symptoms of burnout

The Burnout Personality Factor

DO YOU HAVE A BURNOUT PERSONALITY? (aka your BOP FACTOR)

Are you ready to discover if you have a Burnout Personality?  Also known as the BOP Factor as we like to call it.  Read on…

We all have certain characteristics we were born with that form a significant part of our temperament and personality.  Taken one at a time these characteristics are amazingly wonderful.  In fact, they are like a gift and can give you tremendous resilience and strength.   However, if you don’t pay attention to what you need, want, desire or dream of these same characteristics can wear you down and wear you out.  So now, The Bop Factor.  Let’s get into it.

You are not out of energy, exhausted and stressed because you:

  • are weak,
  • can’t cope,
  • can’t handle stress,
  • are a loser,
  • or a failure.

You do, however, have a ‘Be All and Do All Personality’ that can put you on the direct route to Burnout.

You try to BE everything to everybody and DO everything for everybody and do it all yourself!

Simply knowing about your BOP Factor can change how you feel about yourself and how you approach your life.  We are quite serious about this.  Knowing how your BOP characteristics are inter-woven with each other, how you inherited some of them and learned others, how they work for you and against you can absolutely change your life.

Without further adieu, here is the foundation of your Burnout Personality, your BOP factor:

You are reliable, dependable, conscientious, responsible & trustworthy.

You pride yourself on endurance, persistence, drive, tenacity and strength.  You have stick-to-it-ness!

You are more comfortable giving than receiving.

You always want to do the ‘right’ thing.

You are passionate, compassionate, empathic & sympathetic.

You are highly sensitive, creative, perceptive and have great intuition (when you listen to it!)

You are a caring, helpful, supportive, cooperative, loyal and a dedicated nurturer.

Now there are a few qualities that are cringe worthy.  No doubt you will recognise some of them but no judgements allowed!

You are a people pleaser.

You rarely feel ‘good enough’ .

You have really high standards for yourself and keep raising the bar higher and higher.

You work like a maniac.

You are a perfectionist!

You feel the need to prove yourself.

You are a perfectionist!

And, last but not least…

You have a YES habit.

That my lovelies is the BOP Factor.   When they work against you they put you at risk for burning out.  We certainly don’t want this for you because burnout robs you of energy, happiness, and your zest for living.  Burnout affects your relationships, your health, your career and your success. Ultimately you lose your drive, motivation, belief in yourself, passion and your spirit.

But, big but, when your BOP characteristics work for you we are talking peak performance.  They make you a passionate doer and truthfully the planet needs more of those.  The key is knowing how to embrace them, express them and direct the energy and intensity that comes with having such a strong personality.  That’s the power that comes with being a Burnout Queen.

 P.S. To put it into a context, here are 4 examples of how your BOP Factor can get in the way:

#1:  Being a perfectionist means you live in the future. You are always looking ahead to what you can do better, differently, or tweak a bit.

Result:  You never find peace, contentment, satisfaction or success NOW.

#2:  You live in a land of ‘shoulds, ought to’s, and musts.  You do what everyone else thinks is the ‘right’ thing for you to do.

Result: You end up living a compromise, instead of doing what you want, living your dreams.You end up always feeling guilty about something.

#3: Bell rings, you jump.  Others expect a lot from you and you always try to meet those expectations.  If you don’t, you berate yourself for not being helpful enough, understanding enough or just plain old good enough.

Result:  You end up pulled in too many directions.  Over-being and over-doing everything for everybody.

#4:   You end up silenced by your own strengths.  Your need to prove yourself, to do everything well, coupled with the fact that you are so good at what you do.

Result:  Other people simply expect your success.  They assume nothing is too much for you and you can handle anything and everything whether you want to or not.

With love,  Dr Toby & Dr Bev (aka The Burnout Queens) xx

The Big Leap times 10 years!

From Here to There!

From Here

We just cannot believe it has been a full decade that we left our home and country.  Last evening we were sitting in the Vancouver International Airport saying ‘shouldn’t we be nervous, or sad, or something?’  We weren’t, we were just quietly waiting for our one-way ticket to our new destination in life.

Brave or stupid?  Just feels right.  We had sold our condo, money in the bank, said good-bye to family, friends, neighbours and clients (although some would stay with us over skype), all our belongings except our luggage was packed into a container enroute across Canada to board a boat heading east!

A big leap of faith was starting to really happen.

I vividly remember looking out the window of the plane as we took off, looking back at my neighbourhood (we climbed right over it) and thought…’I don’t know what will happen or how it will turn out, but I’m open to whatever transpires’.

A long sleep, a beautifully calm flight and we landed in our new homeland.  The customs woman looked at our passports and VISAs and said, ‘welcome home‘.  Just such a deeply happy moment we had both waited for for the last 4 decades.  You couldn’t wipe the smiles off our faces, even after the 10 hour flight and time-change.

To There

 

 

 

 

 

So it’s official.  We live in England and over the next 10 or so days in honour of these 10 years,  we’ll give you a peek at the life we set up and are living from then until now (warts, pups and all)!

In the meantime…..

HAPPY 10th ANNIVERSARY TO THE BOTH OF US!

Crack open the books

What better time than summer to crack open the books you’ve longed to read all year long.  The days are long, the pace is summer-slow, and the time is yours to catch up on yourself.  

The Burnout Queens believe in the power of knowledge.  With our psychology degrees, our coaching expertise, and a specialty in womens’ issues, we wanted to share just a few books that will help you jump any life hurdles and open you up to even more personal growth. 

Here are a few of our ‘must reads’ to get you started.

  1. Excuses Begone! (Dr. Wayne W. Dyer)
  2. Be Happy.  (Robert Holden, Ph.D.)
  3. Quiet.   (Susan Cain)

 

Happy Reading darling. 

Dr Toby Silverton & Dr Bev McLagan  aka…The Burnout Queens xx

 

Stop Overwhelm and Embrace Life!

Are you feeling ‘overdone from overdoing’?  Did I hear a big ‘YES’ from you?   Then darling, you are OVERWHELMED and that won’t be a surprise to you.

When we’re overwhelmed we just want to sit down and throw our hands up in the air…give up…and hope tomorrow will be better than it feels right now.   I’m sure you can relate.

 

                                               

In our podcast today, Dr T is talking about OVERWHELM, giving you insight into

  • what overwhelm actually is (not what you think)
  • what happens to you when you’re overwhelmed (anxiety, getting stuck and experiencing a brain drain)
  • how to offset your overwhelm 

The Burnout Queens’ podcast OVERWHELM GEMS give you 7 Gems that are pretty darn simple to put into motion and reap you big results.

Stop the Overwhelm and Embrace Life!

Love, Dr Toby & Dr Bev (The Burnout Queens)

Am I Burnt Out?

AM I BURNT OUT?

 

I am struck by how many women these days easily say, “oh I’m just so burnt out”.  Sadly, I believe it’s a statement most of us seem to relate to in this fast-paced world today. Many of our clients come to us feeling down, depleted, and utterly overwhelmed…and you guessed it, they all say, I think I might be burning out.

 

What is this thing called Burnout?

We often ask people, ‘do you really know what burnout is’.  We hear a variety of common responses some accurate, some not.  Bottom line, if the information is not correct women don’t seek help and things get worse.  It’s the way Burnout takes hold.

When people hear you say you’re burned out, they usually reply that everyone is stressed.  If you think you are suffering from burnout and hear this, you walk away feeling foolish and inept for making a fuss, even though you feel about to drop from exhaustion.

Others talk about ‘being burned out’ in a manner that sounds like a fad or trend or something ultra-light.  They are the ones who seemingly act like the ‘every-ready bunny’ and keep going, hardly skipping a beat.  It makes it hard to believe they feel like you do, because you are struggling to keep up with everything.  So you lie awake wondering what’s wrong with me that I can’t cope.

This would be a good moment to give Burnout some serious thought.  What is it really and what does it look and feel like.  The best medicine is to arm yourself with proper knowledge so that you can make decisions in aid of your well-being.

The Burnout Queens have put together this Simple Symptom Checklist for Burnout to help you identify whether or not you are burning out.  See if you recognise any of the emotional, physical and mental changes for yourself.

 

Get immediate access to this Checklist

CLICK HERE:

 

 

 

 

Don’t dismiss your feelings and emotions.  If it’s just stress it can’t be that bad, right?  And if it’s really bothering you that much you must be depressed, right?  Perhaps not.

Burnout is not stress and it’s not depression, although you just might ‘feel’ depressed and stressed when you keep trying to juggle all your responsibilities and never feel you get enough reprieve to feel well.  If you are burnt out you keep trying to ‘keep going’, but with depression you just want to hide under the duvet forever! 

Let’s nip burnout in the bud.   Start by downloading our Simple Symptom Checklist for Burnout.  This is the best and simplest way to check if you are actually burning out.

If you love downloading, you will love our Learn From Us page.  Feel free to save and read as many of our resources that you think will help on your road to living a burnout-free lifestyle.

 

 

To your health!

Love, The Burnout Queens xx

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