You Can’t Beat Burnout Without Making Time for Rest

Burnout is not a nice place to be in, and I know, I’ve been there many times before.

While there is so much we can do with herbs, nutrients, and supplements to support our stress response and adrenal glands in pushing through it, unless you’re actually making changes to your life and the source of that stress, nothing is going to change.

Just like you can’t expect to run on very little sleep all week and then “catch up” on sleep over the weekend and feel great, the same goes for self care.

If you’re not dedicating time during the week to wind down after work or in between house work or taking care of children, you are still going to feel burnt out even after the weekend has come and gone.

When we try and just push through it and telling ourselves “I’ll rest later” or “just got to get to the weekend”, when that time off finally comes, you can spend all weekend doing nothing and still feeling burnt out.

Especially if you are someone who feels the need to be productive all the time, it is so important to give yourself an hour, or even 30 minutes, of down time each day to do something just for the sake of enjoyment.

When self care is pushed to the end of the day or the end of the week, it can end up looking like doom scrolling on TikTok, mindlessly watching YouTube all day, or sitting at home feeling like you should be recharging, but when Sunday evening comes, you still don’t feel like you’ve got the energy to tackle the week ahead.

Just like sleep, self care is not transactional. You can’t run on a sleep debt for weeks at a time and then expect sleeping for 12+ hours a day to fix it. We need enough of these things daily to actually feel rejuvenated and capable of getting through each day without dreading going back to work.

I see this in clinic in my stressed and burnt out patients working high level, busy jobs, who then continue to keep themselves busy in all of their hours outside of work - and while we can use our wonderful herbs and supplements to support the physiological stress response and energy production and sleep quality, that alone is not enough to truly shift the midday fatigue, late night scrolling, and feelings of dread on Sunday evenings.

You cannot out supplement a stressful lifestyle.

So how can you help to reverse and prevent burnout?

If your schedule allows, try and prioritise time for yourself during daylight hours, so you don’t end up at 11pm at night scrolling on your phone before bed because it feels like the only way to have some you-time. Ultimately, this is going to impact your sleep quality and duration, leaving your with less resources to get through the next day, and continuing the cycle of burnout and fatigue.

If you can designate even half an hour for yourself before the sun goes down, you’re less likely to self-sabotage by staying up late in front of a blue screen.

Of course this isn’t always possible for everyone, so if you can’t find time during the day, think about what sorts of activities or self care practices actually make you feel recharged and rejuvenated that you can squeeze in before bed, because there’s a good chance scrolling through Instagram and TikTok isn’t it.

When you have limited time, it is even more important to focus in on what actually makes you feel better instead of the quick dopamine hits from social media.

Adaptogenic herbs, B vitamins, magnesium, vitamin C and so on can be so useful for supporting the brain, hormones, and adrenal glands to get through times of stress and low energy, but when there are things you can do to change the environment that has resulted in this stress and burnout in the first place, that is how we address the root cause and create lasting change.