If you woke up already tired this morning and already feeling behind, read on. If you are surviving on coffee, pure adrenaline, and feel like you are carrying a weight around your neck, this blog post is for you.
Wired, tired and exhausted to your core, and your brain just won’t switch off. It is time to stop pushing on and pushing through. There are a few physical and emotional things you can incorporate into your day to help recover from burnout. Burnout is a biological response when you have chronic stress, your nervous system gets stuck in fight ot flight mode.Your adrenals pump out cortisol and adrenaline until they run out of fuel.
Your system enters a protective state of shutdown. That is why no amount of sleep makes you feel rested. Essentially we need to reset our system. We certainly don’t do it by adding more to your to do list. Let’s try and do it gently.
When you find yourself in a stressful situation whether at work or at home, sometimes physically interupting the stressor can signal a little safety. So when the stressor has occurs whatever that may be, stand up and gently shake your arms and legs for one minute. This helps to release or discharge excess adrenaline.
Next take two deep inhales through your nose, folllowed by a long exhale out of your mouth. An example is; breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 2 seconds and breathe out for 6 seconds. Do this for 1-3 minutes, what this does, it signals your vagus nerve to slow your heart rate down.
Quite often as women when we are burned out we reach out or lean habits that can actually make burn out worse, such as; fasting, high intensity workouts, and caffiene on an empty stomach. I know I have been guilly of doing these, and they haven’t made me feel better but worse. To our body these things signal danger.
So try low intensity workouts like slow walks, especially in nature, a gentle slow swim or yoga. Be sure to eat protein within 60 minutes of waking up, and definately before coffee. This dampens the early morning cortisol spike and prevent blood sugar crashes.
Burnout can quite often come from a lack of boundaries, saying yes to everything when your mind and body are screaming no. The key here is to not try and fix or rebuild everything over night, but starting with one small change, then another, then another. Create a morning ritual where you can spend 15 minutes or more just focusing on you. Sit with a cup of tea, close your eyes and just breathe, do a brain dump on paper to get any negative stressful thoughts out of your head. Do a light stretch, go for a short stroll. Time to be with just you, no tv, no phone, no social media, and no one.
When someone asks you to do something or go somewhere, pause, do not answer straight away. Give the request time, at least a day. Ask does this request benefit me and my health and wellness and energy or will it be stressful and deplete energy and wellness. No is a full sentence.
Acknowledge that healing from burnout doesn’t happen overnight, or over the weekend, but it does happen in the small choices you make, to show your body it is safe. Fuel with nutritous foods, hydrate adquately and prioritse rest , down time and alone time. Create an evening routine or ritual to improve your quality of sleep. A warm bath, mediation, stretching, breathing exercises, herbal teas, reading, whatever calms your mind and body. And definately no screens 2-3 hours before bed.
Remembering to be kind and gentle with yourself, give yourself time and patience, you deserve to feel amazing and well with an abundance of energy. Take care of you beautiful. Be sure to pop by for the next blog post and share with friends who may need to read this. If you prefer to listen I also have a podcast called Healing Her with Megan Winders on Spotify.
Stay well beautiful.
Love Megs
