Are you so stressed or anxious that you have trouble sleeping?
Are you feeling tired all the time?
Do you dread work and feel triggered by anything to do with work (emails, logging into the work IT system, colleagues, getting ready to go to work)?
Do you find yourself retreating into binge-watching streaming services, maybe while eating your favourite comfort food?
Do you feel worried, negative or cynical about your job or future?
Are you dissatisfied with your life, but don’t really know why?
Do you lack energy or feel too emotionally drained to engage with your favourite people?
Do you lack energy or feel too emotionally drained to engage with your favourite people?
Do you forget things? Find it hard to concentrate?
Are you less productive and efficient? Can’t make decisions? Can’t get motivated?
If you answer ‘yes’ to these questions, you could be experiencing symptoms of burnout.
Emotional exhaustion, responsibility overload, and burnout are popular terms which refer to a sensation of feeling overwhelmed in life, not knowing what’s important to do every day, and possibly having a sense that you may be drowning, not waving.
Burnout is insidious and often in the lead-up the signs slip under your radar so it feels like it has suddenly come crashing into you. This is especially the case because those vulnerable to burnout are people who are typically high functioning, motivated, and successful.
They tend to simply endure and forge ahead. These are the ultra-marathoners of the work and home management worlds. They tend to take for granted their capacity to constantly take on more demands and responsibilities, to pick up the slack for others, while maintaining their own high performance.
In fact, research suggests that many of the personality and behavioural characteristics which have been involved in maintaining our high standards are the very seeds which can sprout into burnout.
- Consider then, the impact the following factors can have on you:
- Unrelenting work demands
- Constant shortages in resources (staffing, funding, equipment)
- On-call pressures or an expectation of availability 24/7
- High risk of legal or administrative complaints, and
- A punitive or unsupportive work culture.
These elements form the soil for those burnout seeds to grow in. When you are responsible, conscientious, and have responsibility but no power, you can start to feel that you hold all the risk and have no support.
So what can I do about it?
The good news is that while you may not be able to significantly change the work context, you can change how you respond to stress.
Burnout isn’t about having stress, but about getting stuck in stress.
It can impact you at any stage of career because it is not necessarily about how long you’ve been in the job. Even if you change jobs or reduce your co-curricular activities, you are likely to always be the person most inclined to volunteer, take on more responsibility, and step in when others step back.
Learning some new perspectives and tools to change your approach to stress may help you to stay on track without necessarily needing to reduce those things in your life which are important to you.