Understanding burnout
“Burnout is nature’s way of telling you, you’ve been going through the motions, [but] your soul has departed; you’re a zombie, a member of the walking dead, a sleepwalker.”
Sam Keen
Burnout is everywhere. In 2022, Forbes reported, “People across the nation and the world are burned out, exhausted, and depressed.” The fact that so many of us ‘burn out’ is perhaps unsurprising given the pressures in today’s competitive fast-paced world. The pandemic has also asked a lot from us.
Even so, it is alarming that burnout is so prevalent. This blog highlights one of today’s most insidious and harmful epidemics, the era of burnout.
What is burnout?
Burnout is a state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. It builds up over time from too many responsibilities, pressure to exceed expectations, overworking, and other stressful life situations. It is most often associated with the persistent stress of a demanding job, but can also occur from parenting, caring for a sick relative, intense or abusive relationships, or unmanaged chronic pain or illness.
Burnout arises when there is an extended and relentless period of stress, and the person can’t see an end to their stressful situation. A person with burnout feels drained and overwhelmed.
Burnout can affect anyone at any time. And just as with any illness, symptoms vary from person to person. The degree of burnout ranges from complete exhaustion and an inability to get out of bed to just about functioning while feeling drained, empty, and devoid of motivation.
Commonly, there are also phases to burnout, from a honeymoon phase to chronic stress and complete exhaustion. Finally, is habitual burnout, where the symptoms of burnout become embedded in a person’s life.
What differentiates stress from burnout?
Most people feel stressed at some point in their work or daily life. Work deadlines, family conflicts, relationship breakdowns, and even trivial annoyances, like traffic jams, can stress us. However, a heightened state of stress is generally short-lived or happens in cycles with plenty of time to recover in between.
Stress is recognisable. We feel more alert, anxious, or on edge. We may feel fidgety, and our heart rate increases. But typically, these responses pass as the ‘stressful’ situation ebbs away. This is because the body responds to stress and then down-regulates the stress response when the stressful situation ends.
Burnout is when there is no let-up, prolonged stress, and no end in sight. Being stuck in a perpetual stress state eventually takes its toll on the body and mind. Unfortunately, when a person lives permanently like that, they may even fail to recognise that they feel stressed.
The simplest explanation of burnout is the body is saying, “I can no longer function in these circumstances!”
The physiological effects of burnout: understanding the stress response
To understand burnout, one must consider what is physically happening in the body during stress.
Firstly, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated. The hypothalamus, a tiny region at the base of the brain, perceives a ‘threat’ and sets off an alarm, causing a cascade of events in the body. Signals cause the adrenal glands to release hormones like adrenaline and cortisol.
Our hormones are chemical messengers that trigger responses in the body. For example, adrenaline raises the heart rate, increases blood pressure, expands air passages in the lungs, improves vision by dilating the pupils in the eyes, decreases sensitivity to pain, slows digestion, and increases blood glucose.
Cortisol helps the body to stay in a state of high alert. It increases glucose in the bloodstream, inhibits insulin production, and enhances the use of blood glucose by the brain. In addition, cortisol constricts arteries so that blood pumps harder and faster to large muscles. It increases tissue repair substances and down-regulates functions like digestion and immune activity.
These protective mechanisms help us stay alert, respond quicker, and function optimally in stressful situations.
Prolonged stress, burnout and secondary illnesses
Understanding the stress response makes it easy to see how chronic stress wreaks havoc on the body and mind.
An excessively high adrenaline level causes insomnia and a jittery, nervous feeling. Over a prolonged period, high adrenaline interrupts sleep and causes damage to the heart.
Persistently high cortisol levels can be damaging, too, causing anxiety, depression, fatigue, gastrointestinal upset, headache, and high blood pressure.
Other consequences include irritability, poor memory, difficulty concentrating, low libido, erectile dysfunction, irregular menstrual cycles, insomnia, poor recovery from exercise, slow wound healing, and weight gain. In addition, there is increased susceptibility to contagious diseases due to the suppression of the immune system. Nutritional uptake from food is also impaired.
Research shows persistent stress is a precursor to high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disorders, musculoskeletal pain, changes in pain experiences, prolonged fatigue, headaches, gastrointestinal issues, respiratory problems, and severe injuries and mortality below the age of 45 years.
Sadly, by the time someone seeks treatment for burnout, several other health conditions often exist. Therefore, in the later phases of burnout, a comprehensive treatment is necessary on several levels to address burnout’s physiological and physical complaints and any secondary illnesses.
Unaddressed, burnout can kill. In Japan, there is a term for death by overworking – Karōshi, which describes sudden death from an unbearable state of exhaustion.
What causes burnout?
The overarching cause of burnout is persistent chronic stress. This state manifests from prolonged overworking or being stuck permanently in a stressful situation (a caring role, for example). In addition, stress may stem from a lack of support at home or in the workplace, taking on too many responsibilities, a lack of boundaries, and poor self-care. Lack of autonomy, or being in a controlling or coercive relationship, may also keep a person in a heightened stress state, leading to exhaustion and fatigue.
Financial worry about debt, or conversely about losing one’s fortune, can take its toll. In addition, self-imposed perfectionism, or an unhealthy desire to constantly prove oneself, can drive persistent stress.
CEO burnout is a real epidemic. This phenomenon has been recognised and written about for years. Running a company and making critical business decisions every day is hugely stressful. In senior exec roles, the pressure can be relentless.
Why some people burn out while others don’t is more complex. Many things cause people to feel stressed and respond to stress differently. Things like personality type could determine a greater or lesser susceptibility to burnout.
Meaning and purpose in life
More recent research explores the lack of meaning and purpose in life as a possible factor in burnout. For example, a research paper on Burnout Syndrome and Logotherapy (a therapeutic approach that helps people find personal meaning in life) concludes that “burnout emerges out of the experience of meaninglessness.”
Medium reports, “Burnout is the ultimate expression of not living your purpose [and] …fulfilment is the opposite of burnout.”
A Forbes report on professionals who burn out concludes, “Burnout in managers results from the disconnect between wanting to make a significant impact on the employees they lead and not having the power or resources to do so.
“Burned-out professionals perceive themselves as unable to carry out the jobs they believe embody their professional values.” As a result, there is a sense of impotence.
The downside of success
Overwork may explain a connection between the drive for success and burnout. But it doesn’t explain why a person doesn’t do something to intervene before they hit the burnout wall.
A new study by Asana, which looked at over 10,000 knowledge workers across seven countries, could further explain. The study discovered that 40 per cent of workers believe burnout is an inevitable part of success. Burnout is viewed as an unavoidable fate. We now live in a world where a state of chronic stress is accepted as the norm.
Burnout and imposter syndrome
Research by Asana also notes an emerging link between burnout and imposter syndrome. Speaking at an Asana-hosted panel discussion, Dr. Sahar Yousef, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, said, “We’re seeing imposter syndrome and burnout start to speak to each other. These conditions are simultaneously cropping up in more early-career workers.”
The BBC also report that feeling bad at your job can lead to professional burnout. Some people experience feelings of undeserving success and intellectual fraud, which is stressful and exhausting. This could explain the rise of burnout among young professional people.
Summary
Sadly, burnout is thriving. In almost all corners of the globe, the balance has tipped to a culture of overwork, and exhaustion has become an accepted part of life.
The acceleration of burnout is concerning because it isn’t easy to recover from and, as discussed here, it can have far-reaching negative consequences on health. If people understood what was coming their way, they might be more inclined to act.
As a global community, we must do more to raise awareness of burnout and what it entails. Above all, we must ensure everyone can find meaning in life and teach people how to handle stress more resiliently and healthily.
Finding your way back from burnout at The Place
At The Place, we specialise in helping people find their way back from burnout.
Our unique and powerful therapeutic programmes combine intense psychotherapy, kundalini yoga, and bodywork to help those suffering from burnout to recover, renew, revive, and find meaning in life again.
Contact us to find out more about burnout recovery. We’d love to welcome you to The Place Retreats in Bali.
