Looking back now, I believe the turning point came when a therapist suggested anti-anxiety medications once he had uncovered the link between anxiety and my symptoms. While there definitely is a time and a place for prescription medications, I figured I’d give yoga a try first. After all, I’d heard that it’s what people were doing to relieve stress. That first step of branching out into the world of wellness led me to slowly examine my diet and lifestyle, and within a surprisingly short period of time, I discovered that my food could act as my medicine.

Through a process I didn’t quite understand at the time, my burnout symptoms started to evaporate. Over the span of a few months I was feeling better than I had ever felt in my life. My job felt easier, my mind worked faster, my energy could sustain me through the day and into the evening. The days of feeling shaky and irritable between meals were a thing of the past. When the anxiety and sadness began to slowly float away, a light contentment took their place and I found myself thinking “is this what happy feels like?”

Once I was out of my own fog, I could see that people all around me were trapped in burnout cycles of their own; punishing their health to get through their gruelling daily regimens, the next project, deadline, or family event – then collapsing when their bodies forced them to rest. The cycle would repeat endlessly, opening the door to serious health issues not limited to thyroid conditions, prediabetes, and various autoimmune diseases.

What broke my heart is that this pattern kept so many people from accomplishing things they wanted to do and led them to lose sight of who they wanted to be – powerful in their own right, getting promoted, taking that bike trip across city, maybe even running the local marathon. They were stuck and all they wanted to do was find ways to feel a little bit better in the moment without addressing why they felt this way.