Holistic Approach to Burnout Recovery
What is a "holistic approach to burnout"?
To many the first association to “burnout” is a physical or mental condition that is caused by pushing too much and being exposed to too much stress — be it physical or mental.
But in my opinion, burnout encompasses more areas than just physical and/or mental.
In this article I’ll explore the idea of a “holistic approach to burnout recovery”: what is it, what does it look like and how to implement it in your own life to conquer and overcome burnout.
The consequence doesn’t always equal the cause
Like I talk about in my article 9 Biggest Lessons I’ve learned on my Burnout Journey, when I burned out for the first time in late 2017, the symptoms were tied mainly to the physical burnout — adrenal fatigue — and that’s why I made the assumption that the primary cause and reason for this was of physical nature.
I thought that I had just been pushing my body too much for too long. I thought that I had been drinking too much caffeine. That I hadn’t eaten enough for my body’s needs. That I’d been pushing too much with the low carb and keto diet. That I hadn’t got enough quality rest and sleep and that I had trained too much and hadn’t allowed my body to recover properly.
But the consequence does not always equal the cause.
Sure, all the things mentioned above contributed to me burning out. Chronically not eating enough, drinking too much caffeine and training everyday, put my body under chronic stress and in a chronic fight or flight mode, which caused my adrenals to overproduce stress hormones, which lead to adrenal fatigue and burnout.
But with time and exploration, I started to realize that there was more to my burnout than just things related to the physical realm. There were other factors that contributed to me being in a chronic stressed-out state and consequently burning out: digestion problems and food intolerances, accumulated stress and emotional stuff, poor sleep, mental pressures and negative energy, living life and operating without joy, passion and sense of purpose and mission.
You can read more about what I learned from my burnout in this article:
Types of burnout
There are many different types of burnout — Physical, Mental, Emotional, Spiritual, Social, Sensory, Creative, etc — but they can all manifest in the
physical realm: in the form of tiredness, fatigue, physical burnout or adrenal fatigue;
and/or mental realm: loss of drive, motivation, brain fog and inability to focus on do mental work, problems with mental health (eg. anxiety and depression).
But this doesn’t mean that we should focus only on healing our physical body and taking care of our minds and emotional state.
That’s just addressing the consequences and not addressing and fixing the underlying causes that brought to burnout.
Although physical and mental health is crucial for overcoming and conquering our burnout, these are only two of the foundations and pillars of burnout.
If we focus only on the physical area and neglect other realms of health — our lifestyle, our mind, emotional and spiritual area — we most likely won’t be able to overcome and conquer our burnout.
“Because the house cannot stand firmly on one pillar alone.”
The four pillars of burnout
My personal philosophy, which I have been researching and developing for the last few years, is that our health, well-being and ability to overcome and conquer burnout is based on four pillars.
These four pillars are:
1. The Body and Physical realm
2. The Lifestyle
3. The Mind and Emotional realm
4. The Soul and Spiritual health
Although it might seem that these areas are not connected and that they each operate separately and individually, imbalances between these four pillars can result in burnout.
Some basic examples of how are these realms connected to each other:
Too much physical stress will negatively affect our sleep which will negatively affect our emotional state which will cause problems with mental health, which will further negatively impact our physical realm.
Poor sleep will negatively affect all of the other realms — how our body functions, how we handle stress, our emotional realm and our spiritual health.
If we’re under a lot of psychological stress and we don’t know how to properly deal with it, the stress will negatively affect our digestion which will negatively impact our emotional state and mental health since our gut directly influences our mind across the vagus nerve.
If we have a lot of underlying emotional distress or we carry a lot of repressed, unprocessed emotional stuff, this might negatively affect the nervous system and our ability to handle stress, which will negatively impact all other realms.
The last aspect is the realm of the spirit, soul or psyche — whatever you want to call it — and spiritual health. This is the most poorly and misunderstood aspect of the four pillars and also often quite a taboo topic, but has a huge importance for our health and other three pillars.
Because things form a whole, we need to pay attention and strengthen all four pillars. That’s what I mean by “holistic approach to burnout”.
The holistic approach to burnout
The word “holistic” by definition means “dealing with or treating the whole of something or someone and not just a part”. So a holistic approach means not focusing just on one aspect or symptom of burnout, but rather focusing on the whole: improving all four pillars to improve and raise the whole.
Taking care of the body and physical realm, living a healthy lifestyle, strengthening the mind and taking care of the emotional state and our spiritual health is the true definition of the phrase “holistic approach to burnout”.
How to implement the holistic approach in your own life?
First we have to evaluate each of the four pillars and areas and see where we stand. Based on that we then make the plan to start working and improving these pillars one by one or all four at the same time.
Elevate only one area and you will see an improvement in all other areas. Elevate all areas and you will see how your life will change!
Stay tuned for all my new content regarding these four health pillars coming in the following weeks and months. I’m really excited about what’s to come!