6 steps that help you out of the burnout trap

There was a time when I was really, really exhausted from my job, and I decided to solve the situation by becoming an entrepreneur. Alongside my hard work, I had spent many years living the everyday life of a family with small children, building a house and pursuing further studies. I had to get off the hamster wheel, so I took the leap.

But what happened then?

It didn’t take long before I was once again up to my neck in work. This time entirely on my own initiative, without any performance pressure set by anyone else. I wanted to get a life, but it didn’t happen quite as easily as I had imagined.

In my work, I often meet people to whom something somewhat similar has happened as to me. They have developed exhausting ways of operating which, on top of that, do not fit at all with their own basic nature.

”Once you’ve sunk deep enough into this abyss, you can no longer calm yourself down, no matter how much you want to.”

Once you have sunk deep enough into this abyss, you can no longer calm down, no matter how much you want to. Your brain has learned to expect stimulation at regular intervals, and it must be satisfied, no matter how exhausting it is to be constantly on the move and performing.

One day, you realize that you have ended up in a completely different life than your own. How on earth did that happen?

6 steps to overcome burnout

The journey from burnout to new job satisfaction is often long, but the steps involved are already well known.

Twenty years ago, Canadian psychologist Diane Bernier wanted to find out what stages people who had fully recovered from severe exhaustion had gone through in their healing process. All those who had fully recovered went through each of the six stages identified by Bernier. This could take several months or even a year, but those who succeeded persevered and worked through each stage to the end. If some stages were skipped, recovery was only partial and the risk of renewed exhaustion was high.

So, if you are clearly exhausted and really want to recover, here are some concrete steps you should take as best you can:

1)   Admit the problem.

Understand that you no longer control your relationship with work or how your body and mind react. Forgive yourself for being in the situation you are in.

If you blame yourself, you will only exacerbate the stress that has led to your burnout. On the other hand, if you always try to convince yourself that you can continue as before “at least until…” once you have regained some strength, you are taking a real risk to your well-being and will never be able to start recovering properly.

2)   Take a break from work.

Disconnect yourself, take enough sick leave. Don’t work while on sick leave. Don’t even think about work. If you are an entrepreneur, at least temporarily shut down all activities that are not absolutely necessary or that you don’t really, really love.

What is a long enough sick leave? It depends on the situation. But if your entire sick leave is spent in tense or fearful anticipation of returning to work, it is too short to give you the opportunity to recover. When your resources are low, you need space to assess your own situation. Stress and exhaustion narrow your thinking in any case, and now more than ever you need to be able to see beyond the edges of your box.

3)    Let your body and mind recover.

Walk outside and look at beautiful things. Sleep.

Research on the physiological effects of long-term stress is constantly increasing. It is already known that continuous stress and the lack of opportunities for recovery will, over time, seriously disrupt the body. If you have crossed the threshold of exhaustion, many things are happening in your body and mind that you cannot control in the short term. You need to give yourself time and do things that definitely give more than they take.

4)   Reassess what is important to you.

Don’t fool yourself: what you truly consider important is what you spend your time on. The rest is just empty words.

This is the stage where your main task is, above all, to strengthen your self-awareness. When did you get onto the track that led to burnout? What drove you there? What would you have done if you hadn’t been on this path? What in your life has been something you can wholeheartedly endorse, and what is something you need to take distance from? How do you want to live the rest of your life? At this stage, you don’t yet need to know what you will actually do. The most important thing is to assess your own life as honestly and directly as possible.

5)    Explore the possibilities for change.

Step outside the box and really think. What is essential and what is not?

Now it is time to fit the insights from the previous stage into the everyday reality in which you live. At this stage, it is essential to be able to assess your resources and possibilities accurately – neither underestimating nor overestimating and think with a sufficiently long-term perspective. There is always something possible, and often necessary, to do immediately, but most change goals are best broken down into smaller parts. Ideally, you break your goals into tasks so small that you can experience the joy of success from them every day.

6)    Make concrete changes.

Keep what you love, let go of what isn’t important. All of the above is probably useless unless it leads to new actions and changes in your work itself.

The unfortunate truth is that if nothing changes in the conditions in which you became exhausted, you are at high risk of burning out again, despite all the work you’ve done in your mind. In Bernier’s study, almost all of those who had fully recovered from exhaustion either changed workplaces or at least managed to make changes in their job tasks. So, if everything continues as before at your workplace, you need to consider your future very carefully.

Still, working through the previous steps has not been in vain: the better you know yourself and the more you learn to respect your own limits, the more likely it is that you won’t carry your difficult and exhausting habits with you to your next workplace or role.

Recovery from burnout happens on many levels, from physical and mental recuperation to learning new habits and gaining deeper insights into yourself. In what ways do you take care of your well-being?”

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About the author of this article

I am Liisa Uusitalo-Arola, an occupational health psychologist specializing in burnout and prevention, psychotherapist (CAT), trainer and non-fiction author.