The burnout is real.
And the need for work-life balance is real. We are all feeling the effects of being burnt out, and it can have an impact on your colleagues, your friends and family.
Let’s address what a burnout is, the phases of being burnt out, and how to recover from burnout.
What is a burnout?
An emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. Burnouts are often attributed to work stress, but your overall lifestyle stress can add to it as well.
A burnout is NOT a diagnosable psychological disorder, though it should still be taking seriously.
Preventing yourself from hitting the wall of burnout involves knowing and understating the warning signs that you are coming close to crashing. So what are the warning signs that you are becoming burnt out?
Here are the twelve phases and or warning signs of burnout.
- The Compulsion to Prove Oneself: demonstrating worth obsessively; tends to hit the best employees, those with enthusiasm who accept responsibility readily.
- Working Harder: The need to prove yourself turns into high expectations, which turns into working in overdrive.
- Neglecting Your Needs: If you are devoting all of your time and resources into work, then it is clear you will not have time for yourself. Messed up sleep schedule, eating disrupted, lack of social interaction.
- Displacement of Conflicts: You’re aware that something you are doing is not right for you, but can not pinpoint the source. Physical symptoms may begin here.
- Revision of Values: A state of denial turns into a change of perceptions and value systems. Friends and family dismissed, hobbies seen as irrelevant. The only focus is on work.
- Denial of Emerging Problems: You may become intolerant, dislike being social, aggressive, and sarcastic, but blame these emerging issues on your workload.
- Withdrawal: Little to no social contact turns into isolation, An increase of drugs and alcohol may be seen. You may be feeling without hope or direction.
- Obvious Behavior Changes: Coworkers, family, friends, and partners may begin to share their concerns with you.
- Depersonalization: You may no longer see yourself or others as valuable. Your view of life narrows to only see the mechanical functions of day to day life.
- Inner Emptiness: Feeling empty inside may lead to increased usage of social media, eating, drinking, smoking, etc in an attempt to feel something.
- Depression: You may feel exhausted, hopeless, and a total lack of direction.
- Burnout Syndrome: The physical and emotional collapse. Suicidal thoughts may even be present.
As you can see, symptoms of burnout range from mild but worrisome behaviors you probably encounter every day at work to utter collapse. You want to avoid the most severe ones, but the trick to doing that is to pay attention to more subtle signs rather than dismissing them as an unavoidable part of a hard-charging professional life.
What should I do if I experience signs of being burned out?
Here are some things you can start with:
- Take breaks throughout the work day.
- Drink plenty of water.
- Do your best to eat three meals a day.
- Do something different or interesting outside of work hours
- Reduce your availability at work
- Take long weekends
- Set boundaries around your use of email and phone outside of work
- Do not spend all of your downtime vegging or dissociating
- Check in with yourself and ask- what do I really need right now?
I know it can be hard to say “no” to your manager when they ask you to work more hours but remember if you choose to say “yes” you are potentially putting yourself at risk for becoming burnt out. So remember it is okay to put yourself before the needs of your work.
This post was written by Hana Hollenbeck, a psychology major at SUNY Cortland, and published by Convenient Counseling Services.
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