How Burnout Stops: A Book For Overcoming Stress And Burnout

10.11.23 12:07 PM - By David Thorpe

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Today, we’re talking about a new book, written by myself, David Thorpe, titled ‘How Burnout Stops: A Practical Guide To Stress Management, Burnout Prevention and Burnout Recovery’.

Rather than this just being a sales pitch for my book, which is now available as an ebook from all ebook retailers and soon to be released as paperback, I want to discuss the purpose behind the book, and more specifically a certain way that it can be used by anyone, regardless of whether they are currently experiencing stressors and burnout, or whether there is someone in their life experiencing stress and burnout.

Namely, today I’m going to be discussing the benefit of learning about stress and burnout so that we can have fruitful discussion on the topic.

As always, please note this is general advice and is not exhaustive for every individual situation. You should seek help from a qualified professional as soon as any causes of stress or symptoms begin to feel more than what you are able to handle on your own.

Let’s start by discussing the benefits of learning about stress and burnout.

Benefits of learning about stress and burnout

There is a term ‘bibliotherapy’ which refers to using books and other materials to help us better understand and gain insight into our lives and what we are going through.

Books and reading materials are abundantly available on demand and, more than not, at affordable prices. Books certainly are not a replacement for getting dynamic help from someone such as a counsellor or therapist, but there is a wealth of information out there that can be helpful and help you identify helpful strategies for overcoming stress and burnout.

There is also a lot of unhelpful information out there, so the phrase ‘Do Your Own Research’, certainly holds true in the domain of stress and burnout. It is important to learn that there are many, many strategies out there for stress, and what has worked for one person may not be the best strategy for you. This is where, alongside bibliotherapy, it can be helpful to have a trusted friend or mentor that you can discuss the materials with.

However, another benefit for just learning about stress and burnout is getting to have those ‘a-ha’ moments. Those are the moments when you learn or identify something that you find really validates and resonates with your personal experiences. For example, recently I was reading a counselling textbook and thinking ‘Wow, there is a lot of information to retain to be the best counsellor for my clients.’ But then I turned to the next section and it talked specifically about how counsellors need to be mindful of perfectionistic tendencies. That was an ‘a-ha’ moment for me that I need to realise that I am only human, and the best I can do is study a wide array of strategies to help point clients in the right direction for achieving their desired goals.

Using the information to improve yourself

So, after we have done some learning, the best thing we can do with the information is consider what can be applied to our own lives. We will find it most pressing to make changes to our lives only when there are stressors or challenges currently present.

If we know there are challenges in our lives at the moment, we can then start considering whether there are any strategies that may be beneficial to improving our short-term coping with stressors and long-term prevention of burnout. For example, I recently learned about the importance of task prioritisation, and one way of combatting procrastination can be to actually start with the hardest tasks rather than the easiest tasks. This is something that I have started implementing in my task management system. Am I doing it perfectly every time? Definitely not, but there are projects that are not getting neglected because I was perceiving them as ‘too hard’ and not even attempting to begin them.

Using this information to discuss stress and burnout with others

The other thing that I hope How Burnout Stops will help with is starting conversations. It is not intended to be a definitive reference book on stress and burnout, really because I’m not sure such a book can possibly exist at the moment, due to all the current research and exploration going on by academics, scientists and practitioners across the globe exploring what stress and burnout is.

Instead, however, getting a basic understanding of stress and burnout means that you will have language you can use to discuss your stressors and symptoms with others. This could be your managers, supervisors with whom you would like to discuss stressors and how they are affecting you.

This could be in discussion with friends, family and mentors so that have a better understanding of what you are facing in your life at the moment.

On the other hand, you may be someone who wants to help others you believe may be experiencing stress.

Chapter 5 of the book is subtitled ‘This is how you help others who are experiencing burnout’, and includes the section ‘How do you talk to people experiencing burnout?’ I thought it might be helpful to provide an excerpt from that section now:

Here is a helpful list of actions you can take when talking to someone experiencing burnout:

Ask whether they'd like to discuss their stressors or be distracted. Different people deal with stressors in different ways, and where one person processes through talking, another may process by thinking. While talking to someone else can really help bring objective perspectives into a situation, the exact time you are engaging with the person experiencing burnout may not be the right time for them. It is entirely appropriate to ask them if they would like to discuss the perceived issues with you, or whether you can provide a distraction through conversing on a different topic. It can also be good to ask if they’d like to be followed up on to converse at a later date.

If they are open to talking, pay attention. If they decide they want to discuss their stressors with you, this is a privilege, and it is your role to actively listen and engage with them. Importantly, do not project your own experiences onto them, as every situation, even if they sound quite similar or have very similar symptoms, is possibly going to have very different factors involved. Interjecting their story with your own can invalidate and close the door to vulnerability. Instead, active listening involves you engaging back with them by showing that you have heard them and validating their feelings and emotions. After you have made sure they are validated, then you can gauge whether it is relevant to share your own experiences.

Ask before giving advice. Again, if they decide to discuss their stressors with you, it is important that you assess whether they are looking for a listening ear, in which case, engage in active listening or ask if they are looking for advice before giving it. Giving unsolicited advice, again, can be invalidating.

Concluding thoughts

And we’ll leave the excerpt there. As you can imagine, having the same language to use around what stress and burnout is can be very helpful in ensuring that you are not invalidating the person’s experience.

It may even be appropriate to discuss with the person reading a book or piece of material together and then discuss how they feel it relates to their lives. That can feel incredibly supportive for the person experiencing burnout to know that someone is going to the time and effort of investing in their recovery.

As I said at the top, ‘How Burnout Stops: A Practical Guide To Stress Management, Burnout Prevention and Burnout Recovery’ is now available as an ebook from all ebook retailers and as a paperback from Amazon.

I do hope that there will be many nuggets of helpful information and strategies in the book, for people currently experiencing stress and burnout, and for organisations and other people who are wanting to help others recover from and prevent future stress and burnout.

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