How can you tell if you're in burnout?

Can't Even – a feeling, and a great book by Anne Helen Petersen

Burnout has been described as a global epidemic. Even prior to COVID-19, symptoms were rife. Today, with high unemployment numbers and enormous uncertainty as to what the future holds, burnout is everywhere.

Yet burnout remains a deeply personal experience. Your burnout is different to anyone else’s because it is interwoven with your own traits, perspectives, responsibilities and background. Your symptoms will be different too.

So what are the symptoms of burnout? Here’s a list of the most prominent symptoms. Not everyone will have all of these, but if you’re nodding at most, you might be experiencing a burnout right now.

Serious fatigue. Subsisting under relentless stress eventually makes you feel tired all the time. Maybe you even wake up under the weight of foreboding and dread. It’s a “Can’t Even” vibe.

Insomnia. Stress-related chemicals keep your brain constantly spinning and prevent you sleeping. This might start insidiously, but as burnout deepens it can evolve into insomnia where you are unable to sleep at all, despite being world-class levels of exhausted.

Physical problems, including chest pain, heart palpitations, headaches, dizziness, shortness of breath or panic attacks and stomach pain.

Frequent illness. Your immune system becomes shot, so you’re more susceptible to colds, flus and infections.

Forgetfulness and inability to concentrate. Stress and insomnia impact your capacity to focus on tasks and recall information. Your brain feels foggy and you find yourself forgetting things, when you’re used to being on the ball and highly organized.

Change in appetite. You lose interest in food and shed weight or gain weight because you’re eating unhealthily or comfort eating.

Anger. This may start as little tiffs or minor irritations, but over time anger can grow until it feels like a wildfire: irrational and beyond your control, causing serious damage to work and personal relationships.

Inability to enjoy life. You stop enjoying aspects of life. Hobbies you once loved now feel ‘meh’. Social interactions you used to relish seem chore-like and boring. You cease activities that you once considered intrinsic to your identity (long hikes, dinner parties, relaxing on the couch with a novel, etc.).

Loss of motivation at work. You don’t feel enthusiastic about work or motivated to carry out daily tasks. Eventually you lose pride in your work and don’t care about results or outcomes.

Pessimism. It starts as an increasingly negative self-narrative. Where you used to think in solutions, you start thinking ‘whatever’ or ‘why bother’. Your world view becomes negative. You don’t know who or what to trust anymore. This can lead to withdrawal.

Isolation. You know from COVID-19 what enforced isolation looks like. In burnout, you withdraw of your own volition. You start resisting socializing (turning down an offer to go out to lunch, closing your office door to keep others out, staying at work instead of joining friends for dinner). As burnout develops, you become angry or resentful when someone even speaks to you, or you try to avoid interactions by coming to work early and staying late.

Detachment. Detachment is disconnection from other people or your environment. As you withdraw, a vicious cycle starts: you feel less connected, which makes you feel worse, so you pull back further.

Apathy and hopelessness. Rather than approaching life feeling empowered and engaged, you feel powerless and indifferent. As you feel more apathetic or hopeless you start to feel stuck and immobilized, which compounds the powerlessness and despair.

Increased snarkiness. You become more easily irritated annoyed. Things that would once have seemed fine now trigger you to become snarky, mean, or other shades of angry. Irritability interferes in personal and professional relationships and at its worst can destroy relationships.

Lack of productivity and poor performance. It doesn’t matter how many hours you work: chronic stress stops you from being as productive, which often leads to incomplete projects and an ever-growing to-do list. Which only increases the stress and decreases your sense of self-worth. The deeper you slide into burn out, the less productive you become, despite your best efforts. This can be compounded by guilt and shame due to the productivity propaganda we are constantly fed.

You may also experience thoughts like...

I’m not living my best life

I don’t know who I am anymore

I wish I was doing something totally different with my life, but I don’t know what

I don’t care anymore

Burnout can make you feel angry, pessimistic or detached in a way that doesn’t feel like you. It can cause you to lose a spark that was once intrinsic to you. And this sucks, because your spark matters.

This world needs your spark.

Feeling adrift from who you genuinely are can be debilitating. That’s why talking to someone is so important.

You’re not alone. Reach out to someone and tell them what you’re going through right now.

Originally published on Medium.