How to Bounce Back From Burnout
Why your stress response breaks down — and how to find your energy and joy again
Signaling safety to your body is one of the most important steps in healing burnout or adrenal fatigue - and finding your spark again | Photo from Antonio Guillem on Shutterstock | Used under license
About five years ago on my way home from work in New York City, I realized I was exhausted.
But it wasn’t normal exhaustion. No matter how much sleep I got or how many espressos I drank, I barely had the energy to stand up for my 20 minute commute. I was tired down to my bones.
I was only 25, but my body was so deeply burnt out that I could barely function.
In the end, I took time off work to recover and began what would turn out to be a five year journey back to full health. I slowly healed my body by addressing the puzzle pieces that made me sick in the first place: food sensitivities and a damaged gut, toxins, poor diet, and a Lyme disease infection. Yet for a long time, I didn’t feel like the best version of myself.
It wasn’t until recently that I found the final puzzle piece: my stress response. Since I’ve begun working on my stress response, I’m not only more relaxed and energetic, but my lens on life has changed. I’m excited to meet people, to explore, and to try new things in a way I haven’t been in years. I feel the joy and playfulness in life again.
Before sharing how I’ve gotten there, let me explain how the stress response breaks down in the first place.
Your Body Under Chronic Stress
Though most people know the feeling and effects of brief periods of stress, sustained stress is more complex. When our bodies are in a sustained state of psychological or physical stress — including from inflammation, toxins, and infections — the communication between our central nervous and endocrine system breaks down and we get stuck in a dysfunctional stress response.
Specifically, communication between the hypothalamus and pituitary in the brain and adrenal glands (known as the “HPA axis”) stops functioning normally under chronic stress. The adrenals eventually stop responding to signals to release cortisol as well as hormones needed for optimal thyroid and reproductive function. The result is called HPA axis dysfunction, also known as adrenal fatigue or burnout.
On a subjective level, adrenal fatigue can make you constantly exhausted, chronically inflamed, and unable to feel much pleasure, excitement, or desire. It can also become a vicious cycle, since a dysregulated HPA axis feeds ongoing psychological and physical stress, which keeps the body in a state of constant threat.
So how do you come out of deep burnout?
There is one thing that helps the body above all: a sense of safety. But how we think about safety versus how we communicate safety to our body is another story, and one I’ve spent the past few months practicing.
Here are the most powerful ways I’ve learned to communicate safety to the body and fully recover from burnout.
#1 Nutrition: Safety Signals Through Food
One of the most overlooked threats to our bodies are the foods we eat. What we put in our mouths on a daily basis has the capacity to either nourish us or trigger inflammation and a blood sugar rollercoaster, both of which our bodies perceive as threats.
Luckily there are three key ways we can send a signal of safety to our body through the food we eat:
Test for and avoid food sensitivities: Food sensitivities are inflammatory reactions to certain foods that develop when the lining of the gut is damaged. Unlike true allergies — such as the common peanut allergy — they do not cause an instant reaction, but long-term chronic inflammation that damages the body over time. Because of the slow, chronic inflammatory reaction they cause, food sensitivities are challenging to detect without a test. The good news is that testing for and eliminating triggers reduces inflammation in the body and gives the gut a chance to heal.
Balance blood sugar: One of the biggest adrenal stressors is dysregulated blood sugar, since every blood sugar spike is followed by a drop that requires a surge in cortisol to re-balance. Read here for more tips on reducing sugar and balancing blood sugar.
Ramp up key nutrients: Though a balanced, whole food diet will already bring major relief to your adrenal glands, certain nutrients are especially helpful: vitamins A, B, and C, fatty acids, and adaptogens. In my experience, supporting my adrenals has given me the opportunity to try new recipes to maximize these ingredients. Some of my favorites so far are this delicious liver pâté, this baked salmon with brussel sprouts, or this spaghetti squash salad.
#2 Transform Your Mindset
Because of the nervous system’s key role in regulating the stress response, working directly with the brain is one of the most effective ways to change it.
One of the most popular brain training programs for shifting a damaged stress response is called Dynamic Neural Retraining System (DNRS). The DNRS program is based on the concept that although the brain can get stuck in a maladaptive stress response, it can also be deliberately re-wired. If a person continually interrupts old stress responses and replaces them with ones that support his well-being, he changes the wiring of his brain and the messages the brain sends to the body. Practiced over weeks and months, brain training can change a person’s fundamental physiology and biochemistry.
The DNRS program offers a wonderful framework for changing the stress response systemically. In a nutshell, it involves:
Stopping an existing stress response and acknowledging it as an old program in the brain.
Consciously acknowledging the desire to make a new choice and congratulating oneself for doing so.
Choosing a new response for the next moment, such as gratitude or a focus on something positive in the environment.
You can read more about DNRS here, but it is an incredible program for those who struggle not only with stress, but with limiting beliefs and poor self-love. It re-wires the stress response and helps build compassion and gratitude over time.
#3 Better Sleep
“One of the fastest ways to induce adrenal dysfunction is through sleep deprivation. In fact, sleep deprivation is what scientists use to induce HPA axis dysfunction in laboratory animals.” -Dr. Izabella Wentz, “Adrenal Transformation Protocol”
For the vast majority of my life, I’ve been a night owl. I’m so used to hitting the snooze button in the morning that it never occurred to me it was anything other than normal to feel groggy in the morning.
As I dove deep into improving my stress response, I decided to see if I could improve my sleep as well. Through basic research on sleep hygiene, I slowly made the following changes in my pre-bed routine:
Getting into bed at a consistent time each night (usually ~11:30 pm)
Avoiding caffeine or naps after 3 pm
Exercising or moving regularly during the day to reach an exhausted state by late evening
Avoiding large meals within 2 hours of bedtime
Practicing breathwork (resonant breathing) or progressive muscle relaxation to calm my nervous system before falling asleep
After a couple weeks of making improvements to my pre-bed routine, I had a breakthrough: I woke up one morning and bounced out of bed at 7:30 am, completely energized and buoyant. My energy lasted through the workday and into the evening. I was not only energetic, but more patient, focused, and appreciative of everyone around me. Not once in the day did I crave coffee.
After feeling the effects of it for the first time in decades, I deeply appreciate the value of a good night’s sleep. Unless you already wake up feeling energized, spend time investing in your sleep hygiene.
#4 Play and Pleasure
A client going through adrenal fatigue once shared with me: “I just haven’t felt playful or curious in a long time. I don’t have much energy or interest in going out and doing things. I don’t feel like myself.”
One of the hardest parts of experiencing adrenal fatigue is that it robs you of your zest for life. It depletes the hormones that support your ability to feel playfulness, joy, or sexual desire.
And yet pleasure and positive feelings are incredibly healing for the adrenal glands. Oxytocin — known as the love hormone — has a powerful ability to turn off our stress response.
As. Dr. Mindy Pelz shares in her book “Fast Like a Girl:”
“The minute the brain gets the oxytocin signal, it turns off cortisol, leading to better glucose management, a reduction in insulin, and a rebalancing of sex hormones. One key hormone brings the whole system back into balance.”
You can trigger oxytocin through activities like cuddling, enjoying a good hug, walking in the sunshine, or finding warm emotions within yourself. Even if it’s just for a short time each day, oxytocin is incredibly healing.
For those going through adrenal fatigue, it’s important to find a balance between opening yourself to more pleasure and positive feelings without beating yourself up for what you don’t feel. I struggled with burnout for a long time because I wanted to jump into the same high intensity activities I used to do, but couldn’t enjoy them. I had to learn to be patient and enjoy the small pleasures in life so I could reset my body enough for the bigger ones.
So if you’re in the midst of burnout, start small: create a list of activities and people that make you feel good vs. those that drain you and make a few more minutes each day for the ones that make you feel good.
#5 Breathwork
Finally, one of the best researched ways to shift your stress response is also the simplest: breathwork. Resonant Breathing — also known as coherent or paced breathing — involves breathing at a rate around 5–6 breaths per minute (e.g. 4 second inhale, 6 second exhale).
As Leah Lagos shares in her book “Heart, Breath, Mind,” a daily practice of 30–40 minutes of resonant breathing can greatly improve your stress response and overall resilience.
Resonant breathing impacts the body through multiple mechanisms: When the timing of your exhale is consistently longer than your inhale, your body’s relaxation response is activated via the parasympathetic nervous system. In a state of relaxation, the HPA axis is less likely to be triggered in response to stressors and fewer stress hormones are released. Additionally, when you breathe in a controlled and rhythmic manner, your blood pressure and heart rate tend to vary in sync with your breathing. The synchronization enhances the ability of baroreceptors to detect and respond to changes in blood pressure, leading to higher heart rate variability (HRV).
After weeks to months of daily practice, resonant breathing shifts the body into a state of greater relaxation and improved resilience.
So if you’re looking for a simple, research-backed way to shift your stress response, just breathe.
Conclusion
After reaching the deepest level of burnout and coming back, my relationship with stress has changed dramatically. If there is one point I could emphasize about all others, it would be this:
Though you can’t always control the demands of daily life, challenges in relationships, or events in the world, you can find ways to communicate safety to your body. You communicate safety to your body and nervous system through how you eat, sleep, breathe, play, and choose to think on a daily basis.
When your body has the foundation of safety, it is far better able to handle the stress of daily life with grace and excitement rather than fear and anxiety.
Want to find out what support your body needs most?
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