The following are a collection of comments from several people who went through a burn out.  I have arranged them under different headings.

What Worked For Me. What Helped Me Recover

1:1 Support
Confidential Counselling

Affirmation by myself and from others

Forms of recognition

Establishing some sort of context /anchor points

Continued contact

Relevance

Reassurance
Reasurance that I wasn't loosing my mind.
Personal calls from people in a position of power.

After re entry

The New Work Environment (in this case in a different organisation)

Being able to use existing skills in a different (and safer) setting, provided reassurance that I am good at what I do.

Reduce The Pressure

It could be useful for staff to be able to suggest which aspects of their jobs they are and are not in an emotional position to do.  NB:  I wasn't cherry-picking the fun work or doing any less work; it was just a different division of labour - I think this was important in making sure that colleagues didn't resent me for working differently. 

Verification of ability

Things that helped:

Being Welcomed
Being affirmed by others as having something of value

Getting many alternative sources of positive strokes
Getting many alternative sources of positive feedback
Getting many alternative sources of affirmation

Getting relationships into a true perspective

Leaving work at work

Leaving home at home

Honouring the small things and activities that provide life’s flavour

Knowing

my values,

what makes me happy

what encourages sad feelings

Accepting responsibility for

myself

my feelings

my role in my life

my use of time

the fact that I am ‘here’ because I choose to be

Actively avoiding toxic

people

ideas, messages and media

behaviours and practices

situations

Actively encouraging positive fulfilling

people

ideas

behaviours and practices

What helped?

Deciding that I’m not being a victim – ‘they did not do this to me, I believe I had a major role in how things turned out - I did this to me. This allows:

Affirmation

For example -This is my wake up call – I will become a much better person as a result of my extreme experience.  This then allows

Reframing old ideas.  For example

·          friendly people are not necessarily friends,

·          long hours does not equal efficiency

·          I’m a caring person but I know now I cannot care for everyone and everything

·          There will always be more work to do

·          When I’ve spent the time I cannot have it back or earn some more

·          Sometimes I have to just be brave and ‘have a go

·          Failure is OK I can learn and do something different next time

·          There is always hope

You can be ‘reborn’.  Your mind and body have just rejected an aspect of your life.  Re learning new beliefs and behaviours will take time.  These cannot be rushed

If you see yourself as entirely the victim in a process – how did this happen.  At which point did you surrender something?  At which point did you somehow choose not to act in your own best interest and why?  What prevented you from doing what would have been the better thing to do for you?

Support should continue after recovery. 

Have you ‘touched bottom’ or gone as low as you think possible and recovered?

Overcoming Fear of Fear

Once you’ve been through this sort of experience and emerged and rebuilt your life there may be an awareness that this ‘could’ happen again. This very thought may produce a wrong pattern.  A ‘fear of the fear’ may be set up.  It becomes possible to be "worried about being worried", so you worry when you need not. The sense of fear "about the possibility of being worried" sets up a refusal to challenge the ‘scary thought’.  By allowing this to happen the scary thought is given more strength than it deserves.

So what do you do? Face the fear or the scary thought down!  Take a good look and ask "Is it worth giving this fear any of of your energy?"  If you are concerned that in the future you might have another burn out face up to it and face it down.  Ask yourself what if you did begin to go through a burn out again?  So what if you did, its no longer a big deal beacuse now you are much stronger by experience. You now know how the pre conditions are set up, how you begin to enter the wrong pattern and importantly you now know the way out! You know now how to wind down sooner and how to counter act what is building up, you have a support network in place ready to help you.  When your burn out happened the first time it was a truly scary unique experience made all he more intense because you did not understand what was happening AND you had no idea what to do or how to recover.  Sometimes accepting rather than fighting the ‘scary idea’ makes the idea way less intense and a lot less threatening.  Now you are experienced, you are armed against the possibility of another burn out – making it even less likely. 

Recovery Time

Recovery time will vary in many different ways.  Also its worth thinking about recovery to what?
You might consider this an opportunity to rewrite the script for how you live and interact with this world.