Understanding Burnout

“Burnout is a nature’s way of telling you, you have been going through the motions your soul has departed.” – Sam Keen

Personally, making a to-do list is very helpful. I like writing things down and striking them one by one as I finish each task. However, the problem arises when I start making the list and I’m suddenly flooded with everything that I have to do. Just to cross off things and reduce the weight of the list, I complete the tasks in a hurry. I do the tasks simultaneously instead of taking one task at a time. This often led me to feel overwhelmed mentally and physically. I’d forget to take a step back and just take a breath. It took me a while to understand what was happening to me.

I was experiencing a “burnout” very frequently. Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands. It is a major, common mental health issue that needs to be understood. All of us experience it at some or the other point of our lives.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to do a lot of work to reach burnout. It is a subjective thing; it comes differently for various people. People generally feel numb, lose interest in starting any activity, or feel like they are unable to meet any demands of life. It is not a psychological disorder, but it still should be given a lot of importance since it can affect us diversely.

Signs of burnout:

• Emotional exhaustion: The person experiencing burnout might feel emotionally exhausted, drained, tired, and feel hard to cope up with everyday things. They might experience loss of empathy and become bitter. They have a higher tendency to cry. In this process, they also might have arguments or fights with their loved ones.

• Physical exhaustion: It also might lead to physiological exhaustion. These physical symptoms include headache, stomachaches, frequent cold, muscle tension, back pain, chest tightness, dizziness, sleep issues, gastrointestinal complaints, perspiration, tiredness, etc.

• Loss of interest: Individuals experiencing burnouts might lose interest in things that they used to enjoy doing. They may also emotionally distance themselves and begin to feel numb about their work.

• Cognitive disturbance: Burnout also affects our minds a lot. People start finding it hard to concentrate, they face memory problems, inability to make decisions, reduced initiative and imagination, and loss of idealism.

Stages of burnout:

• Honeymoon phase: In this first phase of burnout, you may begin to experience predicted stresses of the job. It is marked by high job satisfaction, commitment, energy, and creativity. Based on that predicted stress, you are required to take measures for coping up with stress. If you do adopt positive patterns of coping with stress, then you might just remain in this stage and not proceed to the further stages which is a good sign.
• Balancing stage: Unlike the positivity in first stage, you start becoming aware that start days are better than the others, regardless of how you are handling the stress. You may start experiencing symptoms like anxiety, avoidance of decision making, change in appetite or diet, fatigue, forgetfulness, general neglect of personal needs, grinding your teeth at night, headaches, and heart palpitations.
• Chronic stress: When the stage is prolonged, what we get is chronic stress. It is an extension to stage 2 where the symptoms get intensified. Symptoms include Anger or aggressive behavior, apathy, chronic exhaustion, cynical attitude, decreased sexual desire, denial of problems at work or at home, feeling threatened or panicked, feeling pressured or out of control, increased alcohol/ drug consumption, and increased caffeine consumption.
• Burnout: This is the actual stage of burnout; what we discussed. The symptoms become very critical. Common symptoms include behavioral changes, chronic headaches, chronic stomach or bowel problems, complete neglect of personal needs, continuation or increase in escapist activities, desire to “drop out” of society, self-doubt and desire to move away from work or friends/family.
• Habitual burnout: This is the final stage of burnout where the symptoms are so embedded in your life that you start facing significant emotional or physical problems, as opposed to occasionally experiencing stress. Common symptoms include chronic mental fatigue, chronic physical fatigue, chronic sadness and depression.

 One cannot sit back and just wait for it to go away. They have to search and identify the underlying cause of the burnout. The more you ignore it, the more it will intensify. Therefore, recovering from burnout is a slow process. Do not rush it through, it will cause you more exhaustion.

Sit back, take a deep breathe, and think about the “why” of the burnout. If you are having issues with organizing your thoughts, you can talk to a friend or a family member or anyone. You can also keep a stress diary where you pour down everything that you feel in the form of words. You can get plenty of exercise and eat healthily. The food that you eat really determines your mood and emotional health. Also, make sure that you are having plenty of water daily. Most importantly, you are getting enough sleep.

The above tips might sound very obvious but when you are in that stage, you might ignore them. Just like your mobile phones, even we run out of battery and even we need to recharge. So, to get recharged we need to take care of ourselves and see that we practice the above tips regularly!

References:

Calmer. (2019). What are the 5 stages of burnout? Retrieved from: https://www.thisiscalmer.com/blog/5-stages-of-burnout

Schoen clinic (2020). Burnout. Retrieved from https://www.schoen-clinic.com/burnout

Scott, E. (2020). Burnout symptoms and treatment. Retrieved from: https://www.verywellmind.com/stress-and-burnout-symptoms-and-causes-3144516

Santhoshi Bhadri Member since June 14, 2020

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