And This, My Friends, Is Stress

People experiencing chronic stress very often feel utterly alone. Even if they express that they are feeling stressed out, they are often dismissed, told to work through it and still expected to be a team player. The problem is that if you want to avoid full burnout, you need to start by managing your daily stress (you know, the one everyone ignores). Every moment of the day, you need to be checking in and making changes to manage your stress.

Daily Stress becomes Chronic Stress; Chronic Stress becomes Burnout.

But how do you know if your stress is turning chronic? How do you know when you are in danger of burning out?

It is midnight. You have been lying in bed for hours, thinking, you cannot close your eyes. Your ceiling fan is spinning.

You have a water bill due. Your student loans are due, too, but your paycheck has been cut almost in half because your new benefits kicked in, the new premiums are double and your deducible is sky high. Your tooth has been feeling worse and worse, but the dentist feels out of reach. Meanwhile the check engine light is back. You’ll need gas and groceries before your next paycheck; you suppose it could go on the credit card, but that just tipped high enough to drop your credit score. Meanwhile Mother’s Day is coming, and so is your spouse's birthday. Money is getting much too tight for comfort.

By now, lying in the dark, you are fiddling. You’re breathing is a little light. ‘Stop’, you soothe yourself. ‘It is midnight. There is literally nothing I can do. Even if I get up, the dentist is not open – what will I do right now? Make an appointment?’

You close your eyes. You focus. You finally fall asleep, and in the morning you feel a little fresher. You are going to call the dentist today. You remember that you can use your HSA (you must have forgotten it last night, you were so tired). You see a letter on your table, where your student loan company agreed to reduced payments for the next 6 months, so that will give you some breathing room to figure out a plan. You can afford your bills this month with your loans dropped.

Then, before you even leave for work you call your brother because he has loved cars since the moment he could hold a Hot Wheel in his little hand. He directs you to go to the nearest car part store and ask them to run the codes, it’s totally free, and then call him with what they say.

It's okay, you know that, even if you aren't feeling it right now. You are okay. One step at a time. You’ve got this.

And this, my friends, is Stress. This is where it all starts.

Your Power is to Change: Nutrition, Mindfulness, Sleep, Movement, Financial Literacy, Mental Exercise

So What Is Burnout, Exactly?

Burnout is a drug term. Whether or not you have been around drugs, drug use or drug abuse, the term probably clicks. You get it, no matter who you are or where you are from. You get what Burnout is, you know when you are feeling it.

The phenomena was first described by Dr Herbert Freudenberg in New York. Dr Freudenberg was working in a substance abuse clinic in the 1970s, where the clinic was overwhelmed by the needs of the community and he observed many workers suffering what they called “nervous breakdowns”. For himself, Dr Freudenberg pushed and pushed himself until his family finally talked him into taking a vacation. He powered an all nighter the eve before his trip, trying to get the clinic in order before his absence – and then he was so exhausted, that he could not be roused the following day. He slept through his flight.

The experience startled him. He recorded himself talking about the events which led up to his missed – and much needed – vacation and he was shocked by the anger and exhaustion he heard in his own voice. This shifted his whole foundation enough that he pursued answers to phenomena that was going on all around him.

But his is not the whole story.

Across the country at Berkley and at about the same time, Christina Maslach was just beginning her research career. She began with interviewing service sector workers like police officers and healthcare workers. She found that the term ‘burnout’ was more than just a descriptor, but was actually capturing the essence of what these workers were experiencing. It took a couple of years for anyone to take her findings seriously; she was not published until 1976. The response, when she was finally published, was overwhelming. More striking, though, was how every single person who wrote to her about her work said the same thing: they all thought they were the only one.

...Daily Stress becomes Chronic Stress; Chronic Stress becomes Burnout ...

To this day, decades later, and when burnout as a concept is more universally well known, the pattern goes on. People experiencing chronic stress, particularly those in service work, feel alone. They are dismissed, told to work harder, expected to be a team player. They are encouraged to never, ever express their needs. If they do, they are called selfish, indulgent, bad care providers or "letting down the team".

But Burnout is no joke. It can destroy a career, it can derail life. And if you burnout, what does your team think will happen then?

The World Health Organization considers burnout a workplace phenomena. Moreover, by WHO standards, diagnosable burnout is something from which you cannot recover. It is permanent. That means that once you reach the point of true burnout, you cannot go back. Not even months or years away from the source will “fix” your condition, and maybe that is where WHO figures burnout is a workplace phenomena. Parents in burnout can come back from it with the right changes and tools. Nurses in burnout cannot.

So, if you want to avoid burnout, you need to start by monitoring your stress long, long before it reaches chronic levels. Every moment of the day, be checking in.

Remember: Daily Stress becomes Chronic Stress; Chronic Stress becomes Burnout.

STRESS TO CHRONIC STRESS

Let’s revisit your sleepless night from the beginning of the article. You got through that night and in the morning you felt clear headed enough to make moves. You completed your overnight stress cycle and you were able to cope, move on, calm down.

But now, let’s leave the safety of home.

Your drive to work is the usual traffic and the frustrations of construction – another fender bender, as if people really do not see the eight miles of cones telling them the lane ends. Ten minutes late, you reach your desk. You see your paperwork is piling up. There are half a dozen messages on your machine, there is one new client coming in today. You have two current clients who are in sudden crisis. As you start to scan the stacks before you, your phone rings, and now one of your crisis clients is screaming into your ear. Good Morning to You!

By 9 am, your blood pressure is way up. Your heart is pounding, your breathing is shallow, your stomach hurts.

This is your Fight or Flight phase in the stress cycle. How will you respond? Will you power through, or will you walk away to regroup?

What that means is this: say you pick up the phone to that screaming client. You listen to them as you take off your coat and get settled, then you talk them through the problem. ‘Good Morning to you, too,’ you mutter as you hang up the phone, but at least there’s one thing off the checklist already.

You work on some paperwork until your new client comes in; you take your meeting, you get started, you power through your day. You reach out to an intern and get help with paperwork. While they do that, you reach out to the other crisis clients and you work through the issues. By 5 o’clock when you walk out the door, it is with some sense of accomplishment. Today was awful, but you and the intern pulled it off!

And you remember, just in time, that you need to stop at the car parts shop to get those codes checked. Afterwards, you call your brother for the last ten minutes of your commute.

At home, you feed your dog and then throw together a quick salad for yourself, (you really hate cooking). Later in the evening, you have a glass of wine, you call in your water payment as you watch the best trash on TV. You take a break to walk the dog and then cuddle him on the couch until bedtime. You are asleep before your head hits the pillow. You are safe.

Your stress cycle completes for the day.

If you are STUCK in your fight or flight phase, however, your day might spiral. Maybe you never think to call the intern, (you were flustered and stressed by your morning phone call). When you call your other crisis clients, you clench your hand into a fist. You are fuming. You have other clients besides them – you do not have time for this! Your new clients come in and you cannot for the life of you find the motivation to care about what they need from you, so you rush them through their business and send them on their way. Your paperwork is piled higher than ever. You stay three hours past quitting time to try to get some of it finished and filed, but all you did was the stuff for the new client and everything else is just as it was this morning.

So your drive home is now full of rage. At home, you seethe that the dog is barking the very second you walk in the door. You order pizza for the third night in a row because you cannot deal with cooking, you hate cooking. And then you lie awake all night because you can’t believe the amount of work continuing to pile up, and you never did call the dentist or the water company, either.

You are miserable. You could cry yourself to sleep, if you even sleep at all tonight. Your mind is back in a loop about everything that is going wrong.

In this scenario, you are stuck in your Fight or Flight, and your stress is never ending. Now it is chronic.

Do not be ashamed of your stress. We all experience it, we all suffer under varying weights at varying times.

When stress starts to turn chronic, it bleeds in and out of your work and personal lives. Everything and everyone suffers. Your blood pressure is high all the time; who doesn’t know that high blood pressure is detrimental to your health? Who does not realize that bad nutrition sucks your energy and motivation? That not sleeping causes brain fog and irritability? Or that grinding teeth in your sleep leads to headaches and tooth wear? Or that stress, anxiety and depression mean you treat yourself and the people around you with zero compassion and zero respect?

Do not be ashamed of your stress. We all experience it, we all suffer under varying weights at varying times. The chances are very high that the people around you will deeply empathize with your stresses, more than you may no.

More than not be ashamed of your stress, be honest about what you are experiencing, even if you are only honest to yourself (for now). Recognize when you are struggling to cope. Be willing to think about it, do not shy away from the discomfort. Be prepared to change what is in your power to change.

Most importantly, do not get in your own way. Identify what changes are in. your power to make and prioritize it. You matter too much not to.