also being hyper-aware of my environment and analyzing everything going on around me.

Crucial for me in working on this was my membership of the Primal Trust program by Cathleen King. It primarily targets people with chronic health conditions but I strongly feel anyone would benefit from it.

The homepage gives an overview of what it entails, and here are the most important things I’ve gotten out of it:

• Tools to regulate my nervous system.
• Understanding of how my nervous system operates and thus better understanding of how I feel the way I feel in different moments.
• A step-by-step approach to uncovering triggers, behavioral patterns, limiting beliefs, why they are there, and how I can change them.
• A focus on moving toward the life I want to lead, rather than moving away from the things I don’t want.
• A supportive community.

The following examples are not from my own experience, as those feel too personal to share.

Example of a trigger and what lies behind it: When a character in a book is unfaithful to their partner and you suddenly feel very tense and upset… because you have been cheated on in the past.

Example of a behavioral pattern: When you’re home alone, you always have music, a podcast, or some other type of auditory stimulation on… because you find it hard to be with your thoughts and feelings.

Example of a limiting belief: “I will never be in a long-lasting relationship.”
Unless you can be absolutely certain that a negative belief about yourself is true and forever will be true, it’s a limiting belief.

My daily practice

This changes as my needs change but there are some things I do every day, some of them twice a day:

• Breakfast on my balcony to get morning light into my eyes.
• Voo-ing or auhm-ing to stimulate the vagus nerve.
• Reciting positive affirmations.
• Listing three things I’m grateful for.
• My own short loving-kindness practice.
• A few minutes of eye yoga to stimulate the vagus nerve.
• Calming breathwork. I breathe in for 4 seconds, and breathe out for 6 but there are different ways to do this.
• NSDR or yoga nidra. I love Ally Boothroyd’s guided yoga nidras.
• Going for a walk.
• A few minutes of stretching before bed.
• Journaling.
• Sleeping for 8 hours, sometimes 9.

One thing I “should” be doing daily is a Primal Trust practice that involves speaking an uplifting or calming visualization out loud. It’s something that I feel resistance toward even after several years of being in the program, but it is powerful.

I also talk a lot to my parts (Google: “parts work” or “Internal Family Systems”), use havening (self-soothing touch, like hugging yourself), and take multiple moments throughout my day to just pause, take a deep breath, and note how my body is feeling.

Am I tense?
Do I need to move a bit?
Do I need to eat something?

I dance multiple days a week and try to do (light) weight workouts two times a week. I ask for hugs when I need them.

Final Notes

I quickly whipped up this post after I got some questions from someone who read the article on my burnout journey. It’s more important to me to get the above information out there than to write a perfectly nice post, so please keep that in mind.

You can always reach out via email if you have any questions, but please first make the effort to Google any terms you may not be familiar with.

Know that I am not a therapist or any type of trained practitioner. I’m sharing my personal experience on this website and none of this is medical advice.