Burnout, What is it?

I’m currently on the Thrive course run by Josh Fletcher and Dr Peter Olusoga. The course focuses on how to prevent burnout and create a sustainable coaching career.

The first thing that stood out to me from this course, was gaining a better understanding of what burnout is.

Burnout is the result of a prolonged exposure to high work-related demands in relation to a person’s resources. When the stress we feel outweighs our coping resources. It’s an ongoing experiential syndrome of:

1. Emotional and Physical Exhaustion – feelings of tiredness and being depleted by work.

2. Reduced Personal Accomplishment – no matter how hard we work, we feel like we aren’t accomplishing anything worthwhile and are experiencing poor professional self-esteem.

3. Depersonalisation – having a cynical attitude towards work and relationships at work. Work is no longer perceived as interesting or valuable.

All three of these needn’t be present for someone to be experiencing burnout. Someone can be feeling more of one of the three, however, from personal experience it’s more likely to be a combination of the three.

A wonderful aspect that Josh discussed is how stress/ burnout can slowly creep up on us. In fact, we may have gone through times of burnout without fully realising it. I know I have. I can greatly associate with experiencing all the above three signs of burnout. At the time I wasn’t aware of it. I was still able to operate at work normally. However, it was when I was home that I really felt the symptoms. No energy, no feelings of accomplishment, and not wanting to go into work. I was an empty person to be around, and just wanted to bury myself in the couch and watch endless episodes of the Office.

Josh talks about can you sense the creep of stress? The first warning signs of burnout, or the first signs that our stress levels outweigh our coping resources. These may be different for individuals. So, it’s about trying to understand and identify these within yourself. These may be irritability, being unable to focus on anything, your mind feeling constantly elsewhere unable to attend what’s happening in the present, procrastination, spending excess time on the wrong things, spreading yourself too thin, and the use of numbing agents (examples: social media).

Many of these stand out to me, especially being unable to focus on anything and use of numbing agents. Numbing agents for me would be phone, television and food. There are times when watching something I feel myself rotating between the television and the phone, unable to fully attend to anything.

Linking in with the previous blog post, I think this relates to gaining a better sense of self-awareness. Can we be aware of times when we sense the creep of stress, when we might be experiencing the three aspects of burnout above, and if so, can we do something to help ourselves or reach out to someone who can guide us in the right direction.