Adrenaline Burnout: How Your Working Style Could Be Driving You to Exhaustion

Is your working style causing adrenaline burnout? You might associate an adrenaline junkie with skydiving or racing cars, not sitting at your desk. But many working women unknowingly rely on adrenaline highs to power through their to-do lists — deadlines, emails, and endless multitasking.

While this might feel productive in the short term, living in constant fight-or-flight mode puts you at risk of burnout from your working style. In this post, I’ll explain how adrenaline burnout happens, the symptoms to look for, and practical ways working women can recover and work more sustainably.

What is Adrenaline Burnout?

Adrenaline is a hormone produced by your adrenal glands. Its purpose is to prepare your body to face danger by triggering your fight-or-flight response. It increases blood flow to your brain and muscles, releases sugar for energy, and helps you push through with sharp focus and stamina.

In real emergencies, adrenaline can be life-saving - helping people perform incredible feats of strength or speed. But when used daily at work, these highs can turn harmful. Constant reliance on adrenaline creates a cycle of short-term productivity followed by long-term exhaustion. That cycle is what we call adrenaline burnout.

Are You an Adrenaline Junkie at Work?

This working style can feel addictive. When you are in the high it feels so good to be able to power through task after task easily, just knocking each one out the park. Your brain is crystal clear, solutions seem to come to you with ease one after another and your energy feels limitless. It also activates the reward system in your brain.

I used to love this feeling. I could work really long days during the week, then finish things off on the weekend, just to catch up or prepare for the week ahead. Multiple deadlines didn’t worry me because I knew I could just power through by getting those stress hormones going, usually accompanied by some caffeine. Like many working women, I would then rush to do the school run, liftshare or bedtime, then get straight back to it.

My adrenaline high working style meant I could get all my tasks done, but it also aligned perfectly with how I wanted to be seen; super efficient, always prepared, always willing to put up my hand for tasks and someone who gets stuff done.

The problem is that this pattern isn't sustainable. Our bodies were never designed to be in constant fight or flight mode.

Why Constant Fight-or-Flight Mode Leads to Burnout

If we start producing adrenaline for extended periods of time, our body starts to produce other stress hormones such as cortisol. If you are feeling overwhelmed chances are your cortisol levels are stuck on maximum flow rate. This can result in a variety of serious health issues including digestive issues, weakened immune system, hormone imbalances, muscle tension, headaches, migraines and sleep disruptions.

This isn't just stress, its your body's way of telling you you're stuck in survival mode. Left unchecked and it leads directly to adrenaline burnout.

Symptoms of Adrenaline Burnout in Working Women

For me the warning signs started slowly and then became impossible to ignore. After an intensive work period of a few days or weeks, I would often have a crash. I became irritable, suffered from headaches, would need to spend nearly whole weekend days in bed, cancel plans with friends and ask my partner to take the kids out so I could try to rest.

I began to feel permanently "tired but wired". Things I used to enjoy like reading a book were difficult as it was hard to sit still. Even when I went on holiday, I would need a few days to transition into it and would feel miserable while the chemicals in my brain readjusted. Sometimes the holiday would be over and I was only just starting to wind down.

I didn’t know at the time but these are all classic symptoms of a typical adrenaline slump - and for me they were becoming more and more common, to the point where it felt easier just to keep going than to stop and deal with the consequences. This is the trap that leads directly to adrenaline burnout.

How Adrenaline Burnout Impacts Long Term Health

These long periods of working to the max followed by slumps are not only miserable at the time, but you could be putting your health at risk. Beyond physical symptoms, this working style can also cause anxiety and restlessness, loss of focus outside work, difficulty enjoying downtime and strained relationships. Over time, it erodes both health and happiness, leaving you burnt out and disconnected from the life you’ve worked so hard to build.

How Adrenaline Burnout Impacts Work Quality

Another impact of adrenaline burnout I hadn’t expected was the decline in my work quality. I found it increasingly difficult to focus on one task at a time, so multitasking became my default. The problem is, when we multitask, we give less attention to each task which often means more mistakes, rework, and wasted energy. In fact, research shows that multitasking can reduce productivity by as much as 40% .

I also noticed my decision making skills deteriorating. I was constantly second guessing myself and in retrospect this makes sense; when you are in a constant fight-or-flight state your brain makes decisions based on fear, not logic, experience or emotional intelligence.

In reality my adrenaline-fuelled working style wasn’t only harming my health it was also making me far less effective at work. What felt like efficiency in the moment was actually costing me time, energy, and quality in the long run.

Breaking Free From the Adrenaline-Burnout Cycle: The Anti-Burnout Mindset

The good news is that you can change. Recovery starts with awareness and a commitment to building new habits. Through my own journey, I developed the Anti-Burnout Mindset (ABM), a framework built around three pillars:

• Accountability: Recognising your working style and taking ownership of change.

• Balance: Reducing microstressors and prioritising sleep, nutrition, and movement.

• Maintenance: Regular check-ins to prevent slipping back into old patterns.

  
  

By shifting from an adrenaline-fuelled working style to a more balanced approach, you can recover energy and resilience.

Sustainable Strategies to Recover and Prevent Burnout

If any of this feels familiar, you’re not alone. Here are some steps that helped me transition away from an adrenaline-driven work style.

Notice the Triggers

Deadlines, presentations, important meetings or overcommitment often fuel adrenaline highs. If you start to feel those familiar jitters, don't encourage them by reaching for a coffee or powering through your inbox. Instead, step away for five minutes and take slow deep breaths. Just this small act calms me down and allows me to complete my tasks and challenges from a place of control not fear.

Prioritise the Basics

Sleep, nourishing food and movement are non negotiable when recovering from adrenaline burnout. If you focus on getting the basics right, you will find it much easier to fight the urge to rely on those adrenaline highs. For example, I found reducing caffeine made a huge difference. I love my morning coffee but now switch to decaf from mid morning. This small shift has the double benefit of reducing the caffeine jitters and supporting quality sleep.

Practice Disengagement

Switching off from work is a skill and like any skill it needs practice. At first you may fear the dreaded adrenaline slump or other work related consequences, but the more you disconnect the easier it becomes. Set clear boundaries and make a commitment you will not work on your days off, shut the door to your office, put your laptop away and remove work email apps from your phone. Have a cut off time for finishing work in the evening and stick to it, plan activities like a walk in the evening to avoid the "just one more task" trap. Once you have done this for a few weeks, your brain will learn that its safe for you to step away and disengagement becomes natural.

Replace the Rush

Adrenaline highs don’t have to come from overwork. Find healthier ways to get your dopamine hits through creativity, connection or hobbies. I took up cold water swimming after being given this advice by a coach and its still a regular habit three years later. This may not be for you, it just needs to be something that challenges you and you enjoy.

Even now, there are days when I feel myself slipping into old habits. The adrenaline rush still has a draw. But knowing the long-term consequences of adrenaline burnout helps me spot the warning signs early and choose a healthier response.

Start Your Journey to End Adrenaline Burnout

If I can make a change then you can too. Start by reading my guide: The Ultimate Anti-Burnout Plan for Working Women and explore the wider Anti-Burnout Blog for more tips, strategies and insights.

If you are looking for ongoing support sign up for my monthly newsletter where I share practical burnout recovery tools, mindset shifts, and gentle reminders to help you stay balanced.

www.balancingbluebells.co.uk

Mairi Joyce

14 September 2025