FOR Jennifer Parkes, it took bumping into a childhood friend to realise she was overwhelmed, overstretched, and over it.
The mother of two - a partner at Hicksons Lawyers in Newcastle - said that between work, family, and volunteering commitments, she had become incessantly "busy" and "burned out".
"I hate this term, but I think the balance was off," she said. "I was probably a bit directionless - trying to keep everything bubbling along, taking on too much. I had taken on extra responsibilities, and I wanted to take the opportunities up - but I wasn't matching them with the required enthusiasm because I was spreading myself a bit too thin."
The litigation lawyer and chairperson of the Hunter Women's Centre said she had lacked energy, and "clarity of thought". She was going through a particularly challenging time when she ran into Leah Gilbert - an old friend, and a sports and fitness counsellor based in Lake Macquarie.
"When she asked me how I was, I said I was 'busy, very busy'," Ms Parkes said.
"Leah said she had actually been working with a lot of people - many were really high achieving people who were successful in their chosen career, and she was helping them process how they were feeling to get the best out of their lives. I assumed they were amateur or professional athletes, but they were CEOs, or managers, or people in leadership positions that don't have any particular interest in sport."
Ms Gilbert introduced her to the Social, Emotional, and Mental (SEAM) Recovery Protocol - a stress recovery tool. The program encouraged her to allocate points to small but "intentional" activities each week to help her refill her "cup".
"You give different weightings to different activities that make you feel good, with the highest weighting going to the most important task," Ms Parkes said. "For me, that was having a family meal with my husband and two teenage daughters. And little things - some of them were as simple as going for a little walk every day, or getting out of the office for lunch - might have a lower weighting, but you could do lot of those over that week and build up your score that way."
And, it had helped.
"I feel really good, I feel really calm, and I feel like I am making good decisions for myself with respect to the time I spend in different spaces - the time I spend at home, the time I spend at work, the time I spend outside of work doing extra curricular bits and pieces," she said. "My sleep is better. My dedication to regular exercise is a lot better... The most important thing for me was how it felt to give priority to feeling good about yourself - and pursuing things that make you feel good... It makes you so much more capable of dealing with the ups and downs as they come.
"It has made some stressful situations at work, or at home, very easy to deal with because you know you can always pursue something - even really small for yourself - the next day and centre back to feeling full, or half full."
Ms Gilbert said she was seeing a growing number of clients - mainly women - seeking her help to address burn out.
"Most of us are 'on' from the minute our eyes open in the morning, and we are jam-packing every minute until we close them at night time," she said. "Our schedules are packed, our children's after school schedules are packed, then we try to fit in some time somewhere for exercise and interests of our own. The idea of trying to add some 'self care' to this exhaustive list seems ludicrous, but it's often the thing we need most."
Ms Gilbert said "self care" was a term that evoked images of bubble baths and candles. But self care looked different for everyone, and small, everyday gestures could make a big impact.
"A lot of people don't realise there are little things they might already do that serve them in this way, but because they are so busy, they are not getting the full impact of it because they are not doing it with intention, in a 'present' state."
Ms Gilbert said the SEAM Recovery program encouraged people to book little appointments with things that brought them small moments of joy - like a quiet morning coffee, reading, or a short walk. Lunch outside in the sun. Doing a puzzle. A meaningful conversation with a loved one.
"I've seen people's stress scores halve, and their cognitive fatigue scores go down by 45-to-65 per cent within six weeks," she said. "We have been conditioned or encouraged to believe that to be successful is to be busy. And that when we are doing, we are achieving. We know we need to look after our physical fuel tank with nutritious foods, exercise, and sleep. But a lot of us forget that we also have a mental and emotional fuel tank that we need to fill up as well."
How to beat burnout in 2020
~ Talk to someone you trust about how you are feeling. Whether it be a trusted friend, mental health professional, or even your doctor, discussing this with someone else is a great way of starting to get some clarity around some small changes you can make immediately to help lighten the load.
~ Know that you are not alone in feeling like this. The more we talk about it to each other and be honest in how this is affecting us, the less alone we feel and the more we can help each other.
~ Plan your self care and put it in your schedule. When we are in a stressed state, we lose the clarity we need to initiate strategies that help alleviate it, so planning ahead helps you regulate stress rather than react to stress.
~ Aim for around three self care activities a week, and for every 'life layer' that adds on, add one self care activity.
~ Be ok with downtime feeling uncomfortable to start. If you are constantly on the go, there is a chance sitting still or pure downtime is going to be uncomfortable at the start. Try to visualise a fuel tank refilling so that you can stay tuned into the purpose this downtime is serving to your overall wellbeing.
- Leah Gilbert, sports and fitness counsellor
