The year is speedily winding down and many people are still going through a lot of stress and losing steam. While stress is a normal part of life and we cannot completely avoid stress because it is a natural human response to certain situations, too much stress is problem. Stress in little levels can improve mental wellbeing, by boosting productivity, alertness, and energy levels. However, when our experience of stress becomes prolonged or greater than our ability to cope with physically and mentally draining, it may have overwhelming consequences on the mind and body.
If you’re feeling exhausted and sluggish and even simple tasks feel overwhelming to complete or you find yourself so stressed out that you’re quick to get angry or frustrated, you might be experiencing burnout.
Burnout is a state of complete mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion which makes it difficult to engage in normal activities that give individuals satisfaction and you may no longer care about the things that are important to you or experience an increasing sense of hopelessness.
While frequently associated with a stressful job, burnout can affect many areas of your life and even cause health problems and though often-debilitating, there are ways you can cope with and even overcome burnout.
Burnout can be difficult to describe. However, it’s not a medical condition; it is mainly physical, emotional or mental exhaustion, accompanied by decreased motivation, lowered performance and negative attitudes towards oneself and others and you may not realise you have hit burnout until it’s too late.
Burnout also happens when your work-life balance gets out of sync and while it looks different for everyone; it can be identified by symptoms like fatigue, feeling apathetic or dissatisfied with your work, tension headaches as well as changes in diet or sleep patterns among others.
While the symptoms of burnout can be similar to more serious medical conditions like depression, depression is a diagnosable mental health condition, whereas burnout is not and burnout is a response to a specific environment or situation but depression doesn’t have to be in response to one specific trigger.
You hardly recognise burnout at its early stages until it takes hold; but once it’s identified, the first step is to care for your mental health by seeing a therapist, build breaks and personal check-ins to make schedule more balanced, exercise, practice mindfulness, establish a routine that encourages work-life boundaries, explore a hobby, take a break and recalibrate your actions if you feel your life is going out of sync, keeping lines of communication open with support systems and maintain balance.
Signs and symptoms of burnout may include headaches, stomachaches/intestinal issues, fatigue, frequent illness, changes in appetite/sleep, helplessness, cynicism, sense of failure or self-doubt, decreased satisfaction, feeling detached or alone in the world, loss of motivation, reduced performance in everyday tasks, withdrawal or isolation, procrastination, outbursts, using substances to cope.
Burnout is not caused solely by stressful work environments or too many responsibilities; it can also be triggered by prolonged levels of chronic stress and pressure from work or home demands, having little or no control over your work, lack of recognition, overly demanding job expectations, monotonous or unchallenging work, chaotic or high-pressure environment, working too much without socialising or relaxing, lack of close, supportive relationships, without enough help and not enough sleep among others.
To overcome burnout, turn to other people for support: reframe the way you look at work or your home life by finding value, meaning and balance, revaluate your priorities and support your body with a healthy diet and quality sleep.
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