Stress and burnout: when the global eco-crisis becomes personal
and how to
Grow your personal sustainability
We hear a lot about stress and burnout in our developed world. Some of us believe it’s a “normal condition” of living for the progress we’ve all striven hard to achieve. However as Krishnamurti succinctly says:
“It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”
If we burn ourselves, and our physical environments/natural world, out in the process, then progress and achievement is really a pyrrhic victory
Stress and burnout can easily present as anxiety like symptoms:
- heart palpitations or anxiety ‘attacks’
- not be able to sleep and/or waking at 2 or 3am
- forgetfulness and foggy brain
- loss of enjoyment in those things that usually bring us happiness or joy (activities, work, family, relationships)
- not being able to eat or eating ‘crap’-the chips/lollies/baking etc
- low self esteem and confidence
- lacking energy a lot of the time
- needing to use alcohol or weed to relax and sleep at night
- a lack of purpose or feeling “what’s the point’ to life
So may people who come into my counselling room fit this picture. If you went to the Doctor with these symptoms, you’d probably be medicated for anxiety. Medication can be really useful, however there are many things you can do yourself to support and recover your wellbeing. With a third of the population on anti-anxiety medication at any given time, and WHO identifying anxiety and depression as the epidemic of our developed world, we need to have education around how to grow our wellbeing and personal sustainability.
If you view at your ‘symptoms’ as a barometer, then you can learn how to look after yourself in ways that are sustainable. You’ll have energy, a sense of purpose and enjoyment within your experience of life.
We’re generally not taught how to look after our whole person health in our modern world. The focus has predominantly been on using resources to produce and achieve; whether those resources are ecological resources or human resources. Resource -stripping can easily ensue: of the person and planet. We haven’t been encouraged to care or nurture- or only to if it doesn’t get in the way of production and achievement. The burnout we’re seeing on our planet in mirrored and exacerbated by the burnout experienced by so many human beings, as they’re ‘resource-stripped’ in the pursuit of achievement and acquisition. If you are physically burnout, you’ll feel like crap. Your feelings and thinking will be deeply affected by your physical state.
Your body is a small planet. How are you doing? Is your personal bio-diversity in crisis?
Good counselling and therapy needs to take into account your physical sustainability as interdependent with your emotional and mental sustainability: you can learn to support yourself and to build your interconnected sustainability. Many people have never been given the opportunity to learnt how to do this in their lives. Yet we wouldn’t expect a garden to flourish and thrive and produce without informed attention and care, or a car to run well without a regular service and good quality fuel.
If you are feeling some of the things I’ve listed above, it may be that you’re caught in stress or burnout mode. You can recover.
It’s not too late for you to have energy and to enjoy your life.