Where do I even start….
I’ve had a long, complicated health journey from my years of hustling in the corporate world. For as long as I can remember I’ve been super motivated, type A, workaholic who was always pushing myself to get to the next step in my career. Unlike most young girls growing up my dreams didn’t involve my potential husband or being a mother but instead were focused on my career and how I would climb to the top of the corporate ladder.
After graduating college with a degree in Marketing, I moved to LA to start my career at an Advertising agency working on one of the top categories in that market. I dove head first into my job and after a while everything in my life revolved around the Advertising industry including my friends, roommates, dating, hobbies and social events. I was working long hours, enduring endless stress and ignoring my personal well-being. To offset the eating and drinking at industry events I put my body through additional stress with high-intensity workouts.
My first experience with burnout
Occurred after nearly a decade of grinding, multiple promotions and new jobs. I had recently moved to Nashville after receiving an opportunity to transfer with my current job. I always loved country music and at the time was dating someone (who also worked in Advertising) that lived in New York so I didn’t hesitate and started packing my bags.
After the big move and some downtime I felt like my endless drive ultimately led me to hit a wall. Looking back, I was living on adrenaline and stress hormones and once I gave my body the time to recover it all came crashing down. I experienced mysterious health issues such as fatigue, weight gain, mood disorders, loss of motivation and brain fog that doctors described as a symptom of “getting older.” At the “old” age of 30 I refused to believe this was my new normal so I started investigating how nutrition and lifestyle can help heal and prevent these types of chronic health concerns.
By incorporating what I was learning I started to feel more energized but was still struggling with many symptoms like emotional exhaustion, anxiety and the inability to manage the stress. The final blow happened after overcoming an oppressive, toxic work situation immediately following a devastating break up. Feeling lost and beaten down, I took a year off of work, traveled the world and recovered from the trauma and burnout.
My Recent Experience
I landed back in San Diego feeling refreshed and ready to take on the corporate world again. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn from my previous experience as I jumped back into the chronic negative responses that hindered health, career growth, relationships and my self-worth. My ambition and lack of boundaries led me to take on more and more responsibilities and I started to become cynical because I was sacrificing my wellbeing for my career but I wasn’t advancing as I once had. The disillusionment with my job and the disconnect with my values and passion became more clear.
After a few years the never ending stress from working long hours and dealing with toxic “workplace warfare” started to wear on me. The endless list of burnout symptoms such as brain fog, extreme fatigue, digestive issues, TMJ, headaches, depersonalization, depression and anxiety became so debilitating I could barely get out of bed let alone perform my job. Thus I embarked on another year of recovery and learning.
Conclusion
I was incorporating the foundational nutritional habits I learned but it wasn’t enough. Once again I was running on caffeine and stress hormones as I spiraled down the burnout path.
During my year off I tried many methods and modalities to heal from the destruction of burnout. I’ll dive into these and provide what worked for me in future posts. Stay tuned!
Curious about your burnout levels? Take our quick and insightful Burnout Detector Quiz to discover if burnout might be impacting your life.
If you are interested in working with me to recover from burnout make sure to book a free consultation.