Overcoming Burnout
Overcoming Burnout – support of people with the burnout syndrome through Colorpuncture
“Burnout” is a modern term for a type of disease, which has always been around. In the old days the manifested chain of symptoms of the burnout syndrome was simply called a nervous breakdown. The modern term “burnout” was coined by the psychoanalyst Herbert Freudenberger in 1974. “Burnout” means just that: “burning out” and is signified through a sense of an inner emptiness, exhaustion and a decline in performance. These are only general symptoms, that can be found in all people affected by burnout.
For a long time the belief was held that the disease primarily affected the so-called helping professions, like physicians, geriatric nurses, priests, psychologists, educators or nurses in general.
Today we know that all professions and all people are endangered. It is difficult to classify the feeling of being burned out medically and to summarize the many diverse symptoms in one diagnosis. Up until now the ailment could not be clearly defined by scientific research.
Burnout: Symptoms and Causes
When people are complaining about chronic fatigue or lack of energy for many months or years, classical medical exams often do not show any relevant findings. Even when more physical complaints keep developing, like heart pain, headaches, dizziness, problems with concentration and memory or sexual problems, there still is no cause to be found on the physical level. Therefore the burnout syndrome is classified as a psychological type of disease.
The problematic nature is more encompassing, if you keep in mind that there cannot be a physically manifest disease that does not involve the so-called psyche (it would be better to call it “soul”). The realization that nothing drops out of the sky and that everything that is has been developing, gives credence to the fact that everything has to develop from the subtle to the gross.
If “burnout” means to be burned out, than that means there has to have been a huge fire. Such a “fire” generates stress in any case. Most authors agree on this point that stress that becomes permanent is the first step towards the burnout syndrome.
But what type of stress is it that extinguishes the fire over time? Stress in itself is doubtlessly healthy, if after the tension there also are phases of relaxation. If as humans we would live according to this dynamic, in all probability we would become or be less sick.
This is How a Burnout Syndrome Develops
Let us first look at the development of the burnout the way it is being described through treating psychologists and therapists.
In the beginning phase most affected persons show a marked engagement for grand goals, for instance professionally. They are doing what they can to be indispensable. To the contrary, in order to be even better the addiction keeps increasingly occupying the private life and thus the necessary recuperative periods.
These people are characterized by the feeling of never having time. The evening before they are already planning the next day in detail, and then they take this thought stress into the night. The result is that such people can no longer sleep in a rhythmic fashion and are therefore tired and exhausted in the morning. Their own demands for the coming work day need to be met, so the flame is still burning as well as it is able to. The energy expenditure keeps increasing, though, so that during the second stage of development there is an inevitable reduction in their professional commitment. The flame, the energy level, grows weaker. In this phase the people are loosing a great deal of their positive feelings towards colleagues, employees, clients. Now feelings of not getting enough recognition or even being exploited are spreading. The wheel of ruin keeps picking up speed.
The existential fear that is felt like for instance of loosing the job, is being joined by conflicts in the partnership or family. Over time that leads to the further development of reduced self-confidence, guilt feelings and the feeling that nothing can be changed and helplessness.
Before the flame expires there is a last flare-up, which can express as impatience, aggression, mistrust, irritability and moodiness. Memory and concentration decrease and now there is an inability to make decisions.
Furthermore other indications of burnout emerge: The body’s immune system becomes weaker. As previously mentioned these people are reporting a multitude of complaints, which do not show any causal findings during the medical examination. The term “psychosomatic syndrome” is usually the diagnosis in these cases. The symptoms keep repeating more often and more intensely, in spite of pharmaceutical treatment, which has been used for the multitude of complaints.
During the next stage – as Herbert Pruida stated so accurately – we see an “ infarct of the soul”. The people have arrived, the fire is gone, everything becomes dark and quite often they fall into the most severe depression.
Though the many complaints and the development of the burnout are usually quite similar, Esogetic medicine holds the tenet that the causes have to be looked at individually. We are talking about “being burned out”, about the “infarct of the soul” and about a change in the “subconscious psyche”.
Overcoming Burnout: Recognizing Hidden Causes
At this point it is crucial to investigate, whether there might not be some causes in the subconscious that open up the path into the burnout syndrome. One of the most important criteria seems to be a long forgotten conflict. Experience with patients shows: In the anamnesis there often were conflicts and traumas that had taken place before the end of puberty. We have known for a long time that there are developmental thrusts, which can be correlated to shifts in consciousness. From a diagnostic point of view an individual’s stress criteria during that time can be relatively easily empirically outlined:
1. Nearly every burnout patient has suffered considerable emotional conflicts before puberty, knowingly or unknowingly.
2. This may even have been prenatal stresses or disruptions during birth (birth trauma).
3. People are unable to forget anything. Everything is registered and recorded. Therefore traumas and conflicts keep vying for attention for life.
4. Conflicts are there, so that people can resolve them. This was the opinion of the great physicist David Bohm. That would mean that the human being needs conflicts to develop on his path through life.
5. People who are affected by burnout are usually driven personalities in the initial stages. They are looking for personal success on the outside, no matter what the cost. At the same time they are ignoring the emotional-psychological necessities, like for instance the relaxation that needs to follow stress and the joy in what has been created.
6. Whenever the daily problems are lingering, they keep growing and the possible solutions keep diminishing. The result is always a pressure in the upper abdomen, fatigue and exhaustion in the morning.
7. Burnout can hit everybody. The number of unrecorded cases is large. Often these people function by sheer force of their will, yet that means they are living on their substance. That leads to some type of symptoms and diseases no matter what.
8. It is mandatory that the prophylaxis should be intensified. Doing something in advance, before we feel the negative consequences, is recommended even by the medical establishment.
A mindful lifestyle, good nutrition, renunciation of nicotine and alcohol, as well as sufficient physical exercise belong to the basic requirements. The fitness of the body and its cells conforms with the expression of the information from the subconscious psychoemotional space.
Even the best prophylaxis will not work permanently, if people neglect a conscious encounter with the longstanding conflicts and conditionings from the past. What people have experienced cannot simply be erased or extinguished. So therefore the option left is to put in order that which looks chaotic.
For over three decades Esogetic medicine has been concerning itself with therapeutic options of conflict resolution. Many excellent concepts have been developed already. In this context the term “nonverbal psychology” has arisen. This strategy can be described as follows: Reflexes in a person’s subconscious, which generate numbness, conflicts and traumas are gently touched, so that the information content can be liberated within the “numbness” of the blockage of the flow of information.
When we talk about prevention and prophylaxis, then the starting point of any prophylaxis or treatment is the inner world of each individual.
It is time to teach people how they can free themselves or each other without psychoanalysis or extensive treatments. On one side we have the subconscious, veiled, implicit. On the other side we have the waking or Ego-consciousness, which encompasses the terms “unveiled” or “explicit”. In the middle is the source of information, which has a relationship to both sides.
Overcoming Burnout – Ways of Support for Those Affected by the Burnout Syndrome
It is self-evident that the burnout syndrome has to be treated by expert physicians, naturopaths or therapists. All affected need the help of specialists, which can counsel and guide them on the spiritual/mental, emotional and physical levels.
The patients’ attitude determines the success. The patient has to be willing to find a new lifestyle, and particularly a new work style, on his own authority. The patient’s treatment is often quite lengthy and commonly fails due to the subconscious and firmly embedded impatience of these folks. Therefore it is even more crucial to take some preventive measures in the run-up to “burning out”. The initial symptom picture, as we encounter it so commonly points the direction. This is the sequence of effects:
1. Initially there are problems with the sleep.
2. That results in chronic fatigue.
3. That creates a lack of energy.
4. The consequence is difficulty in concentrating
Therefore one of the important points of entry is the sleep, especially in regard to the sleep rhythm. That implies in particular the dreams of the night that can be remembered. Every person dreams every night, five to seven times, depending on the length of the sleep.
It seems crucial that at least one of these “nightly movies” can be recalled. One of the experiences from the observations of Esogetic medicine is that sick people (physically or psychologically) often and for a long time do not have a memory of their dreams.
From this insight the “Esogetic dream therapy” came into being. It became evident that people who remember the “images of the night” can be treated much more easily. Concurrent with the memory of the dreams the person acquires a better sleep rhythm and thus regenerates better. Only during sleep, when thinking, feeling and doing and the senses are switched off to the greatest possible extent, are the body and its cells regenerated in the deep sleep (non-REM phases), and the brain and nervous system in the dream sleep (REM phases).
How important it is to have a balanced sleep rhythm can be explained through the need for regeneration that is inherent in all matter alive. Fatigue and exhaustion in the morning are the consequence of an altered sleep rhythm. The methods of Esogetic medicine make it possible to stimulate the dreams in the night. More than 150 dream zones on the skin are known in Esogetic medicine up to the present time.
The Esogetic therapist can therefore support people with the burnout syndrome in a gentle manner, to return to a natural sleep quality and thus contribute to a stabilization.
Interested patients will receive detailed information about the topic of sleep in our workshops.
