Burned Out By Tuesday?
Beat burnout proactively with Dr. Claudine Holt’s expert strategies on restoring vitality, setting boundaries, and shifting workplace culture.
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Avoiding Burnout, The Active Way
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This is Dr. Claudine Holt. She’s double board-certified, in Occupational & Environmental Medicine, and Lifestyle Medicine.
In short: preventative medicine in all parts of our life.
Hopefully, you are reading this bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready to take on another exciting day in this wonderful, beautiful world!
On the other hand, it’s possible that you’re reading this semi-focussed, looking for a crumb of dopamine as much as you are looking for information.
If you’ve ever had the “What a week!” / “It’s only Tuesday” moment, this one’s for you.
What does Dr. Holt want us to know?
You can recover from burnout without guilt
Sometimes, we overreach ourselves. Sometimes, life overreaches us! Sometimes it’s not that we overcommitted—it’s just that we were taking each day as it comes, but sometimes several days gang up on us at once.
Sometimes, even, we can feel exhausted when it seems like we haven’t done anything.
Note: if you feel exhausted and it seems like you haven’t done anything, then be aware: you are exhausted for a reason!
What that reason might be may vary, but contrary to popular belief, energy does not just vanish. It went somewhere.
This goes double if you have any chronic illness(es), even if you’re not aware of having had a flare-up, chances are you were just exceptionally busy (on a cellular level).
And it’s easy to think that “mere” cellular activity shouldn’t be exhausting, but that is 100% of where our energy transactions happen—whether or not we are consciously aware of them!
See also: Eat To Beat Chronic Fatigue ← yes, this also covers when you are too exhausted to shop and cook like a TV chef
Dr. Holt specializes in working with burned out medical professionals (and also specifically specializes in working with women), but there are lessons for everyone in her advice. For example:
Fiction: ”Medicine is my calling–it’s who I am.”
Fact: You are more than medicine! Remember that your career is just one aspect of your life. Don’t forget to create your big-picture vision and tend the garden of the other areas of your life too.
Read more: Dr. Claudine Holt | Burnout: Fact vs Fiction
This same thing can go for whatever part of your identity frequently follows “I’m a…”, and is somewhere that you put a lot of your energy; it could equally be a non-professional job like “homemaker”, or a relational status like “husband”, or a cultural identifier like “Christian”, or a hobby like “gardener” (assuming that is not also your profession, in which case, same item, different category).
Indeed, a lot of women especially get hit by “the triple burden” of professional work, housework, and childcare. And it’s not even necessarily that we resent any of those things or feel like they’re a burden; we (hopefully) love our professions, homes, children. But, here’s the thing:
No amount of love will add extra hours to the day.
So what does she recommend doing about it, when sometimes we’re juggling things that can’t be dropped?
Start simple, but start!
Dr. Holt recommends to start with a smile (yes even if, and sometimes especially when, the circumstances do not feel like they merit it), and deploy some CBT tools:
Two Hacks to Quickly Rise Above Burnout (Or Any Circumstance)
We’ve expanded on this topic here:
With a more level head on, it becomes easier to take on the next step, which creating healthy boundaries—and that doesn’t just mean with other people!
It also means slaying our own perfectionism and imposter syndrome—both things that will have us chasing our tails 36 hours per day if we let them.
See also:
- Perfectionism, And How To Make Yours Work For You
- Imposter Syndrome (And Why Almost Everyone Has It)
❝Burnout is the culture of our times. A culture that expects us to do more and think our way out of everything. A culture that asks for more than the body can bear. Unfortunately, even though the situation might not be of our creation, burnout culture is our inheritance.
An inheritance we can either perpetuate—or change—depending on what we embody.❞
Source: The Embodied MD on Burnout with Dr Claudine Holt
That “embodiment” is partly our choices and actions that we bring and own just as we bring and own our body—and it’s partly our relationship with our body itself, and learning to love it, and work with it to achieve wonderful things, instead of just getting through the day.
Which yes, does also mean making space for good diet, exercise, sleep and so forth, per:
These Top Five Things Make The Biggest Difference To Health
Want to know more?
You might like to check out Dr. Holt’s website:
The Embodied M.D. | Burnout Coach
…where she also offers resources such as a blog and a podcast.
Enjoy!
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