This website is dedicated to helping you heal from burnout. The reason is simple. I have experienced it myself. I went through burnout for several years, was diagnosed with it in 2016 and it took me two years to get through it. How to heal from burnout is not always easy, but in 2018 I achieved just that.
You are not Alone
The journey taught me a lot about myself, others, causes, symptoms, and ultimately what healing methods worked and what didn’t. Although burnout is so common nowadays, it is still misunderstood, which is why people who suffer burnout often find little to no comprehension from colleagues, acquaintances, and perhaps even some friends.
Going through a rough patch can sometimes be a lonely road, and in this article I would like to sum up all the help and tips I have shared over the last months, so that you can find your own way to heal.
We are all different, of course, but in general, the methods I used worked for me and I am confident that they will also work for you, or at least make a difference.
I just want to add a quick disclaimer here. I am not a doctor or a nurse, and I am no mental health worker. Before suffering burnout I was like most people who had not gone through it. I didn’t understand it and I had no idea what it was like for someone who was burned out. When it happened to me, though, I learned.
I learned the hard way and there were many lessons I could have done without, but I believe that bad experiences can be used for good. That is why I created this website, to use my experiences to help others.
Perhaps Some Things do Indeed Happen for a Reason
I think that this is the best way to use negative experiences, turning them into something that can be useful, make them a positive, so that they can serve others.
If you are here, because you are looking for ways to heal from burnout, I hope that the following articles will provide some guidance and understanding. If you would like to read one of the following texts, just click on the title in bold, and a new window will open, so that you do not lose this page.
Road of Recovery – List of Articles to Help Heal From Burnout
- How to Heal From Burnout – Here I mention several steps you can take to start your healing journey
- How to Keep Stress Under Control – In this article I talk about how to handle stress when you are going through burnout. Stress is the one thing we must avoid, but that isn’t always easy in this hectic life we lead. So, here I share a few tips how to deal with that.
- How to Deal with a Burnout – Symptoms and Solutions – this blog post covers more tips and advice on how to get through burnout.
- How to Prevent Burnout at Work – The workplace can often be a cause (but not the only cause) for burnout. Here are some techniques you can use to avoid burnout at work.
- Emotional Burnout Recovery – Long term Consequences of Child Abuse – As I mentioned in point 4, many other events and situations can lead to burnout, and child abuse that goes on for years on end is certainly one of them.
- How to Have Self Love, part 1
- How to Find Self Love, part 2 – These two articles cover self-love and our relationships with ourselves, another very important topic we should cover to heal from burnout.
- High School Burnout – How do You Fix This? – Schools have turned into stressful environments and with full schedules of extracurricular activities, and enormous pressure to achieve excellent grades, many students are prone to suffer burnout. As a teacher in junior high and high school, I have often seen it.
- Top 5 Meditation Apps That Help You Relax – Meditation is a wonderful tool to help you relax and find inner peace. These apps are all great to help you do that, and each single one was developed to fit with customers’ personal lifestyles and preferences. Some of these apps are free. I am also using one of them.
- How Does Self Love Help? Part 3 – This article concludes the series about self-love.
- 11 Jobs With High Burnout Rates – I wrote this blog post as an informational article. There are obviously many more jobs that have high burnout rates, but these are the top 11. Could yours be among them?
- Don’t Push Yourself – I think the title says it all 😉
- To See or Not to See a Therapist – To heal from burnout, we need to work on ourselves, and this is why I hope my articles will help. A therapist, however, is also necessary, especially if you find yourself trying to evade this dark tidal wave alone. Somehow, society still relates receiving treatment with a psychologist to “being crazy”, but it is far from that. It’s a therapist’s job to help you. He/she was trained for that and is qualified to help you heal from burnout. There is nothing wrong with getting help, right?
- How to Get Over Burnout – a Checklist – With these printable checklists (what to do and what not to do) I conclude the series which I called Road of Recovery, because healing from burnout is a journey, and a journey takes time. I thought that having a printed checklist in your pocket or taped to your mirror or door can also be helpful, a constant reminder of what we need to avoid, do, and work on.
Final Thoughts
When I went through burnout, I had a hard time finding understanding with others, and my healing journey was done alone, and – for a while – with the help of a therapist. That was my main inspiration for sharing these tips on my website, to not let you do this alone.
If you have any doubts or questions, you want to have a listening ear, or you would like to share your experience here, please let me know in the comments. I will be happy to reply and help.
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Hi Christine,
There are great tips to heal from burnout. I must say, I have been there myself quite a few times and it’s not a nice feeling at all! You are almost on the edge of everything – ready to snap. I think if you take the self care inwards and really take care of yourself by slowing down, noticing how to feel, taking a few minutes out to just breath really really helps. Meditation and yoga is another great way to calm your mind down and center yourself.
Anther technique I’ve started doing is: the minute I start to get overwhelmed, I straight away focus on my breathing and intentionally take a long breath. I think when we are ‘too busy’ in our mind, we forget to breath. This has been making the real difference.
Many thanks for helping so much of us out on these recover tips from burnout.
Hi Habib,
I also absolutely believe in breathing techniques and I also use them when I feel stressed or overwhelmed. They make a huge difference.
Thank you for your comment!
This is really a helpful article, just living in today’s world can be stressful. and especially this year 2020, with all that’s going on in the world, so many crises, the job, the kids and the school situation, it is good to have these help you mention, and the best thing I believe is helping others. thank you
Wow. I didn’t know burnout was a mental health issue. I mean, I’ve definitely overworked myself to the point that I’ve been burned out, but it didn’t last for several years. But I have to be very careful when I schedule my calendar workday. I can often make it jam packed with minute by minute “to do” things, which is not only unreasonable, but sure to burn me out. I agree with you. Seeing a therapist, used to be seen as your crazy. But nowadays, it’s considered chic. Everyone sees a therapist – at least here in Manhattan. LOL. I believe in getting help from a therapist. Sometimes burnout is covering up something deeper that needs to be explored with a therapist. Great post.
Thank you, Shalista!
Interesting that in some places seeing a therapist is considered chic 😉 I think that’s good, though, if it’s chic, it will motivate more people to see one 🙂
Thank you so much for this fantastic article, Christine! As someone who has been on the verge of burnout numerous times (from school to work to home to life in general), it’s so important that we exercise self-care. I am terrible about spending extended amounts of time on electronic devices and not getting enough sleep. The more that I stare at a screen and try to call myself being “productive.” the more that I myself becoming tired, drained (and on the verge of headaches), remaining stagnant, and frankly wasting time. There’s too much to do for that! Haha. I am definitely going to take your advice to heart and start taking better care of myself! Great read! God bless you!
Burnout syndrome is a big problem today and is becoming more common in people. too much work, too much pressure at work with colleagues and too much ambition are part of the lives of many of us. lifestyle has changed a lot. Your article is great and can be useful to many at this time when stress is huge.
Hi Christine,
It’s good to see that you share so many articles about recovering from different kinds of burnout. I agree that everything happens for a reason, but the key is not to regret or complain. It is to face the problem, and we try some methods to see how it goes.
I can relate to self-love-themed articles from your list since I practice to love myself for a long while. It’s essential to get myself healed from many traumas that I got from family, school, or workspaces. I am getting better every day because I exercise regularly, walk & sleep enough, and meditate to feel so much better about my life and keep positive.
Thanks for sharing, so I didn’t feel alone.
Matt
Hi Matt,
I think it’s important to know that we are not alone in this. Thank you for your comment! Wishing you all the best!
Very noble of you to share your experience and tips on how you overcame burnout.
I’m sorry you had to go through this on your own and that you didn’t have the support around you. Unfortunately, most people are not aware of the true meaning of true burnout (often confused with fatigue).
I’ve had some stressful and overwhelmed periods in my life but luckily I haven’t gotten to extreme burnout because I’ve been performing various forms of relaxation and balancing energy, for more than half my life.
I wish you much success and all the best,
Nina
Thank you, Nina!
Relaxation tecchniques and balancing energy are a great help. If you have been performing them for more than half of your life, you are indeed safer from getting a burnout. Those practices help a lot.
I believe some things do happen for a reason. And you have also mentioned this in your post. One of the ways I am recovering from burnout is viewing how all these difficult times have made me better. Have made me have a much wider vision and develop skills I never knew I could have.
As bad as burnout can be, it is also a learning experience. We discover strenghts in ourselves we didn’t know we had.
Thank you for your comment!
Great post list. I just went and read the top 5 meditation apps, and 11 jobs with high burnout rates.
We are all different, and it’s really important that we find something, or a combination of methods, that work for us when we need to de-stress.
I agree with Habib, in the comment above, that when stressed we tend to restrict our breathing. If we can recognize this when it happens, we can immediately rectify the problem and ‘not hold onto’ the stress. We can release it with our deep, relaxed, and purposeful breathing.
I don’t know what a solution would be for someone who is volunteering at an animal shelter. It takes a really brave and courageous soul to be exposed to the worst of humanity n a daily basis and come out of it with their mental and emotional wellbeing intact. Thank you for doing such a job for so long. the world will be a better place when there are more people like you in it 🙂
Hi Andrew,
Habib brought up a very good point, I agree! I am a big believer of breathing exercises, they really do help release you of stress and bring you calm.
Working in animal rescue is tough, and although I stopped doing it for a few years now, I still have memories (good and terrible ones), they don’t go away. I do know, though, that I was there for them, for the ones I lost, they knew love in their final moments, and that is something that brings me comfort, as little as it is.
Burnout is a very serious health issue today but it was always a health issue, it just wasn’t taken serious until the last 10 years or so. I was very stressed out with my job in the Military, we had to just get up and go without even asking why. That was the easy part because when we got where we were going that’s when the stress really took hold. Whether it was spending 14 hours a day saving people from flooding or spending your whole weekend on an exercise that never seemed to have any downtime in them.
I wish I had your book to help, but I did use some of your suggestions which helped a lot at the time, but nothing solved it until I got rid of the problem. Now I do the things I want when I want and have much better control of burnout.
This is a great article for anyone with stress or burnout, thanks for caring.
Hi Rick,
It’s very true that burnout is nothing new, it has been a health issue for a long time, but it was never taken seriously. The work in the military is tough and can also have its toll … I’m glad that you are now doing what you want when you want to, and that you are doing much better. We have to look after ourselves.
Hi, Christine,
I can totally relate. Ever since I was a kid, I knew something was wrong with me. I tend to stress easily over almost anything, and as a consequence, I suffer from anxiety. Not everyone understands it, and it’s frustrating. It’s something beyond our control, something that doesn’t let us lead a normal life.
I’ve never seen a psychologist or therapist, although I’ve considered it many times. I remember one job in particular where the environment was so stressful that I had to quit. I considered other alternatives, but nothing worked.
Life is too short to waste it like that. I think we’re here to be happy and make others happy. Happiness is such a relative term, but I think we can all agree it’s something we need in our lives.
As you mentioned, this is a journey and not a destination. I tend to compare life to a theater show, and I must say I’m not liking this act lol. But I’m confident the following act will be much better.
Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to learning more about this.
Hi Enrique,
It isn’t easy to go through something like burnout or anxiety and get understanding from others. I understand that, believe me. A psychologist is a person who will listen and understand, and that in itself is already a great help, and they have the knowledge to help heal or learn to live with certain conditions.
Let’s hope that this act is a short one that you will thrive in the next one 🙂
Hi Christine,
Great to read this amazing article you have here.
Burnout is a serious problem most people are facing today.
It lay its icy hand on me when I first started working as a young energetic man. It wasn’t easy. I have to go for leave without pay just to get my life back to normal.
Sometimes we must make time for ourselves including good diets. That can help a lot.
Hi Albright,
Yes, it’s very important to take some time for yourselves. A healthy diet also helps a lot.
Thanks for your comment!
Hey Christine, do you use guided meditation apps? And if so, which one can you recommend? I have had “Calm”, which is great, but after 3 years I could almost recite the meditations myself. And at the moment I have “Balance”, also great, but with even less content.
When we emigrated I left a lot of books behind, so I don’t have it anymore to look up the exact title. But I can remember I read a book (oof, it must be at least 30 years ago!) that gave me the insight that a depression (in those days nobody talked about a burn-out) is a period to reset and reload.
That’s of course comparable with your remark that things happen for a reason. Which they do. 🙂
Hi Hannie,
I like that author’s assessment of depression. I had not seen it that way before, but it could be considerd a period to reset and reload, providing one gets out of it. Some people are having a hard time to get out of a state of depression … I would be interested in reading that book.
I use the Omvana app for guided mediation. I have not been very consistent with my meditations, but Omvana has been great so far.
Christine,
Thanks for this great article about recovering from burnout!
It seems that most people suffer from burnout at some point in their lives (I know I have) so it’s great to have a resource available with important advice and takeaways to get out of the rut.
I especially appreciated your checklist with easy-to-follow steps to improve your mental health and heal from burnout. Having all the to-dos in a single place that I can check off every day is really helpful, especially when I’m mentally and emotionally exhausted.
Thanks for sharing!
Best,
Femi
Hi Femi,
I’m happy you found this helpful! 🙂 If you like you can print the list and tape it to your fridge or any other visible place in the house, to always have those tips in sight 🙂
Thanks for your comment!
This is an amazing post.
I find I push myself too hard sometimes, and I’m very hard on myself. Sometimes just doing nothing is selfcare in itself.
A few years ago I had a massive breakdown, and since then I take selfcare very serious.
I have been implemented meditation, yoga and mindfulness into my daily routine, and the stress has dropped massively. Just by slowing down and living in the present moment, it calms the mind down beyond belief.
Whenever I feel stressed I just revert back to conscious breathing and it calms me down.
Thanks for a great article.
Adam
Hi Adam,
We can’t push ourselves too hard, but we often do it, without realizing it. I am guilty of it myself sometimes. The breathing technique works wonders for me when I am feeling stressed or overwhelmed. I’m happy you are focusing more on self care now 🙂
Thanks for your comment!