In the previous blog we explored gaining clarity about whether you are burnt out.  This blog is a non-exhaustive exploration of some of the ways you can support yourself if you are feeling burnt out.  (More to follow in the next blog post.  If you are seeking information on Autistic burnout, look at resources and work by Dr Megan Anna Neff.)

Reaching out for support

We’ve seen that informal caregiver burnout is linked to having a reduced social life (Gérain & Zech, 2019), so it follows that social support would be a key part of protecting yourself from burnout, or helping yourself to recover from it.  One way in which you can do this is to build in what we’re going to call relational self-care (Smit, 2017).  Relational self-care is where you have (non-judgmental) conversations with other people to help you keep perspective when you are caring for others.  We’ve already said that it’s very easy to give everything to caring. So it’s good if you can check in with someone who can notice that maybe you are over-extending yourself, or you are more on edge than say this time last year/month.  Social support is an important buffer against stress and burnout.  Because it provides a perspective from someone who understands your situation, but is able to look at it from outside, it can also help you keep your self-esteem (Smit, 2017).  This thing that you thought went disastrously was not such a catastrophe, actually it’s just something that does happen from time to time, and it’s normal.  It’s key that this person really understands your situation and can support you in a non-judgmental, empathetic way: this might be a family member, a friend, or a professional.

Take care of your physical health

This is a ‘where you can’ try to take care of your physical health, as for carers this can be really challenging due to lack of time, overwhelming stressors, and exhaustion getting in the way.  Good sleep, exercise, and a good diet are really helpful for underpinning your physical health and bolstering your resources.  I realise this is easier said than done.  I couldn’t do all of these (exercise, sleeping well and good diet) at the same time, so I started with the one that felt easiest for me, building up an exercise habit. Then once I had been doing that a while I tried to be a bit better with my diet.  Some weeks I don’t do well with exercise at all.  However, having intentionally included more exercise in my week, I recognise that ‘exercise’ has become a baseline now.  This means I realise exercise when exercise is missing and it’s easier to get back to if I fall out of the habit.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, but just doing something for ourselves can help  build up our resources to protect us from burnout, or help us with small steps towards recovery.  In the last blog on burnout we looked at how burnout is associated with having to give up things that are meaningful and important to carers due to caregiving (Gérain & Zech, 2019): thus if you can establish and maintain some practice that you do to bolster yourself, this will help.

Self-compassion

To have self-compassion you need to become your own best friend.  Kristen Neff suggests that you support yourself in the way you would treat a best friend who is having a difficult time.  Self-compassion means being kind to yourself, speaking to ourselves kindly (and not castigating yourself for not attaining perfection, or not getting things right all the time).  It means seeing ourselves as human, flawed and capable of making mistakes.  It also means that we don’t mourn for what we were ‘supposed’ to have or do.  Self-compassion means being present with our thoughts and feelings in a mindful way – recognising patterns of negative thinking – but not getting hooked on those thoughts.  Instead of chasing negative thoughts down a negativity rabbit hole, mindful thinking recognises that in some way they might be trying to protect us, even if they might not helpful for us right now.

Taking small actions

Taking some small, manageable steps that you have identified and planned will help you to feel better.  This is because small steps are ‘hope’: psychologist Synder defined hope as a 1) motivation that comes through successful agency, and 2) having a pathway, a plan to move forwards.  So identifying a step forward is important as it gives you agency, when much of burnout comes from feeling helpless and overwhelmed.  Secondly, having a plan to move forwards helps you realise that agency and gives you a new baseline from which to then build your next steps forwards.

If you are burnt out or feel you are becoming burnt out and you would like some support, please reach out to us at info@careforyoucoaching.co.uk.   In this next blog post we’ll have a look at strengthening our agency.