BURNOUT
Do you ever feel like you are running around with an empty tank? Barely making through the day, and feeling like you just have as much to do as when you started. I have been in that place before, and no one likes feeling like they are spinning on a hamster wheel unable to get off. That feeling is burn out.
Burnout is term that is thrown around a lot, but what does it mean? Burnout is a psychological, emotional, and physical reaction that individuals experience when they have reached peak exhaustion. The term “burnout” was first used by Dr. Herber Freudenberger and he defined the term as “prolonged or chronic job stress and characterized by three main dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism, and feelings of reduced professional ability.”
When you have “burnout”, a lot of the enjoyment and positivity that you may have experienced in your career, friendships, and family interactions start to decrease and are replaced with cynicism, negativity, and hopelessness. People who have reached burnout often feel disillusioned with their day-to-day responsibilities and feel incapable of meeting the demands of their career and their personal life’s.
Burnout tends to be common in careers where there are high levels of stress. A lot of individuals in helping professions such as doctors, nurses, social workers, animal care and first responders are susceptible to burnout. That being said anyone can experience burnout, and people can get burnt out through other areas of their lives outside of career. Parents can also experience burnout as a result of the responsibilities they need to attend to in raising their children.
So how do you know when you are experiencing burnout? Here are some of the common signs of burnout:
Exhaustion: people often feel like they lack energy and are physically and emotionally drained, which contributes to their feelings of being unable to cope or manage with their daily responsibilities.
Isolation: engaging in social interaction may feel more and more cumbersome as burnout starts to increase. Often individuals will tend to keep to themselves and avoid engaging with others simply because they do not feel like they have the capacity to manage.
Irritability: Patience tends to wear thin during burnout and little things that normally would not bother you are now impossible to ignore. People find that they are quicker to snap and quick to react with anger when experiencing even mild stress.
Lack of productivity: This is a pretty telling measure of burnout because people will often notice a pretty sharp decline in their productivity when burnout hits. Daily tasks that previously felt manageable now feel overwhelming and often there are negative feelings attached to those tasks. It becomes hard to focus and individuals find that they are much more easily distracted, which only results in their workload increasing, along with their frustration.
Burnout is not a mental health disorder and cannot be diagnosed however with that being said, it does not mean that it should not be taken seriously. Often individual who are experiencing burnout are susceptible to developing mental health difficulties such as depression, and/or anxiety. If you feel like these are symptoms that you are experiencing, take some time to reflect on the amount of stress in your life and see if there are ways to reduce it before you reach full burnout. Next week we will get into how you can cope and manage the symptoms of burnout, and even take steps to prevent burnout.
