Burnout Account: Heather DeJonge - The Relaxed Hygienist and Registered Dental Hygienist

Heather DeJonge - The Relaxed Hygienist

"Looking back, I started to feel the “burn” about 7 years ago. I’ve been a hygienist for 15 years in May, practicing for 5 years in my home state of Michigan before moving out to Denver, Colorado. I remember feeling tired- physically, emotionally, and mentally. I had been a very extroverted person up to this point in my life, but I craved silence and alone time. At that time, my husband was in school full time and I was working Monday through Friday. I had also started to struggle with health issues and I was turning 30, so I chalked my tiredness, my health issues, and my newfound introvertness to aging.

That was not the case, of course. I became depressed from how fatigued I was from working and then keeping our little family afloat. My health issues worsened and despite the multiple specialists I saw and tests that they ran, my autoimmune issues worsened and remain to this day, undiagnosed. I just wanted to be left alone in a dark, quiet closet.

My health issues increasingly worsened over the next couple of years. I was on a restrictive diet to try to decrease inflammation- think: 30 foods… cilantro, plain chicken, parsley, and lemons. I had been an avid rock climber, snowboarder, yogini, and runner, but when I lost mobility in my joints, I had to redefine who I identified as. Walking became difficult, I could hardly grip my steering wheel to drive to work. However, my hands and fingers were still able to do small movements like those required for scaling. I cried a lot that year. Everything I enjoyed doing was taken away from me- I couldn’t even bend my knees enough to get onto my yoga mat.

Then COVID hit. My body and spirit were already exhausted from being in a heightened inflammatory state. They were also scared- I never knew what I could eat and when I was going to be able to eat. When we returned to work during COVID, I was scared. Already being asthmatic and having these undiagnosed health issues put me in a constant state of feeling scared, worried, and unsafe. On top of that, there was a shortage of hygienists so I was asked to work assisted hygiene. I said yes, despite knowing that it could push my body over the edge and it did. I became deeply exhausted once again, but this time there was fear and depression.

Fast forward a couple of years. My husband and I decided to try out the world of entrepreneurship. We had been working on our company for a couple of years, and things were getting really busy. I took a position at a new office- one that I had been temping at. I loved working there and the quality of care was superb. However, the days were long, starting at 6:30 am and ending around 5:30 pm with very short lunches. I was asked again to do assisted hygiene, and I said yes, but it couldn’t be every day. So between working 3 days of hygiene and 4 days a week, around 12-14 hrs/day in our company, it’s no wonder I burnt out.

No one had ever really talked to me about burnout; I didn’t know the signs and I certainly didn’t understand the gravity of its effects, so when I had a panic attack getting ready to go to work, I knew that I had to do something to save myself. That panic attack triggered a series of events. I developed an uncontrollable body twitch, crippling anxiety, and I had to resign from work. My husband, bless him, took care of me while my body and brain tried to recover. The best way to describe what my body was going through would be to say that it reverted to acting like an infant. It required food at 3 am and then it would sleep for 2 hours, then eat, then sleep- the cycle would continue until late afternoon. However, I was too weak to even feed myself. After a few weeks, I was able to go for short, slow walks outside, but I didn’t like them. I felt vulnerable, embarrassed, TIRED.

It was a slow process, but one I would do again if it meant that it brought me to where I am now. During the recovery process, I became desperate for help so I decided to start working closely with a couple of therapists. I worked with mindfulness and breathwork coaches, and somatic experts. And, I did a lot of my own recovery research, testing the different tools and strategies that I had acquired from the therapists and coaches- trying to figure out which ones worked and which ones needed to be modified to where I was in my recovery journey.

After I recovered, I decided to become a stress management and burnout coach for hygienists. I knew how prevalent burnout was in hygiene and wanted to give my hygiene family the support and help that they needed to get out of burnout. I didn’t have the hygiene-specific help that I needed in burnout; I didn’t even have the foundational knowledge around burnout. I saw my burnout needs spread across my hygiene family, and I wanted to help.

So, I decided to create my Instagram page as a means to spread burnout awareness as well as burnout solutions and stress management tips because after all, it’s the chronic stress that causes burnout. However, I’ve found that it’s hard to give hygienists the help they need to the extent that they need it. I decided to package all of my burnout lessons, strategies, and proven recovery tools into a Stress to Strength course, as well as create a community group that will give hygienists the tools, strength, and confidence to recover from burnout, manage stress to prevent backsliding, and also further their careers inside the op. My ultimate goal is to show up as the hygienist that I needed as a new grad and as a burnt-out hygienist for other hygienists. We don’t have to recover alone- we’re all in this together."