Beware of the Burnout syndrome

The stress our job causes us is often not properly monitored, as it is mistakenly considered as part of the job itself. This causes people to reach situations in which they feel unable to cope with this stress and might even start thinking they are not qualified to do their job.

What is burnout?

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Burnout is a state of chronic stress that leads to:

• physical and emotional exhaustion
• cynicism and detachment
• feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment. | Source

This syndrome is a state of extreme mental and emotional exhaustion, which is often accompanied by a feeling of lack of physical strength. It is often experienced as a kind of physical and mental inertia, a feeling of "heaviness" that remains day after day.

This kind of exhaustion is usually a slow process, it accumulates little by little without us realizing it. The problem is that it can end up "exploding", often due to unimportant situations to which in other circumstances we would not have even paid attention

Burnout is not a simple result of long hours. The cynicism, depression, and lethargy of burnout can occur when you're not in control of how you carry out your job, when you're working toward goals that don't resonate with you, and when you lack social support. If you don't tailor your responsibilities to match your true calling, or at least take a break once in a while, you could face a mountain of mental and physical health problems. | Source

The causes of burnout consists in giving too much of our energy, without taking proper rest to recharge it. Like when having constant and even excessive sacrifice on our part, whether it is at work, or to other people, to a project that excites us but also consumes a lot of our energy, to everyday problems, to day-to-day tasks.

At the same time, we receive virtually nothing in return that can fix the unbalance we are having. We don’t not rest and relax properly, we do not spend quality time alone with ourselves and we do not receive enough attention, affection and understanding from the people close to us. In practice, it is as if we only extracted energy from our emotional reserve but without worrying about replenishing it.

In other cases that mental fatigue can also be caused by too many changes in a very short time, even if these changes are positive. However, if they happen too quickly, we might not be able to manage them and we feel overwhelmed as a result.

Symptoms

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When people suffers from this, they will feel a serious lack of energy when it comes to engage in productive activities, this lack of energy manifest itself in several ways.

The feeling of psychological exhaustion usually reflects first physically, so feeling a total absent of energy is normal in these cases, even in the morning after waking up, so that when we open our eyes we might think we will not be able to face the day ahead of us. Often behind these issues are hidden unresolved problems, which go round and round in our mind, making it even more difficult to us to take proper sleep.

All of these can cause us an inability to enjoy the small pleasures of life, the things we once enjoyed no longer encourage us, it is as if the world had suddenly lost its colors. We may feel as if we floated in a kind of distant limbo that take us away from reality.

When we are extremely exhausted, we simply do not find the motivation to get involved in new projects or do those things that we were passionate about before. Any task seems titanic and we develop a deep apathy towards the world. Also some feelings of disenchantment, disappointment and despair can eventually appear.

This exhaustion also affects our cognitive processes, so we may perceive that we think more slowly or that we have a hard time thinking. What we used to do quickly, now it costs us much more and sometimes we find it difficult to give a logical sense to the ideas in our mind or to keep track of a long speech, therefore, our productivity levels are much lower than they used to be.

The attention we put into our activities is also affected by this, which might lead to frequent misunderstandings. It is likely that we forget the messages, that we do not remember where we left the keys or even find it difficult to remember what we ate the day before. This is the result of having our mind too saturated that it cannot continue to handle and store new data at the conscious level.

What type of people are prone to this syndrome?

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We can all feel exhausted from time to time, especially when we go through particularly stressful situations in our life, but there are some some people who are more susceptible to feel this way, because the individual's own qualities are decisive in the perception and managing of stress.

The perfectionists, who demand a lot of themselves, end up adding an extra weight on their shoulders that in the long run represents more stress, and ironically, this could end up causing a decrease in the quality of their work.

The same can happen to people who want to take on all tasks, because they believe that others will not know how to do them or will not measure up, this makes them more prone to suffer from burnout syndrome due to an excess of responsibilities.

When it comes to feeling an emotional drain, people who are highly sensible are more likely to suffer a from emotional exhaustion because they often assume the problems of others as their own, without being able to establish a psychological distance for the sake of protection. So whet we have the burden of our own issues, plus the burden of the issues of others, it can add up easily and become too much to handle.

All of these can end up making it more difficult for them to relax and disconnect. It is as if the brain worked intensively without ever stopping. And of course, in the long run, this ends up causing a severe burnout syndrome.

The current pace of life and work can cause great stress and anxiety and this syndrome starts to affect people when they are in an advanced stage of stress.

his state is caused because our capacity to handle our responsibilities is diminished

Conclusion

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Everyone must find their own remedy for the burnout syndrome, which means that we must detect what is consuming our energy and face that problem as soon as possible, perhaps approaching it with a different perspective. Remember that sometimes a change of perspective is enough to change everything.

To be efficient and productive, we need to rest, this is a must. In life, it is essential to find a balance between work and obligations and free time and rest. We need to make sure to find the time to take proper rest and relax for a while, so that it becomes a habit and this way we can prevent psychological exhaustion.

We must learn to prioritize taking into account not only the things that seem to be urgent but also those that we are most passionate about and that give us great satisfaction. Filling our day with activities that generate stress will always cause some mental fatigue, so we must make sure we find a balance.

We need to be a little more realistic, since none of us a superman or a superwoman. Sometimes nothing happens if we make mistakes, if things do not go perfect or if we postpone them. It's simply about not adding unnecessary pressure

This is why it is important that you find a space to be alone, a few moments of the day when you simply breathe easy and connect with your needs, dreams and desires, meditation is healthy and can certainly help with resolving these kind of issues.