7 Top Tips to Ensure Your Recovery from Burnout.
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How can you ensure you recover from burnout when you are so used to putting your patients and others needs first in your life?
Here are 7 top tips on how to ensure you recover from burnout and what to expect along the way:
- If you are wondering if you may be burnt out, share your concerns and reach out for support. A trusted colleague, your GP, Practitioner Health. Don’t self-diagnose despite the strong urge to do so.
- “Make your own recovery the first priority in your life” says Robin Norwood and he is absolutely right.
Prioritising yourself, your health and your recovery has to come first for you to recover from burnout.
You have to put your health at the top of your priority list and acknowledge that your health is important. Once you do this, your recovery can start!
- Taking time off: in the early stages of burnout- consider taking time off. Later stages of burnout and full stage 12 burnout- taking time off will be a necessity. This is essential for your physical and mental recovery.
Accept the sick note your GP or Practitioner Health Clinician gives you. This will be very hard to do as it may be the first time you have taken time off work. How long should you be off? Again, this varies from doctor to doctor however the best advice is to take all the time you need to recover and a little bit more. Do not rush back to work as work will manage without you.
Taking time off will enable you to focus on replenishing and nourishing things that have been missing or lost in your busy life. You will get clearer about your personal needs and start meeting them. You can restart reenergising activities. You will start considering how you can achieve a balance between your work and life.
- Get support during your recovery. Evidence shows that post-burnout recovery is more likely to happen if you have good support and that coaching is an effective approach for burnout recovery (as recommended by the Royal Society of Occupational Medicine).
- Whatever support you choose, they will help you to reconnect with you. They will help you to work out what matters to you in your recovery. “What is important to you to ensure you do recover? What matters to you in your recovery? What do you need to start doing to get better? What do you need to stop doing to get you back again? They will help you to stop ignoring problems and to start addressing them.
- When you are ready, your chosen support will also help you explore the contributing factors to your burnout and help you to name and identify the stressors involved. You will work out what options you have to manage these stressors going forwards. Defining your values will help too. Have you been living outside of your values? Using your values as a guiding light and living into them will help you in your recovery.
- Your chosen support will also offer you some time to reflect about your personal “salve” for your burnout recovery. What will be in your salve? What you want and don’t want as you start to move forward through recovery. They will encourage you to give some thought to exploring changes that you have made that serve you well and nourish your recovery and wellbeing and committing to continuing those. Also to explore changes that are not serving you well and stop doing those. What boundaries do you need to set to stay well in recovery and beyond? How do you want to show up when you return to work? Having a conversation around a “future burnout prevention plan” and how to maintain your wellbeing when you do return to work is also essential as you never want to go back to this horrible, dark place again.
My experience working with doctors who are recovering from burnout has shown that recovery is gradual, it needs time and patience. Recovery is not a linear process, it’s a bit like snakes and ladders but with the right support it can be much smoother.
Recovery gives you an opportunity to reflect, grow, and learn about yourself and your needs. You will learn to rebalance your life, reconnect with you and what is important to you. Most importantly you will learn how to become better at taking care of you so that you avoid further burnout in the future.