The case in summary: • Mia Keyser has been burned out for eight years and has tried many different treatment methods without success.• Psychologist Jakob Clason van de Leur believes that burnout should be treated as an existential crisis.• Leur suggests a treatment that focuses on finding out what is experienced as meaningful for the patient, and to challenge stress and anxiety through various forms of exposure. • Mia has found improvement through taking small steps in many areas of life, creating a valuable everyday life and lowering the demands on herself. The summary is made by an AI service from OpenAi. The content is quality assured by news’s journalists before publication. Mia Caroline Keyser (34) apologizes for all the mess, but in this living room, in the kitchen and in the hallway, things are tidy. – Would you call yourself a perfectionist? Mia chuckles lightly. She understands why the question is being asked. It turns out that people with exhaustion tend to be perfectionists. And Mia, she’s been burnt out for eight years. She has been a perfectionist all her life. A great start to her career Mia pours herself a cup of coffee – a task that is now easy, but which once upon a time was a big job. Eight years ago, Mia completed her legal education and worked as a paralegal in Oslo. Every day at work is busy. Leisure time is not very relaxing, either. Mia feels tired, but the body’s signals can be difficult to interpret. It is clear that she will be able to juggle work with training and an exciting social life. Suddenly the body says stop. Mia gets the kissing bug. This will be the start of an eight-year battle against my own health. Getting sicker and sicker Mia goes on sick leave for a little while, but gets back to work. Still, something is not right. After a few months, the body collapses. – I was completely on the brink at this point. I had pushed myself for too long, explains Mia. She says that it felt as if she never recovered – that the headache, body aches and fever never went away. In fact, it only got worse. – I felt very helpless, scared, despairing. I didn’t understand what happened, says Mia. Was told to rest Mia’s GP is aware of her rather busy everyday life and therefore asks her to rest, which is common practice when dealing with burnt-out patients. There is a lack of knowledge about what helps against burnout, according to Marte Kvittum Tangen, head of the Norwegian Association for General Medicine. – Resting as much as possible has been the recommendation until now, but there is a discussion going on where some doctors believe that more activity can be good, she says. Mia rests, but it doesn’t help. She thus goes through long investigations at Aker hospital, she is diagnosed with ME. It is a diagnosis for which there is no research-based treatment. Mia points to the stairs that go down to the basement. There is a wheelchair she had to use if she had to move around due to exhaustion. Mia does not agree to be like that. She and her boyfriend, Erling Keyser, desperately want children together. But first Mia must get well. She contacts a nutritionist, a psychologist, tries acupuncture and physiotherapy and receives treatment at a rehabilitation centre. – We tried everything, but I just got worse. – Everyone who treated me said their knowledge would cure me. Everyone was only focused on their area. But it wasn’t just one thing Mia needed to work on. Need to find meaning Psychologist Jakob Clason van de Leur has treated people with burnout for several years and recently wrote a PhD on the diagnosis. The Swedish psychologist believes that we must view burnout as an existential crisis resulting from a lack of contact with the meaning of life. Photo: Filip Jovicic Because burnout is often the result of an overall large load over time, rest will be nothing more than urgent advice, he explains. So far, there is also no research that proves that rest makes people with long-term fatigue better. – Being told to rest for a long time can lead to fear of experiencing stress and passivity, says the psychologist. His treatment suggests helping the patient and finding out what is experienced as meaningful and when that person feels capable and loved. Based on that, patient and therapist can work with different forms of exposure to challenge stress and anxiety. – We have tested this treatment in a small pilot study on 26 patients for 12 weeks with promising results, says Leur. The results from this treatment correspond to the effect of a significantly more extensive treatment over six months. This is how Jakob researched: Study 1: An open clinical study that followed up 390 patients with burnout who had all been through a 24-week cognitive behavioral therapy. Study 2: Explored subgroups and what helped 915 patients with fatigue. Study 3: Explored factors believed to be relevant in people with burnout such as sleep problems, worry, perfectionism, and psychological flexibility. Study 4: A pilot study in which he tested a new model that follows 26 patients with the diagnosis through a twelve-week treatment program online. Source: Psychological Treatment of Stress-Induced Exhaustion Disorder: Towards a Contextual Behavioral Approach Got renewed motivation The cohabiting couple decide not to wait for better times, but to live the life they want. First one child comes, then another. – I got someone else to think about and renewed my motivation to get healthy, says the mother of two. Mia makes another attempt. This time she is starting a health coach education. – I suddenly realized that I had to find a balance and take small steps in many areas of life, says Mia. The solution is as psychologist Leur proposes in his doctorate: to look holistically at health, create a valuable everyday life and lower the demands on oneself. Leur’s research shows that it is often perfectionists who burn out. Mia never experienced getting the help she needed from the healthcare system. – But it’s not because they didn’t want to. I think they just don’t have the knowledge and resources for it, says Mia. Psychologist Eline Lie Hæreid treats people with challenges related to stress and exhaustion on a daily basis and says it is very individual what makes someone healthy. Eline Lie Hæreid Exploring what makes sense sounds like an important factor in getting out of long-term exhaustion. My experience shows that it is important to find a good balance between rest and activity. Many people need gradual exposure and new stimuli for the nervous system to get out of a pattern where situations are associated with stress, and then finding meaning can be a great resource. Dreaming of helping others Mia sits on the step outside the door and ties her running shoes. Right behind the house is a gate that goes straight out into Nordmarka in Oslo. It’s a hiking area Mia tries to use every day – now that she finally can. Yes, because after eight years of exhaustion, Mia is on the way up again. Going forward, she wants to teach everything she wished someone had taught her when she got sick. In a few months, it will become a book. – The book project makes me feel that the last eight years were not such a waste, says Mia. She also wants to learn more about the body, so after the book project she will study medicine. But Mia promises that the threshold has been lowered and that life will be lived at a calmer pace. A pass must be good enough and the children even get fish sticks for dinner now and then. Hello! Thank you for reading my case! Do you have thoughts about the case you have read or input for new cases? Feel free to send me an email! Published 13.08.2024, at 20.10 Updated 13.08.2024, at 21.13
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Burnout, perfectionism and wrong treatment – news Vestfold and Telemark – Local news, TV and radio
