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aburntoutdiscovery · 8 years ago

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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Merry Christmas!

I was hesitating over this title because it sounds a little too dramatic. Decided to go for it anyway!

So Stage 12 of Burnout Syndrome is total mental, emotional and physical collapse - I felt like I got pretty close to that on the 15th December. I didn’t have much energy to walk and a simple would-be doctor check-up turned into a complete 3-day physical and hospital stay. I could barely reach across my hospital bed to a jar of peanut butter which I had no appetite for! My blood work was pristine and the best I got from the psychiatrists was ‘a delayed reaction to anxiety, similar to depression - but we can’t explain your energy levels - maybe the doctors can do that’ (the same doctors that referred me to the shrink). My brother and niece visited from Netherlands and my brother offered to take me over there to see a specialist in burnout to get an official diagnosis since it didn’t seem I could find anyone here. I’m not quite sure if I’ll be doing that - since curveballs are being thrown around my recovery but I know it’s still early days. From what I’ve read it’s pretty difficult to fully recover before 6 months - 1 year - but that is hopefully a small fraction of my life and definitely worth this ride of self-discovery. Considering that I believe my burnout was finally arrived at through it’s own breed of situational depression (Stage 11) - mine is pretty serious so I’m well aware of that. I wanted to write this post to quickly share my perspective on a few advantages and disadvantages of severe burnout:

Disadvantages:

1. Loss of mental power. On the worst days I considered seeing a neurologist. I’d space out and have enough brain fog to not follow through on quite simple commands. Everything I did during the day felt like I was in another body, similar to a mild version of PTSD. Yeah, this was pretty scary. Reality was warped.

2. Cognitive issues. My lowest energy days were marked by difficulty to understand people speaking, delayed response times, loss of any fragment of executive planning, mental power or ability to think creatively - I wasn’t sad perse, I just literally felt like my brain had been downgraded about fifteen levels.

3. Feels like you’ve ‘lost’ yourself and you’re not quite sure if you’ll ever feel normal again. Before burnout, most people who would describe me would say I was unflinchingly positive, intelligent, optimistic, ambitious, idealistic, and a bundle of energy. Right now, at 25, I need to sit down after walking a few hundred metres, occasionally stop speaking during board games due to feeling dizzy or stand up due to palpitations, and I’m not sure where the hell my creativity has gone - the one thing I took most pride in - hopefully it’s sitting cosily somewhere in my brain waiting around for me to heal.

4. Frequent mild headaches, dizziness, etc.

At the hospital I remember telling the psychiatrist, while lying in bed, that I didn’t want to go back to being a lawyer because I wanted to build an international NGO. This, while barely being able to walk to the bathroom. I remember feeling a little ridiculous as the words clumsily stumbled out of my mouth. I know previous me could have done it. Current me, not so much.

So without further ado, to the flip side:

Advantages:

1. Exploring and very, very slowly trying to reconnect with who I was.

2. Refilling the fuel tank - food and joy to combat neurotransmitters being out of whack - simple things like books, tea, movies, walks, being lighthearted and not dramatic - developing a ‘so what’ attitude to the difficult, and trickles of hopes and dreams.

3. Learning about others going through and coming out the other side is so wonderfully uplifting - this is probably my go-to mood boost. I feel a little (extremely little) more ‘me’ every day - what could be more encouraging?

4. Time off work (necessary and sometimes I wish I was still working, but still nice being able to sleep in).

5. Regaining your energy and the subtle ways in which your brain feels a little different every day feels pretty great.

6. Falling in love with Mark all over again. Remembering how alive we felt at the future we created together and learning where I went wrong just makes you realise that you can’t trick yourself into living someone else’s life.

7. It’s more interesting than an average life. This is a biggie. Burnout can be horribly cruel and wonderfully curious - it takes away all 3 aspects of energy, mental and physical power - but it somehow is anything but boring.

8. Realising how much my body responds to every action, every choice, every food, every thought - and realising how much control I have over all of those.

9. Learning that it’s possible, on the worst days, to just get through the day. And very doable. On my most spaced out day ever, I wrote a song about being a happy zombie and made Mark sing it to me. Win.

10. Becoming stronger. There are some things which break you down so thoroughly they force you to either surrender or create yourself anew, better than before. That second option is the joy - it’s the wonder.

11. Nothing ever turns out as badly as you imagine it to be. Reading this you’re probably thinking ‘wow, what an ordeal’ - but you could just as easily think ‘wow, what a journey’.

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aburntoutdiscovery · 8 years ago

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The Difference Between Burnout and Silly-Worded ‘Depression’

Good afternoon! I wanted to clear up some confusion that seems to have cropped up among some people regarding what I’m ‘dealing’ with (sounds quite somber). So I wanted to bust some myths for those who are interested but confused about the whole ordeal:

1. Burnout is not the same as depression

- A lot of confusion surrounds this because once at an advanced stage, burnout truly can mimic mild to moderate depression - strange, unrelenting ‘low’ moods, extreme brain fog and feeling spaced out, not being able to follow conversations properly, not having the mental energy to speak properly in social situations - in extreme cases some people temporarily lose the ability to read out of sheer mental depletion (luckily I only felt this on one day). These are all neurotransmitter-related and mental exhaustion issues. The difference between the type of depression (what a sunshine-filled word) that is all-too misunderstood and wrongly stigmatised in social circles and burnout is that burnout has physical instigators and depression has psychological and genetic instigators, often with a physical trigger. The lines get even more blurry when you consider people prone to neuroses are more likely to get either.

So what’s the difference? Burnout is not caused by a mental health issue. I tried seeing a psychologist when I first started having extreme anxiety that was interfering with my ability to function - this didn’t help matters - I just found myself getting worse. I had no deep ‘underlying’ issues that needed to be addressed other than my health concerns from having a really weird range of unexplained but very real symptoms (which, when taken out of burnout-causing situation, suddenly became a lot more rational and am now anxiety free 99% of the time) - I truly wish the psychologist had, at the time, warned me of my dire need to take a break to reset my stress response - this could have avoided progression.

Treating burnout as primarily a mental health issue can make symptoms worse. Although psychologists can be very useful for those struggling from the anxiety and depressive feelings brought on by burnout, recognising it as a primarily mental health issue can be dangerous. I believe first a burnout diagnosis should be sought and then, if desired, psychologists can help treat the psychological fallout. By thinking my burnout was mental health related, I did these things which exacerbated the condition:

1) Kept working at the same pace and tried to ‘treat’ the anxiety without lowering my stress levels, only making matters spiral further out of control

2) The single biggest damage is that, thinking I had depression, I started a very intense exercise routine as I knew aerobic exercise 3x weekly was proven to alleviate depressive symptoms. My body being in a weakened state, this was the single biggest adrenal crash I had - it took my progress back by about 1 whole month of recovery.

When taken away from the burnout situation and once the physical issues are addressed, all the physical, emotional, and mental issues related to burnout begin to heal - but it takes time and in advanced stages the symptoms linger for many months. The depressive symptoms brought on by burnout are reactive and situational in nature - once the body and mind are in an extremely weakened state - the individual becomes prone to anxiety, depressive symptoms and reactive hypoglycemia - much like the person does not have a natural tendency towards hypoglycemia, the person usually does not have a natural tendency towards depressive feelings. Prior to my burnout, I had never had a single depressive mood in my entire life (not the same as sadness - oh so not the same).

2. Burnout is not an anxiety disorder

At the late stages I really had reason to think I had an anxiety disorder - the anxiety became unrelenting. Having actually had severe anxiety in the past and a tendency to anxiety, this was the natural conclusion. Once my body returns to a calm state, the anxiety pretty much all but disappears. Truthfully, as my first blog post described - I did get some anxiety every few months in the past - it was always manageable and never truly interfered with my life - burnout is another beast entirely.

3. Burnout drains all resources of the body - physical, mental, and emotional.

4. Burnout is more likely among perfectionists and people who have unrealistic expectations of themselves

5. Burnout is more common among neurotics

6. Burnout can happen to optimistic, lighthearted and easy-going people

7. Burnout can literally happen to anyone (read: anyone) under extended periods of stress and insufficient dietary compensation. Inherent neurotic tendencies simply aggravate the situation - neurosis feeds burnout, but does not cause it.

Burnout is a state of complete physical, mental and emotional depletion where all the body’s stress reserves have been utterly drained after a prolonged period of using up the same reserves (not eating, over exercising, not relaxing, being on hyper-alert) without replenishing them. All individuals are susceptible to burnout at similar levels of perceived stress.

Since in the most advanced stages of burnout, the associated depressive symptoms are (for me at least) the most challenging to deal with, this often causes people to make false assumptions.

This being said, one thing burnout has taught me is that it doesn’t matter too much how someone ends up feeling depressive symptoms - what matters is that and how they’re dealt with. I think the vast majority of people still have a hidden ‘judgement’ and unspoken stigma regarding people who experience true depression (non-situational) - perceiving people as inherently lazy, weak, negative and complaining, damaged. My experience with depressive symptoms has been mild to moderate level, 2-3 times a week for several hours. In other words, I ‘feel’ sad for no reason sometimes due to neurotransmitters being pretty wrecked. When this happens I can usually sum up the energy to journal, do something productive, or dance for no reason to get those neurotransmitters firing again - and I usually start feeling fine again. People with true depression on the other hand, usually have, through no fault of their own, false negative beliefs about their lives and themselves feeding a depressive cycle - those who take steps to overcome these issues, in my opinion, are the strongest people in our society. The true ‘lows’ I have experienced to this extent, I can count on one hand at the very beginning of my burnout - knowing that a large number of people experience this kind of low daily for months or even years - I have developed an unbreakable respect towards anyone dealing with this. I truly believe it when I say they are much stronger than the rest of us. Until you’ve felt, at least once in your life, what it’s like to have pain, real pain (the dementor kiss), so severe that you feel like you must escape your body - please do not dare to judge anyone who has experienced true depression - you’d be a hypocrite anyway, unless you also judge the likes of JK Rowling, Angelina Jolie, Princess Diana, and countless others.

*A note on partner support*

A couple people have remarked how strong/rare my partner Mark is for ‘supporting me through this’ (somewhat dramatic). It made me sad to see that this is not seen as the norm in a healthy, loving, mutually giving relationship! I am extremely grateful for Mark (our relationship makes me more blessed than millionaires in perfect health) not only because of what he does for me but because of who we are together - I do not complain to him, or pretend him to fix me, or allow him or myself to wallow. Now that our financial roles have switched it’s normal that, as much as possible, I’ve taken up other roles to balance things out. I have once or twice contemplated whether, if my situation escalated, I’d be a ‘burden’ but Mark promptly squashed those fears and I realised that being proactive and responsible for my own recovery is the best thing I can do to keep things balanced. I think it’s perfectly ok to take shifts leaning a little more on each other, but I don’t think it’s ok to drag each other down or stop giving what we can or depending on the other needlessly. I’ve always tried to be a positive bundle of optimism and that doesn’t change because you go through something. There have been quite a few days since this that I’ve been the one dancing in the living room trying to pick Mark up when he has been feeling low due to his own matters - it’s really give and take. I believe if you cultivate respect in a relationship then you both deserve each other equally - I try to treat him like a king and he treats me like a queen and we never, ever take each other for granted - we thank each other about 30 times a day and remind each other each day of how much we appreciate what the other has done. We dance, sing, play - these things don’t stop just because somebody is facing something. What a horrible world that would be!

I try not to be negative about this situation because, at core, I believe this is a journey of self-discovery. True - some of the symptoms, especially feeling sad for no reason for 2 days a week, or feeling spaced out sometimes, or not being able to exercise at all or socialise much for now, suck a little - but what I am going through is very little compared to what some people have soldiered through - and those people know bravery most people will never touch.

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aburntoutdiscovery · 8 years ago

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So that’s what that is.

Reading my last blog post already feels outdated - I have learnt so much about adrenal fatigue and burnout since then. I will keep this one short!

Today is the first full recovery-fuelled day.

Made some more little changes to take agency of my health. No more skipping breakfasts, no more going a whole day with 2 glasses of water. Mark and I have made an impromptu office in the currently spare room! To combat morning lows, getting an extra half hour of sleep after waking (does wonders). Focusing on mainly liquid meals to ease on the digestive system. Trying to start the day with one or two small chores for a productivity boost and really worked today! Now trying to build up a routine of cooking and having 5-6 small nutrient dense meals throughout the day to avoid hypo crashes. I also joined a spa and am forcing myself not to exercise or work for the time being (a lot more difficult than it sounds).

One thing I know this is going to take is patience. It can apparently take 4 weeks before reserves start to rebuild... so I’ve got to strap myself in for the long haul. Whenever that feels like a long time, I remind myself how far I’ve already come (and it really is far since this started). The eating really helps the ‘spaced out’ feelings and severe brain fog. I am learning to listen to what my body responds to, and it’s great. I’m basically rebuilding my entire nervous system from scratch and I want that nervous system to be full of creativity, music, love, nourishing food, relaxation, mind management, patience, and just the right amount of not giving a damn.

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aburntoutdiscovery · 8 years ago

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Shit son, our brains can lie!

Cortisol. Designed to keep you alive in an ancient world, destined to kill you in a modern world.

I’m a happy person. Extremely positive. My parents did all the right things! Except, for some unknown mix of biological and psychological factors, a little anxiety monster crept up upon me when I was 18. It was then I realised my mind was capable of things other than the image of a daisy being cuddled by a polar bear. From a panic attack and a few hospital trips developing over the course of a year (”the only thing we can find is that your heart is racing”, “you’re dehydrated” “your chest x-ray is flawless [why thank you]”), I developed a deeply satisfying hypochondria - which would be my little pet, adopted from a shelter, by my side for the upcoming years.

My brain grew in wondrous ways over the next few years. Though my relationship with fear remained very primal. The fear was rarely about tangible events but almost always either health or sanity related. Anxiety being the creative squirrel it can be, I started coasting through the motions - I tasted panic, agoraphobia, and developed an acute sensitivity to all peculiar bodily sensations. Every time I sailed through and conquered one anxious fear - another would, months later, rear its head and claim some enjoyment of my life.

Once I started full time employment as a lawyer that’s when the squirrel really went nutty. Driven by work stress, perfectionism, a desire to outperform and the total absence of creative output and socialisation, the squirrel had a field day, every day. Anything and everything became a threat. Slowly but surely and definitely without my noticing, the squirrel began to drag me down into darker and darker realities. One month, I’d overcome the news of having given myself a brain tumour after smelling my boss’s piece of toast. The next, depersonalisation made me accept I’d never touch reality again. By this time, every weekend on a Sunday, I’d started having these very low existential lows - the feeling was alien, or so I thought. During all of this, my work responsibilities were piling up, fueled by my increased mental processing speed. I was an anxious force to be reckoned with. The next month, my thoughts about anxiety became so overwhelming I ‘knew’ I had an unstoppable thinking disease that would never let me enjoy reality again. On top of that, I had also, a few months prior, decided this would be the perfect time to buy a house and save 90% of my wage from then on in order to cover it. We were in a promise of sale. The only way out of this hellhole I saw was the acceptance of the thinking disease. I remember distinctly lying on my bed that afternoon having finally resigned to the reality and telling myself the only way to move forward was to except I’d never be able to enjoy anything again. I remember getting these balls of stress in my abdomen that made me feel like I was dying.

That evening we went to a house party and I loved it. I felt like myself. But then something happened - we got a call from the owner of the property we had just given up and were told that he didn’t accept the refusal letter we had given him from the bank and he’d need further proof. Proof which we didn’t have. Knowing my anxiety would make me need to leave work, I felt like the stress was finally insurmountable. I had one last ball of extreme turmoil in my gut and I thought I’d faint.

The next morning, I woke up and couldn’t feel. The energy needed to form a complete sentence was lacking - I could feel the time taken between my brain sending the signal for a word to be said and my mouth reacting. My organs had been swiftly replaced with lead. I was unable to focus on anything my boyfriend was saying. I was pretty sure I was clinically depressed. I told work, we sorted out a final few hurdles with getting out of the house, and was given two weeks off. My psychologist said it was situational depression, a doctor said it might be depression, I had no idea what I was dealing with.

The most striking feeling I had was the realisation that the final blow of depression was actually, for the most part, better than my previous reality. Better than the deepest depths the anxiety had taken me to. The thoughts were completely gone. My mind was still. Void. Peaceful. Dead. It was simultaneously refreshing and depressing in itself. I remember at first feeling extremely relieved I was depressed. Anything was better than the realities I had made for myself over the course of the previous months. I ‘just’ had depression - and I was quite alright - kind of. My anxiety, all that time, had been nothing but a series of lies fuelled by my deepest fears. I couldn’t believe what I had let myself do to myself. I had put my body through the emotional reality of being diagnosed with a different terminal or degenerative illness each month - and my body was about to pay the price. My negative thoughts, conditioned by stress hormones, had destroyed me. I realised that the perception of stress - wherever we perceive it, whatever we let it feed off - usually our long-held false negative beliefs - can kill us simply through lies we keep believing - people kill themselves over self-told complete and utter lies. The reality was harrowing.

Over the course of those two weeks full of 100% recovery-focused energy, I went from moderate to severe depression 4 days a week to mild depression twice a week. Hurrah! I was almost cured and ready to go back to work! I restarted work promptly, with all the verve and energy I had had, this time on half days. That weekend the relapse was just as bad as the first time it hit. I was concerned, to say the least. I went on a previously planned 10 day holiday to visit my niece in the Netherlands and felt more or less fine on most days. I was so happy - it was almost over (right?).

I returned to work on half days - acutely aware of the 3-hour lows I’d have from waking until around 11am - but this time remembering my brother muttering the words ‘burn-out’ and not being quite sure what I had. Was it burnout, situational depression, full blown depression, mild depression? No idea.

At work on most days my processing speed was almost inexistent. I remember my brother saying not to expect to do more than one hour of work a day for the first few weeks. Of course, that wasn’t me. I managed the first week, rarely more than 1-2 hours. Although those 1-2 hours of work still took all the mental energy I had. The next week, I went up to 2-3. The next, 3-4. I was finally getting better, but slowly. I felt like this all was a cruel trick on my hypochondria. Someone who previously held the golden standard for feeling physically perfect - I had requested an MRI over an unfamiliar smell of a piece of bread - had now been given mush for brains and was tasked with not freaking out.

Miraculously, my cortisol being fully depleted, I had no anxiety for the first wonderful few weeks. The depressive lows, I could handle - as long as they didn’t bring anxiety. I had peaceful and positive thoughts whenever I wasn’t in a low. My mind felt like it was changing. My boyfriend Mark and I decided that, nevertheless, due to the lows, it would be best if I called it quits from work for the time being. I knew that being there was not aiding my recovery - and a hypochondriac is nothing if not hell-bent on recovery. I didn’t want pills unless they became unavoidable. For once, my health-obsessed nature was put to good use - despite having to recover from something brought on by itself. Ironic.

My managers suggested a 3-day half-day week. It was the final frontier. I accepted and we started a Tuesday, Thursday, Friday routine.

That first Monday I had a low from being home alone for most of the day - but it was distinctly very mild. The Wednesday after, I remember reading a book about depression and then learning that Stephen Fry had something called ‘cyclothymia’ and my cortisol reared its now somewhat alive but severely malfunctioning head. I probably had this. I was feeling happier and happier as the weeks went by - surely this was a sign of early bipolar. This was more rational than the other diseases I had given myself, so it was ‘necessary’ and justified to panic over it, so I told myself. Turns out that post burn-out self takes much longer to recover from anxiety than pre-burnout self - and I had no prefrontal cortex power left - that is, no physical capacity to rationalise health-related thoughts.

That night I didn’t sleep well and work was a blur the next day - I felt these moments of dizziness and confusion and feared the worst. I must have had a degenerative brain condition. I tried to calm myself down but it was almost impossible. Eventually I managed and the next few days the confusion lessened. Phew.

The next Monday I felt almost fine - pretty much no low at all. I decided to turn a new leaf and start an ambitious exercise program - I attended a HIIT session and subsequently a handstand yoga class and felt very energised after. However, during the yoga class I felt a very funny confused feeling in my brain and knew this time - I had epilepsy. The feeling lingered for a few days and I went to the GP after work - I felt utterly horrid in the waiting room. Having actually had what I believe to be a mild seizure on a funfair ride when I was 18, I actually had the slightest sliver of a reason to think this was true. The doctor was a little confused but gave me a prescription for something called Strezam.

I went home and calmed down and kept the prescription without using it for the time being, knowing that if needed I would try not to oppose it. My cortisol levels were operating a little more highly now and my body was having none of it. My energy levels plummeted to almost zero. I was confused - my depressive lows were better than ever but my energy was worse. I realised my double exercise whammy, brought on by my desire to be better, faster, and recover quicker, was probably too much and I had fried my Central Nervous System. This was a little disheartening - exercise was a pinnacle of recovery.

One week later I tried to calm things down, and energy levels were up again - so went to an intermediate yoga class and felt great. The next day I was nauseous, felt feverish without a fever, and was spaced out almost to the extent I had been when the depression first hit, but not quite. It took me five minutes to photocopy something. I couldn’t register what people were saying. It took Mark and a lot of conversation to keep the hypochondria at bay, but I was quite proud of myself for not fully freaking out. Still, cortisol levels were messing me up. Overall though, months ago, I’d have panicked over anxiety alone - now I actually had more symptoms, a worn-out rationality centre, and yet the conversation with Mark kept me from freaking out - definite progress. I recognised I had a healthy anxiety issue and I knew I had to start working on my fears head on. If I was ever going to heal, this had to be dealt with proactively. It could no longer fester in the depths of my mind while I ignored it. Ignoring it made it stronger. I knew this because I had recently discovered an incredible book - “The Chimp Paradox” - which I highly recommend. I gave in my final notice at work - asked when would be the earliest to leave - and had my final work day that Friday. I did some research and found out from everything I had been reading, I was most probably suffering extreme burnout but not full-blown depression. The frequent lows were a ‘part’ of the burnout.

That weekend was the first almost low-free weekend in months. It was great but on Saturday got extremely anxious at a social dinner. Guessing that is part of my body being able to produce cortisol again. I’m going to have to deal with this head-on. Also of course, as every day since this happened, things felt off. In a different way each day.

That brings me to now. Monday. Had a very mild low in the morning, so mild pretty much unnoticeable. Wonderful. Main symptoms are tired and dry eyes, hair-trigger fear response, mild weird feelings in head, distinct and worrying slowness of my left finger. It feels like using my left hand is a little more difficult than usual - I know rationally and from the horrid internet this is all part of the depressive side of burnout - and have accepted I will, like a rational human, get it checked only if it gets worse. Incredibly, the one thing that hasn’t been touched is my sleep or, on 8/10 days, my appetite.

Overall, I’m very optimistic about the future. I am going to focus 100% on my health for a while and nourish it to the best it can be. I know burnout takes anywhere from 6 months if treated to 4 years to recover. Some people who never come down from altitude, so to speak, never fully recover.

Giving my body the best shot it has will become my full-time job now. That and working on my anxiety issues - one step at a time - my anxiety being, all things considered, the lowest it has in years. I will start exercising again slowly, finally accepting that this recovery may not be something I can overachieve at. I will work on being kind to myself when I start worrying about recurring or new symptoms. This is my journey - and for the most part, I’m happier than I have been in six months - even before the depressive blow. I’ve started feeling excited about the future again and it’s fantastic. I’m into mindfulness and on the bad days, the limit I expect of myself is enjoying a cup of tea - and I really, really enjoy my cups of tea.

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