I've been thinking a lot about what it actually means to be an active participant in our own healing.
In my role as an integrative nurse at Enso, I spend a great deal of time reminding clients of the physiological importance of giving our bodies the resources they need to function. Nutrients are essential to cellular metabolism, mitochondrial energy production, neurotransmitter synthesis, and immune regulation. When those resources are depleted or deficient, restoring them can make a meaningful difference.
But my understanding of healing extends beyond the biochemistry. On a more personal level, I know the deep discomfort of sensory overwhelm that accompanies profound exhaustion. I know what it feels like when the world becomes a little too loud, ordinary demands become strangely insurmountable, and even the simplest acts of self-care begin to feel impossibly far away.
For me, burnout rarely announces itself with a dramatic collapse. It arrives quietly. A subtle dulling of my spirit. A gradual dimming of the curiosity, creativity, and vitality that make me feel most like myself. At first, I notice the difference. But after a few days, that diminished version of myself begins to feel familiar. Eventually, it starts to feel normal.
My own needs become another thing on an already impossible list. And slowly, almost without noticing, I begin to bow out of caring for myself. I think that's one of the more insidious things about burnout. We don't always recognize how much of ourselves we've lost until we begin to feel those parts returning.
When the body learns to survive
I was a relatively new nurse when the pandemic began, living in New Orleans and working at a rehabilitation hospital. Those early years of nursing stretched me in ways I could never haveanticipated. I was learning how to care for people through some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives while navigating a world that seemed to be unraveling around us.
And then came Hurricane Ida.
In August of 2021, I was selected to be part of our hospital's "A-Team," the group of healthcare workers responsible for staying behind to care for patients while the rest of the city evacuated. I remember helping my sister and dog prepare to leave, hearing where my friends were planning to shelter, and watching the city empty around me.
There was something surreal about knowing that everyone I loved was moving toward safety while I was preparing to stay. I had never experienced a Category 4 hurricane before. The thought of facing one was frightening enough. But the responsibility of protecting patients with serious physical injuries, many of whom could not move independently or evacuate without assistance, brought an entirely different kind of fear.
When the hurricane arrived, it was worse than I had imagined.
I was working on a split-level unit spanning the fourth and fifth floors of a relatively new hospital building. As the winds intensified, we could feel the building moving beneath us. I watched pieces of the exterior tear away and disappear into the storm. The pressure against the windows was terrifying. I remember looking at the glass and wondering whether it would hold.
So I began moving my patients' beds away from the windows, layering blankets over them in case the glass shattered. I was preparing for the building to come apart around us. Then the roof began leaking badly on the fifth floor. Water was making its way into patient rooms, and we had to relocate everyone from that level into the gymnasium normally used for physical therapy.
In the middle of a hurricane, we were moving medically vulnerable people through a building that no longer felt safe. We made it through the night but surviving the storm was only the beginning. What followed were five grueling days of caregiving under increasingly compromised conditions. Plumbing failed. Fresh food became scarce. Water had to be rationed. The ordinary infrastructure that makes hospital care possible was breaking down around us, but the needs of our patients remained.
There was no opportunity to fall apart. No room to fully process what was happening. We simply kept going, because people were depending on us.
It took five days before the B-Team arrived to relieve us. And although the immediate crisis had ended, I wonder now how long it took my nervous system to recognize that the danger had passed.
The quiet cost of holding it all together
Looking back, what strikes me most is not only what we endured, but how readily the extraordinary became ordinary.
When we're called upon to function through prolonged stress, our bodies are remarkably capable of adapting. Our stress-response systems mobilize energy, sharpen attention, and help us respond to immediate threats.
These are extraordinary survival mechanisms.
But survival has a cost, particularly when our opportunities for recovery are limited. In physiology, we use the term allostatic load to describe the cumulative burden of repeatedly adapting to stress. Over time, persistent activation of our stress-response systems can influence sleep, immune signaling, metabolism, emotional regulation, and the ways we perceive and respond to the world around us.
I find this concept profoundly validating.
Because burnout, at least in my experience, wasn't simply being tired. It was the gradual narrowing of my capacity to be myself.
The world began asking more of me than I had available to give, and instead of recognizing that imbalance, I became increasingly accustomed to living inside it.
My body had become very good at getting through things. But getting through life and feeling fully present for it are not the same thing.
Resourcing Ourselves: Finding Our Own Way Back
Looking back on those years in New Orleans, I can see how much of my life was spent responding to what was needed of me, and how little energy remained to consider what I needed for myself. I knew the physiology of stress. I understood the importance of nutrition, sleep, and recovery. I could explain to a patient why their body needed rest, why certain nutrients mattered, and why prolonged stress could affect their health.
But knowledge and capacity are two very different things.
When you're deeply depleted, even caring for yourself can begin to feel like another demand.
What eventually helped me wasn't one extraordinary treatment or a single revelation. It was a gradual process of discovering what actually resourced me.
During my time in New Orleans, I spent several months working at an IV infusion clinic. Much of the business revolved around hangover recovery, helping people bounce back after a night of excess.
But I saw something different in the potential of the work.
Having experienced the profound exhaustion of burnout myself, I couldn't help but wonder what might be possible if we approached nutrient therapy as part of a more intentional, whole-person approach to recovery.
I had the opportunity to receive IV nutrient infusions from the nurses I worked alongside. For someone who had spent so much time caring for others, there was something meaningful about being on the receiving end of that care.
And, I began to notice something interesting: when I felt even a little more physically resourced, other things sometimes became easier, too.
The idea of preparing a nourishing meal felt less overwhelming. Rest felt more accessible. I had a little more patience, a little more curiosity, a little more of myself available for the people I loved.
It wasn't as though one infusion suddenly resolved the accumulated weight of burnout. Rather, I began to recognize how even small shifts in our physical well-being might create opportunities for other positive changes.
A little more capacity to care for myself made it easier to make choices that supported my health. And those choices, in turn, helped me feel more capable of showing up for my life.
I began to think of this as a positive cycle of resourcing. When we feel depleted, our world can become smaller. We may struggle to access the very behaviors that help us recover: preparing nourishing food, moving our bodies, connecting with loved ones, or recognizing when we need rest.
But sometimes, a little support can create enough room for the next supportive choice. And then the next.
This is not to suggest that IV nutrient therapy has been proven to restore emotional regulation or improve decision-making in people without nutrient deficiencies. Those outcomes haven't been established in clinical trials, and my experience is personal rather than proof of a physiological mechanism.
It gave me a new appreciation for something that continues to shape my approach to integrative nursing: the value of helping people find an accessible starting point for recovery.
That experience became part of the inspiration for my own business. I began imagining an infusion practice that looked beyond hangover recovery and considered how appropriately prescribed nutritional support might fit into a more comprehensive approach to health.
As I continued exploring my own healing, acupuncture and other mind-body practices became important parts of that picture.
I was beginning to understand that different forms of support could meet different needs.
Some addressed the physiological foundations of health. Others helped me feel more grounded, aware, and connected to myself. And some of the most meaningful changes came from what became possible afterward.
I started to think about healing less as finding the one right intervention and more as discovering the unique combination of resources that helped me return to myself.
Because perhaps the most meaningful measure of feeling better isn't simply how we feel in the moments following a treatment. It's what that renewed capacity makes possible in the rest of our lives.
Written by Elena Bradley, RN