Want to avoid burning out? Learn your sweet spot

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

You notice that you’re always feeling tense, getting a lot of headaches, you can’t fall asleep, your stomach has been bothering you more lately, sometimes you feel like you can’t breathe, your heart races, and you can’t seem to get over this flu you have had.

It’s not just that: your mind is always racing, you have trouble focusing, and you feel out of control. Your children, and partner are irritating you, things seem to take longer than they need to, and why is everyone so damn annoying all of a sudden.

Last week you really messed up at work; how you could have been so stupid. Well, you haven’t wanted to go into work; you just don’t want to be there. You missed a couple major deadlines and have had to be corrected a few times about the same thing. “What is going on with me?”

We currently live in a hustle culture that pushes busyness as a badge of honor. Now, we just expect to feel overwhelmed, over-stressed, and eventually burned out at work.

What is disturbing, is that while I was researching this topic I found an article that was written in 2008 titled “Burnout: 35 years of research and practice,” and I was shocked to discover that job burnout emerged as an important concept in the 1970s. Both then and now, burnout has been a concept that seems to ring true to a common experience among people. It has inspired researchers to study it and try to better understand what it is and why it happens. It has inspired practitioners to figure out ways to: cope with it, prevent it, or combat it.

Burnout is a syndrome characterized by exhaustion, negativity, or cynicism toward one’s job, and underperformance. You are more likely to experience sleep disturbances, cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal issues, depression, absenteeism, and job dissatisfaction. If you are burned-out, you are more likely to make errors and less likely to be innovative and productive. The 2023 Gallup report estimates that low employee engagement (a hallmark of burnout) costs the global economy $8.8 trillion, or 9% of the global gross domestic product.

We are becoming numb to just how serious burnout syndrome actually is. Not only is the sheer number of people experiencing burnout higher than ever, recent evidence shows that burnout is affecting workers at younger ages — and its effects are debilitating. The latest Stress in America survey reveals that 67% of adults ages 18 to 34 say stress makes it difficult for them to focus, 58% describe their daily stress as “completely overwhelming,” and nearly half report that most days their stress is so bad they’re unable to function.

In her book Kandi Wiens Burnout Immunity, the author describes how burnout can sometimes sneak up on you so gradually you don’t realize you have entered a danger zone until you get sick, your motivation vanishes, or your performance plummets. “I believe a similar mechanism is occurring on a larger scale, across work cultures and even societies,” Kandi shares. “Slowly, but steadily, while we’ve been preoccupied with trying to meet demands that outstrip our resources, grappling with unfair treatment, or watching our working hours encroach upon our downtime, burnout has become the new baseline in many work environments.”

The good thing is that there are measures you can take to help protect yourself, and to begin moving your personal baseline back to a healthy starting point. One of the best ways is to learn to maximize your time within what’s known as the “window of tolerance” — or what is referred to as the “sweet spot” of stress.

The window of tolerance concept was first developed by neurobiologist and clinical professor of psychiatry Dr. Dan Siegel to describe an “optimal zone of arousal” within which we can best process and respond to the demands of everyday life. If you are in your window of tolerance, you are neither hyper-aroused (i.e., overstimulated, too stressed, or anxious), or hypo-aroused (i.e., under stimulated, withdrawn, or shut down). This is where we have access to our executive functioning skills, which enable us to: plan and organize, regulate our emotions, and manage our time and priorities.

This optimal state, psychotherapist Linda Graham explains, is our natural, baseline state of physiological functioning, when we’re “Grounded and centered, neither overreacting to other people or life events nor failing to act at all.”

How do you get to this sweet spot?

• Make an inventory of the conditions that enable you to get to and maintain that “sweet spot.” This will take some time to access, because we spend so much time in a burnout state.
• Think back to the last time you felt calm, regulated, and fully engaged in what you were doing.
• Make an inventory of the conditions that enabled you to get to and maintain that state (sleep, healthy, nutritious meals, some sort of physical activity).
• Make a list of any of the supports or resources you would need to stay within your personal “sweet spot” and think about the triggers that would push you into the distress zone, so you can do your best to avoid them.

What’s on your list? Calling a friend for a pep talk (popular one), engaging in regular exercise (healthy option), and regularly connecting with people who uplift you are all good options (social option). The list will be different for everyone but knowing what ushers you into your “sweet spot” (as well as what will push you out of it) will help you remain there as long as possible, and avoid dipping back into burnout.