Healthy Conversation with GZ Psychologist Yuna van den Adel
A little stress is not bad at all, and even healthy. But when do you speak of chronic stress and how can this ultimately lead to burnout? You can hear it in this episode of Healthy Conversation, with GZ psychologist Yuna van den Adel as guest. Of course she also tells you how to prevent and treat chronic stress and burnout.
The good of stress
Yuna van den Adel works as a GZ psychologist at Viviq, an organization that offers help with mental challenges. Viviq offers help both online and on location. “The emphasis is always on strengthening your own strength,” says Van den Adel. In practice, she sees many people who suffer from chronic stress. But, she emphasizes, “Basically, stress is a healthy response that protects us.” Imagine if people wouldn’t know stress. Then we would probably have been extinct on Earth long ago! Because the stress response in our body makes us alert, sends the extra blood to the heart and muscles and ensures that we can respond quickly to dangerous reactions. “Stress is therefore healthy. It only becomes unhealthy when stress becomes chronic,” says Van den Adel: “A primeval man who was attacked by a lion, ran away and, after he was safe, was able to share his story and exhaust from the adventure “That is short-term, acute stress. With chronic stress there is not such a discharge and relaxation and the stress does not disappear from the body. The level of stress hormones remains constantly high. That puts a lot of pressure on our physical and psychological health. So much , that for example, eventually a burnout can occur.”
This is how chronic stress arises
Many people in our society suffer from chronic stress. This can be caused by a busy job, by the combination of work and family, by making high demands on yourself or by the constant stream of stimuli that we receive via the internet and social media. Or because of all these factors at the same time, because chronic stress is often a sum of factors. What determines that one person does, and the other does not, ‘get stressed’? According to Van den Adel, this is because some people take more rest and relaxation than others. “The point is always that you consciously take the time to lower those stress hormones in your body. You can do this through mindfulness, breathing exercises, walking, yoga, doing a hobby: as long as it works relaxing for you. And preferably without that you receive new stimuli. Netflix or scrolling on your phone is strenuous for your brain, while walking in nature really relaxes your brain.”
That voice in your head
A risk factor for chronic stress and burnout is perfectionism. You speak of perfectionism if you constantly set the bar high for yourself, or if you keep comparing yourself to others and then want to do better. Many people have a little voice in their head, an internal critic, that criticizes or urges you to do things better all day long. It is very difficult for many people to accept that you can also fail and that ‘good enough’ is also fine. Van den Adel: “Perfectionism is an internal factor. But there are also external factors, such as private problems, illness or money worries. When it comes to work, it is a risk factor if you have a job in which others determine exactly what and how you you have to do your work. If you have no autonomy at all, it causes a lot of stress. That stress increases if you also regularly disagree with the rules at work.” Suppose, for example, that you are a nurse who constantly has to deal with mandatory administration, leaving little time for actual patient care. That can be a major source of stress.
Collapse on the kitchen floor
The danger of chronic stress is that you can continue to perform for a long time without noticing. You keep all the balls in the air, without immediately noticing that you are committing robbery. For many people the limit is then ‘suddenly’ reached. From one moment to the next they can no longer function at all, and they sometimes literally collapse on the kitchen floor. Then there is a burnout: all reserves are exhausted and the body is completely exhausted. Recovering from a burnout usually takes a long time, from several months to several years. Logical, thinks Van den Adel: “First of all, you have to accept that your limits have been reached. Then you have to work slowly on restoring your reserves. And to prevent repetition, you also have to take a critical look at the factors that cause burnout. have caused and tackle it. That could mean looking for another job, working less, doing mindfulness training, or turning things around completely.” Those are processes that take time, but if you don’t change the factors that caused the burnout, there’s a good chance that it will come back.”
Burnout can be a blessing
Van den Adel himself also had a burnout. “During the period that I studied, I also had a job with evening and night shifts. The combination was quite exhausting, but I thought I just had to be able to do it. Immediately after graduating I got a job in which I did not always agree was with the rules and in which I didn’t set my limits properly. That caused a lot of stress unconsciously. During a holiday the bomb exploded and I realized that I had a burnout. There followed a long process of recovery and change, but I can I can now say that my life has become better. I feel less stress, set my own limits much more and have learned to really relax. A burnout can therefore also turn out to be a blessing in the end.”
You can listen to the podcast about chronic stress and burnout below.
