Your body and brain cannot handle exhaustion and high levels of stress quite well. There’s a certain limit to what you can do mentally and physically. If you constantly overwork, continuously overthink and feel overwhelmed, there will come a point in time where your brain and body stops responding altogether.
Constantly experiencing high levels of stress without making the efforts to reduce or manage it, has a direct impact on your productivity, performance, mental, emotional, and physical well-being. The symptoms may be subtle but it all happens gradually and finally. When you start feeling demotivated to do anything and nothing you do matters anymore, that’s when you’re facing burnout. Many of us undermine this feeling and confuse it with ‘normal behavior’. When in fact it’s unhealthy.
There’s no denying the fact that Covid-19 has thrown everyone a curveball. We’re all experiencing different phases of our lives in such crisis and experiencing burnout is a feeling we all have or had shared this year. While the signs may seem subtle or repetitive, it’s important to recognize them so we can take action before it gets worse.
The Signs of Burnout
Some major signs of burnout involve
- Feeling underachieved
- Taking no credit for your own accomplishments or losing pride in your work
- Not paying attention to achieving goals
- Not paying attention to who you are and losing yourself
- Feeling irritated, frustrated, and annoyed with co-workers
- Feeling physically tired
- Experiencing insomnia, fatigue, muscle pain, and tension.
- Being mentally absent from close family and friends or having difficulty maintaining existing relationships
The rate at which everyone experiences burnout depends mostly on the environment they’re thriving in i.e. their field of work. For instance, healthcare workers experience more anxiety, frustration, and stress than those belonging to a sales or marketing field. It has a strong impact on mostly those who are working in a fast-paced, high pressured and stress-inducing environment.
Burnout negatively affects work productivity and performance, keeps you from spending care-free time with your family, and makes you forget enjoying your hobbies, increases health risks specifically, type 2 diabetes, suicide and depression.
Taking strict action is important to recover from burnout before it gets worse. Luckily, you’ve come to the right place! Here we have a few effective ways to get rid of burnout.
- Find The Reason Why
It’s difficult to make changes when you don’t really know what to change. Explore the sources of stress or any contributing factors that may be the probable cause of burnout in your life. Most of the time, burnout happens due to professional triggers, such as dealing with the pressure of a super demanding job. But other sources may also be from having a stressful academic routine, facing relationship problems, or taking care of a loved one with health issues.
Doing everything on your own creates a negative environment and bending so much will break you eventually. Handling one stressful thing at a time is manageable than a combination of stressing factors. Find the reason why you’re facing burnout and begin working on it right away.
- Calm The Chatter In Your Mind
When you’re experiencing burnout, 9 out of 10 times, there’s a constant chatter blocking your mind from relaxing. You need to calm your mind for that chatter to end. You’re not only physically exhausting your body, but you’re also doing it mentally as well. To switch off the chatter going on in your mind, you must seek help from things that help you mentally such as yoga, Reiki, and other mediation or energy healing techniques. They help greatly.
- Make Immediate Changes When You Can
Find ways to reduce the workload right away. If you’re staying up for long hours on the weekend working on heavy-load projects, you can always be realistic and ask your supervisor to reassign one of the projects to someone else. Doing everything or nothing can backfire. Don’t take on more work if you already have a full plate. It will only add more stress and frustration.
- Take Control
You might feel powerless because you had zero control over the things that drove you to this point, but you can still take back control with the power you actually have. Delegate what you can’t do, prioritize the tasks which need immediate attention, and set aside the ones that you can do later when you have the energy and time, draw boundaries between personal and professional life, and know what you need whether it’s support or understanding.
- Go Back To Your Hobbies
The key to burnout recovery includes going back to things that brought you peace and happiness. Clear your schedule, take some time off and go on a full break to unwind and relax. However, this may seem impossible for some people, since it’s not that easy to just quit mid-way.
Instead, just make enough time to spend time alone. It’s important. Read a book, go on a walk or simply tune into your favorite channel and catch your favorite shows. A subscription to AT&T TV is all you need to unwind and forget about work for a while. Check for AT&T TV availability in your city and catch all your favorite shows and movies whenever you want. Make sure to get some physical activity every day as well, along with maintaining your diet.
Keep in touch with things that make you happy. From phone calls with friends to re-reading an old book for the 10th time, don’t lose sight of what you love doing. The best way to counter burnout is by making a list of things that make you happy instantly. Make time for those things every week, even when you don’t feel like yourself.
- Talk To Someone
It’s normal to feel lonely and alone when confronting burnout. By opening up and talking to the people closest to you, you may feel a little lighter. If you can’t due to the toll the burnout has taken on your relationships, you can always turn to a therapist for professional advice.
Not only with they help you identify the sources, but you will also learn how to handle life challenges and coping techniques.
To Wrap It Up
Facing burnout and recovering from it requires a lot of learning and unlearning. It’s a length process, but with the right help, support and guidance, you can do it. Follow and practice these tips to take back control!
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