How to Recover from Burnout and Overstimulation During COVID-19 Lockdown

How are you coping with lockdown?

In these types of situations it emphasises the importance dedicate to recovery – as things evolve you can constantly become obsessed seeking updates and trivia

When everything kicked off, the news and people on social media went wild with updates and theories on COVID-19.

Too much exposure to information creates overstimulation, which if not kept in check has a major impact on mental health.

And if you’re like me, home has become an office – the balance between work and life becomes more than ever coordinating the commitment of your different roles, as a parent, husband, and employee.

Also with restrictions in place you can’t enjoy the places you used to, and unwind.

Being at home constantly do things without having breaks in between makes you liable to burnout.

What is over stimulation?

Over stimulation is the sensory over load of our stimuli.

It can be pressured from receiving excessive noise, multitasking and, disorganised surroundings.

As you can see, switching between work needs and family needs adds to this load and the use of electronic devices, watching television, playing video games, and social media contribute to it.

Over stimulation is created by all of lifes pressures, your mind feels constantly busy and ‘on the go’, resulting in a build-up of anxiety and stress.

How do you get burnout?

Burnout happens by taking on too much, being constantly busy and don’t allow time for recovery and rest (such as through sleeping).

The increased demand of ‘catch-up calls’ in your work, places pressure on your time.

And if your having to take on other duties like educating your children, then despite not having to be in the office all the time, you are probably working more than ever!

What is the solution?

A good approach is to enjoy the little things.

Everyday take a moment to display gratitude for what you have, and even during the tough times coronavirus has brought, appreciate the good things from it, such as being able to spend more time with your wife and children.

Also, try and spend five minutes of the day doing nothing.  With the nice weather in the UK, I often go out and just sit around and look at the garden.

On a nice clear night look at the stars.  Whenever I’ve felt under anxiety, I’ve star gazed, with my only thought being:

“this is beautiful… how did it all come to be?”

Secondly, take more time out planning and reflecting, enabling you to reprioritse and allocate time to activities focused on rebuilding and growth, like reading and building relationships.

This enables you to spend leisure time with the family – such as by having daily walks or arranging a board game night when the kids are in bed.

My post How applying the 7 habits of highly effective people quadrant theory helps manage time introduces the quadrant theory from the book by Stephen Covey, which is a powerful approach to understanding what you are spending your time on.

Finally, avoid overstimulation.

I’m cutting down on my use of Twitter, as because of it’s busy format, you can go away feeling like you’ve been listening to 100 people’s conversations – creating a busy mind.

Instead focus on light activities to reduce the effect on your stimuli, such as watching a comedy and exercise.

Take time out to recover, rest and return ready to take on the world again.

Look after yourself, until next time.

To understand how coronavirus has caused overstimulation on social media, see my post Everyone’s catching it, no not coronavirus, first fever

Also to assist with your wellbeing, check out my post Keep your sanity in COVID-19 isolation

Enjoy this post?  Why not join my mailing list?

I share more thought provoking articles that help you aim higher, feel good and get results: