#friedguides Why Your Burnout Recovery is Stuck (and How to Unstick It)
Apr 28, 2024
auto_awesome
Discover why your burnout recovery may be stuck and how to unstuck it by embracing patience and self-care. Learn about the importance of making small changes in your environment, avoiding toxic relationships, healing attachment styles, and overcoming self-shame. Explore strategies to navigate challenges, prioritize rest, and seek support for a successful recovery journey.
In burnout recovery, avoid overdoing it to prevent replicating past patterns of burnout, prioritize a slower and intentional approach for lasting progress.
Focus on personal healing processes over stress management tools in early burnout recovery to ensure holistic repair of the body, mind, and spirit.
Deep dives
Avoid Overdoing Burnout Recovery
Trying to do too much in your burnout recovery can be counterproductive as it replicates the same patterns that led to burnout. Recognizing the need for a different approach and taking small, intentional steps is essential for effective recovery. Restoring slowly and intentionally rather than rushing allows for lasting progress.
Differentiate Stress Management and Burnout Recovery
In burnout recovery, stress management tools may not be as effective as they are in burnout prevention. At the beginning of recovery, focusing on healing and repairing the body, mind, and spirit is crucial before addressing stressors. Prioritizing external healing processes over stress remedies is vital in the early stages.
Recover for Yourself, Not Others
Recovery from burnout should be driven by personal needs and desires, rather than external pressures or expectations. Giving yourself permission to prioritize self-care and recovery is essential for sustaining a helping or healing role. Placing oneself at the center of recovery fosters personal growth and overall well-being.
Identify and Address Toxic Environments
Recognizing and removing oneself from toxic job, relationship, or family dynamics is crucial for effective burnout recovery. Self-empowerment involves acknowledging harmful environments and taking steps to create a healthier space. Addressing personal patterns and external toxicity significantly impacts the recovery journey.
“You’re going to have to surrender and have patience and be ready and willing to be annoyed.” On today’s episode of FRIED, Sarah Vosen and Cait review some of the common reasons why your burnout recovery may not be working, or not working as fast as you’d like. First off—you may be overdoing it, which is the exact kind of perfectionistic approach that burned you out in the first place. You have to be open to doing things differently and going at a slower pace than you may be used to. If you’re expecting to make progress using the usual self-care tricks on Instagram and TikTok, you’re in for disappointment. Instead, Cait and Sarah will share with you what will actually get you back on track to the other side of burnout.
Burnout recovery is a convalescent period. Your environment—physical, home, work, family, and relationships— can make or break your process. Sarah and Cait will explain how to put yourself first, why treating yourself in the smallest ways makes a world of difference, and why you shouldn’t do this alone. Sarah will share the physiological change that she describes as “miraculous” and that sped up her recovery journey overnight, and reveal the emotional state that has recently been determined to be worse for your health than smoking.
You have to believe there is another, better life waiting for you once you recover from burnout. Join Cait and Sarah as they help you remove the obstacles that may be blocking your path.
Quotes
“The recovery mode is a healing process. There’s a lot of repair that needs to occur to your body, mind, and spirit in the very beginning. You have to basically convalesce. That’s a tough one to go from running on adrenaline to convalescing. So it’s going to feel like shit, and it’s going to be awkward, and you’re not going to like it and you might not be able to do it at first.” (7:14 | Sarah Vosen and Cait Donovan)
“It’s too big of a jump. You go from not having yourself in the equation of your life to trying to be Number 1 in your life? It’s too much change at one time. There’s too much guilt involved in that, there’s too much fear of disappointing all those people you’ve been trying to help for all those years. You’re worried they’re all going to turn on you and so there’s all this negative reinforcement in your mind about giving yourself what you need.” (9:58 | Sarah Vosen)
“Small environmental changes, you might not think they matter that much, but they are critical.” (20:56 | Cait Donovan)
“We talked about ‘other care.’ Sometimes you have to outsource some of this—and not just coaching and therapy—the physical care of your body has to be outsourced to someone.” (28:31 | Cait Donovan)
“Loneliness increases your risk of mortality by 40 percent. I could not believe that statistic when I heard it. Loneliness is now considered more detrimental than smoking.” (31:28 | Sarah Vosen)
“Recovery requires taking off the blinders or having someone support you who doesn’t have blinders on who says, ‘Oh, no. There’s a world of possibility for you. Let me offer you an exit pathway from this life with blinders on to one that actually works for you.’” (36:02 | Sarah Vosen)