Ron Kness

Preventing and Controlling Burnout Ron Kness

Short-term stress is actually beneficial, when it is not recurring or chronic. When you encounter stress for just a few minutes, or even an hour, your fight or flight response is triggered. When this happens, the hormonal and chemical calls to action in your body are positive. You are highly alert and aware. All your senses come alive. Your brain function improves substantially. You have detected stress of some kind, so your immune system immediately responds. There are studies which show that this type of short-term stress can instantly improve your body's natural defense system, and help you ward off disease and infection. Now imagine that situation over the long term. Your senses are hyper-alert for days, weeks and months, instead of just a few minutes or hours at a time. There are no significant rest periods between your stressful states. This is when stress leads to burnout. Studies on brain chemistry show that burnout can cause long-lasting neurological problems. Your brain controls everything you do. Your brain is crucial for normal bodily function, and is the core of what allows you to exist. A normally functioning brain is so important to human survival that a lack of brainwave activity is one of the requirements for a declaration of death. Burnout can cause negative changes in your brain chemistry that, if left untreated, can do lifelong damage. In my book, I show you how to identify excess stress, cope with it and prevent it from happening again in the future.