This Week My Mind Caught Fire (And What I Learned)

If I had to pick a lesson learned this week, it would be that it’s ok to slow down a little. This week was a doozy, one that left me spinning a little. Maybe your week was the same. 

Let’s face it, we are good at putting out fires; we do it all day long and often without even pausing to jump in and take action. 

This was the kind of week I had, a perfect combination of continuous little fires that individually wouldn’t have caused too much disruption in my day, but combined caused a conflagration. 

To be clear, the conflagration only involved my mental state- everything external got resolved in a somewhat timely fashion, all patients were well cared for, and no animals were harmed in the making of this story 🙂.

But it felt pretty bad, and I have reached Friday exhausted with what I call an overstimulation/overwhelm hangover. You know the feeling, the one where you have been riled up for so many days in a row that your brain and your body are screaming, “enough!” Obviously we can’t stay in this place if we want to continue doing the work we do.

When I get into this state, I know it’s time for a personal root cause analysis. The point of this is not to place blame but to understand why and how something happened and what steps can be taken to prevent recurrence. While root cause analysis is typically applied to address an error or a poor systemic outcome, the same principles can be applied to situations where we find ourselves triggered, overwhelmed, or totally stressed out.

The steps of a root cause analysis (if you need a refresher or don’t work in corporate) are as follows. 

Define the problem: Identify the specific symptoms. In applying this to myself and not an external system, I look for when the stress symptoms and overwhelm started. This is the first step in burnout prevention. When did I notice the subtle signs of stress: moving faster, palpitations, tighening of the neck and shoulders? What happened that moved me from moving with purpose to worried (and agitated) action-taking?

Understand the current impacts: What impact did this have on my day, (my week), my sleep, my coping strategies, my stress levels and relationships, my self-care practices? Let’s just say it involved a lot of carbs and doom scrolling.

Gather information and data: What was the timeline of events? When did things start to go off the rails, and why? What factors contributed to this situation? How did I react?

Identify causal factors: This could involve external factors (and often will). The nuance here is to find intrinsic factors that may contribute to your experience. One approach to help with this is the “5 Whys” approach. This is done by asking repetitive questions to get to the smallest or deepest contributing factors. When applied to yourself, it can get a little personal, and that’s ok. Let me give you an example

Why did this situation produce stress for me? 

Because I had patients scheduled and I had to stop what I was doing to make sure that the issue in the office, which also involved patient care, was resolved.

Why did I have to do this? 

Because I was covering for the manager and was the only one with the skills to make it happen.

It would be easy to stop here, feeling like you are at an impasse of the facts being the facts. But keep in mind that the goal here is to change the experience of feeling triggered, to problem-solve overwhelm, 

Why am I triggered by this being the situation? 

Here comes the gold. 

When I asked myself this question, the overwhelm didn’t come from fear that everything wasn’t going to work out; I knew it would ultimately work out. It wasn’t because I wasn’t capable or that I didn’t want to help. I like solving problems and helping people. 

The problem lies in a pattern that I learned many years ago- it’s better to move fast and keep everyone happy. 

Yup- that’s where my root cause analysis brought me. Right back to unconscious (and arbitrary) rules that I have set up for myself.

I realized that I get incredibly anxious when running behind or when people are waiting. And let’s face it, there are plenty of times that this has really helped me out. My patients are always really appreciative that I see them at their scheduled times. I am always happy when I get out of work on time because of my attention to these details.

And I like it when the people around me are happy- it makes for a much easier day.

To be clear, we don’t have to treat this unconscious standard as good or bad. There are plenty of times that this model has been incredibly helpful, but this wasn’t one of them.  This may be more than what you wanted to know about how my mind works, but I think it’s important to identify this background programming if we want to make meaningful change in our lives. 

In the moment, I had to make some quick decisions, all of which resulted in patients waiting, providers waiting, colleagues waiting, and messages waiting. The rest of the day left me trying to regain lost ground. which triggered me to feel agitated and out of control- not feelings that I like to propagate in my life.

None of the situation was life-or-death, and much of the internalized stress could have been minimized if I had taken a breath to notice it in the moment. 

But I didn’t, I couldn’t, because I hadn’t used this approach in the past. 

This is the beauty of a root cause analysis- it can change behavior (and thereby outcomes) in the future. 

In retrospect, this can help me work through the repercussions of a stressful week because I can hopefully prevent recurrence or at least be aware in the moment. 

The solution doesn’t just lie in preventing the overwhelming circumstances, which I also evaluated and have put new processes into place to help minimize the likelihood that I will be in this situation again, but it also lies in putting processes in place to minimize the stress response. 

Now that I know what causes me internally to feel stressed, I can accommodate that as well. 

Here’s what I came up with. 

1. Stop and think for one minute before jumping into action. 

2. Ask the involved parties what their expectations are and take it from there. I didn’t ask the doc if she was ok waiting 30 minutes for a fluoro tech to come instead looking for an alternative solution. I didn’t ask my telehealth appointments if it was ok to pushthem back an hour instead of just telling them I was running behind (so I was still rushing).  I could have bought myself a lot of peace if I hadn’t tried to stay on a previous schedule. I didn’t take 5 minutes to look through my messages, prioritize actions, and delegate what I could. I didn’t tell my dinner meeting that I may be late. I didn’t acknowledge myself in any of this so of course I felt panicked.

3. Reframe “running late” into “revising the schedule”. Reframing has never let me down. Now that I know I need to apply it in these situations, I am armed with a solution for the next time my day lights on fire. 

This particular solution may not resonate with you at all. What YOUR root analysis reveals may be totally different. The point is that what we are thinking without conscious awareness has profound effects on our ability to deal with stress throughout our lives. If we want to build resilience, we must identify and address our internal dialogues, instead of just blaming unforeseen circumstances. 

If you had a stressful week, take a minute and try this. I was surprised with what I came up with and I am honestly relieved to have a plan for next time, because we all know, there will be a next time. 

Don’t you like to feel prepared?

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Burnout prevention isn’t about doing less—it’s about understanding what’s driving you. If you’re ready to identify your internal stress patterns and create practical strategies to change them, I’d love to support you in that work. Reach out at Megan @NursingBeyondtheJob.com