burnout
Fashion Beans website | June 2019
1. What is burnout?
Burnout is the term used to describe what you’re likely to experience if you’re under too much work stress, too consistently, over too long a period of time; where you’ve run out of the physical, emotional and mental resources required to perform your job in the way you want and need to.
2. What are the warning signs?
People will usually report some or all of being physically exhausted, feeling hopeless, anxious, helpless, chronically irritated, isolated, trapped, numb, overwhelmed, being distanced emotionally from the job and unable to meet its demands. Because we don’t like feeling any of this, we might also increase the use of potentially addictive substances like alcohol, food or drugs as quick, short-term ‘fixes’. As well as exhaustion, the constant supply of stress hormones leading to burnout can cause other physical symptoms, such as frequent illnesses, headaches and changes to sleeping and eating patterns.
3. How do I know I don't just need a break?
Stress is inevitably going to be part of the complicated, demanding, hyper-stimulated lives most of us lead. Occasionally experiencing some of the thoughts and feelings described above is therefore to be expected. It’s their intensity, pervasiveness and duration that distinguishes you just needing a holiday from the profoundly life-changing experience that is burnout. If you’re burnt out, a holiday will do little to lessen your ongoing distress.
4. How can I avoid it?
If you think of burnout as the debt felt where your resources are outweighed by life’s demands, there’s a lot you can do to maintain the self-care that avoids it, including:
a) short-term, practical ways like looking at your work activities and, for example, seeing what could be delegated. Be really conscious of how you manage your time, particularly keeping an eye on web browsing and social media use, to increase your sense of control over your day. Being comfortable with asking for support and help when you need it is also key.
b) wider, longer term psychological self-care such as:
- always keeping your work ‘boundaries’ in mind and trying to hold them in place. These include the number of hours you’re comfortable working to make sure you’re keeping a healthy balance between work and personal life. You also need to know what’s ‘enough’ status and income for you, because, if you don’t, you’ll tend to be overly reliant on external demands, opinions, affirmation and expectations from others who, understandably, will just be speaking from their own experience and potentially prioritising their own needs.
- try to be consistently aware of what you’re thinking and feeling. A proportion of your stress is likely to come from your own thinking patterns. A tendency to catastrophise, having distorted beliefs that you’re helpless/hopeless/trapped and ‘imposter syndrome’ leading you to think you’re not good at what you do, all exponentially increase work stress.
In terms of your feelings, without deliberate effort, they’ll almost always come second in importance to your thoughts at work. It’s no coincidence that the stress, anxiety, chronic irritation, loneliness, hopelessness and helplessness experienced in burn-out are all feelings. If you’re unsure, and/or undervalue, what you’re feeling most of the time, you may not be conscious you’re struggling until you’re overwhelmed. As importantly, you have to know what you enjoy and are excited and passionate about to know what you should be doing more of.
- there’s a lot of focus above on emotional distress, but try to be aware that the status, winning, validation, goal-achieving, money and power that can come from work and which, when kept in balance with other aspects, will make for a great life, can also be highly addictive due to their dopamine highs. As with all potentially addictive behaviours, you may then be compelled to pursue them despite an adverse consequence like prolonged stress.
- making sure you have a toolbox of mind, body, feeling and behavioural techniques that’s going to keep you, most often, in a state of psychological and physiological balance, i.e., feeling both calm and alive. Deep breathing, sleep, creative pursuits, helping other people, laughing, synchronised group activities, spending time outside, exercise and mindfulness, for example, will all help to achieve and sustain the balance that manages work stress, avoids burnout and more generally leads to a happy and purposeful life.
5. I have burned out. How can I recover?
In spite of the depressed and anxious thoughts consistent with burnout generating a self-fulfilling prophesy that it’s permanent, it’s absolutely a state you can recover from. You’ll probably even go on to make changes that enhance your life in the future. Much of what’s described in 4.b) above will help recovery from burnout. It may also be that some anti-anxiety/depressant medication is required at least for a period and potentially some counselling or therapy to look at the reasons why you got into situation in the first place and how you’re going to take better care of yourself from this point on.
It may also be that you just need to accept that the combination of your psychological temperament with the demands and cultures of a certain industry means you’re trying to defy gravity to maintain your wellbeing whilst remaining in it. If this is the case, it might be an idea to start thinking about an ‘exit plan’. This lessens the ‘trapped’ feeling that greatly increases stress.