How to Beat Burnout - One Day at a Time

Are you burned out? 

Do you feel like your fire has gone out? Are you resentful of the energy you put into your work after finding yourself depleted every day? Like a duck on the water, nothing you do looks different. You might even make the workload look easy. If you are like many of my clients, you know how to look steady and calm above the surface while you paddle yourself into a frenzy below! 

With burnout it can be hard to say what the problem is. Maybe the work wasn’t even a problem at first and you just felt tired or less productive. Then over time, because you have become more tired you are less likely to take care of yourself in ways that require energy. You stop exercising and watch more television; you opt for fast food over cooking healthy. And, so goes the cycle.

Are you exhausted by obvious advice like, “relax”… or, “you just need to take time off”? Well… of course it would be nice to take time off and we would all probably benefit from more relaxation. But, would that help your burnout even if you had the time to take? 

“How do I fix this?” It’s the first thing people want to know when they are working with me in therapy or in a burnout workshop. You want to be better yesterday. But what if you set your mind to reducing your burnout like it came on—little by little, daily, and over time. If you are willing to take just one little step that can build up to big help for burnout, click below for a handout to increase awareness of how you cope. *

Within this Coping Log you just list the ways you take care of yourself that can prevent burnout—the “Proactive Coping Methods” and the ways you tend to cope as a reaction to burnout—the “Reactive Coping Methods”. The proactive and reactive methods in which you cope are not necessarily good or bad. They are just defined by when you use them: in this case, before or after you are feeling burned out. This is about building awareness.

At the end of each day you will briefly indicate how burned out you feel and check all the ways you took care of yourself.  It’s just one page that will allow you to view a whole month of how you handle your burnout and bring insight to what helps.

Coping Log

*Disclaimer: Contents of this blog and throughout this site are intended as additional resources for people already in or considering psychotherapy. It is not a replacement for therapy and if at any point you feel you are in crisis, please call the National Crisis Line 1-844-493-8255, Text "Talk" to 38255, call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.