Burnout, recovery and community
(Nimue)
After my previous post on burnout I set off to do some reading and it turns out the science around this is interesting stuff. Research into people with workplace derived burnout has happened, and the available evidence indicates that what happens around workplace burnout is much the same as what happens in other situations of overwhelming and extended stress.
Burnout affects the physical structure of the brain. This is not surprising as everything we do with our brains contributes to the structures we have in there. Specifically, burnout weakens connections between the amygdala and the frontal cortex. As a person becomes overloaded with stress, that older more instinctive part of the brain takes over, and the rational part of the brain becomes less able to get the steering wheel. The more burnout you experience, the less able you become to push through or tough it out. You become more vulnerable to panic and less able to cope.
This is really important stuff. You cannot develop resilience while being hammered. It’s not physically possible. The only way to recover is through rest, time off and changing the situation that caused the problem in the first place. The advice is explicit about that when dealing with workplace stress overload. Why we aren’t applying that understanding to other forms of stress overload I do not know. It’s clearly the ongoing stress that burns people out, not the precise method by which it hits you.
The vast majority of mental health advice focuses on changing your thinking and fixing the inside of your head. But, what we know from workplace burnout is really clear that you cannot fix your head if your environment is making you sick.
This is where I think the community aspect comes into play. The person with no wriggle room cannot magically create time off for themselves. The person who is under too much pressure may well not have the resources or the opportunity to lighten that load for themselves. When we insist on treating these as personal problems, we put many people in situations they cannot hope to overcome and that will just grind them down.
However, when we support and take care of each other, all of that changes. We can give each other respite, share loads, and bring each other uplifting and restorative things. If we work as a community and take each other’s wellbeing seriously then the scope for everyone to be well greatly improves. This doesn’t have to mean dramatic and difficult interventions – indeed I’m pretty sure we’re all better off avoiding those. Small, everyday acts of kindness and mutual assistance can lighten everyone’s loads. Being resilient together is far more realistic than trying to do it alone, and any small gestures we can make will contribute to this.
