Beatha Coaching

In this post I am going to address one of the commonest issues that present in my coaching of academics, creative burnout. I have explored physiological burnout and how it differentiates from stress in this post, so if you are not familiar with burnout it might be worth revisiting that content. However, creative burnout is intimately related to the broader definition of being burnt out so I will repeat some of the core information below. Creative burnout is usually experienced as a profound mental exhaustion and the sense of being blocked; it can also sometimes be described as writer’s block or artist’s block. This language articulates the key presenting symptoms of the condition, as well as the sheer frustration that accompanies it. In addition, for most creatives, burnout or being blocked tends to turn-up exactly when you don’t want it to, in moments of high pressure and stress, exacerbating both the experience and the cause.

What is Creative Burnout?

Creative burnout is a state of nervous system exhaustion that makes connecting to our prefrontal cortex, where imagination, logic, and creativity are most active, more difficult. When we are experiencing a stressful or traumatising situation, our limbic system comes online to streamline our reactions in an effort to keep us safe. This might look like going into fight/flight and sympathetic activation, with a big release of nervous energy. Or it might be closer to a state of freeze, where we drop down into numbness and dissociation to wait out a threat we aren’t in a position to avoid. In both states, activity in our prefrontal cortex is reduced, and the work of our hippocampus and amygdala, in the base of our brain, becomes heightened. These parts of the brain are responsible for ensuring quick reactions to a threat, and they lay down emotional memories related to bad experiences in order to keep us safe next time we encounter something similar. Either way, once the threat or stresser has diminished, we should return to a state of rest and digest where our prefrontal cortex is back online, processing what has happened and enabling us to integrate and move forward from our experience.

These two types of brain activity are often referred to as quick and slow thinking. When we are in our nervous system responding to a stresser, our quick thinking or survival brain is taking the lead. Our reactions are based on implicit memory rather than deep contextual thinking, and our bodies respond faster than conscious thought in order to keep us safe. In periods of long-term stress, our brains will stay in survival mode most of the time, and we might see some immediate benefits of this, like quick reactions and the ability to habitually repeat certain actions. Have you noticed the difference in answering emails during semester and vacation for example? Or how about marking – in term time I once marked 70 first year assignments in one night, but during the summer it would take me several hours to go through a single dissertation.

However, the pay-off is decreased function in the areas of the brain that we need for slow thinking. Slow thinking is the creative, generative work that requires the ability to pattern find, contextualise, strategise and execute plans, and, significantly, to store and retain new information. Slow thinking is also essential for maintaining our concentration and focus. Another academic example for you – what is the difference between reading to teach and reading to research? The first is an action you can take when in survival brain – a quick skim of something familiar in order to reconnect with already stored information or something you don’t need to retain beyond the seminar. Reading to research requires long stretches of focused concentration without distraction, the ability to absorb and process new information, and to make connections with other material you have read or seen. This is slow thinking, and it needs the prefrontal cortex to be online and in the lead.

You can probably already see why creative blocks show up during term-time when we might well be operating from our survival brain much of the time. Creative burnout lingers once semester is over, however, leaving us frustrated and confused about why we can’t write or research even though the obvious stressors have been (temporarily, at least) relieved. Creative burnout is the aftereffect of being under stress for so long. When we are healthily regulated, there is a constant renewal of neurons and of the dendrites that form connections and neural pathways in our brain. These are the functions that allow for laying down new knowledge, creating connections, and changing old reflexive pathways. When we are in survival mode, however, the brain’s normal neuroplasticity and neurogenesis functions are effectively on hold. After a long period of stress we are therefore also dealing with a legacy of reduction in the neural networks needed for creativity. With the immediate stressors reduced, neuroplasticity and neurogenesis start up again and begin to renew the connections, make new neurons, and replace damaged dendrites. But this takes time, and is directly related to the recovery of the overall body and our ability to stay regulated for an extended period.

Recovering from Creative Burnout

The positive news, as with everything to do with neurobiology and the nervous system, is that our brains and bodies are remarkable plastic healing machines. The frustration and emotional pain of creative burnout is not a chronic condition – given enough time and rest, your ability to work generativity will return. The brain requires the right conditions to work in this way, however, and it is noticeable that the current university systems do not create or encourage the best environment for healthy creative flourishing. Executive functioning, or slow thinking, is significantly impaired by stress, as well as the need to multitask, and lack of sufficient rest (both physical and emotional). I hope that having a little more information about how your brain functions under stress will help to reduce any shame or self-criticism that has crept in if you are struggling to research and write at the moment.

My summer coaching programme is designed for academics who are experiencing burnout as we come to the end of an academic year in the UK. Over the next three months I will be taking participants through a process of recovery, reviving, and resourcing to help keep them out of burnout next year. The topics we will be covering on the programme are the three main things we need in order to limit the impact of stress on our creative functioning and overall wellness:

1. Nervous system regulation – regulating appropriately to our environment, managing stress, and having enough time in rest and digest is terribly difficult when we are working in a toxic or high-pressure environment. Regulation means being able to cope with sympathetic activation, discharge energy appropriately, and then come back into a state of calm and connection. The summer coaching programme will look at how we can expand our window of tolerance for stressers so that we feel more in control and able to care for ourselves even when our environment isn’t ideal.
2. Creative play & connection – we can help to rebuild neural networks that have been damaged through long periods in survival mode by consciously engaging our prefrontal cortex in stimulating activities. This means having fun with our research again, and ideally doing so in relationship with other people. Being connected and playful is a childlike state of learning that is low stress but highly effective for learning and building new stores of knowledge. On the summer coaching programme we will explore some of the common ways we over-professionalise our creativity and inflect it with stressors like perfectionism and imposter syndrome, whilst supporting one another to stay playful.
3. Embodied living – a feature of being under stress is a feeling of powerlessness, and a loss of agency over our body and lifestyle. Returning to connection with our embodied experience, and really learning to listen to what our physical self is telling us, is essential to healing from stress, and to resourcing to prevent further burnout. Over the summer we will emphasise practices that help us connect to our physical and emotional wellbeing again, planning and practicing for ways to maintain agency over our lifestyle and health when the new academic year starts.

There are now just five spaces left on the summer programme, which starts June 5th. If you are interested, head over here to find out more, where you can also book your slot. All participants get three one-to-one coaching slots with me, as well as a weekly group check-in, and monthly workshops over the summer

In my next blog post I am going to explore embodiment in more detail, as an essential component in healing from stress and trauma, and a core aspect of my own practice. Do subscribe to the blog if you would like that article to drop straight into your email when it is released. And as always, I would love to hear from you if you would value content on a specific topic, or would like to explore working with me one-to-one, just use the form below.