End-of-year burnout

Maybe don't wait until you're completely cooked.

Every year, somewhere around October, we start hearing the same sentence in clinic:

“I just need to make it to Christmas.”

Respectfully, no.

If you're crawling towards December held together by caffeine, cortisol and the promise of two weeks off, your body may already be asking you to pay attention.

Burnout doesn't always arrive as one dramatic collapse.

Sometimes it looks like waking up tired after eight hours of sleep.

Being weirdly emotional about something that normally wouldn't bother you.

Losing your patience with everyone.

Needing coffee to start the day and wine to come down from it.

Skipping lunch because you're too busy.

Feeling exhausted at 3 pm then mysteriously wide awake at 10 pm.

Getting sick the second you finally stop.

Or sitting in your car for five extra minutes because you genuinely cannot handle one more person asking you a question.

That's the stuff we want to catch before you hit the wall.

Your body isn't failing you because you can't “handle stress” anymore.

Often, the load has simply become bigger than the recovery.

So we start with the boring stuff.

And we say boring with love because unfortunately your nervous system doesn't care that a $79 wellness hack is sexier.

Eat enough.

Get protein into breakfast.

Stop surviving on coffee until 1 pm.

Get outside.

Move your body, but maybe don't flog it seven days a week when you're already exhausted.

Protect your sleep.

Look at iron, B12, thyroid function and other relevant pathology if fatigue is persistent.

Reduce the things making recovery harder.

Then, where appropriate, we can layer in nutritional and herbal support based on what you're actually experiencing.

The goal isn't to make you better at tolerating an impossible workload.

Sometimes the treatment plan needs to include doing less.

Radical, we know.

Don't wait until December 23rd to decide you're burnt out.

Your body has probably been dropping hints since August.