Workaholic recovering from chronic burnout 🥲

I’m finished with being a workaholic but worse is unlearning old burnout habits that keep me egged on. No more glorifying feeling good from having so much work done. No more OTs for me if it’s truly unnecessary.

I knew that my mental health was in the gutter when my friends would talk to me but half my soul felt out of the convo, I was disassociating so hard I had to bring myself back to the chat

So I’m working to break down old habits & these are what helped me

1️⃣ I breathe so I can be in the present

I made it a habit to stop what I’m doing & ground myself in my present, not the work I do but really in me. Check my body for how I feel, take deep slowed breathes and look around me

2️⃣ Recognising my stress signals

Contrary to general knowledge, stress is useful to stay motivated & creative. If we’ve too little we get bored, too much and we burn. Learning to spot the signs is important, this can be done by using 2 models - Yerkes-Dodson curve and emotions wheel.

Yerkes-Dodson curve (stress curve) : https://tinyurl.com/ywvnzsdh

shows one where are we on the stress spectrum, the outputs from being on that point, the signals on our body & the emotions.

Emotion wheel - https://tinyurl.com/3xrf2ypv

helps one identify what are they feeling. I use this to see if i’m showing more negative emotions or positive. It’ll help me locate where am I on the stress curve

But most of all, you want to often come back to a calm state of mind and emotionally relaxed. You’d wanna get to what we call in the “parasympathetic nervous mode,” where we rest and digest 🥹 That’s also where we feel most bonded & connected to love ones and or are in most creative. Which we want, we want to be creative & not suffer brain fog 🤌

3️⃣Using directive journaling to monitor my stress signals then reframing myself out of fight/flight mode

I CBT myself a lot, like a lot a lot. I have a bad history of being negative or overly pessimistic so I need this if not I’ll be stuck in a high stressed mode. We no want too much stress, chronic stress = Aging. Nah nah, not at late twenties. Basically You’d want to first “list down what’s the situation,”then “what are my thoughts,” then “ what am I feeling.” Then from there, identify any stress causing triggers, what are the stressor signals like headache or difficulty breathing then when was the stress peak & how I recover.

This is good cause this is how we recognise symptoms of burnout or what is the burnout pattern so that we can get off it

4️⃣ Have a strict “no internet” boundary

For real, no cap. Digital devices and phones actually trigger a subconscious desire to work and then my brain gets overstimulated and then I don’t sleep or can’t mentally decompress. This minimise all the running thoughts on how to get more work done.

Most importantly of all, to help ease of any symptom of workaholic addiction. Which i got from hustling too hard thinking I’m the top of my game but actually I’m just not caring for myself

5️⃣ Calm my nerves (literally)

During this point, we’re really high strung, so there’s a lot of need to self care and calm down. Deep breathing exercises like breathe in 4 counts, hold 7, breathe out 8.4-7-8. Helps, walking mindlessly without phone for an hour helps. Doodling helps. Anything brainless and calming.

And with that, i get better sleep. More creative juice. More energy for the day & better connection with my love ones 🥺

If you find this really useful, I’m also conducting a burnout recovery journaling & self smoothing workshop, interest form is here :): https://forms.gle/hY3rvvFDzHBHHgPc7 , ps it’s local in SG only because of limitation 🙇‍♀️ I hope to see some of you guys there cause for real, love connecting with people 🫶

#mylemon8journey #mentalwellbeing #productivityhack #My9to5 #AdultingWoes #Adulting101