Working long hospital shifts where you carry more than just the work, feeling exhausted felt normal. What I didn’t realise at the time was that it wasn’t the kind of tiredness rest could fix.
People assume the pressure ends when your shift ends. But the anxious thoughts and emotional exhaustion can stay with you much longer.
In intensive care, it doesn’t really work like that.
One day you’re holding the hand of someone your own age while they die. The next morning you’re in the gym trying to act normal, replying to messages, buying groceries, coaching classes, carrying on like your nervous system didn’t just spend twelve hours in survival mode.
That was probably the strangest part for me.
Work would finish, but my body never seemed to believe the stressful part was actually over.
And honestly, I do not think this only happens to people working in intensive care.
The brain and nervous system are not always very good at distinguishing between physical danger and constant psychological pressure.
Over time, deadlines, emotional pressure, notifications, lack of rest and never fully switching off can keep the body operating as if something is constantly wrong.
Looking back now, I think the anxious thoughts and burnout symptoms were signs my nervous system had been stuck in survival mode for a very long time.
I work in an ICU, and the environment is intense in a way that’s difficult to explain unless you’ve lived it. You are constantly around life and death. Around fear. Around grief. Around families having the worst day of their lives while you try to stay calm enough to do your job properly.
People sometimes assume healthcare workers become immune to that.
You don’t.
You learn how to function professionally inside it. But the body still absorbs what it’s experiencing somewhere.
And eventually, it catches up with you.
I Started Noticing It Outside Of Work
Outside the hospital, I train and coach CrossFit at a high level. Training has always been a release for me. If I felt stressed, overwhelmed or emotional, my instinct was always to move harder, train harder, push harder.
For a while, I thought that was helping me cope.
But looking back now, I think I was going from one intense environment straight into another without ever really allowing my body to recover in between.
Some mornings I would wake up already anxious before the day had even started. Heavy. Puffy. Exhausted. Almost like my body was having some kind of allergic reaction to life.
Other times I would suddenly feel emotional during training for no obvious reason. I’d have to stop mid-session and try to pull myself together while everyone around me assumed I was just tired or moody.
But how do you explain to people that yesterday you spent hours with a family saying goodbye to someone they love?
A lot of healthcare professionals carry things like that silently.
And the difficult part is that it rarely hits you while you’re actually at work. It’s afterwards. On the drive home. In bed at night. Randomly in the gym. Standing in a supermarket. Sitting with your thoughts for the first time all day. That was when the anxious thoughts would usually get louder. Not during the chaos, but when everything finally went quiet.
I Thought I Was Just Burnt Out
For a long time, I thought I was simply exhausted.
And honestly, I tried to do all the “right” things.
I trained. I ate well. I tried meditation. Breathwork. Journaling. Therapy after COVID. I started reading again because I realised I had completely lost the ability to sit quietly with my own brain for even twenty minutes.
Some of those things genuinely helped.
But the feeling kept creeping back in.
And honestly, I think that’s why so many people don’t recognise burnout early enough. They keep functioning, even while anxious thoughts, exhaustion and emotional overload are building underneath.
Burnout does not always look dramatic at first. It looks like answering emails while eating lunch, rushing between responsibilities, carrying low-level anxious thoughts all day and never fully feeling mentally off-duty, even at home.
I could rest all day and still wake up feeling exhausted but strangely on edge the next morning. My body felt tired, but my mind still felt switched on all the time – like it had forgotten how to come out of fight or flight mode properly.
If I was a button, you could hear static coming from me constantly.
That’s when I started realising this probably wasn’t just about being “busy” or “run down” anymore. It genuinely started feeling like a nervous system issue.
What I Didn’t Understand About Burnout And Anxious Thoughts
Before all this, I thought burnout and anxious thoughts were mostly mental.
I didn’t fully understand how physical they could become.
For me, it showed up everywhere:
- racing thoughts late at night
- irritable gut flare-ups during shifts
- feeling constantly tense
- waking up anxious
- crashing emotionally over small things
- struggling to properly slow down even when I finally had time to rest
And weirdly, the more exhausted I became, the harder relaxation actually felt.
That was the part that confused me most.
Because logically, rest should fix exhaustion.
But sometimes when the body has spent too long under pressure, the Nervensystem can struggle to switch out of that high-alert state properly.
And that pressure does not always come from one dramatic event.
Sometimes it is simply years of being mentally “on” all the time.
What I Learned About The Nervous System
That was when I started learning more about the autonomic nervous system¹ and why prolonged stress can affect people so deeply physically, not just emotionally.¹
The nervous system has two primary states that constantly work together.
Die sympathisches Nervensystem is your fight or flight¹ response. It helps you stay alert, react quickly, perform under pressure and survive stressful situations.¹
Die parasympathetic nervous system is the opposite. It’s associated with recovery, digestion, sleep, emotional regulation¹,² and the body feeling safe enough to properly slow down again.
Both states are important. We need both.
The problem is that when pressure becomes constant, the body can start living in a state that feels a lot like burnout⁹, ¹⁰: tired, reactive, restless and unable to fully recover.
And when that happens, people often describe feeling:
- restless but exhausted
- emotionally reactive
- unable to switch off
- constantly overstimulated
- or like their body never fully relaxes anymore
That explanation honestly made more sense to me than anything else I had heard up until that point.
The Vagus Nerve Was Something I Kept Seeing Come Up
As I started reading more, I kept coming across discussions around the Vagusnerv and its role in helping regulate anxious arousal, burnout recovery⁷,⁸ and the body’s ability to come back down after pressure.
Die Vagusnerv is one of the major communication pathways between the brain and the body. It plays an important role in helping the body¹,² shift back toward a calmer parasympathetic state after stress.
When that system is functioning well, people generally recover from stress more effectively. Sleep tends to improve. Digestion functions better. Emotionally, you feel more settled and less constantly on edge.
That’s also why practices like meditation, slow breathing, mindfulness and cold exposure are often associated with vagal stimulation in some way.
And honestly, many of those things did help me.
The problem was consistency.
When you work long ICU shifts, train intensely and feel mentally overloaded already, even healthy habits can start feeling difficult to maintain.
Meditation sounds great until your brain feels loud all the time.
The Burnout Period That Forced Me To Change
I eventually hit a point where I completely burnt out.
COVID in ICU didn’t really end for healthcare workers in 2020. For many of us, that level of pressure carried on for years afterwards. Back-to-back shifts. Nights. Constant emotional strain. Constant responsibility.
At the same time, I was still training intensely and trying to perform at a high level physically.
I wasn’t sleeping enough. I wasn’t eating enough. I was trying to maintain work, training, relationships, hobbies, social life – everything – all at once.
Eventually my body just pushed back.
And honestly, I do not think the body particularly cares what job title you have.
You do not need to work in intensive care for your nervous system to become overloaded. The body responds to prolonged pressure, emotional strain, unpredictability and constantly pushing through without properly recovering in between.
I remember days where I physically couldn’t get out of bed and genuinely couldn’t explain why.
Not because I was lazy or unmotivated – my body just felt completely overloaded. I felt emotionally flat all the time. Even training stopped feeling like a way to decompress anymore.
I ended up taking four months away from work through the NHS because I realised something had to change.
Not just how I worked.
How I lived.
Why I Started Looking Into Nervous System Regulation More Seriously
As someone who works in healthcare, I’m naturally sceptical about wellness products.
But at that point, I was also exhausted enough to realise I couldn’t keep functioning the way I had been.
At the time I was already paying attention to things like HRV⁴ (heart rate variability) through training and recovery, which athletes often use as a rough marker of how well the body is adapting to stress and recovering between periods of intensity.
And the more I started reading about stress physiology, the more I kept coming across discussions around Vagusnerv-Stimulation and something called taVNS³ – transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation.
It works by gently stimulating part of the vagus nerve through the outer ear³,⁵,⁶ in order to support parasympathetic activity associated with recovery.
That was the first time I became genuinely curious about whether nervous system support could actually be useful in a practical, everyday way – not just theoretically.
That was what eventually led me to Nurosym.
Why Nurosym Felt Different To Me
Nurosym ist ein CE-certified non-invasive taVNS device designed to stimulate part of the vagus nerve through the ear to support nervous system regulation during periods of Burnout, ängstliche Gedanken und prolonged pressure.
What made me take it more seriously was that there is already a significant amount of scientific research behind Nurosym and this type of stimulation.
At this point, the technology has been supported through more than 10 years of research and development, over 60 completed scientific studies, ongoing research across more than 150 institutions¹¹ and collaborations involving places like Harvard, Yale, Imperial College London, UCLA and the NHS.⁵
As someone working inside healthcare, that mattered to me.
Not because I thought it was some miracle fix – but because it felt grounded in legitimate research rather than just wellness marketing.
Honestly, part of me initially thought it sounded a little strange.
And the first few times I used it, I wasn’t even fully sure whether I felt much at all. I think when your body has been running on anxious thoughts, overload and burnout for that long, you almost forget what feeling calm is supposed to feel like.
But what stood out to me very quickly was how easy it felt to integrate into real life.
There was no complicated setup. No gel. No huge wellness routine around it.
I could throw it into my bag, use it during a break at work, after training, or while reading in bed without needing to completely stop my day first.
And honestly, I think that mattered more than anything else.
Because when people are overwhelmed, consistency is usually the first thing that disappears.
How It Fits Into My Actual Day
I carry my Nurosym in whichever bag I’m carrying that day – my hospital bag or my training bag.
At first it actually felt a little odd carrying around something attached to my ear, but eventually it just became part of my routine in the same way packing my lunch or my headphones is.
At work, I often use it during my 15-minute morning break instead of grabbing another coffee. We have something called a “wobble room” in ICU – a quiet room staff use when things become emotionally overwhelming – and sometimes I’ll just sit in there for fifteen minutes reading while using it.
Other times I use it after training while eating or recovering.
And on quieter evenings, usually Sundays, I’ll use it in bed while reading before sleep.
I did not need silence, candles, or the perfect environment to use it.
And honestly, after ICU shifts, that probably mattered more than anything.
There’s no perfect ritual with it.
That’s probably why it became sustainable for me.
Because when your life is busy and stressful, consistency has to feel realistic. Otherwise even helpful things slowly disappear.
What Actually Changed
I want to be very honest about this part.
Nurosym was not the only thing that changed my life.
Therapy mattered.
More sleep mattered.
Eating properly mattered.
Training differently mattered.
Learning how to slow down mattered.
But Nurosym became one part of the overall system that helped me feel more regulated and aware of myself again.
It gave me small moments during the day where my body genuinely started calming down instead of constantly pushing through everything.
And over time, I started recognising overload earlier instead of waiting until I completely crashed.
The people around me noticed it too.
My boyfriend noticed it.
My colleagues noticed it.
The people I train with noticed it.
They could usually tell when I’d had a particularly difficult shift before I even said anything. And over time, they also started noticing when I seemed calmer, more present, more like myself again.
A Safe Way To Explore It
One thing I appreciated was that there was a 30-day return period, which made trying it feel lower pressure.
Begrenzte Studienplätze verfügbar – some participants may receive a subsidy of around €70 in exchange for sharing feedback on their experience.
And honestly, when you’re already mentally exhausted, that softer, lower-pressure approach matters more than people realise.
The Biggest Thing I Learned
The biggest thing I learned is that recovery is not just about stopping.
It’s about whether your body actually feels safe enough to come out of stress mode in the first place.
I think a lot of people are functioning while carrying far more than they realise underneath. Especially people working in healthcare, high-pressure jobs or constantly demanding environments.
People become very good at surviving.
And I think many of us get so used to functioning in constant “on mode” that we stop recognising what feeling genuinely calm even feels like anymore.
The body adapts to survival mode very gradually – until eventually it just starts feeling normal.
But surviving and recovering are not the same thing.
And eventually, the body knows the difference.
If Any Of This Feels Familiar
If you recognise yourself in this – the constant tension, emotional exhaustion, anxious thoughts, feeling wired even when you’re tired, struggling to fully unwind – it may be worth looking beyond simply “trying harder” to relax.
For some people, anxious thoughts and burnout may not only be about mindset⁹¹⁰, discipline or needing more rest. Nervous system regulation may be part of the recovery picture too.
Nurosym is not a replacement for therapy, sleep, medical care or lifestyle changes.
But for some people, it may be a useful additional tool that helps support recovery and gives the body more opportunities to shift out of that constant high-alert state.
Especially during periods where life feels relentless and your body no longer feels like it fully believes the stressful part is over yet.
ICU is still ICU for me. The pressure has not disappeared. But now I understand what prolonged overload was actually doing to my body – and I recover very differently because of it.
Referenzen
- Thayer JF, Lane RD. Claude Bernard and the heart-brain connection: further elaboration of a model of neurovisceral integration. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. 2009.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18771686/ - Breit S, Kupferberg A, Rogler G, Hasler G. Vagus nerve as modulator of the brain-gut axis in psychiatric and inflammatory disorders. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 2018.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00044/full - Farmer AD, Strzelczyk A, Finisguerra A, et al. International consensus based review and recommendations for minimum reporting standards in research on transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS). Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 2021.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2020.568051/full - Shaffer F, Ginsberg JP. An Overview of Heart Rate Variability Metrics and Norms. Frontiers in Public Health. 2017.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2017.00258/full - Forte G, Morelli M, Grässler B, Casagrande M. Ear your heart: transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation on heart rate variability in healthy young participants. PeerJ. 2022.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36438582/ - Soltani D, et al. Transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation on baroreflex sensitivity and heart rate variability in healthy subjects: a systematic review. Scientific Autonomic Research. 2023.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37119426/ - Bremner JD, et al. Application of Noninvasive Vagal Nerve Stimulation to Stress-Related Psychiatric Disorders. Journal of Personalized Medicine. 2020.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7563188/ - Fanselow MS. Fear and Anxious Thoughts Take a Double Hit From Vagal Nerve Stimulation. Biological Psychiatry. 2013.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4176918/ - McEwen BS. Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England Journal of Medicine. 1998.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9428819/ - Chrousos GP. Stress and disorders of the stress system. Nature Reviews Endocrinology. 2009.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19488073/ - Nurosym Scientific Research Overview — published taVNS studies and institutional collaborations involving Harvard, Yale, UCLA, Imperial College London and the NHS.
https://nurosym.com/pages/science
Dieser Blogbeitrag soll informativ sein und sollte keine professionelle Gesundheitsberatung ersetzen. Konsultieren Sie immer einen Arzt, um eine individuelle Beratung zu erhalten.
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