A life coach has shown that it can take three to five years of active recovery to recover from burnout, explaining that chronic stress changes body chemicals.
Nebraska’s Niki Pals, 29, stunned her TikTok followers earlier this month when she shared her recovery timeline from “real burnout,” prompting her to discuss her own experiences and the changes she’s had to make in her life in a series of videos.
The mom, known on the platform as @niki_jo_, explained that she has studied burnout for years as a certified life coach and also as a person who suffered from it.
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Life coach Niki Pals, 29, from Nebraska, stunned her TikTok followers earlier this month when she shared that it takes three to five years to recover from burnout.
The mom, known on the platform as @niki_jo_, explained that she has studied burnout for years as a certified life coach and also as a person who suffered from it.
“Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion caused by prolonged or repeated stress,” says a Psychology Today publication.
Work is often the driving force behind burnout, but it can also be caused by other stressors, including parenting or romantic relationships.
“Once you’ve reached the stage of true burnout, your body has changed chemically,” Pulse explained. “The chemicals in your body are very mixed up. You have exhausted your resources. You burned out.
“When my doctor did a blood test on me, cortisol, which is a stress hormone, was off the charts,” she recalls.
“So I needed to focus on bringing that down and restoring everything else to have a good even balance. What I needed was a lot of rest.”
Research shows that chronic stress also contributes to high blood pressure and causes brain changes that can contribute to anxiety, depression and addiction, according to Harvard Health Publishing.
Pulse explained that she had to step away from the coaching business and take a remote job due to “normality”, recalling that her cortisol levels were “off the charts” during this period of her life.
Pulse said her burnout problems started about three or four years ago after she started her own life coaching business. She loved helping people and “quickly became very successful.”
When other coaches started asking her to help them build their own business, she moved from life coaching to business coaching.
“I turned my passion into profit and it didn’t become my passion anymore,” she explained. “I really regret this.
Pulse said running her business became so stressful that she had to give it up because it was affecting her health.
“I was very unwell when I ran my business because I didn’t have time to take care of myself,” she recalls. “What is all this money worth if I’m not even healthy enough to enjoy it?”
She now has a social media and marketing job that allows her to log out at the end of the day and finish.
Pulse now has a social media and marketing remote job that allows her to log out at the end of the day and be done with it. She also has several private coaching clients.
Pulse is a proponent of “slow living,” a mindset that encourages a slower approach to everyday life, and she explained that recovery requires “active healing.”
“I have time with my family. I have a place in my brain,” she said. “When you are a business owner, you never think about it. Every minute of the day I thought about my business.”
“I work privately with a few clients that I love,” she added. “So I still do some stuff on the side, but I don’t run a full blown business for my sanity.”
Pulse is a proponent of “slow living,” a mindset that encourages a slower approach to everyday life, and she explained that recovering from burnout requires “active healing.”
“You can’t just sit on your couch for three to five years,” she said. “So many people say, ‘How can I do this and let myself live?’ or “I have children.”
“When true burnout happens, you deplete and deplete everything in your body. You need to restore it.
Pulse shared that she personally needs a lot of rest to recover from burnout, but that doesn’t mean she’s stopped caring about her personal responsibilities.
“Life doesn’t stop just because we’re burnt out,” she said. “We continue, but in a much healthier way”
Pulse said taking daily walks, breathing exercises, simplifying her life and decluttering her space helped her recover from burnout.
“Life doesn’t stop just because we’re burnt out,” she said. “We keep going, but in a much healthier way. We find work that is much more consistent. We find work that doesn’t burn out.
“And here’s a little funny thing: if you’re burnt out doing what you love, you probably don’t love it anymore.
“If you burn out as a teacher teaching a room full of kids, you probably don’t want to work with kids anymore, which is really sad because it ruins a lot for a lot of people.
“So you’ll have to fill your bucket with something else.” You’ll have to find something new that you like.”
Pulse suggested reading a book, staying home, going for a walk as a few examples of “active recovery.”
She also said taking daily walks, breathing exercises, simplifying her life and decluttering her space helped her recover.
“The last step is to get resources,” she said. “You can’t just fly around and hope you get better in three to five years.”