Brilliant Burnout: How Successful, Driven Women Can Stay in the Game by Rewiring Their Bodies, Brains, and Hormones

by Nisha Jackson

Overview

Renew Your Passionate Self

In Brilliant Burnout, Nisha Jackson reveals proven and successful testing and treatment strategies, with step-by-step instructions for optimal hormone, brain, and body balance and compelling insights that have helped women all around the world change their lives and step up their game. Learn and use the very tactics explained in this book to beat the big snooze of burning out!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632992109
Publisher:	River Grove Books
Publication date:	02/04/2019
Pages:	374
Sales rank:	504,778
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.77(d)

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Today's Classic Burnout: Having It All ... Including the Stress

"Find your balance and stand with it. Find your song and sing it out. Find your cadence and let it appear like a dance. Find the questions that only you know how to ask and the answers that you are content to not know."

— MARY ANNE RADMACHER

IN THIS CHAPTER, we're going to be discussing burnout and how it can affect women, both mentally and physically. To see where you fall on the burnout spectrum, take a moment to answer the following quiz.

QUIZ: ARE YOU BURNED OUT?

* * *

Answer the following questions as honestly as you can, based on how you feel now. After you've completed the quiz, add up your total number of "yes" answers.

1. No matter how much sleep you get, do you wake up feeling tired and unrested? Y/N

2. Do you hit a wall in the afternoon? Y/N

3. Do you have sugar, salt, or starch cravings that you can't seem to get under control? Y/N

4. Are you using alcohol, food, or drugs in the evening or after work to relax? Y/N

5. Do you need to use something to increase energy throughout the day, such as caffeine, prescribed medicines, or supplements? Y/N

6. Are you easily irritated by small problems or by coworkers or family? Y/N

7. Do you have negative thoughts about your job and feel you are not getting out what you are putting into it? Y/N

8. Do you feel unsupported by your spouse or feel you are doing the majority of the work in your household? Y/N

9. Do you often experience unexplained sadness? Y/N

10. Are you forgetting appointments or deadlines, or are you losing personal possessions (like your keys) regularly? Y/N

11. Are you seeing family members and friends less frequently? Y/N

12. Are you too busy to make routine phone calls, read reports, or remember birthdays or celebrations? Y/N

13. Are you unable to laugh at a joke about yourself? Y/N

14. Does sex seem like more trouble than its worth? Y/N

15. Are you experiencing more PMS or menopausal or hormonal changes? Y/N

16. Do you gain weight easily, especially around the belly? Y/N

17. Do you feel your skin is aging or feel as if you're aging too quickly? Y/N

18. Are you experiencing anxiety or does your heart race often? Y/N

19. Are you experiencing increased physical complaints (body pain, headaches, lingering colds or flu)? Y/N

20. Do you have brain fog and lack of focus and memory? Y/N

21. Do you feel you are achieving less than you should? Y/N

Total number of yes answers:_____________

1–5 yes answers: You might be okay for now, but be careful because you are at risk of burning out. Now is the best time to implement new strategies to achieve balance.

6–10 yes answers: You can't keep doing this to yourself; you've got moderate burnout. It is time to change at least three areas of your life to adjust your course.

11–15 yes answers: Danger! We've got work to do. You are suffering from significant burnout. You should make diet, sleep, and hormone changes in the next 90 days.

16–21 yes answers: You might want to sit down for this — you've got severe burnout. This should be treated immediately through diet, hormone adjustments, brain support, lifestyle adjustments, and supplementation.

* * *

After completing this quiz, you should have a good idea of where you are on the burnout scale. And no matter how severe your burnout is, the good news is that you are close to discovering real solutions to overcoming this state.

ON THE EDGE OF BURNOUT

Today, most women are constantly dealing with an undercurrent of stress in their lives. We all have it rough in this day and age, but studies show that women have twice the level of stress and stress-related disorders (such as anxiety, depression, and physical problems tied to stress) as men do.

In fact, numerous studies have shown that high-achieving women have a constant internal turmoil that is detrimental to their health and quality of life. This is something that I find simply unacceptable. More than that, I consider burnout for these brilliant women a tragedy. High-achieving, driven, passionate women everywhere are maxed out, addicted to being busy, and thriving on chaos (or at least fooling themselves into thinking that they're thriving). Keeping busy at all costs is now the cultural norm, but, if brilliant women took a moment to realistically consider what they were doing to themselves, they might take a step back and start taking on less. Manic busyness can lead to

• Exhaustion

• Guilt

• Anxiety

• Social comparison (a cousin of FOMO, or fear of missing out)

• Inauthenticity

• Significant physical and mental symptoms

The inner drive to do more and achieve more is significantly impacting women's health, families, and careers. And one of the problems with burnout is that it's so intricately woven into women's lives that even the brightest of women are not able to identify the telltale signs until it is too late. The path to burnout is caused by a complex and interacting web of stressors, but they all boil down to a few key causes:

• Women's expanded roles (home, career, children, parents)

• Constant sensory stimulation

• Social pressures to achieve more and have more

• Family and child expectations

• Financial constraints

• Poor lifestyle habits (sleep, diet, exercise, hormone imbalances, and brain chemical deficiencies)

• Adrenaline addiction

You must also remember that getting burned out is not your fault, because it simply isn't. It's something that has insidiously made its way into the constructs of modern society and become the norm. These days, women are expected to take on more than they can handle, so burnout has become more common. The brilliant woman may be able to sustain the chaos for some time, but the stress will eventually take its toll. Full-throttle burnout can take months or years to manifest, but a meltdown is inevitable.

Over the past 25 years, but primarily in the past five years, I have witnessed significant burnout in colleagues, friends, family, and thousands of patients. I have seen countless women who once had sparkles in their eyes and fires in their bellies–driving them toward adventure, challenge, and pursuing their passions–eventually fall victim to intense fatigue, depression, anxiety, health decline, and loss of zest for life. Their flame simply went out.

Burnout is a villain that quietly and skillfully robs women of what makes them brilliant, and it's effective because of its gradual onset that works below the surface, traveling methodically through each of its stages, ultimately leaving women feeling lost and desperate, with no clue how they got there or what to do about it. If you feel constantly rushed or in a hurry and can't seem to catch up, but you still want more from your life and know you are too young and too smart to jump ship, then I am here to tell you that you are not alone.

To help you avoid getting to this state, it's important to be aware of the triggers of burnout so you can understand how it sneaks into our lives so easily. Can you recognize any of the following triggers in your own life?

TRIGGERS FOR BURNOUT

* * *

• Interrupted sleep or insomnia: This can manifest in anxiety, fatigue, and a lack of focus.

• Poor diet: This can lead to a disturbance in brain chemicals, which causes irritability, cravings, and depression.

• Intense pressure on self: This happens when you push yourself too far. This can lead to a drop in progesterone, causing mood instability, PMS, early menopausal symptoms, and irregular cycles; it can even stop ovulation.

• Lack of movement or exercise: This can result in shortened temper, anxiety, pent-up stress (no outlet), weight gain, body pain, and a loss of flexibility and strength.

• Eating foods high in sugar or bad carbs and snacking and skipping meals that contain protein, good carbs, and fat: More than just having a poor diet, these eating habits specifically cause higher insulin levels or low or unstable blood sugar levels that result in weight gain, an inability to concentrate, headaches, and memory loss.

• Shallow breathing: When you fail to take in deeper breaths, you are sending a signal to your body that you are in fight-or-flight mode. This can cause headaches, fuzzy brain, unstable cortisol levels, and a constant state of activation (a medical term for overstimulation).

• Hypertasking: Moving quickly and unconsciously between tasks with interruptions creates an inability to stay focused. You can also lose personal items, forget appointments, and experience confusion, dizziness, and rage.

• Saying yes to one more thing: Overextending yourself can lead to anger, poor execution of tasks, resentment, a cynical attitude, and a negative state of mind.

• Limited social connections: This can lead to more anger and pent-up frustration. A lack of connection negatively affects the adrenal stress system, leading to a downward spiral.

• Limited alone time: When you have no time to step back and examine what is happening in your life and what you can do about it, you end up reaching a boiling point with symptoms of irritability and the emotional exaggeration of stress (i.e., rage, irrational behavior, and making decisions that are not in your best interest due to not getting the right perspective or having the right priorities).

• Lack of necessary supplementation, hormone testing, and age or stress intervention: This can cause an imbalance in the endocrine system, often stemming from overworked, underperforming adrenal glands.

• No time for planning: Poor use of time leads to bad food choices, lack of sleep, and increased stress — emotionally, mentally, and physically.

* * *

It is easy to see how these triggers can make their way into your life. There are a limited number of hours in the day, and trying to keep yourself healthy by planning ahead, eating regularly, slowing down a few hours before you go to bed to shift your body into sleep mode, keeping yourself tuned up with supplements and hormones, and turning off your brain when it gets away from you takes more than simply a burning desire to feel better. It takes practice, commitment, and an extreme devotion to self-care.

THE 12 STAGES OF BURNOUT

If you are like me, you may find yourself annoyed at the advice "Just relax and slow down" or "Just let it go" or "Stop worrying about everything so much." (My eye started to twitch just writing that.) I have never been knee-deep in seven different projects and thought, If I just let it go and relax, everything will be okay. That simply isn't part of my DNA. Instead, I tend to be a bit bullheaded about things; I am more action oriented and results driven. I still choose to believe that women can have it all, but now I recognize that they need to go about getting it the right way (which, of course, is going to require some letting go of worry and relaxing).

Today, you and other brilliant women's long-term success is based on a commitment to strategically managing yourself in all areas of your life. Doing this requires that you preserve your brain, empower your adrenals, keep fit and healthy, and be able to withstand daily stressors and stay on top of things while feeling optimally balanced.

There are various stages of burnout that I have researched extensively in my efforts to fight it. To keep it simple, I will briefly outline them here. This list will show you how burnout progresses. And in the figure, you will see how your body responds to the stress of burnout.

12 STAGES OF BURNOUT

• Stage 1: Burning desire. This happens when your inner drive to work hard and get ahead while proving yourself kicks in.

• Stage 2: Intense working. This is when you establish high personal goals (many times unrealistic in scope), often with a myopic focus on work while family, home, and friends get moved to the back burner.

• Stage 3: Starting to ignore personal needs. This happens when your personal needs (such as the importance of good sleep, exercise, supplementation, and regular meals) begin to be ignored.

• Stage 4: Personal neglect. After a period of ignoring your personal needs, you eventually reach a state of personal neglect. At this stage, you notice health issues (such as gaining weight, not sleeping well, and eating junk food). While knowing you are not at your best, you continue to postpone getting back on track to a later date, "when things calm down."

• Stage 5: Displacement of priorities. This is when your work consumes all your energy, leaving little for family and friends. You also start feeling overworked and underappreciated at this stage.

• Stage 6: Onset of physical and emotional problems related to stress. Here you begin to experience: fatigue during the day; headaches; flying off the handle at those you love; and forgetting obviously important dates, names, and details that begin affecting your production at work, your homelife, and your ultimate success. At this stage, you might find yourself thinking, I've lost my mind. What is wrong with me?

• Stage 7: Withdrawal. This occurs over time, but true withdrawal happens when you find yourself saying, "I just don't want to see anyone" and have minimal social contact. This behavior is often coupled with the use, or abuse, of alcohol or drugs to take the edge off.

• Stage 8: Behavioral changes. At this stage, others are telling you that they are worried about you and your stress level, and you become aware that you are overreacting to normal day-to-day issues or problems that arise (e.g., your kids don't pick up their room and you go postal).

• Stage 9: Loss of drive. This is when you begin to no longer see yourself as useful; you feel you have lost your edge and no longer have the drive you used to have. This is the stage where you begin to think about quitting your job, sending your kids to grandma's, leaving your partner, and heading to Mexico in a stolen Porsche. This stage is also known as "You are desperate and feel you have no other options."

• Stage 10: Inner emptiness. At this stage, you have little to no enthusiasm for work, home, or others. You begin engaging in destructive habits to overcome these feelings (such as asking your medical provider for medications to wake up, to sleep, to help your mood, anxiety, and focus, which all have their own side effects). Often at this stage, you exhibit increasing use of alcohol and drugs and spontaneous destructive behavior.

• Stage 11: Depression. This progresses over time, but by the time you notice it, you are already deep in its throes. When you reach this stage, you feel true exhaustion, depression, anxiety, and hopelessness and may even be questioning your life, mission, and value.

• Stage 12: Burnout. By the time you reach this stage, you can no longer connect with work or family and find yourself collapsing physically, mentally, and emotionally. This is the brilliant woman's rock bottom.

* * *

Burnout can negatively affect every part of your body. That's the bad news. But there's some good news, too. You have control over every single activity that can help you recover, and I'm going to show you how.

THE ENDOCRINE TRIAD STRESS SYSTEM

To grasp the concept of how your body reacts to stress and how it protects you, let's take a quick look at the endocrine system.

On the offensive line for stress are three endocrine glands: the ovaries, adrenals, and thyroid. These three glands work together and are inseparable. Also included in the stress management system for women are neurochemicals in the brain, the gastrointestinal system, nervous system, and, of course, the human psyche, or will.

When your body is under stress, high levels of stress-modulating hormones and neurotransmitters (such as cortisol, norepinephrine, epinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin) are released. This is a natural and healthy response to a stressful situation. Once the event passes, your body returns to a state of non-stress, and your hormone and neurotransmitter levels decline. However, if you're dealing with continuous stress, your body will not be able to return to a relaxed, non-stressed state. Instead, you will continue to produce stress-regulating hormones and neurotransmitters to assist with the constant movement between one event and the next. You can probably guess by now where this leads ...

"But is stress really that big of a deal?" People ask me this all the time. "An emotional breakdown isn't going to kill me," they say. And ignoring the fact that they're wrong about that for now, I like to point out that stress has more than just emotional effects. If you've been exposed to continuous high levels of stress hormones, chemicals, and neurotransmitters, over time, your body will move into a state of malfunction, adversely affecting your endocrine system, brain, nervous system, and metabolism. This, in turn, causes your hormones and transmitters to become depleted, resulting in numerous detrimental and unwanted symptoms.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Brilliant Burnout"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Nisha Jackson.
Excerpted by permission of River Grove Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION,
CHAPTER 1: Today's Classic Burnout,
CHAPTER 2: Adrenals in Action ... or Not!,
CHAPTER 3: Hormone Hurricane,
CHAPTER 4: Thyroid Madness,
CHAPTER 5: Brilliant Brain Balance,
CHAPTER 6: Brilliant ... but Feeling Fat,
CHAPTER 7: Don't Be Moody; Shake Your Booty!,
CHAPTER 8: The Brilliance of Sex,
CHAPTER 9: Brilliant Energy,
CHAPTER 10: Girls Squad,
CHAPTER 11: The Brilliant Vibe Tribe,
CONCLUSION: The New Brilliant You ... Built to Last,
APPENDIX A: Supplements for Stress and Adrenal Function,
APPENDIX B: Supplements to Regulate Estrogen Metabolism,
APPENDIX C: Supplements for Mood Support,
APPENDIX D: Supplements for Optimal Sleep,
APPENDIX E: Supplements to Regulate Appetite and Cravings,
APPENDIX F: Testing Options for Female Hormones,
APPENDIX G: Finding a Hormone Expert,
APPENDIX H: Cleansing Jump-start Diet for Fat Loss and Adrenal Reset,
Index,
About the Author,