What is Burn-Out Syndrome?

  • Have you been feeling tired lately?

  • Has the thought of going into or facing work* filled you with dread? (*Work = any occupational pursuits, including unpaid activities, like being a parent, carer, or student.)

  • Are you losing your empathy? Getting cynical and overly pessimistic about work-related things?

  • Do new demands on you feel overwhelming and make you avoidant, irritable, angry, or resentful (i.e., the fight or flight reponse)?

  • Are you struggling to get things done? Is everything taking longer to do? Are you half doing things or cutting corners, and underperforming?

You might be burnt out.

In 2019, the World Health Organisation broadened their description of burn-out to a ‘syndrome’. Burn-out Syndrome in the ICD-11 was defined as:

  • Feelings of exhaustion or depletion of energy;

  • Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feeling pessimistic, negative, or cynical in relation to one’s job; and

  • Reduced professional productivity or efficiency.

Put simply, burn out is when the demands on you keep outweighing the time, energy, and other resources you have to meet those demands, so you become physically and mentally depleted. Everything starts to shut down…

I like to think of it as your brain and body closing for business, effectively saying to the world, people, and work/life, “Nope. Can’t.”

So how do you recover from burn out?

The research is still emerging, but our current thinking is to:

1) Reduce the demands on you, and

2) Find ways to restore good physical and mental wellbeing and energy.

1) Reducing the Demands:

  • Reducing the demands can be tough to do.

  • You can start small with the 4 Ds: What can you Drop, Delegate, Delay, or Do right now?

  • Or you can start bigger: How can you restructure your day, week, or life to give you a better balance? Can you talk to your boss or HR to reduce your workload, redefine roles and responsibilities, or get more support? For students, can you ask for extensions, cut back on your subject load?

  • Can you ask for outside help? From friends, family? Or health professionals?

  • Can you outsource things in your life, to free up your time and energy?

  • Or do you have to completely rethink your job? Look elsewhere? Major change is sometimes required.

2) Restoring Good Physical and Mental Wellbeing and Energy:

  • Physical wellbeing: what is and isn’t working well in the physical domain of your life? Should you see your GP for a full health check, including blood test? How is your sleep, your diet, exercise, and your alcohol and drug consumption going? What is your pace like throughout the day? Are you rushing everywhere and never slowing down or stopping? Or are you too inactive, oversleeping and barely moving each day? What can you work on, improve or change, to give you more energy and wellbeing?

  • Social wellbeing: how are your relationships going? Are you doing too much socialising or not enough? Or are you not doing the right amount and type of socialising? Are there certain people you could connect more with, feel renewed by, and others you could interact with less in your life (stressful relationships that exhaust you)? Can you work on some relationships and improve things? Or implement healthier boundaries in relationships that take your energy or pose more demands for you?

  • Spiritual wellbeing: this doesn’t mean religious; this just refers to ‘the YOU in your life’. What brings you joy? What passions, hobbies, and interests do you have? What makes you feel good, connected, in tune? What gives you that feeling of flow, where you are so immersed in something wonderful and you lose a sense of time? What piques your interest and helps grow or makes you feel on track as a person in your life? If nothing much is happening in this domain in your life, now is a great time to change that!

  • Mental health patterns: how are your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours going? Are you caught in any negative, self-defeating or destructing cycles? Are you spending too long on your phone, ‘doom-scrolling’? Are you staying up late to get more ‘me time’ and then not sleeping enough, waking tired, and then repeating it all again? Are you stuck in some negative thought cycles? Avoiding things that might otherwise be great for you? What could you change here?

Recovery typically involves good self-care and good boundaries. These aren’t always easy, but your health and wellbeing matters.

The latest literature on Burn-out Syndrome suggests that it can take weeks, months, even YEARS to recover from! Making changes sooner than later matters. And seeking professional help is worthwhile.

Renae Kurth, Director/Clinical Psychologist

Healing from trauma or other distressing life experiences with EMDR

What is EMDR?

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy that enables

people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life

experiences. EMDR Therapy is based on the idea that negative thoughts, feelings and

behaviours stem from unprocessed memories from stressful or traumatic experiences.

EMDR was first utilised to successfully treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and is

now the most thoroughly researched method used in the treatment of trauma. EMDR has

also been used to effectively treat a wide range of mental health problems, including: anxiety

and panic attacks; depression; stress; phobias; sleep problems; complicated grief; addictions;

pain relief; self-esteem and performance anxiety.

How does EMDR work?

EMDR utilises the natural healing ability of your body, to process memories and feelings that

are “stuck” or stored in the limbic system (emotional part) of your brain in a “raw” and

emotional form. Often this occurs due to your natural coping mechanism becoming

overloaded, at the time of the distressing or overwhelming event.

Memories stored in this way are disconnected from the brain’s cortex (logical part of the

brain), and the painful feelings such as anxiety, panic, anger or despair are continually

triggered in the present.

EMDR helps to create the connections between your brain’s memory

networks, enabling your brain to process the traumatic memory in a very natural way. Eye

movements, similar to those that occur during REM sleep, are used to facilitate the brain’s

natural processing, and you remain fully alert and in control throughout.

Through this process, the memory tends to change in such a way that it loses it’s painful

intensity. Other associated memories may also heal at the same time. Most people

experience EMDR as being a natural and empowering therapy.

Further information can be found on the EMDR Association of Australia (EMDRAA) website -

https://emdraa.org/emdr-resources/

Natalie Avery, Clinical Psychologist