Is your working style causing burnout?

You might associate an adrenaline junkie with skydiving or races cars, rather than working in an office. But, many of us are relying on adrenaline highs to get us through our daily work. Read on to find out how this can put you at risk of burnout.

What is an Adrenaline High?

Adrenaline is a hormone, produced naturally by your adrenal glands. Its purpose is to help you face dangerous situations by engaging your fight or flight response. A release of adrenaline increases blood flow to the brain and muscles and stimulates the body to make sugar to use as fuel. It gives your muscles and brain a boost of energy, which is what is giving you that ability to go longer and faster. This can be incredibly useful in situations where your life is in danger, we have all heard the stories of mothers being able to lift cars to save their children or our ancestors fighting off tigers. But adrenaline can also be useful at work. I am sure you have all experienced that feeling of being 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.

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.

Adrenaline Junkie

This working style is addictive. When you are in the high it feels so good because it activates the reward system in your brain. 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.

Even if you are not a work related adrenaline junkie like me, modern day working styles result in many of us doing this unconsciously. Society places a high value on being busy and productive and many work places reward people for overcommitting.

The problem is that this adrenaline high is designed to happen infrequently, our bodies are not designed to feel like they are in danger every single day and long term exposure can create health problems. Our body is simply not designed to be in constant fight or flight mode.

Adrenaline and Burnout

Even though I thought my adrenaline habit was a sign I was enjoying work, I began to notice some downsides to this working style. After an intensive 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. In hindsight it is easy to see how this pushed me further down the path to burnout.

Rehabilitation

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. If any of this is sounding familiar to you, don’t worry, like me you can make a change.

There are other ways to get your tasks done without having to rely on an adrenaline high, or as a minimum save it for when you really need it. Of course there are days when I find myself veering towards old habits, that adrenaline rush still has a draw. However, I now know that disengaging from work is essential skill that needs to be practiced regularly. This is an important part of the Anti-Burnout Mindset and living a more balanced life.