The Three Main Types of Burnout
Of the people who come to me for chronic fatigue there are three main types.
Type 1: Lifestyle & Organ Depletion
The person who has led a life of lesser discipline and unfortunately poor lifestyle choices has made life tough to bear because of depletion and underperformance of their physical organs.
Type 2: High-Stress Overdrive (Adrenal Burnout)
The person who owns a big company or is a CEO and the high stress and demand from the job has caused adrenal fatigue.
Type 3: The Post-Peak Void
The person who used to own a big company, sold it or got out of the game and because of that ever since then have a lacklustre for life because nothing can match that level of life engagement.
Note: Types 2 and 3 also commonly apply to high-level athletes, performers, and people with PTSD.
Treatment Implications
Types 1 and 2 can be the easiest to treat.
In the first person’s case, a restoration of their microbiome and organ function is usually the first critical step to restore appropriate life direction and restore energy on a day-to-day basis. It may not happen overnight, but a gradual incline is possible to achieve through using high-level medicine to course-correct these health factors.
In the second person’s case, there is usually an abuse or overuse of stimulants and/or other chemicals involved, and as such the adrenals have been burned out. The normal mechanisms of taking testosterone or going on meditation retreats or similar don’t solve the problem. But proper medicine using holistic principles and clinical experience — in combination with the introduction of a specific daily lifestyle schedule — will fix or give the body a chance to course-correct where these other approaches fail.
Number 3, depending on the person, can be a little more complicated. There can still be lots of side effects from medication or stimulants, but fundamentally the pathway back to restoring energy comes from addressing another hidden factor.
The Hidden Factor in Type 3
Peak experiences are exhilarating — there’s no way around it. They are a drug, and a drug of the good kind. Many people who have the big company and then sell understand intellectually that life afterwards will not be fulfilling, but it is still a shock when daily life sets in.
Here is where Eastern medicine has an understanding that only the top medical research universities in the world are starting to touch upon now.
Engagement of the mind and focus within the flow of the moment is one of the biggest keys to maintaining, improving, and regenerating organ strength and health. And if you have healthy organs, you have healthy and strong energy. Period.
The key therefore lies in developing the skills to develop this focus and engagement where it is not dependent on external stimuli. If this can be done, then health can return. Paradoxically, that is also when new purpose and the perceptibility to new meaning starts to develop.
This is also where Eastern Medicine is particularly powerful. Not only does it have the understanding of focus and flow states and how they impact energy levels and healing — it also has the practical tools to bring this into your life. Tools that are available to everyone, no matter how severe their energy depletion.
The fact of the matter is, for many people, burnout and chronic fatigue are a symptom of achieving focus and engagement in life in an incomplete way. Not wrong — just incomplete. And if you can learn to address this hidden imbalance with careful guidance and sincerity, then not only is it possible for your energy levels to recover, but you will also unlock a side of life that will make what was once exciting seem dull in comparison.