Burning Out, Crushing It, or Both?
It's a fine line. Learn how to recognize accumulated stress, reset your stress cycle, and rewire your brain to prevent burnout, enhance well-being, and boost performance.
Burnout doesn’t look the same for everyone. It varies, and it’s not always obvious. From the outside, it can even look like someone totally crushing it. It’s a fine line.
Among other nasty impacts to our health and well-being, stress accumulation can push us over that line. Some stress is normal, of course, even useful. That’s why our stress response is hardcoded into our DNA — to help us be alert and respond quickly in urgent situations.
Problem: our stress response system wasn’t designed for accumulation. The effect of unprocessed stress reminds me of that horrible frog pot analogy. The frog adapts as the heat slowly increases, not realizing it’s boiling until it’s too late to jump out.
F…F…F… This Frog Pot
As you’re likely aware, our biological stress response developed when we lived in caves and dodged tigers — a brilliant survival mechanism that’s intended to be temporary. We’re not designed to stay in Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn (or any other F’s) forever. Our stress response is intended to be a physical performance enhancing cycle, not a state of existence.
We’re supposed to reset. Assuming the tiger doesn’t eat us (aka the threat has passed), we’re supposed to chill the F out! We go back to our cave, light a fire, tell stories with our people, and maybe draw on a wall.
When there’s no reset, the cycle doesn’t complete. Stress builds up and can become stuck, which is why it’s important to recognize when you have unprocessed stress, reset your stress cycle, and rewire your brain to transition from stress to flow. The ability to make this shift impacts everything from your health and well-being to your cognitive ability and performance!
1. Recognize Stress Build-Up
Unprocessed stress is not a good look for any of us, whether it leads to burnout or not. Below are some ways to recognize accumulated stress. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but hopefully enough to spot it in a line-up:
Mentally: Hypervigilance is common; feeling constantly on edge, or like something is about to go wrong (even when things are going well). Thoughts might include persistent self-doubt, self-criticism, or other negative self-talk, as well as overwhelm and lack of motivation. Focus, memory, and decision-making can be impacted. It’s important to note that, while it’s not depression, burnout can increase the risk of depression.
Emotionally: Emotions range from fear, unease, and irritability to anger, anxiety, and paranoia, or feeling ungrounded, disconnected (from yourself/others), lonely (even when you’re with others), exposed, and/or vulnerable. Feelings of accomplishment and fulfillment are frequently diminished, even when productivity is high. Relationship issues/drama can also arise when we don’t feel grounded (aka clinging, pushing people away, and people pleasing).
Physically: There’s a wide range here too, including unexplained body aches, pain, discomfort, or tension, as well as headaches, decreased energy, insomnia, frequent illness, digestive issues (among other things), or even panic attacks.
Clearly, no one wants to experience burnout. We’re all doing our best to balance all the things, and sometimes wellness can feel like one more damn thing to figure out. I get that. But, make no mistake, learning how to recognize and reset stress isn’t a perk or a luxury. It’s more than a periodic nap or vacation. It’s an essential daily practice.
2. Reset Your Stress Cycle
Unfortunately, we can’t just tell ourselves everything is OK after a stressful situation. “Yep, all done with today’s stress, no tigers here, moving on.” I wish, but nope! Not how it works. Processing stress is more than a simple decision or mental exercise.
Don’t get me wrong, healing starts with a choice, and positive affirmation is a wonderful tool. However, thinking alone, doesn’t address the physical or energetic shift that needs to happen to reset our stress cycle.
Assuming you’re casually reading this blog and not in an actual emergency, here’s what you need to know about stress accumulation:1
Your body needs to actually feel that it’s safe, not just be told that it’s safe. Resetting our stress response is physical, not intellectual. Our bodies don’t lie and they don’t always believe our conscious thoughts (with good reason).
Removing the stressor(s) doesn’t always “automagically” clear the stress. It can be stored in our mind, body, and energy. Something to consider before uprooting your life/career only to find that more change actually added stress.
Sometimes our stress response does reset naturally, functioning as designed. Other times we need to check in on what’s happening in our mind and body, and consciously take action to reset and complete the cycle.
If we don’t experience a proper reset, stress accumulates. That’s when mental, physical, and emotional stress can remain, reactivate, and pile up. Thoughts alone don’t release this accumulated stress. Healing needs to happen in the body too.
Guided or DIY reset tools: Breathwork, somatic practices and therapy, mindful movement, and energy management techniques are wonderful stress reset tools.
More DIY resets: Physical activity, social connection, laughter, giving and receiving affection, feeling and expressing gratitude, having a good cry, spending time in nature, and various forms of creative expression can also help us reset.
After you reset, rest!!! Rest is not self-indulgent, it’s self-compassion, and it shows your body that it is safe.
How do you know you’ve reset, that you’ve completed the stress cycle? You will feel the change in your body. Again, our bodies don’t lie… our minds, well, that’s another story. Fortunately, we can rewire our minds.
3. Rewire for Flow
While we can’t change our automatic biological stress response, we can rewire how we consciously respond after the hardcoded process kicks in. There’s a principle in neuroscience called Hebb’s Law, which boils down to: neurons that fire together, wire together. This is shorthand for how our thoughts can become like computer programs, kicking off mental, emotional, and physical processes that run automatically.
Fortunately for us, “wired” isn’t a permanent state. The brain’s neuroplasticity is one of its most amazing design features, allowing us to interrupt our standard programming, rewire what’s been wired, and change for the better — aka change our thoughts to help us consciously transition from our automatic stress response (the stress Fs) to another F (Flow). Here’s how:
Notice + Shift Your Physical Response: Observe your body’s response to stress. This might be a racing heart, rapid and shallow breathing, skin changes (pale, flushed, cold, or clammy), muscle tension, upset stomach, difficulty concentrating, and/or feeling irritable, restless, or nervous. Unless you’re in an actual emergency, let whatever is happening externally be what it is. Pause. Breathe deeply, letting your exhale be a little longer than your inhale, until you feel a shift toward calm.
Observe + Reset Your Mental Response: Keep breathing with intention. Start to notice your inner talk-track. Observe if your thoughts are feeding your body’s stress response. Are you replaying the past or imagining future doom scenarios? Stop. What’s real right now? Stop feeding, fighting, or following thoughts that increase, sustain, and prolong your stress response. Think new thoughts.
Reality Check The Swirl: If you’re stuck in a mental-emotional stress spiral, feed your brain clear, uncontestable facts. Try imagining you’re a reporter giving a short statement: “Hi, I’m (name), here at (location) on (date), with (who) and I see… hear… (3-5 observations based on your five senses). This can be an internal monologue, or spoken out loud if you’re alone / among friendlies. You do you, but stick to facts! This is not an opinion piece. The point is to use facts to return your brain to the present, reconciling internal swirl with verifiable external reality.
Make A New Choice: Choose to do something that resets your stress response in the moment (see the DIY reset ideas above). Your next best actions will become clear when you’re back in balance, helping prevent snap decisions that you might have made differently from a place of calm vs. stress. With repetition, making new choices and taking new actions in times of stress, will feel less forced and clunky. The choices you make and actions you take to reset will become more habitual.
Observe Your Experience: Your new choices and actions in moments of stress will likely result in new experiences and feelings, which your brain will auto-filter and judge as positive, negative, or neutral. With awareness, you can make this subconscious process a conscious one. Don’t resist what comes up naturally. Feel emotions as they arise, let them be, and let them flow on through.
Choose Your Adventure: Your emotional response to stressful experiences (or any new experience!) can influence, change, or confirm your beliefs. Your beliefs determine your expectations for the future. This can be helpful… or not. Reflect on the role your beliefs and expectations play in stressful situations. Get curious! Are they useful or stressful? You have a choice. What stays? What goes? Flow is way easier when you remove obstacles, including self-limiting beliefs!
Choose Your Mindset + Repeat: Numerous studies have shown that our “programs” are a big loop: thoughts> choices> actions> experiences> feelings> beliefs> expectations> mindset> thoughts... And, the “wiring” of our programs is strengthened with repetition. Keep returning to healthy thoughts that you consciously choose, especially in stressful times, and you can wire in a healthy mindset, which will help you roll with life’s twists and turns, making it easier to transition from automatic stress response to flow.
Finally, please keep this in mind: DIY efforts are often enough to reset the stress cycle, and can help us chip away at accumulated stress over time. Burnout, however, is more of a rebuild than a reset (in my experience), and you don’t want to do that alone! Find a qualified support system. Doing so doesn’t mean that you’re weak or falling apart. It shows that you’re self-aware and committed to making healthy changes to reclaim and accelerate your well-being. Your brain might say otherwise. Think new thoughts!
More to Explore!
For more on flow, including getting into a creative flow state and the resulting well-being and performance benefits, check out this blog post. If you want to add more wellness into your work day, download our free Wellness at Work Resource Guide. If you’re interested in going deeper, I have a program called The PATH of Well-Being. Whether we work together (or not), if you’re feeling more than a healthy level of stress, please let this be a gentle wakeup call to prioritize your well-being (for reals).
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The information provided is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please seek professional help if there’s a risk of danger to yourself or others, or in cases of trauma recovery.
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