What Is Burnout & What Can You Do About It?
Stress is a part of life that we are all bound to deal with at some point or another, especially when we are faced with perceived threats and challenges. Eustress is a term used to describe positive stress, or rather a type of stress that is challenging in a way that is motivating, satisfying or enjoyable. This may come from starting a new job, getting married or having a child. Distress, on the other hand, refers to negative stress. This type of stress is often anxiety provoking, is perceived to be outside of ones coping abilities and may lead to psychological and physical problems. When our levels of distress remain heightened over a long period of time, we may experience burnout.
What is burnout?
Burnout refers to a state of emotional, physical, and psychological exhaustion, usually caused by high levels of stress over a prolonged period. Many of the symptoms of burn out actually look quite similar to those of depression and can include fatigue, loss of passion and motivation, issues with concentration, headaches, depressed mood, and feelings of hopelessness.
What are the causes of burnout?
Many of us become burned out due to our jobs. While there is not one specific job that can cause burn out, there are several workplace conditions that can lead to it, including workload, control, reward, community, fairness, and values. When difficulties begin to arise in one or many of these domains, we become more susceptible to burnout.
You may also become burned out because of unfulfilling relationships, carer responsibilities, study, daily responsibilities, and many other situations. Burnout can not only change the way you feel but can also lead a deterioration of your physical health.
Who is susceptible to burnout?
Given the right circumstances, many of us can experience burnout, however there are a few characteristics that may increase one’s likelihood of reaching this state. Research has suggested that burnout is linked to one’s core self-evaluation. People who have a low core self-evaluation generally lack confidence in their own abilities, skills, and resources to effectively manage stressful situations. These people are more susceptible to burnout as they perceive life’s challenges to be out of their coping abilities.
People who are high on ‘perfectionism’ may also be at a greater risk of burnout. For many of these people, their work-ethic and work-performance are at the very core of who they are. As such, they will often burn themselves out to meet this excessively high self-standard.
How can we deal with burnout?
Develop your emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence is arguably the best skill one can develop in both preventing and treating burnout. Awareness of our emotions can help in understanding what is causing our distress, assist us to stay calmer in difficult situations and allow us to use a problem-solving approach rather than becoming paralysed by our stressors.
Take a break
A break might be a holiday; it might be some time off work, or it might be reducing your workload. Whatever it is, when we are feeling burned out, we are not functioning at our optimal psychological level. Taking a step back from our external pressures is often needed and can leave us feeling a lot less stressed and a lot more emotionally regulated.
Maintain self-care
Ensuring you are looking after your core needs including eating, sleeping, regular exercise and getting enough sunlight are crucial at any point or life, but particularly when under high stress levels. Additionally, recognising what fills your cup and regularly engaging in hobbies, interests and enjoyable activities can help in regulating your emotions and reducing your stress.
Understand your core beliefs
For many people, burnout can be rooted in maladaptive core beliefs. These may include dysfunctional thinking styles around perfectionism, people pleasing, conflict avoidance or self-esteem. By understanding what has led you to this point you are much more likely to both treat and prevent it in future.
Challenge your perspective
When we are highly stressed, it is easy to perceive everything as a stressor that cannot be avoided or resolved. Re-evaluating our situation and recognising that there are other options available to us can be helpful in bringing our stress levels down.
Prioritise and set boundaries
Sometimes, it is unrealistic or impractical to take a break from the sources of our burnout. In these instances, it can be helpful to prioritise tasks that are most important and focus your limited energy resources on these. It can also be helpful to delegate tasks where possible and set boundaries around which responsibilities you are willing to take on and which you are not.
Therapy
Burnout can look different for each person depending on your stressors, lifestyle, personality, belief system and past. It is important that each situation of burnout is addressed in its uniqueness and that effort is made to understand the stressors that are contributing to one’s burnout. A therapist can help you to identify your specific challenges and work with you to both manage and prevent burnout from occurring.
While there are no overnight fixes, it is very possible to both prevent and cope with burnout. Through building up your internal and external resources and reaching out for support from a professional if needed you will be well on your way to recovering.
