Hospitalised for exhaustion: Burnout Sent Me to the Hospital. Here are the Signs I Look Out for Now

08.03.202213.07.2023 by alexxlab

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Burnout Sent Me to the Hospital. Here are the Signs I Look Out for Now

One of the biggest myths about burnout is that it can’t happen if you love the work that you’re doing. I am certainly proof positive of the opposite.

In 2015, I was celebrating 10 years of working as the head of advertising for the largest eyewear company in the world. On the surface, I actively loved what I was doing. I had fantastic bosses and an amazing team who I learned from every day. I got to work on interesting projects and was given a lot of creative freedom and opportunity to experiment. I was living in beautiful Italy and regularly traveled around the world for work. All in all, I thought I was living the professional dream.

But my body was sending me warning signs that things weren’t as great as I made them out to be, signs I unfortunately didn’t even know to look out for. I’ll share more about those in a minute, but it all came to a head when I woke up one morning and couldn’t see out of my right eye. What followed was 10 days of extensive testing to rule out all possible causes: MS, stroke, and other autoimmune or neurological diseases. Finally, when I tested negative for everything else, the doctors concluded that my vision loss might be stress-related.

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Thankfully, my vision came back after a few weeks of rest—but my drive to return to the way things had been did not. I took more time off to prioritize my health and consider what I wanted to do with the next chapter of my life. Based on my own experience and desire to help others avoid a similar fate, I decided to go back to school to study the neuroscience and psychology of mental health, ultimately getting a master’s degree in Organizational Psychology. Since then, I’ve started Moodally, an app and group training program that uses creative and science-backed strategies to help people better recognize their moods and change them in real time.

Throughout my studies, I learned about all the biological and neurological processes that are affected by stress and the dozens of ways it can show up in the body. Looking back, I can now see the warning signs my body was trying to send me—signs I now keep an eye out for as a busy small business owner. Here they are, along with some of the strategies I now use to keep my stress in check in those moments.

I Was Waking Up With No Energy Every Morning

One of the clearest early signs of burnout is regularly waking up after a full night’s sleep and immediately having no energy: I’m talking sitting on the edge of your bed, head between your hands, not feeling like you can possibly face the day.

For months before I lost my vision, every day felt like a Herculean effort to get out of bed and to get to work. Even though I enjoyed the work I was doing and the people I was with once I got there, getting started each morning took everything out of me.

I now know that I was likely experiencing a cortisol plateau. Cortisol is sometimes known as the “stress hormone” because it’s released during times of stress to give you energy to deal with the situation, but it’s also closely tied to your sleep-wake cycle. Normally, you get a spike of cortisol first thing in the morning to give you a feeling of wakefulness. But, if you’ve had ongoing stress, your body has released so much cortisol that it has nowhere to go.

Too many people, especially small business owners or passionate creatives, think exhaustion is a necessary part of working hard toward something we care about. While it can happen occasionally from a bad night of sleep or a busy week and not be a sign of burnout, if it’s happening consistently over time, I know it means that something needs to shift so that my sympathetic nervous system gets the down time it needs.

I Was Feeling Incredibly Bored With My Day-to-Day

Another common sign that burnout is brewing is a deep feeling of boredom. When I hear people wonder when things are going to change or wish for some sort of disruptive event to shuffle the cards, I often suggest they need to care for their mental health before they make any drastic changes.

Even though I was generally very happy with my job, I’d been there for 10 years, and every day was starting to feel the same. On a deeper level, I was getting tired of making billionaires more billions and wondering if there was something more meaningful I could do with my talents. It was getting harder and harder to feel excited about the projects I was working on and continue bringing my best creative ideas.

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I now understand that this was related to a lack of dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter some call our brain’s “reward center,” playing a huge role in pleasure and motivation. When we succeed at something at work, we get a hit of dopamine, which motivates us forward. But, when we do the same thing over and over again, even if those things are successful, we don’t get the same dopamine response because we’ve already done it. That makes it harder to feel motivated to keep showing up day after day.

Our dopamine system loves new successes and challenges, so persistent boredom can be a clue that you need to change up your work to avoid getting tired of doing it. Even now, as a small business owner with new challenges every day, this boredom can creep in. Instead of seeing it as a sign that I need to completely overhaul my life, I recognize it as an opportunity to make small tweaks to keep myself engaged in working towards my mission.

I Was More Cynical and Irritable

Finally, a common early warning sign of burnout is a shift in personality, often causing people to become more cynical and jaded and more easily irritated.

Before I lost my vision, I noticed myself dwelling on problems instead of being solution-oriented. Whereas I used to have an attitude of “we can do it!”, I started thinking things like, “I doubt that’s going to work” or “what’s even the point?” It was even worse when someone would ask me for help with something: I lacked the energy or the desire to go to bat for them.

It took me the entire process of healing to realize that I was unable to care for others because I wasn’t taking care of myself. I was taking multiple flights a week, sleeping on planes, not eating well, not exercising. In addition to exacerbating my exhaustion and lack of motivation, it meant I didn’t have any spare energy to give to others. If you think of energy like a well of water, I was giving and giving and giving my water until I was dried up, and then getting mad at others for taking my water, instead of realizing the core issue was that I wasn’t doing anything to protect or replenish it.

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Now, when I find myself unable to see solutions or getting frustrated more easily, I know it’s a sign that I probably need to prioritize my own needs.

As so many entrepreneurs know, running a business is stressful, and burnout is always a risk. But now that I know these early warning signs, I can turn things around before they get really bad. I can step away for a few hours or days to care for my needs and let my cortisol levels calm down. (Pro tip: Unless you’re saving lives, nothing is truly so urgent that you can’t ask for more time so you can care for yourself.) I can reframe what I “have to” do as what I “choose to” do, which helps me understand what I need to say no to and reprioritize so I have work I’m excited about.

Or I can just spend some time doing something that brings me joy with no other goal than filling my well back up—so that I can go back to the work I care so deeply about refreshed and with a better mind to get things done

Burnout put me in the hospital but I learned healthy work-life balance

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By Alice Merron 6 minute Read

In my corporate job, I was turning up and smiling at parties, but inside I was burning out and only just treading water. It all felt like too much. I was too far past my boundaries and saw my only choice as quitting. I barely spoke about my situation except to laugh off how awful it was.

I’d wake up exhausted, dreading the day, already stressed, with my to-do list already consuming my thoughts.

I was overwhelmed.
I lacked motivation and concentration.
I felt an emptiness with regard to caring about my work.
I felt very negative about the tasks I had to complete.
Most of my day was spent on tasks I had little interest in and made me exhausted to even think about.
I felt a loss of interest in most things in my life.
I became withdrawn and made excuses because I was embarrassed to say that I didn’t have the energy to get out of bed.
I became short-tempered, frustrated, pessimistic, guilty, angry, and irritable.
I wanted to cry (and often did) at just the thought of having to go back to work the next day. I’d also cry if anyone asked how I was.
I felt fatigued, physically weak, and my immune system suffered.

Life is too short for feeling like this so often.

When I didn’t take notice of my emotions, my body started sending me messages too. My illnesses were physical manifestations of the thoughts and struggles I was having inside.

Thankfully, I went to the hospital in time. The doctor’s advice was to stop working, take more breaks, and change my lifestyle. But I disregarded that, even after he ordered my MRI scan. I had to get my work done. There was no question about taking a step back in my mind.

When the test results came in, the next stage of my life was set in motion. The doctor told me that the level of stress I’d experienced for such an extended period of time was so extreme that it had physically damaged the tissues in my body. The sustained level of the stress hormone cortisol I had for such an extended period of time meant that my organs, muscles, etc. were severely weakening.

He gave me an ultimatum:

“Either change your lifestyle or I staple your organs to your ribcage to keep them in place. Your tissues are weakening at such a rate that I’d have to perform surgery that I usually only recommend for 80-year-olds. But when 80-year-olds have this surgery, they don’t have to live another 50 years with stapled organs.”

I quit.

It’s easy to lose yourself in your work in a culture that values success, achievement, and productivity. You might feel that pressure to push yourself harder and faster but everyone has a limit and it’s most certainly not one-speed-fits-all. If we weren’t too distracted with work, deadlines, and home life, we’d react to the symptoms in a healthier way. Burning out is a signal that you need to change it up. What you are currently doing is clearly not working for you.

When I burned out to the extreme, I thought I’d be perceived as weak compared to my colleagues who seemed to be coping. The stigma around burnout led me to compare myself to others and perceive burnout as a weakness. But behind the scenes, we all have very different things to deal with including our upbringing, definitions of success, boundaries, motivations, expectations of ourselves, etc. We can get so caught up in our own experiences that we forget this. Did you ever consider that burning out is like lighting a bonfire to burn away all of the beliefs and ideas that aren’t serving you anymore?

If your current work is leading you to despair, burn the belief that working all hours is making you more productive and that you can get more done.

If your social life is deteriorating as work consumes more of your time, rewrite the script on how much you’re willing to sacrifice your valuable time for this work.

We react to situations physically for a reason, so when burnout hits, think to yourself: Why is my body sending me these messages of exhaustion, fatigue, emptiness, etc.? and take action to flip the narrative.

Change up the questions you’re asking yourself

Instead of: What am I doing with my life?
Ask yourself: What can I do every day that makes me feel fulfilled?

Action step: Make a list of what lights you up. Review your list and set an intention each day to do one thing on your list that lights you up. Create a plan to incorporate the things you love into your career whenever possible. Consult with a coach if this will help you to streamline your decision-making process regarding your career.

Instead of: Why is my job so awful?
Ask yourself: What do I need in a job to make me enjoy it? What is a nonnegotiable in my job that I won’t work without, e.g., connection, healthy culture, work-life flexibility?

Action step: Identify the pertinent aspects by asking yourself what would cause you to leave this job.

Instead of: I feel so drained, so fatigued, and I am struggling.
Ask yourself: What are these symptoms trying to tell me? Am I overworked, do I need to change my hours, my job, my schedule?

Action step: Reach out to get help. Don’t stay in this place of struggling for longer than is necessary for you to learn the lesson that something needs to change.

Instead of: Why am I in this awful role?
Ask yourself: How can I make this into an experience I want to be in?

Action step: Write out which experiences would provide you with the most value. Consider your skills, achievements, and interests to determine which role might suit you better. Consult with a coach if you’d like support with designing your next steps in a healthy way.

Instead of: Why do my hours feel so endless?
Ask yourself: How can I reduce my hours while still being productive? In other words, how can I change my environment and organization to improve my working hours?

Action steps:

Identify the time of day that you’re most productive.
Remove all other commitments during those productive hours to complete your work. Block out time in your calendar for this deep, uninterrupted work to happen.
Switch up your environment. Are your notifications loud, your emails and your door always open? Are these distractions aiding you or causing your work to take more time to complete?
Pay close attention to the questions you ask yourself and what you tell yourself is “normal. ”

Remember that this isn’t just a corporate problem. It’s particularly important to recognize burnout now when working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. When you fuse home and work life with these added distractions, it can be easy to overlook the symptoms that are adding up.

By monitoring your symptoms and taking action as early as possible, you not only ease the pressure on yourself but you can turn the situation around to find yourself enjoying daily life instead.

There is light on the other side of burnout; that’s why it’s there. It highlights what’s not right for you and directs you back toward a lifestyle that serves you better.

Alice Merron is a former senior associate at a Big Four accounting firm and is now a master practitioner in Neuro Linguistic Programming and a transformation coach.

media: Pele hospitalized due to exhaustion of the body – Gazeta.Ru

January 19, 2018, 16:10
Sport

100%

The legendary Brazilian football player Pelé is hospitalized due to exhaustion, reports RT , citing the British press.

According to the source, 77-year-old Pele is currently under the watchful eye of doctors and will not be able to attend the upcoming awards of the Writers’ Football Association in the UK.

Previously, , the three-time world champion expressed the opinion that the Brazilian team is capable of winning the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

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