With thanks to Hororata Chorazy-Przybysz, Creative Counsellors. Training: Burnout- A Parts Informed and Compassionate Approach to Burnout

Understanding Burnout

When the resources we have are not enough to meet the demands on us. Reducing emotional resilience. Spending more time in dysregulated states. Reduced capacity. Memory and focus issues. A feeling of losing skills. Making mistakes. Feeling out of control.

Some external factors may not be changeable, e.g. work and caring responsibilties.

Soul destroying. Clashing values, compromising their own values.

Disconnection on many levels - from self, others, the world.

Classical 12 stages of work burnout.

These may be different for everyone, especially neurodivergent people.

• A strong need to prove yourself - an innocent beginning, overlooking the risk

• Working harder to achieve this

• Beginning to neglect own needs - taking fewer breaks, less rest, sleeping less

• Conflicted and blaming others for the situation

• Changing your values, focusing on work more

• Denying the problems that have arrived due to work stress

• Withdrawing from social and family life

• Behaviour changes, upsetting your loved ones - irritated more often, more quickly

• Depersonalisation - not feeling like yourself

• Feeling empty and numb

• Feeling depressed and lost

• Mental and physical collapse

Bombarded all at once, for example “I can’t focus, I am angry, I keep getting ill, I’m tired and anxious, my stomach hurts.”

A Parts-Informed Approach

The inner critic, the people pleaser and the pusher come together to create burnout. Our work is to understand where the parts are coming from and to learn to manage them in a more effective, compassionate way. The parts are us and we need to accept ourselves, not silence or push them away.

Inner Critic

Wants you to be better and therefore loved and accepted by others.

People pleaser

Wants you to be connected to others.

“You must help and meet others’ needs before your own to be a good person.” Inability to say no without guilt. Difficult to distinguish between selfish, self-care and assertive. Inability to face ‘conflict’. A part formed to gain parent/carer love and support by pleasing them.

the pusher

Wants you to keep learning, growing, stretch out of your comfort zones.

Obsessive learning and personal growth. Always looking to the future, the next step. Inability to let go, relax or be happy with where you are now. Filling time, unable to allow space. Can be created by family, educational and cultural values. It can disguise itself as self care, but with a purpose.

Working with the Parts

A slow process. Developing understanding that the part had good intentions and that they were needed at different points in our lives, e.g. needing to please family in order to be accepted, to function in that environment.

Learning that parts, which are stuck in the past, activate our nervous system in order to be in charge. It was safer in the past to say yes, for example, so when we now say no the people pleaser activates our sympathetic nervous system for danger. Learning that it is safer now to say no.

Seek to take away the shame.

• Offering nurturing self touch or sensory input (a blanket, warmth, music, etc.)

• Acknowledging the part being present. “I know you are there, I feel you.”

• “I can hear your messages.”

• “I understand why you are doing this. Thank you for your work in the past.”

• “What you worry about may not be the case now. Look at… (e.g. evidence to counter a self-critical belief).”

• Later: offer the part some attention and compassion through journalling, creative expression, meditation, etc.). “I am giving you space. I am not rejecting you.” The aim is that it feels acknowledged and doesn’t feel threatened to the level it needs to protect you.

Polyvagal Theory

Yellow zone

Sympathetic nervous system - I am in danger. I need to run or fight back. As pressure continues, it becomes harder to come out of this zone. The parts above collaborate to keep a person in this zone. “You’re not good enough, do more, say yes more.” Functioning in this for too long leads to:

Red zone

Dorsal vagal - I can’t cope. I am collapsed and shut down. The transition to this zone starts with losing pleasure or interest, losing focus and motivation, isolating. Dominance of the inner critic. “You’ve failed - disconnect from the world.”

Some people cycle daily from yellow in the daytime, functioning at work/school, to red at home, collapsing, perhaps substance misuse.

Use with clients

It can be helpful to question “what part said that/was in charge?” or “what zone/nervous system response was that?”.

Create a timeline of when and how you were in yellow zone and when red zone started/happened. Becoming aware of the warning signs.

Recovery

A slow journey of retraining the nervous system response, building emotional resilience. Not the speed the Pusher would like us to have.

Restoring connection is the key. To self, others, the environment. What did you used to love? What connects you to your authentic self? Healthy relational connection. Co-regulation -a regulated human beings or animals being with us. Looking at values, connecting with something bigger, feeding the soul. Sensory reconnection - giving the body the message “you are safe”.