Burnout prevention through sport

Every patient is individually different and therefore the prevention of burnout is different for every patient. Nevertheless, it can be said that sport is an important prevention and even an important therapy for almost all patients who suffer from burnout or are about to do so. Many patients who suffer from burnout occupy themselves a lot with their thoughts or think about everything twice and three times.

In order to interrupt this stream of thoughts it is important not to forget the body and to concentrate fully on your own body and sensations during sports. Many patients who are on the verge of a burnout have forgotten to listen and pay attention to their own body. Stomach ache or sore throat are ignored and instead of curing them in bed they take unnecessary medication to continue to perform.

In order to get out of this spiral, sport is a suitable measure and is therefore a very good prevention against the burnout syndrome. When doing sports, you reach your limits at some point, are out of breath and have to slow down. The experience that at some point you just stop and that at some point you cannot go on is a very important experience for patients with a burnout syndrome.

In addition, sport helps to lose the inner tension and to come back into balance with oneself. Sports such as yoga or Qui-Gong, where the patient must consciously pay attention to his body, are also particularly suitable. It is important that the sport does not also become a pressure to perform, because then the sport is no longer a prevention for burnout but rather promotes it. It is better to pay attention to what you perceive when jogging, whether you hear a bird chirping, whether it smells of trees and not to pay attention to how many minutes you jumped up the mountain today and whether the time was really better than yesterday.

Prevention sleep

Probably the most important prevention, however, is a sufficient portion of sleep. Burnout patients have a completely wrong sleep rhythm due to the changed, stress-related hormone situation and the day-night rhythm is often hardly kept. Working late into the night or constantly waking up at night promotes an unhealthy day-night rhythm.

Therefore, one of the most important preventative measures against burnout is to allow yourself a sufficient portion of sleep. How much that is varies from patient to patient. Some patients are fully recovered after 7 hours, some patients need 9-10 hours of sleep.

Here it is important not to stick to numbers, but to listen to your own body what it needs. In addition, it is important to take fixed times in which one sleeps. For example, you should decide to go to bed between 10-12 o’clock. In this way, the body gets used to this rhythm and adapts the hormone level and biorhythm to these times. This is very important and a very good and simple prevention against burnout.