Burnout can ruin an individual and the organization they work for. Don’t let that happen to you. Learn burnout prevention strategies from Cait Donovan, host of the podcast.

What if burnout is present – or even rampant – within an organization? Cait – You’ll need outside support for the people experiencing it because once they are burnt out, recovery takes a lot of support and anywhere from 6-18 months to heal. Outside support can be through an EAP (employee assistance program), a coach who understands burnout, mentorship, a sabbatical program, and more.

This is what’s most important: if someone is already burnt out, making changes has to happen so other people don’t burn out. And, those same changes will only help the burnt-out person once they are well on their way to recovery. Burnout is a health issue and should be addressed as such. It’s not a mindset problem or a ‘take a long weekend’ problem.

What can we do as individuals to identify when burnout is encroaching?

Cait – If burnout is encroaching, then we are not talking about prevention, it’s time to talk recovery. These are two different things. Burnout prevention is stress management and can include tools such as exercise, diet, sleep patterns, mindfulness practices, and more. Burnout recovery often requires a deeper dive into the reasons for a person’s burnout so that they can start to untangle the web they’ve found themselves in.

Burnout does not have a ‘root cause,’ it has a web of causative factors that layer up over time. Some factors are influenceable, and some are not. As someone goes through this discovery, they have to make peace with the noncontrollables and exert influence on the controllables. I have yet to meet a person who has experienced burnout who has a full picture of why it happened without outside help. We are often blind to the issues that got us here, through no fault of our own and need outside support to move through it successfully. One of the things I often ask people to start with is counter-intuitive, but it works! Start a resentment journal.

Resentment is an often-avoided emotion that is so rich in great information. Once you start noticing your resentments, you’ll notice some patterns. Resentment often points to places where your boundaries are being crossed and places where you are self-neglecting. This is a major kick off to long term burnout recovery.

Why is this important to you?

I was a solopreneur who burnt out terribly doing a job I loved. When I tried to recover, most of the information I found was designed for different experiences: corporate life, being a doctor, being a nurse. And most was about burnout prevention, not recovery. It took more than I ever imagined to recover, and while recovery is deep and sometimes complicated, my goal is to help people understand that it’s doable as long as they are committed to themselves.