How to Recover From Burnout

By Sara Prech RN, NC-BC, CCFP & Anastasia Prech RN, NC-BC, CCFP

Holistic Wellness Coaches

As nurses and burnout coaches, we think burnout recovery includes your mental health, your mindset, and your physical wellbeing!

The first step is to reset, and debrief after stressful events! Talking things out helps us to process events and move forward. It's also a great time to assess your coping mechanisms and be honest with yourself about which ones are healthy and which ones will only numb you out. You can do this with other nurses, peer support groups, critical incident stress debriefing groups, nurse coaches, or nurses who specialize in debriefing.

The next step is to recover and develop resilience. The means to do these are the same! Recovery allows you to get back to baseline, and developing resilience is important so that you minimize your reaction to future stressors. This means incorporating daily practices that help activate your parasympathetic nervous system (the rest, digest, recover one!).

We suggest our own 4 part model we call "Think - Breathe - Move - Be." We love to incorporate something from each category, creating small but sustainable and holistic routines. Think refers to mindfulness or meditation. Breathe is breath work. This can be guided, paced, counted, done with a timer or free; just do it slowly and try to lengthen your exhales. Move is gentle, nourishing movement for the sole purpose of stress relief, not a workout. And Be means time to simply do nothing, absorb your surroundings, or close your eyes and visualize something positive. Adding in "white space," just to be, to your schedule can also be a game changer. You can do this before or after shifts or meetings as a nice way to transition. Even something as simple as 5 minutes of mindfulness in the morning, 90 seconds of breathwork on your lunch break, 2 minutes in child’s pose or doing legs up a wall when you get home from work, and 5 minutes to do nothing can be life changing. We challenge you to spend just a few minutes on each category and create your own routine. Start as small as possible, experiment, and design a routine you love!

We highly recommend adding another component into your daily routine, Joy. Don’t save enjoyment and fun for the weekend. Adding joy to your stress management routine is a game changer. Even five minutes per day can change your life. Listen to uplifting music, dance, find something to laugh about and laugh really hard if you can! Take a short break to enjoy something delicious. Take a bubble bath on a weeknight, or even just take a walk in nature.

After this we recommend that you nourish! This means taking a look at your nutrition to ensure it is helping your overall health and wellness. Focus on real, whole foods. Learn about foods that are anti-inflammatory and help keep your blood sugar stable and incorporate them into your diet! Add in some low intensity exercise as well.

The last step is to empower. Work on establishing and protecting your boundaries. Assess if your confidence needs a tune up. Work on your mindset to overcome limiting beliefs related to your ability to prioritize self care, without guilt. Set goals that are in alignment with how you want to feel and work towards them with an accountability partner. As nurse coaches, we see the biggest transformations when nurses do this with a group or work 1:1 with a coach.

Many of these things sound simple in their concept, but they’re definitely not easy to put into practice. That’s because behavior change is a big deal, no matter how you slice it! Learning how to flourish after burnout is both an art and a science. Working with a coach can help you deepen your own self-discovery process, give you the clarity you’ve been missing, help you stay accountable, and take the much needed action you may not have been able to take on your own.

Want to connect with Sara Prech & Anastasia Prech? Visit their site www.livewellandwhole.com

Email: hello@livewellandwhole.com

Instagram: @saraandstacy

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