Feeling exhausted? These tips from mental health experts can actually help - For people in high-stress jobs — maybe you're a paramedic, social worker, firefighter, or anyone with challenging deadlines — there are times when your adrenaline rushes, you feel extremely alert and highly productive.
But if you stay there all the time without rest, you'll burn out, says psychologist Marlene Valter.
Valter is the founder and CEO of AnaVault, a company that supports people with mental health challenges. AnaVault provides endurance training for all types of demanding professions but, in particular, for peer support specialists. These are people with experience living with mental illness who help patients in recovery.
Also Read:
Feeling tired? These tips from psychological specialists are very helpful
Peers tend
to have a lot of trauma in their lives, says Valter. They have overcome many
challenges to be healthy, and when they want to return to work, it is very
important that they are able to build enough resilience so that they are not
risking their own mental health.
"But even people who normally function very well who have been hit by the anxiety, depression, and hopelessness of COVID, they also have to think about rebuilding," Valter said.
Burnout can lower your self-esteem, he says. You are tired. You can't concentrate. You are cold and unfeeling towards people you really care about. You wonder why you hate this job that you know you love. You start to panic.
Valter says the people who are most vulnerable to burnout, compassionate burnout, and vicarious trauma are people who are big-hearted and eager to help their community.
"The last thing we need is unattached people," he said. “So how do we save our most friendly and empathetic people? That's what we want in this job, so how do we preserve it?”
Valter walks
us through the six steps to resilience taught in AnaVault training, while the
co-founders of the peer-run mental health nonprofit Painted Brain — David
"Eli" Israel, Rayshell Chambers, and Dave Leon — share some of the
ways they can manage health. their mental health while supporting others with
mental health challenges.
Also Read:
Calling on All Companies to Promote Better Nutrition
Self-regulation
— the ability to manage your emotions and behavior even in the face of trauma —
is the foundation of resilience, says Valter.
When we
sense danger, the brain activates our sympathetic nervous system, triggering a
fight-or-flight response; other parts of our brain shut down so we can deal
with the stress in front of us.
"It's
like a zebra on a grassy plain," Valter said. “They were grazing. It was
beautiful, warm, relaxing, and they really relaxed their bodies. Then they saw
a lion — danger — and they left immediately.”
Once the
danger is gone, the zebra will come back and relax again, he said. And that
human equivalent is the way the parasympathetic nervous system shifts our
bodies back into relaxation mode when we feel we're no longer in danger.
“The
difference between animals and humans,” he continued, “is that when the lion
appears in our lives, we may take off or we may fight, but then we associate
memories and emotions and thoughts with that danger. So when we see something
similar, we've learned to think it's a dangerous thing."
Sometimes
the new danger is real. Other times, we may react to past trauma. So the first
step is to teach people how not to be impulsive and reactive.
Lawrence
Rozner, a member of the peer-run mental health nonprofit Painted Brain, drew a
"Mission: Impossible" parody in which Brain is on his computer with a
headset while Nose hangs on a table trying to insert a USB drive into a
computer port. (Lawrence Rozner)
"If you're always stressed and upset and feel like it's dangerous, the part of the brain that shuts down is your judgment, creativity, and systematic decision-making," says Valter.
Sure, you can do yoga or listen to music for half an hour, but often we don't have time for that. Valter suggests getting into the habit of taking 5 to 10 seconds to scan from the top of your head to your toes and relaxing all the muscles in your body, he says.
Many people think that the part of meditation that helps relax the body is the part of breathing, he says, but it is muscle relaxation. And you can do it all day, 50times a day.