If you’ve been googling Burnout Symptoms Test, trying to diagnose yourself, this blog post is for you. Below I explore what burnout is and four things you can do if you are experiencing burnout.

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You feel tired all the time. But it’s more than just a physical weariness. Even your soul feels tired. Because you feel so tired, you can’t find the energy to care about the things you used to care so much about. This apathy relates a lot to your work, but also to other areas of your life. You’ve stopped working out. You see friends only occasionally and when you do, it feels like a great effort to engage. You can’t be bothered to cook a meal, much less try a new recipe. What’s wrong with you? Nothing in your life has really changed. You know this isn’t normal for you, you’ve been wondering about burn out, but you aren’t sure what it is and if you are experiencing it.

According to the World Health Organization, burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:

• feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
• increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and
• reduced professional efficacy.

Check. Check. Check. Okay, so maybe you are struggling with burnout. It doesn’t really surprise you but finding the energy to take proactive steps to find help feels impossible at this moment. Recently, it’s hard to even take a shower.

Let’s look at four things you can do, right now, to change your downward trajectory.

1. Reduce your stress

Did you read that with skepticism or shake your head in exasperation when you saw it? By reduce the stress, I don’t mean that you just magically find your way to a cabana on a beach. In fact, you may not be able to change your stressors at all. Children, supervisors, difficult projects may not be able to be set aside. But those are stressors, not stress. A stressor is something that causes stress – it is what initiates your stress response.

Stress, on the other hand, is what is produced by your stress response. It is the end product, so to speak. So, what I mean by reducing your stress is that you begin to recognize that even when the stressor “ends” (I put that in quotes because many of our stressors are chronic – they don’t stop. You walk out of work or put your child to bed, but you know they will be back again shortly) you are left with an end product – stress – and you need to process it.

If you don’t, your body continually stays in that stress response mode – the fight or flight mode. When you don’t release the stress, even though you left work because you take it home with you in your mind, the stress from the day stays in your body. Over time this stress accumulates, so you start each day with a higher threshold of stress.

Carrying a high level of stress around with you requires a lot of energy, so of course you are depleted. It also makes it harder to respond in a healthy way when you encounter new stressors. That feeling that you just can’t take anymore? That indicates your internal reservoir is close to overflowing. You need to empty it.

How to dump the stress

To empty it, use your body to help you get out of and calm your mind. Mindfulness techniques work. For two minutes, name three thoughts, three sensations in your body, and three things in your environment.

Meditation is the best way to get into the present moment. Try a meditation that focuses on breathing or scans your body for sensations.

Exercise that requires exertion also works. The exertion doesn’t have to be sweaty – it just has to be intentional and take all of your focus. Qi Gong works as well as sprints.

Affection is also a great way to signal to your body that it’s safe. An awkwardly long six-second kiss or a twenty-second hug let’s your body know that you aren’t in fight or flight mode anymore.

Emotional Freedom Technique is a great way to release stored emotions. You tap on acupressure points while focusing on what caused your stress. Then you give yourself empathy. You tell yourself it’s okay. Okay to feel that way. That you are okay in the moment. That you are handling the situation the best you can.

After you process the stress, look to balance the things in your life that influence the stress. Review your sleep, eating and exercise habits, your spiritual practice (which doesn’t have to be religious if you aren’t – ask yourself if you’ve been doing the things that give you meaning), your social connections, and your physical environment.

If any of those are out of balance, take steps to bring them back into alignment with what best supports you. Been staying up late getting lost in series because going to bed means the morning, which you can’t face, is closer? Try to go to sleep at the same hour each night and ensure you have space to get enough rest. Where you are eating junk food, replace it with a healthy meal. These aren’t rocket science, but they significantly impact your ability to cope with stress.

• Connect to your meaning

Where you feel emotionally distant from your work, your life, the things that are important to you, you aren’t connected to your “why,” your raison d’être. This makes sense because you’ve been putting all of your energy into managing the negative stress.

Where your focus has been on negativity and any positivity and inspiration has been sucked down your mental vortex, you either won’t have the energy (because it went down the drain) or you are armoring up against – blocking – the negative feelings. This is protective, but when you shut down negative feelings, you shut down positive feelings too.

To change this trajectory, you need to begin to feel again and then turn your focus toward inspiration. Mindfulness and meditation are great for helping you become aware of your body sensations, which are the physiological cause of your feelings. You feel a sensation (emotion) and your mind interprets it and voila! you have a feeling. When you block feelings, you block sensation.

To reverse this, start intentionally focusing on what you sense. You can even do this on the go. When you are on the bus, turn your attention inward, what do you notice? Is your stomach gurgling? Are your ears hot, your hands cold? What is your breathing like – shallow or deep?

Usually in a situation of overwhelm and burnout, there’s a sense of time scarcity. So in lieu of trying to carve out major moments to reconnect to your inspiration, use instead the transition moments – the between times – where you are moving from one thing to another (in the corridor or restroom between meetings), on the bus, in the shower.

When you find yourself in one of these, notice where your mind goes. Does it go to the problems? Are you focusing on cynical thoughts? Are you looping your anger round and round in your head? Intentionally shift your focus to something you enjoy(ed). Think about the last time you went on vacation and the feeling of skiing down the slope. Focus on laughing with your child over nonsense. Think about an accomplishment that gives your pride.

If you don’t immediately feel anything, don’t worry. That’s normal. Keep doing it. A drop of positivity in the bucket of negativity won’t make any difference. It’s in the sustained effort over time that you see the darkness lift and the sunshine come in. When your thoughts quickly shift away from what inspires and connects you, bring them back time after time, trusting that, like the gym, after a time you will see results.

 

• Strengths

Because the workload is so unmanageable and there’s no end in sight, you feel incapable of managing it. You can’t do quality work in a system with this quantity of work. You have to rush through everything. Because you aren’t doing quality work and you aren’t making a dent in the mountain of things to do, you feel like a failure every day. You are not, however, your feelings. That you feel like a failure does not make you a failure. In fact, looking at it in a different way, you could say you are a hero – courageously battling a workload that will burn you out, but never giving in, ferociously persisting because you care. That small perspective change creates a lot of space for feeling differently. To get to that mindset, change how you are measuring yourself. Stop using your to-do list and your feeling to determine if you had a successful or a good day. Don’t look up at the mountain of work. Turn and look down at the mountain of what you’ve done and accomplished over the last six or two months. How many additional projects did you take on? How many of those came with new challenges that you solved? If at the end of the week, you aren’t looking at what you didn’t get done, but focusing on all that you did, does that change how you feel about yourself. You are drowning in a system that isn’t built to ensure you swim. Change how you are swimming.

If you need to be reminded of what your strengths are, take the VIA institute on Character survey.  The survey measures you across 34 character strengths that are highly valued in all cultures around the world and tells you which ones are dominant for you. Being reminded of your natural strengths can help you used them more intentionally to navigate this difficult period.

 

• Let go of the stigma

A lot of clients I work with feel shame when the subject of overwhelm or burnout comes up. They are overachievers who have always excelled, and they don’t see themselves as people who get overwhelmed or burn out. Self-judgment will get in your way, blocking your ability to change your outcome. Since overwhelm situations never magically resolve, the trajectory when the workload never changes as your energy and focus diminish is only down.

Let go of this judgmental image in your mind that you are not enough. Release the idea that if you were stronger, more capable, or quicker, you wouldn’t find yourself here now. Picture instead a person, even more dedicated that others, because when the workload got out of hand, instead of shrugging and saying, “that’s not a one-(wo)man job” or “this amount of work in this period of time is not feasible,” you thought, I will try harder, I will give more, I will endure. That you care so much is why you find yourself in this predicament. So, burnout really equates to caring too much, rather than not being good enough. No single person would every be able to do it, so why are you punishing yourself for not being superhuman?

Start talking about it. The situation won’t change if it’s not openly discussed or addressed. Secrecy and silence indicate shame. Why are you ashamed of caring too much? And when you are silent on your own behalf, it doesn’t open the door for others to say “you too? Whew, it’s not only me!”

Ask for help. Ask your manager. If you fear they will punish you, ask yourself what will happen if you don’t say anything? What is at the end of the scenario where you work until you fall? Also, why are you prioritizing an organization who punishes you for your humanity over your personal wellness?

Ask your friends. Don’t talk to friends about the negative gossipy details of colleagues and managers they don’t even know. Talk to friends you trust about the truth of your life – the exhaustion, the colorlessness, the secret wish you have to be magically transported out of your life. Connecting with those you love on real and meaningful topics helps you be seen. And that replenishes energy.

Ask a professional. Seeing a therapist, coach, other mental health professional should be the norm. You exercise your body and your mind. Why would you not exercise your emotions too? You see a professional when your digestion acts up, why not when all the good emotions have left your world?

 

In sum

These four things will help you get a foothold on life again. They will not guarantee that you pick up where you left off. You will need to look at all the contributing factors and assess how you want to change to ensure you don’t gain a foothold only to relapse six weeks later. Once you feel enough energy to be curious again, dig into your core beliefs – what drives your sense of out-sized responsibility? The system – do you want to learn to swim better in a system that absorbs you or do you want to learn to swim differently? Your emotional regulation – how well do you recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate/release your emotions, your stress? Only when you’ve identified and integrated critical changes in these areas will you get a different outcome.

If you want a partner to help you figure out how to shift from overwhelm to optimism, schedule a free call with me. The first step to getting out from under overwhelm is on me.

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Image credit: Weeping Woman, Pablo Picasso