This post is all about how to heal from burnout with these 8 powerful strategies.

Have you been feeling stressed out or anxious lately? Do you find it hard to concentrate, have low energy, feel exhausted all the time, and burn out from life?

Then you are in luck! In this post, I’ll be sharing with you all you need to know on how to heal from burnout, including:

• What is burnout
• Most common signs of burnout
• The 10 stages of burnout
• 8 powerful strategies to overcome it
• And finally how to know if these strategies are working

So buckle up and let’s begin this journey to create your own recovery plan!

What is burnout?

Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion. Normally it’s caused by a prolonged feeling of stress and/or anxiety and it can come from any or all areas of your life (work, personal life, health, etc.).

But how exactly can you determine that you are burnout?

Here are some of the most common symptoms you can feel:

Early signs of burnout

Some of the first signs of burnout you can notice is forgetfulness and an inability to focus. For example, you find it hard to remember words or even simple things like what you did the day before.

Another common symptom is a low immune system. Meaning that you get sick easily because your body no longer has the strength to fight against colds and viruses in your body.

Other early cause of burnout to look out for is a lack of appetite. When your body is in a constant state of fight or flight mode, your body pushes away primal things like hunger. This is usually because all its energy is focused on surviving.

More symptoms can include constant worry, irritability, and mild sadness.

More serious cases of burnout

If your stress and anxiety are getting worse with time, you might:

• Have trouble sleeping. Sleepless nights when you can’t help but overthink and worry about anything and everything in your life.
• Suffer from mild anxiety. Anxiety is another serious sign of burnout to the point it starts affecting your personal life, work, and even health.
• Depression. If your burnout is more serious you might feel hopeless and without direction, as well as sadness, guilt, lack of direction and purpose, etc.
• Anger: What starts as mild irritability or a quick temper turns into full-on anger attacks and yelling matches as burnout becomes more serious.

10 Stages of burnout

Feeling burnout is not turning on and off a stitch. It doesn’t just happen one day.

It’s more of a built-up emotion. As time passes and you neglect this feeling more and more, pushing yourself toward your limit that’s when it starts to build up and become worse.

But how does this happen exactly? Well according to science there are 10 burnout phases..

1. Feeling overly ambitious. You have this renewed energy to prove yourself maybe because of some change in your life, like a different job, a promotion, a living environment, etc.
2. You start working harder. This is where the line between work and life starts getting blurry. You are investing most of your time in work, working harder and harder.
3. Neglect your own needs. The sad truth is ourselves and our needs are one of the first things we start to neglect. You work late, stay up late, and stop prioritizing yourself.
4. Don’t have time for non-work related things. You stop hanging out with your friends, family, and even yourself. Your top priority now is work, work, and work.
5. You are in denial. You continue to believe that your work needs you more than anyone in your life and you deny and dismiss anyone who tells you otherwise.
6. You feel misunderstood, with a lack of direction. You start to feel like no one understands you. You isolate yourself from social activities, family time, and even work events. Because of this, your mental and emotional health becomes worse. You have a quick temper, get irritated easily, complain a lot, and are skeptical.
7. Start to lose yourself. As your stress and anxiety get worse you start to disconnect from yourself including your needs and your self-image. You tie your self worth to your accomplishments, even more, to prove yourself to everyone around you.
8. Inner emptiness, addictive behavior, and anxiety. You have the need to distract yourself from your low self-esteem by engaging in addictive behaviors like alcohol, binge eating, etc
9. You start to feel meaningless and a lack of interest. You feel lost, hopeless, and without direction like your actions are not leading you anywhere. You start to feel uncertain about the future, cannot make decisions, feel worthless, and even depressed.
10. Physical exhaustion to its limit. The last phase of burnout. This stage means a total physical, mental, and emotional breakdown.

Knowing these and identifying which one you are in will help you better come up with a recovery plan to heal from burnout.

How to heal from burnout

Now that you understand and know some of the most common signs, let’s take a look at these 8 powerful tips on how to heal from burnout.

Understand the why

Like with most things in life, knowing why you feel the way you do is 50% part of the solution.

Because when you know and understand what isn’t working in your life, you have it much easier to figure out how you can fix it.

So the first step on how to overcome burnout is to understand and reflect on why you feel this way.

Is it because you are basing all your self worth on your accomplishments? Or maybe you prioritize work too much and have a high workload?

Maybe you are constantly in an environment of high stress, but whatever the reason reflect and review over your life lately and what may be causing this.

Rediscover your values

One of the most common feelings when burnout is feeling lost. As if you don’t know exactly in which direction to move or what to do.

To overcome this I want you to take a look at your values and even rediscover them.

And not only to stop feeling this way but in your daily life as well.

By rediscovering your values you will gain clarity and focus over what is important to you. It will also help you set boundaries (we’ll talk more about that in a sec.) to protect your mental health.

Here is a simple exercise to discover your values:

First of all, values are the things that you believe are important in the way you live your life. They are the fundamental beliefs that guide your actions and determine your priorities. Values are the terms with which you determine if your life feels full, abundant, accomplished, and happy. 

Now inside your values, you have your core values which are the ones that define your biggest priority in life.

One of my favorite benefits of discovering your values and core values is the improvement of your decision-making skills. 

But how can we use values to make better and wiser decisions?

By for example every time you have to make a decision but you find yourself doubting, you simply have to internally ask: “Does this choice support my values and what I stand for? Does this decision support the essence of my true self?

Okay, but how can I discover mine?

1. Write your values

Firstly review the list of examples of core values linked below and select and write down every value that resonates with you as well as the values that most accurately describe your feelings or behaviors. Add any you think of that are not on the list as well. 

A little tip that has really helped me in this step and that I highly recommend is to read the words out loud and feel what emotion they evoked in me.

Here is a list of 100 values worth checking out to find out yours!

2. Categorize values into related groups

Now you have a master list of your values, so the next step is to review the list and see if you can group the values into categories. So for example, you may have written down growth, learning, and personal development. These values are all related and could be placed in one category. 

3. Identify the central theme of your groups

Once you have categorized your values, choose a word (within that group) that best represents each group. You can leave the other words in the group in parentheses next to the central theme word to give the primary value more context.

So continuing with the example mentioned above, let´s say I have a group of values which are growth, learning, and personal development. And I decide that the one I resonate most with is personal growth. 

Then that list would go from- learning, personal development, and growth to “Value: personal development (learning, growth)”.

4. Choose your core values

Now that you have your values chosen and grouped, it´s time to rank the top values in order of importance. While the number of core values people have can vary, try to choose between 3 to 5 core values.

If you have more than 5, ask yourself what values are essential to your life. And remember, in this list, the order has a meaning so make sure to list your values in order from your most meaningful to your least meaningful ones.

Create an action list

This next activity I want you to try is to create an action list of things that bring you peace and make you feel grounded.

That way whenever you start feeling stressed or anxious you can come back to this list

I like to keep mine always with me, even if it’s on my note app. 

And make sure to also include small, simple activities that you can do anywhere like closing your eyes and breathing for 5 minutes, coloring, or listing mentally three things you are grateful for, for example.

Prioritize self care. How to heal from burnout

As we said when talking about the 10 stages of burnout, when we start feeling stressed we neglect ourselves and our needs, which only makes the situation worse.

So whenever you start to feel burnout, no matter the stage you are in I want you to intentionally create time for and prioritize self care.

It could be a little 10-minute self-care idea or you can dedicate an entire morning to it if you want. Whatever you choose make sure it’s something small you can commit to so that you don’t push away when things start to get worse.

Related posts:

• 26 best self care ideas in under 10 minutes
• 48 powerful self care affirmations to boost your self esteem
• How to create a killer daily self care checklist

Set boundaries

Establishing clear boundaries, especially between your work and personal life can make a huge difference not only in helping you heal from burnout but also in avoiding it.

But what are exactly boundaries?

Boundaries are your personal guidelines. They are the limits you set, not only to yourself but to others around you to express and define your needs and limitations.

Here you´ll find a complete beginner’s guide on what are boundaries and how to set them in your life!

Take things slow

Sometimes you might feel burnout because you are trying to achieve too many things at once. It’s something very common if you are an overachiever and/or a perfectionist.

Between a job, your personal life goals, family, home, etc. It can be difficult to create a healthy balance between all of them.

And normally the first thing we start neglecting is ourselves. 

One of the things you can do to avoid this is to take things slow. Try not to take that many responsibilities, limit your list of commitments, and prioritize activities that make you feel good and happy.

Sometimes we take on heavy loads of work or force ourselves to work harder because we feel like that is what we should do.

Like those are the kind of activities that will help us grow and become better every day. And although these are important, so are you, so are your needs, family, friends, etc.

Working is not all there is to live, there are a million other ways of enjoying it. And you can have a healthy balance between your work and personal life.

How to heal from burnout by working on your self esteem

You might remember that in the first tip, we talked about how basing your self worth on your achievements is a very common reason for burnout.

That is why this tip is all about working on your self esteem to shift that mindset.

Now it’s true that this is more of a “long-term solution” or rather a way to avoid feeling burnout. But none of the less is worth investing your time in. 

And not only to avoid feeling burnout.

So how can you boost your self esteem?

There are actually many ways in which you can do this. Including self esteem activities in your daily routine, using affirmations daily, working on yourself, overcoming self limiting beliefs, etc.

But whatever you choose, the most important thing is consistency. Even if you choose a small activity daily or weekly to work on your self esteem it can have a huge impact over time, so don’t underestimate the power of small actions.

And overall, don’t give up!

Related posts:

• How to boost your self esteem and love yourself
• How to improve your relationship with yourself
• 6 Healthy self care ideas to become a better person

Talk to a professional

The truth is there are situations that we cannot solve on our own. And that’s completely okay.

So if you feel like your burnout is affecting your health (and your life) please don’t hesitate to contact a professional, go to therapy, or at least talk to someone you trust in about how you feel.

Needing help is not a sign of vulnerability or failure and you deserve to feel good mentally, emotionally, and physically.

How to know when you’ve actually overcome burnout

Okay so now I have a better idea of what to do when I’m burned out. But how do I know if what I’m doing is working?

Well here are some signs that you are actually overcoming burnout:

• You have more energy
• You feel more positive and optimistic
• You manage your stress in healthy ways
• You are more open to other people’s opinions
• You feel clearer and better mentally, physically and emotionally
• You have the motivation to take on a new project

Here are just some of the signs. But overall you will start to feel more like yourself, and as if you’re living life, and not just surviving or watching the days go by.

Final thoughts on how to heal from burnout

In conclusion, feeling burnout can steal your energy, your good mood, productivity, and even your help. 

But there is a way out of it, and it starts with you.

I hope by following the tips in this post you can start your recovery journey towards a better you and to heal from burnout.

Thank you so much for investing your time in this article and remember that you are worthy of even your deepest and wildest desires!

Here are some more related articles you might be interested in:

• How to overcome feeling stuck in life
• The ultimate life reset checklist you need to reinvent yourself
• How to balance your life areas and live harmoniously