Burn Out
This is very topical currently.
There are a few layers in this toxic sponge cake.
The icing is the obvious, an exhausted wasted human, a shadow of it’s former self, confined, beyond clear thought and signalling a May Day call.
The cake’s top layer contains the constructive essence of this disaster, the decades of over work, the stress beyond stress, the denial of self of quality rest and good nutrition and often the relative lack of sunshine.
The filling upon which the top layer rests is full of the pressures that create the stress. The unrealistic self expectations and of those often in commanding positions. The self expectations more likely relate to those of a parent/guardian or parents or an unsatisfactory nurturing of the flight, fight, freeze response through foetal times, infancy and youth.
The bottom of this unholy mess is the coiled biology(DNA) that interfaces with the physical world giving conscious life.
DNA is both the responder to the environmental landscape and the constructor, reacting through epigenetic tagging and other mechanisms to provide a being that has the best chance of fulfilling the choice of reproduction which for some might include requiring perceived success, respect money and or power.
The genetic variation that we have individually, expressed through the genetics variations generated via single nucleotide polymorphisms and other genetic processes gives the individual we see, those who get burn out and those who don’t.
The effect of chronic over stimulation of the flight, fight, freeze axis leads to excess adrenaline and cortisol activity, these chemicals drive the distortion of the biology of survival, directly affecting the primal elements, those of inflammation and blood clotting amongst others. An individual’s genetic variances and epigenetic tagging dictate the outcome.
The chronic fatigue of an over active immunity driving inflammation can be profound with loss of strength, balance, mentation and in some situations the will to carry on.
PTSD and depressive illnesses are all part of the same new world miseries.