Dread for the day.
Constantly overwhelmed.
Fatigue.
No excitement or joy in what you do.
Feeling trapped.
Minimal satisfaction and loss of motivation.
No sense of accomplishment.
Self-medicating to cope.
Decreased capacity.
If you are frequently experiencing these symptoms, you may be experiencing burnout. Psychology Today defines burnout as a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress. As many increasingly report feelings of burnout, it’s important to understand what it actually is and how to recover from it.
Causes for Burnout
There can be many contributors that lead up to burnout. For work-related burnout, some causes can include unreasonable expectations, unfair or unclear demands, dull or meaningless assignments, high-stress work environments, and being undervalued or hardly recognized. For lifestyle-related burnout, causes may include constantly feeling overstimulated, lack of support system, being everything for everyone, and minimal to no boundaries. Burnout as it relates to faith and spirituality can look like feeling detached from God, disconnectedness from community and outreach, strife with church or community leadership, or increased spiritual skepticism.
Ways to Help Burnout
- Do a serious inventory of your current load. Break it down into a priority-tier. Helpful questions to ask while re-evaluating priorities:
- What is a high priority?
- What can wait?
- What is not even necessary anymore?
- What is still serving you?
- What is harming you?
- Have I communicated my workload grievances to the appropriate parties?
- What boundaries do I have in place?
- Talk to someone. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to wait until you’re at your wits end to work with a trained professional. In addition, you may be surprised to find who can relate and what has been helpful for others who have felt the same way.
- Consider what ways your own expectations may be contributing to burnout. For example, are you requiring perfection of yourself? Are you hypercritical of yourself and those around you? Do you have high or even unrealistic expectations?
- Get moving. Studies show how exercise increases your endorphins and contributes to stress relief.
- Walking
- Running
- Sports
- Weight Lifting
- Dancing
- Trauma yoga. (Learn more about our Private Trauma Yoga services here.)
Whether you’re only beginning to notice a few signs or are fully engulfed in burnout, it’s never too early or too late to seek the relief that your mind and body may need. Vine + Root Counseling offers outpatient therapy and custom therapy intensives for individuals, couples, and families. Learn more here.