Burnout

The Energy Bank

If I tell you to relax, do you roll your eyes? Relax? Really?

Are you listing all the things you have to get done, all the places you need to be, all the things that keep you from stopping long enough to look at who you are? You are tired, exhausted from trying to manage what life throws at you. You are so tired you can hardly think, let alone grow. Let me tell you, then, about the Energy Bank.

Imagine this: Every morning you wake up with enough energy to get through the day. Imagine that each day a typical human creature requires, and is given, 10 energy units. But you are facing a day more likely to consume 12 or 15 units. In fact, you have awakened to an energy deficit like this every morning for months. You may have had cutbacks at work, leaving fewer people to do more. You may be coping with financial strain or illness. Perhaps your e-mail inbox has, yet again, a hundred messages demanding replies. Then the phone rings. The school is calling about your child, the one with learning difficulties or behavior problems.

Without enough energy to get through the day, you borrow - an extra cup of coffee, a smoke break, pills. One way or another you manage, but you probably do not realize that your body has automatic overdraft coverage at the Energy Bank. Designed to trigger an emergency release of energy, your body has not changed much since the days of the cave man. During stress or danger, the fight or flight adrenaline response naturally increases blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tone, and blood sugar, providing the perfect energy boost for a meeting with a saber-toothed tiger. Surviving such an encounter, the cave man would rest, repaying the borrowed energy, his body and adrenaline level returning to the normal state.

Unlike the cave man, your day rarely holds physical threats that you can solve by fighting or running away. Instead, your brain would be a more appropriate tool than your muscles as you search for solutions to your day’s stress. Nevertheless, your body’s automatic reaction provides the energy you need to continue with your busy life. Unlike the caveman, you believe you do not have the option of resting long enough to repay the energy loan. Thus, the following morning, instead of waking with the expected 10 energy units, you have only eight, as you borrowed two to get through yesterday. Worse yet, your day today is again likely to be a 12 energy unit day. You borrow again.

Your credit limit at the Energy Bank is a generous one, allowing you to continue borrowing year after year. You probably do not even realize you are accumulating debt. Yet without rest, your adrenaline level remains high. Eventually the strain begins to show and the Energy Bank Manager sends a few memos - an inability to relax, irritability, fatigue, depression, heart palpitations, headaches, panic attacks, more frequent illness, or a sense of not being able to cope as well as before. You might start telling yourself you are getting old, but even by our twenties some of us are hugely in debt. You might say you are losing your edge, or even think you are about to go crazy. More accurately, your adrenal glands are reaching their limit. You are approaching your credit limit at the Energy Bank. Ignore these messages, and at some point the Energy Bank Manager will have to say no. No more credit. No more energy to borrow. You will have reached the point of “burnout.”

Financial institutions expect you to make a deposit before you write a cheque, and loans have regular payment schedules. The same holds true at the Energy Bank, but the overdraft process is so automatic that we do not realize we are not holding up our end of the bargain. Deposits into your Energy Bank account include getting adequate sleep, good nutrition, and moderate exercise. But when your day is a 12 or 15 unit day, those are the very things that you cut back on to save time. On a day like that, in a world like this, you ask, who has time to get enough shut-eye? Supper will have to be take-out again, and, well, you have to bow out of that yoga class again tonight. Too tired, too busy, too fried.

Beyond that, you probably have forgotten what you once enjoyed, those things that boost your spirits and make life worthwhile. You neglect the activities which have paid energy dividends for you in the past - the walk in the woods, the leisurely bubble bath, the pleasant times with family and friends. You must take the time to make these energy investments. Otherwise, your body may force a time of recuperation - through stress leave or illness.

Making deposits into your Energy Bank account is only half of what is necessary. If you are constantly facing 12 or 15 unit days, something has to change. But where can you cut? Sometimes nothing in your outer world can be ignored or set aside for later. Sometimes all that you have the ability to change are the inside stressors, or the expectations you put on yourself.

That is a good place to start, so start. Make your days fit your energy allotment, and gradually you will be out of debt, and feeling more like yourself.