Out of the Fog
With all that’s happened in the past weeks, months…years, so many of us are feeling exhausted or burned out. Frequently feeling unsteady, overwhelmed, or unfocused almost feels ‘normal’ after living like this for so long. It can be difficult to see burnout when it’s happening, but once we name and acknowledge the signs and symptoms, we can begin to truly restore ourselves and emerge from the fog.
Is it burnout, or is it “just stress”?
To define it: burnout is a reaction to chronic, prolonged stress or fatigue from a job, relationship, or another ongoing life event (like a pandemic, for example). It happens when we haven’t been able to meet our needs or hold our boundaries in healthy ways. When we talk about feeling burnout, we usually describe it in three broad categories: cynicism, exhaustion, and feelings of reduced personal ability (feeling like you just can’t keep on going).
What begins as acute stress, can soon become chronic, ongoing stress. Without proper care and intervention, this stress can progress to burnout.
People experience burnout in many different ways. However, there are some common warning signs to look for. They often start small, so we need to check ourselves regularly and pay attention to how we feel. The sooner or more frequently we check in with ourselves to recognize signs of distress, the sooner we can start restoring ourselves.
Physical Exhaustion - Our bodies feel sore, weak, or just “off”. Some people may experience stomach aches, headaches, or other intestinal issues. Others may experience increased fatigue or a vague feeling of restlessness or numbness.
Emotional Exhaustion - We may experience decreased motivation or a lack of energy to “get going”. This can also manifest in emotional “outbursts” (e.g. suddenly, we explode just because our partner asks a mundane question). When we have more difficulty regulating our reactions, it can be a clear sign that we’re emotionally exhausted.
Reduced Performance - When we’re experiencing burnout, our perspective can shift more toward cynicism and we may experience decreased creativity or cognitive performance. We may notice a deficit in processing and overall performance (i.e., it can feel like it takes an entire day to complete a task that otherwise would have taken several minutes).
We often allow these signs of burnout to continue longer than we should, typically labelling it as “stress” and hoping it’ll go away when life gets easier.
Keep in mind, burnout doesn’t just heal on its own. It requires our attention. We need to recognize it and do the work of intentionally caring for ourselves to heal from it.
The Pandemic Wall
We want to stress that feeling burned out during a pandemic is normal. You are not alone, and we are not yet past the “pandemic wall”. Over the past year, our responses to the pandemic were as varied and unpredictable as the virus itself. Within what felt like moments, we were stuck indoors, working from home (with the same expectations around productivity), taking care of kids full time, trying to find toilet paper, worrying about layoffs, and much, much more.
We are now more than a year into the pandemic and our rushed “normalcy” is catching up to us. Our bodies may have given us the temporary energy we needed to get us through, but now we may find ourselves hitting the wall. The compounding factors of the past year are really catching up to us in unavoidable ways at this point. We’re now dealing with the aftershocks. It will take time to restore fully and heal from the trauma and stressors we experienced. Be patient with yourself. Doing the good human work of healing takes time, intention and a great deal of effort.
How do we come out of the fog?
To begin restoring from burnout (and hopefully learning to prevent it in the future), we must consider how to truly care for ourselves in an intentional way.
At Good Human Work, we talk a great deal about self-care, but we’re not talking about bubble baths and other cliches.
When we talk about self-care, we’re talking about tending to all the parts of ourselves and being sure that one isn’t taking precedent over the others in a way that is unhealthy or detrimental to our wellbeing. This involves looking at all of our needs, internally and externally.
This full view of self-care includes tending to our relationship with ourselves (our emotional health, internal wellbeing, and physical needs), and taking care of our important relationships with others to be sure they are healthy, secure, and loving.
When we take care of our “self” in these ways, we’re doing good human work, and it helps us to protect from burnout and compassion fatigue, and to restore all aspects of ourselves. This restoration process allows us to show up for ourselves and others in a more meaningful and sustainable way.
Let’s practice change.
How can we (practically and intentionally) begin restoring?
First, we start by assessing where we need to focus our recovery efforts. We use the Good Human Work basic human needs (restore, protect, nourish, explore, evolve) as a guide to identify out unmet needs. When we identify the fundamental needs we’ve let slip, we can build in time to intentionally take care of our self in these ways. It’s common to identify more than one unmet need, and the process often involves restoring and protecting (or nourishing, or exploring, or evolving).
Plan to take an intentional break when possible. Taking time off is essential to preventing and recovering from burnout. Try to first consider how much time is needed for a break, then align that as much as possible with what is realistic. Whether it can be many days or just a few hours, it’ll help you restore. To use breaks as burnout prevention rather than just as recovery, plan them on a regular cycle (one day per month, or a long weekend every quarter, etc). It provides something to look forward to, which gives us hope and positive anticipation.
Reach out for connection and support. Talking, connecting, and openly acknowledging our struggles with a close friend or family member can allow space for us to more deeply connect with one another. When we find that we’re not alone in our burnout, we can provide reciprocal support and encouragement for each other. Human connection and healthy relationships are essential for us to feel steady and whole.
Spend a little time planning recovery days. They are best when they are intentionally designed to meet the needs we’ve neglected. Is there a need for extra sleep? Time to socialize? A creative outlet? Organizing surroundings or schedules? Exploring nature? Build these into recovery days and other down times to begin targeting the unmet needs.
If you can, chat with a professional. To talk more deeply about preventing and recovering from burnout, meeting with a licensed and skilled therapist can lead to truly sustainable strategies. For some people, this can be the most efficient way to recover from burnout and prevent it from happening again in the future.