If you’re feeling a little exhausted, you’re not alone. The vast majority of people living modern lives will eventually get to the point where they just need to take a break.
For most people, this happens during their 30s or 40s, but it can occur at any time. It usually happens when there is a mismatch between the work you demand of yourself and the time you allot to recover.
Today, we often call this state “burnout.” It occurs when you experience emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. Usually, it relates to work, but it can revolve around other aspects of life, such as challenging relationships, or even being underappreciated by the people around you. Sometimes, people experience it when they are unable to cope with their responsibilities.
Burnout is a problem because it can lead to reduced performance, lower motivation, and increased cynicism and detachment. You may feel like there isn’t a great deal worth getting up for in the morning, or you might get to the end of the day and have no energy to do anything other than lie in front of the TV.
Related to burnout is adrenal fatigue. It describes a condition where the adrenal glands, which produce hormones that regulate stress response, energy, and mood, become unable to function properly due to chronic stress. Constantly working eventually leads them to the point of failure with symptoms such as depression, anxiety, weakness, fatigue, and weight gain quickly following.
For burnout and adrenal fatigue, stress is the common factor. And that’s why they are often linked. Both burnout and adrenal fatigue can have serious consequences for health and well-being and can impact cognitive function, lower your self-esteem, damage your relationships, and increase your risk of developing chronic diseases. If you notice either, it’s a sign that you need to take a break, spend some time out of the game, work out what went wrong, and then reapply once you have answers.
But how do you actually recognize if you have burnout or adrenal fatigue? Sometimes, that can be challenging. The good news is that the tips below should help. They should help you detect issues and solve them before they take over your life.
What Are The Signs Of Burnout And Adrenal Fatigue?
The signs of burnout and adrenal fatigue are pretty obvious once you know what they are. However, detecting them does require you to pay some attention to your body. Here’s a list of tell-tale signs:-
- You feel tired all the time, even if you’ve had a good eight hours or more of sleep
- You can’t concentrate on what people say and have trouble remembering things
- You struggle to make decisions and want to delegate to others
- You feel helpless, hopeless, anxious, or depressed
- You have more frequent muscle pains, headaches, and digestive issues
- You find yourself losing motivation or interest in your work, hobbies, and relationships
- You rely excessively on sugar, alcohol, caffeine, and drugs to get through your day
- You find it hard to cope with changing circumstances or unpredictable events
- You feel cynical about work and life or detached from everyday circumstances that used to engage you
- You notice excessive inflammation, allergies, or infections, or you get sick more often
When you experience any of these symptoms, it is your body’s way of telling you that you need to slow down. While the mind might want to race ahead and get things done, the body can only do so much. When it reaches its limits, it will tell you and ask for a change.
The good news is that you can take care of yourself and prevent these symptoms from developing. You want to get ahead of these problems and deal with them before they occur by adopting healthy and mindful practices that improve your well-being.
How To Recover From Burnout And Adrenal Fatigue
But what are these steps? That’s what we discuss in this section. Before we begin, it’s worth noting that the strategies that work for other people might not work for you. The mind is a complicated mechanism, and it interacts with interventions differently, depending on a host of psychological and physiological factors.
Seek Social Support From Friends, Family, Colleagues, And Professionals
One way to recover from adrenal fatigue is to seek support from the people around you. Telling them that you’re having a tough time and are displaying signs of burnout or fatigue will usually prompt them to change your circumstances. Bosses may give you time off work, or family members might provide you with more support around the house. Whatever it is, going to other people and talking about your problems can take the pressure off and free up time for you to recover.
Exercise Moderately
Another strategy you can use is moderate exercise. Getting out of the house and being active can be an excellent way to reduce stress levels and feel better about your circumstances. It also improves your state of mind, particularly if you exercise in nature. Being outdoors among the greenery can be tremendously calming and result in the release of feel-good hormones that change your biochemistry.
Don’t overdo it, though. Exercising too much can lead to additional cortisol release, making it harder for you to calm down and feel relaxed. Aim for around 30 minutes per day of movement and see how you feel afterward. Avoid focusing on weight, sets, reps, or any other metric. Just do exercise because you enjoy it.
Avoid Caffeine And Other Mind-Altering Substances
Another excellent way to reduce adrenal fatigue and recover from burnout is to avoid caffeine and other substances that impact the nervous system. Caffeine is a stimulant and taxes the adrenal glands more, forcing them to churn out additional stress factors into the blood. Other drugs can do something similar.
Hence, burnout sufferers should reduce their caffeine intake significantly, or eliminate it. If you are struggling to get through the day, find other ways to keep energy levels high, such as exercise or a low-glycemic index diet. Many people find that eating legumes at midday helps them avoid the early afternoon slump and concentrate better at their desks.
Eat A Balanced Diet
Eating a balanced diet is also among the most powerful tools available to fight exhaustion, fatigue, and burnout. Having the right nutrients in the body can be protective, and some plant foods may actually make people feel calmer.
Brain inflammation is a significant concern in today’s scientific literature. The Western diet causes cytokines to travel up the brainstem and into the neurons, leading to various forms of dysfunction that make you feel tired and unable to function.
Fortunately, you can reverse this process with food. Walnuts, rosemary, and berries are excellent for removing inflammatory factors from the brain and modulating the immune system. After a couple of weeks of including healthier foods, most people feel significantly better.
Check Your Hormone Balance
Another way to recover from burnout and adrenal fatigue is to check your hormone balance. If some chemicals are out of whack, it can result in unwanted side effects, including exhaustion.
Diet and lifestyle factors may improve hormone balance slightly, but a lot of people opt for hormone therapy. Various techniques can check hormone balance and then correct it if it is out of whack after a lifetime of stress and excessive work.
Take Regular Breaks Throughout The Day
Taking regular breaks throughout the day is another option for beating burnout. People who do their work in chunks tend to be happier and more productive, and less prone to the types of fatigue discussed above. Giving the body short breaks between tasks allows it to calm down and reset before doing the next thing.
These breaks don’t need to be long. Just taking 10 minutes every couple of hours is often enough to completely change how you feel and keep exhaustion at bay.
Delegate Some Responsibilities
Another option for overcoming burnout is to delegate responsibilities to others. Giving tasks to competent people takes the responsibility off your hands, letting you focus more on strategy and thinking, instead of constantly doing.
Avoid believing you are the only person who can complete specific tasks properly. Trust others to get it right, even if it takes some time and training.
Prioritize
Another option for beating burnout is to prioritize. Do all the stuff you don’t want to do in the morning and get it out of the way. Then you can set yourself up for a more successful, lower-stress day.
Most people find it takes a couple of hours to deal with all the nagging issues. But once they are out of the way, it frees you up psychologically to do your best work.
Set Boundaries
Lastly, you’ll want to set boundaries and learn to say “no” to things. You don’t have to hop on every call, go to every meeting, and serve every customer. Sometimes, taking a break can make a tremendous difference in how much you can get done, and makes you more productive when you do eventually return to the office.
