If there’s one conversation I would love to have become extinct, it’s the conversation about ‘being on the verge of burnout’. Every single person I have spoken to, who believes themselves to be on the verge of burnout, is, on further discussion, deep into a life of habitualised burnout.
We think of burnout as being the end point in the destination, that there is some kind firework explosion, that a brass band plays when we tip over into burnout, but the truth of it, there is no ‘Welcome to Burnout’ sign at the end of the motorway. It’s more like a border you expect to be straight, but actually wiggles back and forth along the map. Most of us play hokey-cokey with burnout, dipping into it’s worst facets and then taking a step back and rationalising that it will all be ok, even whilst we know we’re struggling.
In March 2020 Gallup released a poll that found 76% of workers experienced burnout some or all of the time, a jump of 9% in 2 years. That’s three quarters of people at any one time - and these statistics were released before the word ‘unprecedented’ was used so often it lost all meaning.
So in a time when all the rules have changed, when exhaustion and overwhelm are just any given working day, how to we identify burnout?
I turn to the smaller details. It was difficult to limit myself because there are so many small signs of burnout, but these are 4 that I have discussed with clients over the past month. How many of them do you recognise? Would you even have recognised them as symptoms of burnout before today?
Struggling to sequence and to put things in order.
When I was a mental capacity lawyer, I worked with a medical expert who held up a very simple test for assessing someone’s mental capacity; ask them to make you a cup of tea. It’s a surprisingly complex task; you have to ask how someone takes their tea and remember that for 5-10 minutes. A cup of tea must be made in order (let’s set aside the debate about milk first or second for a moment!) and if any one of the parts of the sequence go wrong, you either have a cup of milk-water, or a dry teabag in a mug, left on the side all morning.
How often has something like this happened to you? The reason why it’s such a good test is because it operates a number of different parts of our brain at once; our short term memory to recall how this person takes their tea, long term memory in how to make tea, sequencing and conceptualisation and recalling where in the process you are, as well as remaining on-track for a significant period of time.
Still with me?
How many times in the past month have you partly made a cup of tea and been distracted by a phone call or picking up another process thread (putting the washing on, putting away a food delivery etc) and come back to find a cup of stewed, cold tea?
What about in your daily work? Being able to see the wood for the trees, figuring out and working on the number one priority first rather than getting distracted and going round in circles?
I’m sure plenty of people reading this will be horrified that I’m drawing a comparison between people with dementia or traumatic brain injuries and burnout, but the impact can be very similar. Exhaustion, overwhelm, lack of sleep can all have a similar impact on our brains, causing us overwhelm, struggle to focus or sequence, easily distracted, unable to focus. You might feel a little like you’re crazy but of course the good news is that burnout is far more easily managed and reversed than a traumatic brain injury!
Emotional overwhelm; tears or anger at the slightest thing.
This is one that trips people up constantly; ‘why am I so over-emotional’ or ‘I should be able to cope with this, and instead I feel lost’. Part of the problem with burnout is that it has us overworking to the point of exhaustion on an almost daily basis. This means that there’s no energetic reserve, it’s like we’re constantly living an an exhaustion overdraft, and then wondering why we don’t have the additional reserves to deal with challenges, setbacks or difficulties.
At the height of burnout I have;
cried because I couldn’t buy my favourite pizza for dinner
cried because I burnt the runner up pizza
berated myself for eating pizza instead of a massaged kale salad topped with superfoods, and then cried.
Not to put too fine a point on it; if you’re feeling emotional, overwhelmed or out of control and think you ‘should’ be behaving in a certain way, then winner winner, you were always on the fast track to burnout, because you put perceived societal standards of stoicism ahead of taking care of how you actually felt.
When you’re deep into burnout it’s a little bit like working through a hangover every day; everything hurts, you’re exhausted, your emotions are all out of whack and the vulnerability hangover is real.
If you think that you are too emotional or that you are reacting to things that would previously not have fazed you, you’re probably experiencing burnout.
The 10pm second wind
(No, this isn’t about IBS, although that is a physical symptom for many people!)
You come in from work, or switch the work laptop off and try to transition from home working to home relaxing and you are exhausted. Drained. Cooking feels like too much hassle. You scavenge from the cupboards in lieu of an actual meal. You might even fall asleep on the sofa mid-soap. You’re definitely going to have an early night.
And then.
Somewhere between 9 and 10pm you get a second wind. You are suddenly filled with ideas and energy. You absolutely must put a load of washing on, and unload and reload the dishwasher, then you start putting the hoover over to the annoyance of your neighbours. You start watching that Netflix series. Even as you feel the exhaustion creeping in you push it away again and again until you end up giving up and going to sleep at midnight or later, only to curse yourself when you wake up the following morning.
This one comes up time and again and it’s a combination of factors; the early evening exhaustion that is dealt with by lying corpse-like on the sofa, combined with the desperate need to have some time for yourself that isn’t just work or chore related. You might even feel resentful for how work has taken up your entire waking day and you try to make time for yourself, by eating into your sleep time.
Some people say it’s adrenal-fatigue related, others that it’s to do with our out-of-control cortisol thanks to constant fight-or-flight symptoms. Whichever way you slice it, you’re stuck deciding to move the furniture around at 11pm and an anti-social behaviour warning from the local authority for your late night solo singing of Hamilton… just me?
Withdrawing from colleagues, family and friends
It’s that time of year again, the trees are already going up, the mulled wine might have even made an appearance… and you have never been so relieved not to have to make your excuses to avoid the Christmas party.
No judgment here, I used to work for a firm that had approximately 3,000 parties I was required to attend over Christmas and I would regularly stop drinking after the second event until the New Year just to be able to cope.
Everyone around you is all ‘bah humbug Scrooge McDuck, wear your Santa hat’ and all you can think is ‘if I have one more glass of this cheap not-Champagne I’m going to tell you what I really think and I will NOT regret it, Sharon’.
Withdrawing from people is a sound strategy when you’re likely to lose your temper and tell them that they smell like week-old fishsticks and their work is shit, but it often goes far beyond that.
We withdraw in order to be able to cope.
We withdraw because we’re too exhausted not to.
We also withdraw because we feel ashamed at how overwhelmed we are, because we fear revealing how close to the edge we really are and that we’re going to finally get found out as a fraud.
We withdraw because it’s too terrifying to be vulnerable with the people we love and let them know just how much we’re struggling. We fear being a burden, that we won’t be loved if we give up our role as supporter and protector for everyone else.
Of all the symptoms I’ve listed, this is by far the most damaging to our short and long term health, because withdrawing means we never open up, and nothing changes. It means panting yourself into a corner of ‘keep calm and carry on’ and choosing functioning over health.
Burnout is not the end of the line.
It also isn’t somewhere you want to live.
If you recognise any of these symptoms, it’s ok. Burnout is entirely manageable and reversible, with small but significant adjustments, that can make your career and life something that is sustainable, enjoyable with real longevity. Take action now, particularly if you think you’re ‘on the verge’ of burnout. Because I can promise you, it’s affecting you more than you might realise.
PS Do you want to know more about burnout and the impact this year of pandemic, recession, lockdown and adaptation has had on a previously struggling workforce? Whether you’re looking for help for yourself, your team or the people you love, this workshop may just help.
On Monday 7th December I am holding my final public-access workshop for the year where I will be taking you through:
What burnout is and how it shows up
What causes some of us to struggle whilst others are remarkably resilient
Why battle-fatigue has risen in impact this year
Understanding your basic needs and how they impact burnout-resilience
How to create a resilience action plan through this winter season
Drawn from my corporate training sessions, my original Burnout Prevention Session and the Burnout & the Impact of Covid-19 workshops I released earlier this year, this is a massively expanded and more detailed workshop that will give you a great understanding of what and why we are so impacted this year.