Worried that your mental health is having an effect on your relationships or your ability to perform at work? Anderson, R. S. (1990). Christians who counsel: The vocation of wholistic therapy. Pasadena: Fuller Seminary Press.

The Burnout Bible — re:Nutrition

I absolutely loved reading this book. It was so interesting and insightful and really helped to identify those possible signs or symptoms of burnout. In The Burnout Bible , registered nutritionist, functional medicine practitioner and mental health expert Rachel Philpotts shares: I love this book! It’s full of insightful information and understandable scientific explanations that offers perspective and solutions to overwhelmed people juggling it all. Prioritisation - “The first rule of working smart is ensuring you’re not doing things you don’t need to be doing. It’s easy to procrastinate the effective work you need to do by prioritising non-urgent, non-important tasks. My favourite method for prioritisation is the Eisenhower Matrix [which helps you select tasks based on importance].”We can divide our duties into two general categories: mandatory and voluntary. Mandatory duties are those bestowed on us directly by the hand of our good and gracious God. Childbearing and childrearing certainly fall in this category. If God has given you a quiver full of children, then you are called to do the good work of bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The work and worth of homemaking and home keeping, childbearing and childrearing are grievously underestimated by most of us. It is work (lots of it), and it is good work. But there are other kinds of work in this category as well. If you are called to work outside the home to provide for yourself or your family, this is also in the mandatory category. You can’t just decide it’s too hard and fail to show up for work. Chandler, D. (2010). The impact of pastors’ spiritual practices on burnout. Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling, 64(2), 1–9. Research confirms that chronic stress can cause physical illness too. Sheldon Cohen, a professor of psychology at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University says, “We are just beginning to understand the ways that stress influences a wide range of diseases of aging, including heart disease, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes and certain types of disability, even early death.” When it comes to the non-negotiable duties, these are the priority. If we are not handling them well, then we should not be taking on more duties to add to the pile. We want our homes running on all cylinders or our duties at work to be fulfilled before we look elsewhere for good things to do. “They made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept!” (Song of Solomon 1:6). Your own vineyard is your first priority. You Are Not Irreplaceable Elijah, one ofthe Old Testament’smost iconic figures, knewallabout burnout. He’d fought an intense spiritual battle and prevailed, until he received a death threat from the queen herself; the final straw. Elijah,the great prophet,endeduprunningaway,losing hope, desiring death. People suffering fromseveredepression will tell you theyjust want the pain to end.

Burnout in Christian Perspective | SpringerLink Burnout in Christian Perspective | SpringerLink

Insight practice, on the other hand, allows one to (1) attend more fully to the present moment and (2) hold the present moment compassionately. “Compassion is the ability to feel the suffering of another being along with the wish to lessen or eliminate that suffering” (McCollum 2015, p. 50). This sense arises as one gains insight into the fact that all beings are connected and thus one individual’s suffering is everyone’s suffering. This duality of compassion—connection with all humanity and being present in one’s experience—challenges therapists, counselors, and pastors to know their personal suffering. Part of the present moment is the counselor’s suffering in addition to their being present with the client in suffering. The point is, you will always encounter a mountain of problems when you seek to build God’s temple. Commenting on this point, Dr. James Boice said, “As I counsel with people in our day, many of them young people, I am convinced that one of their biggest problems is that they expect shortcuts” ( The Minor Prophets [Baker], 2:510). He goes on to say that people want some simple principle to understand all the Bible apart from diligent study. They want some experience that will transport them effortlessly to a higher spiritual plateau, without daily discipline. They want a nearly perfect church, without the hassle of working through difficulties. But that is not the way God gets His work done. (2) God’s work seems incredibly slow in its progress.

Smith, S. (2014). Mindfulness-based stress reduction: An intervention to enhance the effectiveness of nurses’ coping with work-related stress. International Journal of Nursing Knowledge, 25(2), 119–130. https://doi.org/10.1111/2047-3095.12025. We’re often like that woodsman. We’re gutting it out for God and using some of the tools that are available. But we need to ask God for the power of the Holy Spirit. I’m sure most women know what I mean by the phrase burned out. Burnout is what happens to us when we take on too much, and we simply hit the wall. Those duties you once enjoyed have piled up way too high, and now you don’t feel like carrying them anymore. They are heavy. They are hard. They are too many. And you are tired. The duties themselves have not changed — you have. Though this physical feeling of fatigue is not sin, it can, of course, be accompanied by sinful attitudes. Elijah walked a whole day into the wilderness. He stopped and sat down in the shade of a tree and wished he would die.‘It's too much, Lord,’he prayed.‘Take away my life; I might as well be dead!’He lay down under the tree and fell asleep.

What Is Burnout and Why Is It So Dangerous? - Crossway What Is Burnout and Why Is It So Dangerous? - Crossway

Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. (Hebrews 12:12–13) The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and He helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise Him.’It’s easy to get discouraged by thinking, “What difference does it make that I teach Sunday School or come out for a work day at church or take a meal to a family going through hardship or share Christ with my neighbor?” If we think that way, we’re more likely to burn out than if we see the importance of God’s work. This book is a must-read for those experiencing or at risk of burnout, as well as those who generally feel that they have too much stress in their lives. All in all, a lot of us would benefit from reading this book and it could not come at a better time given the mental health crisis of today. This book is a well-written, well-referenced, accessible navigation of how stress impacts the body and how this can tip into burnout, and the promise of functional medicine for helping to protect ourselves from and better manage burnout. Rachel’s accessible explanation of the microbiome-gut-brain axis is especially worth a read. I truly hope this book helps to break the stigma surrounding burnout and I have no doubt that it will contribute to the gathering momentum about the importance of nutrition and lifestyle for improving mental health and wellbeing alongside conventional strategies. Well done, Rachel, for bringing your clinical expertise, deep knowledge, and personal insight about this important subject to the masses. Emily Blake, Registered Nutritional Therapy Practitioner & Clinical Educator, Invivo HealthCare A study conducted by Pflugeisen et al. ( 2016) evaluated the effectiveness of a video-module-based mindfulness training program. Physicians participating in this study showed significant increases in mindfulness skills and reported decreased stress, increased sense of personal accomplishment, and decreased emotional exhaustion (Pflugeisen et al. 2016). Likewise, a study of psychologists conducted by Benedetto and Swadling ( 2014) found a strong negative correlation between mindfulness and burnout. Specifically, the study revealed that “four mindfulness facets, non-reactivity to inner experience, acting with awareness, describing and non-judging of inner experience were significantly negatively correlated with burnout” (Benedetto and Swadling 2014, p. 712). This led the authors to the conclusion that mindfulness-based techniques may be effective in preventing burnout (Benedetto and Swadling 2014). In addition, a negative relationship between the constructs of mindfulness and burnout was revealed in a study of 380 counseling interns (Testa and Sangganjanavanich 2016). The acting with awareness aspect of mindfulness was significantly related to both emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, suggesting that attending to moment-to-moment experiences helps facilitate greater awareness of one’s own emotions and feelings toward others. Consequently, this ability can support counseling interns’ understanding of their emotions, which may result in their being more equipped to regulate their emotions and develop emotional coping skills and therefore prevent a strain on their emotional resources—a key factor in the development of burnout (Testa and Sangganjanavanich 2016).