The signs of burnout

Burnout doesn’t just happen to high flying executives. It happens to responsible people in every walk of life.

The people that we rely on to pick up the pieces, hold things together, be on time, do what they say they’ll do, juggle several demands at once, and those who try to do it all.

These people are amongst the best of us.

The friend that’s always there for you. The one that always remembers your birthday and who answers the phone, no matter how late, to listen sympathetically to your problems.

The working mum who makes sure her children eat healthily and are dressed well helps them with their homework and always turns up on time.

I’ve seen signs in students nearing the end of their academic year and retirees caring for a spouse with dementia.

It’s a universal problem. In the past, I’ve ignored the signs in myself.

Recognising the signs of burnout early is an important way to prevent it from getting to the point where your brain and body force you into slowing down and eventually heading for what used to be unhelpfully called a ‘breakdown’, which, in more everyday terms, is when your body and mind are overloaded and something ‘blows’, forcing you to stop, rest and change.

Everyone’s experience will be different, but there are some common early symptoms:

Sleep: You might find yourself waking in the early hours, finding it hard to unwind from the day and experiencing broken sleep.

Mood: You will experience one or more of the unconscious stress states, depending on your personality.

Freeze: Finding yourself emotionally numb, living on auto-pilot, feeling stuck and unable to express how you feel because you simply don’t know. Experiencing a dead inside fog of tiredness all the time.

Fight: You could feel irritable, snappy, impatient, have aggressive feelings or dreams, and take things out on those close to you. Sometimes this manifests as anxiety and progresses to panic attacks.

Flight: You might start cancelling social engagements, ignoring calls and messages, with a strong need to be on your own or get away from people.

Fawn: Some try even harder to please others, feel guilt if they don’t live up to impossibly high standards and think themselves selfish if they don’t give their all in relationships or at work.

Immune system: You will start to catch colds, and stomach bugs, feel aches and pains, have migraines or regular headaches and feel exhausted most of the time.

You might have digestive issues, mouth ulcers, cold sores, and cuts that heal more slowly than usual.

Depending on your gender and age, you might find changes in your periods and have re-occurring thrush, cystitis, or skin problems.

Habits: You may see the emergence of habitual behaviours, regularly drinking, smoking, taking drugs, comfort eating, losing your appetite, and loading up more than usual on caffeine or sugary drinks to get you through the day.

Sex: You will probably find your sex drive diminishing or find sex less pleasurable.

Conversely, some start to become more promiscuous as a coping mechanism but find the experience hollow and meaningless, perpetuating feelings of shame and guilt.

Concentration: Your mind finds it harder to concentrate at work, when people are talking to you, and when watching a programme or film; it can become almost impossible to read a book without re-reading pages because you have lost the thread of the story.

To some of you, these symptoms might seem like the things we all bear as part of modern life and the society we live in. You might even think that what you are experiencing is normal and something you have to put up with.

The signs of burnout mean that you have to change your behaviour urgently.

No matter how guilty you might feel, it’s a signal to take some time out.

You have to mentally stick an ‘out of order’ sign on yourself and do nothing except sleep and self-care for a short while.

This, of course, is only a quick fix.

To really deal with burn out, you need to do some inner work to discover the reasons why you take on so much responsibility and admit to yourself that continuing like this can have severe repercussions for your physical and mental health. And you deserve to take care of yourself in a much better way.

If you don’t, your mind and body will go into ‘protection mode’ and eventually force you to. This can manifest itself in disease, chronic illness and depression.

So as one of the best of us, you owe it to yourself to get some help to re-set, take care of yourself and do the inner work to change your behaviours.

There is a reason why you work so hard and neglect your own needs. It usually has its roots in the past, you may have taken on responsibility when you were too young or got cast in the role of ‘helper’ as a child. Some people became over-responsible in an attempt to deal with the chaos around them.

You’re a precious human being that for once, needs to make yourself your highest priority. Tell us what you think and we can share some strategies to help get out of this potentially self-destructive behaviour.