4 Energy Types & 4 Levels of Burnout (II)
Part 2
Please read Part I here if you haven’t yet! It describes the 4 types of energy, what each corresponding type of burnout feels like, and why it’s important to know these distinctions.
But now, let’s talk about what to DO about the 4 types of burnout and what happens if we don’t take care of ourselves in time.
Replenishing your Energy and Reversing Burnout
Each type of burnout requires its own healing approach. Indulging your senses at a nice restaurant might not help when you’re wired up and restless, just as laying down and resting won’t help much if you’re emotionally low.
We need to match the solution to the problem.
This means, that to heal from burnout you need to know what type of burnout you’re experiencing. Which of the 4 types of energy you’re consistently lowest in. Subsequently, you need to know how to heal that type of burnout - what approaches, methods, and solutions work for that particular type.
But burnout is personal. Your experience of mental burnout will not be the same as mine. How we experience burnout is shaped by our habits and lifestyle, our mindset and subconscious patterns, our beliefs, our identity, and truly, every part of our lives.
As a result, healing from burnout will be different for each of us, too.
Not only do we need to match the solution to the problem (the type of burnout), we also need to find exactly what works for our particular case. This is the key to preventing burnout from recurring in the future, as well - knowing exactly what tactics work for you, so you can resort to them at the first signs of stress, exhaustion, and frustration.
Replenishing your energy doesn’t have to take long. As long as you’re matching your actions to your root cause of burnout and staying consistent, you’re meeting your body’s needs (or mind’s needs, or emotional needs, etc.) and taking the most direct path back towards balance and strength.
For Physical Burnout: Focusing on healing/supporting the body
For Mental Burnout: Focusing on supporting the brain
For Emotional Burnout: Regulating emotional states
For Spiritual Burnout: Realigning choices to your inner compass
I teach all of this in my short and sweet course, Troubleshooting Burnout. I go in-depth with each type of burnout, provide detailed approaches for healing each type, and help you come up with your own back-to-health plan tailored to your lifestyle and circumstances. You get to go at your own pace and get my support every step of the way. The course is designed to get you to start feeling better in just a few weeks. Whether you’re busy and exhausted, or stuck and unmotivated - Troubleshooting Burnout has the right solutions.
Describing these 4 main approaches to heal burnout, as well as providing concrete steps for each approach that would help you heal, is outside the scope of this article. I encourage you to check out my course or talk to me directly if you’re interested to learn more.
What happens if we don’t take care of our burnout (of any type) for a long time? If we ignore the warning signs and keep pushing ourselves to our limits?
From One Bucket to Another
Our energy buckets are connected. (We are one whole being, one system, after all.) With burnout and replenishment both, it’s possible to pour from one bucket to another. You know that feeling of having wings when you’re in love? That’s an overflow of emotional energy transferring to physical. Or that feeling, after a good workout, that your mind is clear and sharp and ready to tackle anything? That’s extra physical energy pouring over into the mental bucket.
Similarly, if work is stressing you out to your limits (mental burnout), you WILL feel it on a physical level after a while! If you’re physically tired, it’s easy to also feel emotionally low. The buckets try to balance each other out so that none of them are ever at zero.
And what happens when you ARE fully depleted in one of the 4 categories? Our body/mind/soul is a holistic system, so if one bucket is empty, energy from another bucket pours in to help even things out.
Chronic energy disbalance always leads to disease. Whether it’s depression, systemic inflammation, autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue, mental disorders, or constant infections, an energy disbalance that’s not taken care of eventually manifests as illness.
I go into detail about all that in Troubleshooting Burnout: how to determine which battery needs recharging, what can recharge it, and what would work best for different people!
Taking care of your energy buckets is like regularly charging your phone: if its battery is dead, it can’t do anything! Our batteries require care, too. Unlike phones, for us, it’s not as simple as plugging a chord into an outlet: it’s not as simple as just laying down and “sleeping it off.” It’s important to know which battery of yours is low, how low it is, and what tactics to use to recharge it.
Building Awareness of the Different Energy & Burnout Types
With all this new information, where do you begin?
As with anything, begin with awareness. Awareness is the prerequisite to action; it’s the information you need to make informed decisions. Here are some ways I recommend to build awareness of your different energy types, awareness of energy leaks (BEFORE it gets to burnout), and awareness of your state of being.
1: Body Scans
A quick and simple body scan, done several times a day, is a great way of getting a baseline reading of how you feel in a moment. Body scans help you feel your energy levels and physical needs (whether you’re cold, hungry, tight, jittery, etc.)
To do a body scan, sit, stand, or lay down comfortably, close your eyes if possible, take 3-5 deep breaths, and begin to pay attention to different parts of your body: starting with the top of your head, and slowly going down all the way to your toes. A body scan can take 1 minute, or 10 minutes, or 30. It’s completely up to you. It can be done anywhere and anytime.
You should feel where there was tension, where there might be sensations in the body, whether you’re holding your breath, and assess your level of tiredness. Body scans can also give a nice boost of energy, or be calming before bed.
2: Evening check-in
An end-of-the-day check-in gives you a chance to assess where your energy went that day. Are you completely depleted for the day, or still have some energy left? If completely depleted, when was the point that you wished you stopped and rested? What during the day took your energy without you realizing it?
Some questions for your evening check-in can be:
On a scale of 0 to 100%, at what percentage is my energy level right now?
What used up most of my energy today?
What did I use my energy on that I’m happy about/proud of?
Where did my energy go that I wish it didn’t?
Did I take enough breaks today?
Did I rest enough today?
What got in the way of me resting/taking breaks/taking care of my needs?
Whatever answers you come up with, accept them without judgment and without trying to look for a solution. For now, you’re just building awareness.
3: Visualize “rest”
At any given moment when you’re not feeling 100%, use a visualization exercise to see what kind of rest would be ideal right now. Perhaps it’s physical rest, such as sitting or laying down, but maybe it’s mental rest, such as taking a walk. Maybe it’s emotional rest, such as taking your favorite novel to a coffee shop.
Anytime you’re tired, drained, stuck, bored, low, or “off” in any other way, ask yourself what the ideal rest looks like right now. Close your eyes, and allow yourself to picture it in detail. Where do you wish you were right now? What would you rather be doing, if you could? What would feel really good, relaxing, and replenishing right in this moment?
This exercise gives you a glimpse of what your needs and wants are in the moment, and trains you to sense which solutions match your current energy state.
Advanced version of this: get into a centered meditative state using your favorite breathing practice, tune into your body, and ask yourself: what do I need right now? Allow the answers to arrive, accept anything that comes up, thank your body for its wisdom, and make sense of the answers after the meditation.
Tools like these help see how burnout is affecting you and what are the best ways for you to recover from it. And this is just the beginning!
Burnout reversal and prevention is a broad topic with many avenues to explore. There are nutrition programs for burnout, mindfulness programs, self-help books, even medications and supplements - and they can all be effective. But applying the same treatment protocol to a wide variety of root causes is not the most direct way towards optimal health. And so, in order to recover quickly, you need a personalized approach, and one that takes into account your particular type of burnout.
I encourage awareness, tuning inward, and observing your state of being and your life, so that you can have a better sense of which physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs are going unfulfilled and how they’re affecting your energy.
If you enjoyed this article, got a lot out of it, and are motivated to learn more about yourself and your energy profile, I highly recommend checking out my self-paced mini course, Troubleshooting Burnout. It will provide you with many ways to recharge each energy type and walk you through my method of creating a burnout-beating strategy that will solve your exhaustion FOR GOOD. You’ll learn so much about yourself and your needs with this course - and be armed with the information and tools to prevent future burnouts!
Read more about my own burnout story on my Instagram!
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