Am I living with burnout? What it looks like and what to do about it
Burnout. If you haven’t heard about it in the past 12 months, you’ve been living under a rock (an understandable decision, all things considered).
Or perhaps you’ve been too busy to notice. I know I relate to the latter. Mostly working from home during the pandemic, with a young family in tow, has too often pushed me past my limits. Sometimes I reach a point where I feel exhausted and too busy to do anything about it. Have I been experiencing burnout?
Is it burnout?
While the pandemic has brought the concept of burnout to the forefront of many news websites and social media posts, the concept is anything but new. At the University of California, Berkeley, Christina Maslach has been researching burnout since the 1970s.
Findings from studies of burnout have helped to differentiate it from general exhaustion.1 Exhaustion, both physical and emotional, can occur when you’ve been overloaded with work for too long. But this is just one aspect of the experience.
According to Maslach, burnout also involves cynicism about work. You begin to care less and develop negative thoughts, even beliefs, about your role and your workplace. A third component involves blaming yourself, focusing on what is wrong with me, instead of what is wrong with this situation.
So in actual fact, I had not been experiencing burnout. I still cared deeply about my work, and hadn’t really been blaming myself for not keeping up. But for many working Australians burnout is a growing reality, particularly as smartphones and working from home mean that more and more of us are finding it difficult to clock off from work.
Dr Michael Leiter from Deakin University, a leading Australian researcher in this field, estimated before the pandemic that between 5 and 7 percent of the workforce had been experiencing burnout.2 Many report that the experience creeps up on them with gradual changes to energy, motivation and mindset taking place.
What is it about burnout that makes it so difficult to catch onto early, and what can we do about it once we finally see what’s happening?
What can I do about it?
Like many other challenges to our mental health and wellbeing, burnout is an outcome that has come about over time. Also like other mental health challenges, prevention is ideal. But that’s not what we’re going to focus on because more of us than ever have a decent idea of what a mentally healthy lifestyle looks like.
Instead, we’re going to address what to do when you realise you are burned out, because that can be a little bit trickier.
Maslach, along with other researchers, has always maintained that burnout is a systemic issue. Systemic issues require systemic changes. If you feel it's safe to speak with a manager or leadership, influencing systemic change will not only lead to a healthier workplace, it will also help increase your own sense of agency, which can directly counteract the sense of inefficacy that is a core component of burnout.
Before we explore other healthy habits and how they can be used to address burnout, it’s really important to remember that we do not want to introduce more and more reactive measures to deal with the fact that we’re burning out. That’s like treating a bacterial infection with pain relief medication. Sure, you might feel better temporarily, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting some pain relief, but in the meantime the infection might be spreading, while your body’s warning signals have been blunted.
As I’ve already stressed, we need to try as best we can to address the systemic factors that are contributing to burnout. Otherwise, we may burn out on burnout remedies, which become just one more thing on our way-too-long to-do list.
Taking mindful action
With that said, a helpful approach we can take on individually is mindful action.
Research on exercise therapy alone has not produced reliable findings for the benefits of exercise for addressing burnout. When done in combination with cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness training, however, exercise proved far more effective.3
What does this research suggest?
A greater awareness of what you value most, how to best navigate and respond to unhealthy situations, and how to implement sustainable lifestyle changes can help you to address a schedule that will likely burn you out.
As a psychologist, father, and partner, remembering what was most important to me was a significant turning point away from my march towards potential burnout. The key was not to prioritise what was on my schedule, but to schedule my priorities.
Try asking yourself:
- “What do I value?”
- “Am I present with my people and priorities?”
- “Can I access the support and willingness required to address the factors that may have burned me out in the first place?” (consider systemic and situational factors)
Answer these questions, step forward, and you are well on your way to addressing burnout and navigating the challenges many will face in 2021 and beyond.
Some healthy-mindset habits to help prevent and limit the impacts of burnout:
- focus daily on your achievements
- practise self-compassion
- avoid criticising yourself
- practise gratitude daily, or start a gratitude journal.
Some practical tips to remember:
- set some healthy boundaries when working from home (e.g. switching off devices at certain times, limiting work to certain rooms/spaces)
- support your energy reserves by making healthy choices in the areas of nutrition, physical activity and sleep.
- seek support early if your workload, stress or ability to switch off is becoming an issue.
If you are seeing the signs of burnout in your team, we recommend Burnout busters, an En Masse webinar/workshop designed to help workers in high-performance environments prevent and reduce the impacts of burnout. Contact us today to discuss a program that can be tailored to your audience.
References
- Maslach C, Leiter MP (2016). Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry 2016;15:103–111.
- Thompson J (2019). Workplace experts weigh in on the prevalence of burnout and how to combat it. ABC News (Australia). 1 Feb 2019. Available at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-01/why-is-burnout-everywhere-psychologist-academic-office-expert/10743726 (accessed 8 Apr 2021).
- Ahola K, Toppinen-Tannera S, Seppänen J (2017). Interventions to alleviate burnout symptoms and to support return to work among employees with burnout: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Burnout Research. 4:1–11.
