Posted by Anna (5 minute read)

When severe burnout ended my corporate career, I felt humiliated and blamed myself for not coping better. Thankfully, a combination of time, therapy and, of course, drumming helped me to recover. But what is burnout, and how can group drumming help prevent it?

Burnout is chronic stress caused by unmanaged workload.

The 3 key burnout symptoms to watch out for are:

• Emotional or physical exhaustion
• Depersonalization (e.g. cynicism, negativity or compassion fatigue)
• Reduced effectiveness

Burnout is like an overflowing bath with the taps still running. With burnout affecting how we think, feel and behave, as well as our physical health, the first thing to do if you notice these symptoms is to seek help, ‘switch the taps off’ and reduce stress.

How drumming can help

Understanding the science of drumming can help us understand burnout recovery:

1: Hitting things is cathartic; it helps us to discharge emotions & negative energy. Let’s face it, it’s preferable to kicking the cat! Drumming is a form of release that can help regulate emotions & complete the stress cycle by strengthening the connections between the ‘fight or flight’ part of the brain (amygdala) & the ‘thinking’ part (prefrontal cortex).

2: Drumming syncs our brains to the beat. Have you ever realised that you’ve fallen in step with someone you’re walking alongside? Something similar happens when we tap out a rhythm, as our brain waves sync to match the steady beat (entrainment), taking us to a calmer state of consciousness that calms frazzled nervous systems.

3:  Using both of our hands to drum also has a soothing effect on the brain. This bilateral stimulation taps into a part of the brain that doesn’t need language or the ability to describe what you’re feeling.

4: Drumming reduces cortisol levels (stress hormones), while also releasing endorphins & dopamine (happy hormones).

5: Drumming with others connects us, improving social bonds, trust & empathy within a group, building confidence & reducing emotional exhaustion.

Why you can’t just think your way out of burnout

Burnout affects your ability to think. Chronic stress makes our brains switch from the part that allows us to reason & make decisions, to a more reactive part. When in this stress mode, our emotions & threat detection levels are constantly on high alert.

Understanding this can help us to watch out for these symptoms in ourselves. At the height of my own burnout, I fell into ‘black & white’ thinking, losing nuance and reason. My perspective narrowed, and my stress worsened due to the pressure I was putting on myself to get a grip. This explained why I found myself with less patience & felt so irrational. It was a relief to understand that this wasn’t my fault, as I’d been blaming myself for not coping. The bit of my brain that would have allowed me to do that had gone offline.

Burnout made me unprofessional

As a Gen X woman with a 30-year public sector career, the working mentality I learned was to work hard, get on with it and don’t complain. Managing stress & workload was just part of the job, and an individual responsibility. ‘Work/life balance’ was a concept rather than a feasibility. It was a shock when at the age of 50, I finally cracked under the strain. Seeing so many mid-life women struggling with the weight of work, caring responsibilities & menopause, I’m pleased that younger generations aren’t willing to tolerate this and that employers are starting to take employee wellbeing seriously.

I knew that burnout had got the better of me when I was no longer able to act as professionally as I’d like at work. I’d been hiding the daily tears & frustration, but everything felt like a fight or an attack. I kept going, but it felt like wading through treacle.

But then cynicism reared its ugly head. I’d always prided myself on being a role model & advocate for the organisation I was working for, but the day I succumbed to criticising my own leadership team to a junior colleague was the day I realised that I wasn’t fit to be at work. Heartbroken, I took sickness absence & never returned to the organisation I loved.

Burnout is systemic and not your fault!

While drumming clearly helps burnout prevention & healing, it’s NOT OK to expect staff to manage unrealistic workloads & stress through a drumming intervention alone. Burnout prevention is still too often considered an individual’s responsibility or failure of resilience. Good line managers & organisations protect their staff from chronic stress by managing workloads & implementing robust employee wellbeing programmes.  

Life after burnout

Do I regret my own burnout? Yes & no. The loss of confidence & professional identity felt akin to a bereavement, and I sometimes wonder there might have been a different outcome if I’d known more about burnout. But it’s also led me to a deeper understanding of myself, and a rewarding new career that I’d never have predicted. Through Burnout Beaters, I hope that others can learn more about burnout prevention.

Further reading about burnout

For more information about group drumming, wellbeing & burnout, please see our other blogs The cost of caring: burnout statistics,  Menopause: how drumming helped me and Ten reasons why drumming helps wellbeing, which includes the sources for this blog.

I can also highly recommend the book ‘Burnout Free Working’ by Dr Richard Duggins, a Newcastle-based NHS psychiatrist; it’s a great read.