What is burnout? By definition, burnout is a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion. It’s caused by excessive and prolonged stress with more and more jobs. When this stress is continuous, especially when left untreated, people lose the interest and motivation that inspired them in a role in the first place.
Burnout can sap your energy, making you feel incredibly cynical, hopeless, resentful, and helpless. Eventually, it would affect every area of your life. First, it would start in the workforce, then your home and social life. Extreme negative feelings can cause long-term changes to your body, making you feel vulnerable. Thus, it’s crucial to deal with it right away. Read on below to learn the signs and symptoms of burnout and what you can do about it!
Signs and Symptoms
Almost everyone has experienced feeling overloaded, underappreciated, and helpless in our lives. It seems like just getting out of bed requires significant amounts of energy. If you feel like this most of the time, you may be burned out.
Remember that burnout is a gradual process – it doesn’t happen overnight. At first, the signs are subtle, but as time goes on, they can become worse. The following signs and symptoms need to be addressed for proper burnout recovery. You should ensure that you pay attention and actively try to reduce your stress to prevent a major breakdown or burnout.
Emotional Signs
- Low self-esteem
- Sense of failure
- Unmotivated
- You feel trapped, helpless, defeated
- Decreased sense of accomplishment
- An overall feeling of dissatisfaction
Behavioral Signs
- Isolating from others
- Procrastination
- Using alcohol, drugs, or food to cope
- Skipping work or arriving late
- Withdrawal from responsibilities
- Anger outbursts
Physical Signs
- Frequent headaches and muscle pain
- Change in sleeping habits and appetite
- You feel drained most of the time
How to Recover from Burnout
Despite burnout’s grip on many people, you can still recover from this! You should know that there isn’t a quick fix for burnout, but there are numerous ways you can alleviate stress levels and return to a much healthier state of being.
Track your stress levels.
You can download applications or gadgets on your phone to track your stress levels. You can use stress trackers to help you understand your behaviors and stress patterns.
Identify what causes your stress.
You can deal with your stress much easier when you know your stress triggers. It will allow you to avoid or at least reduce your interactions with them. You can do this by paying attention to people, situations, or incidents that consistently give you stress. Determine what exactly in your situation causes a trigger.
Learn proper stress management techniques
Each one of us is unique. What may cause our burnout may not be the same for others. Everyone also processes burnout differently. Stress management techniques include journaling, practicing mindfulness, breathing exercises, intuitive eating, or cardio. Try out different strategies to find out what works best for you.
Take a Breather.
Apply for that vacation leave and book a ticket. Everyone needs time to relax as well. Take a step back from your stressors (after accepting them) and heal from the world’s wonders.
But if you aren’t really the travel kind of person, you might be asking yourself, “where can I go on vacation?” If that’s the case, you can always start by looking up various blog articles and bucket lists online. By knowing what your options are, you can easily choose which places you’d want to see the most.
Talk to someone.
There’s no shame in asking for help, even if it’s professional or simply talking to a trusted friend. It’s encouraged to seek help from a trained psychologist or coach. Going to therapy can help reduce stress levels and facilitate healing and healthy well-being.
Ensure a work-life balance.
Often an imbalanced relationship between your work and personal life is the reason that causes people’s burnout.
Set proper boundaries to ensure balance. You can do this by making simple actions like only working on work hours. After work hours, even if you aren’t finished with your tasks, do it the next work day if your work allows it. Or look for remote vacancies with zero hours.
Depression vs. Burnout
While many think that stress and burnout are alike, some individuals misinterpret their burnout to be symptoms of depression. Indeed, there are common symptoms, like difficulty performing tasks and exhaustion; however, these two are entirely different.
Burnout is typically feelings of overall dissatisfaction and demotivation to do day-to-day tasks. You can also recover from burnout with the things mentioned above. You can take care of your burnout by actively trying to handle your stress.
On the other hand, depression is a disorder. According to the DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria, depression severely impacts every aspect of your life, including social and occupational settings. There is also no cure for depression. However, the symptoms can ease.
Final Thoughts
We only have one body, and we indeed only have ourselves to recognize our needs, wants, and pains and take care of ourselves. We have to listen to your body and ensure that you put your health and well-being as your top priority.
You shouldn’t only focus on your physical well-being; you should also assess how well you’re doing mentally and emotionally. Take the necessary precautions and steps to ensure that you won’t reach burnout and take care of this problem. Don’t just wait for it to pass!
This post was featured by Twinkl in their Sleep Blog