Mastering Fear in the Face of Burnout

How Burnout Fuels Fear and Practical Tools To Conquer It

Is fear holding you back from living a fulfilling life? It's time to break free from its suffocating grip!

In this issue of Conquering Burnout, I explore the lesser-known connection between burnout and fear, how burnout can trigger long-term fear, and its detrimental effects on our daily lives. 

In the end, I offer valuable insights and practical tools that helped me to reclaim control and tame fear once and for all.

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One of the worst long-term challenges that burnout can leave us with is fear of burnout.

You might have heard me say this before in previous newsletters but it bears repeating: What makes burnout so challenging is the fact that it affects multiple areas of our health and well-being at the same time: it affects both our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

Burnout doesn’t just cause physical consequences, it can also leave some mental and psychological problems: among others, burnout can cause anxiety, depression, trauma, fear, and panic attacks that can range in both intensity - from mild to severe - and frequency - from occasional to very frequent, even daily. 

And long-term fear caused by a singular intense episode or by several repeating episodes of burnout is one of the lesser-known psychological consequences of burnout.

I can speak from my own experience: When I’m feeling really low — when I’m physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually really tired, fatigued, or exhausted — the fear of burnout comes back to haunt me. I’m afraid that I’m on the edge and that I might burn out once again. 

But is that fear real and useful, or is it just an illusion, a negative spiral pattern produced by the past experience and trauma of burnout, and thus counterproductive?

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Fear is an odd thing: it usually plays tricks on our minds because we can’t tell whether it’s real and useful, or not. 

It’s difficult to tell sometimes if negative emotions, anxiety, and worries that fear brings might be useful and “real”: Anxiety and fear are produced by our survival mind to remind us and warn us of what might happen if we continue on at this pace. So after you burn out, anxiety and fear are there to remind you of the burnout experience and they try to prevent you from burning out again.

But at the same time, fear can not only be counterproductive but also very detrimental to our health. 

Fear is rooted in the memories of past traumatic and stressful events and triggers the amygdala to take over control of our mind.

When we experience fear, our primitive brains send the signal to our bodies and nervous system that we’re under threat and that they should activate the Fight or Flight system. 

Evolutionarily Fight or Flight (ForF) was essential for survival since when humans or animals found themselves in danger it enabled them to fight or flee from that life-threatening situation and thus survive (think of a gazelle running away from a lion)

The problem arises when fear and ForF response are chronically activated.

During ForF, our body prioritizes short-term survival and sends all the blood, oxygen, and nutrients to our muscles and limbs so we can fight or run away, at the same time all other body functions - immune system, organs, and tissues -  turn off which causes long-term problems, chronic diseases, and health issues. 

Since our immune system is turned down and is not functioning optimally, it can’t fight off viruses and we get more sick. Since our digestion is not working properly, we don’t get enough nutrients and energy from the food that we eat, which causes our body even more stress. Since our brains don’t get enough blood, oxygen, and nutrients, we can’t think clearly, we feel foggy, and can’t do mental and creative work.

Fear can also create an illusion that holds us back and inhibits our growth.

Our survival mind wants to keep us safe and alive and therefore it produces fear and anxiety of burnout to keep us in that comfort zone where nothing bad will happen to us. But at the same time, if we give in to that fear and remain in the comfort zone for too long, we will grow weaker, fear will reinforce itself and grow stronger and we’ll find ourselves in a vicious cycle of fear, from where it’s very hard to escape.

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As I mentioned above, the fear of burnout is something that I still struggle with a lot from time to time. Sometimes this fear can be there a for short time and then vanishes, or there can come a period of time where I’m fighting it for a couple of days, sometimes up to a week. 

But over time, as I’ve learned about fear and experienced it, every time I got over it and beat it I became stronger mentally and emotionally and it became easier for me to confront it the next time it arose.

Following are all the tools and practices that I’ve discovered and learned over the past few years that help me tame fear and overcome it.

Analyze The Fear

When fear arises, the first thing I do is analyze it.

By nature, I’m a very analytical person and I have a very strong mind - which can be both a good and a not-so-good thing - so my default reaction is to analyze and “debunk” the thing, look at it objectively and remove subjective and emotional weight from it. 

A ton of problems can be solved by simply looking at them objectively and by removing the emotional charge associated with them. 

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1. “False Evidence Appearing Real” (“F.E.A.R.”) exercise 

With this first exercise, as the name implies, I try to debunk fear and realize that it’s not real.

Exercise helps me look at fear objectively, helps me understand what are some of the mechanisms behind the fear, where it has shown in the past, if there is anything that this fear is trying to say to me and teach me, etc.

Here are some of the questions that you can use to explore and unmask your fear:

• “What are the objective facts about this fear?”, 

• “Where has this fear not been true before in the past?”, 

• “What do I know now that I didn't before that makes this different?”

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2. Fear-Setting

You might have seen or heard of this exercise in Tim Ferris’ book The 4-Hour WorkWeek or TEDx talk that he did a couple of years ago. 

The “Fear-Setting” exercise consists in defying our fears and worst-case scenarios and what we can do about it. When we do this exercise, we:

1. Realize that our biggest fears don’t have solid grounds and we’ve been living in the illusion of our minds. 

2. Step out of our comfort zone and start taking steps to make the leap into the unknown and steps to prevent those worst-case scenarios from happening.

This exercise helps me realize that the fear that I experience and the worst-case scenario are not as bad as they seemed before and the steps I can take to prevent the worst-case scenario are much easier than they appeared to be.  

If you want to learn more about this exercise, you can check out the newsletter I did about it some time ago or check out Tim Ferris’ TedX talk:

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3. The One Question

In the past when I found myself on rough seas, paddling in the waves of anxiety and afraid that I'm on the edge of burnout, the one question that helped me the most was this one:

"What would I do and how would I behave if I didn't have the fear of burning out?"

This question helped me realize that I should focus on what I can control and act according to that. 

So when I find myself paralyzed by fear, I ask myself this series of questions:

• "What would I do and how would I behave if I didn't have the fear of ___?

• “What are the things I know I should do and how I know I should act but I don't because I'm afraid?"

You can learn more about this exercise in the newsletter below:

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4. Journaling

All these 3 exercises above I found work best when journaling.

Journaling is such a powerful tool and can have a profound healing effect on both our general and mental health. 

Journaling works on 2 levels: When you journal, you can access both the deeper part of your mind and brain and also your unconscious or subconscious mind, which represents 90-95% of the intelligence of the mind and body and it’s thus much more powerful that the conscious mind is.

You don’t have to journal just structurally using questions and prompts presented in the first 3 exercises. You can also free journal: just write and describe what are the feelings, emotions, and experiences of the fear that you’re feeling and experiencing and really feel it. 

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But sometimes you can’t really rationally think yourself out of the fear.

Sometimes our minds are too strong and we can’t think ourselves of what we’re experiencing and we have to use other physical, emotional, and spiritual tools and practices to escape the grips of fear, “override it” and leave it behind us.

Since this nesletter is getting a bit (too) long, I’ll write more about these tools in the newsletter next week, so stay tuned for that!