Meaning of 'Burnt Out'

Today, we're discussing what it means to be ‘burnt out’. Please note this is general advice and is not exhaustive for every individual situation. You should seek help from a qualified professional as soon as any causes of stress or symptoms begin to feel more than what you can handle on your own.

The important thing to point out here is that stress can come from many sources, and what's stressful for one person may not necessarily be stressful for another person. That's because a stressor, in itself, a source of stress, can be defined as anything that signals danger or requires a call to action. For example, a stressor may be a difficult co-worker. For some people, this can cause great anxiety as they go about their day at work, but for other people, a difficult co-worker may instead be seen as simply a call to action, something that they need to address, whether that be confronting the difficult co-worker over a specific issue or talking to management or a supervisor. So, for that person, that cause of stress may be less prevalent than for the other person.

Now, importantly, many definitions of being burnt out define burnout by the symptoms, and there can be a lot of symptoms. One of the most common ones to discuss is exhaustion, being physically, mentally, or emotionally exhausted, which can be a result of dwelling on stress and not being able to find a way out of it. Every person's symptom of burnout will be different to the next person to some extent. It will depend on the individual's temperament, their experiences, and the specific stressor.

So, I've got some examples. Let's say we've got James. James is in conflict with his supervisor at work. He may feel anxious about judgments from other people. He may feel a sense of inefficacy or inefficiency about what he does. He may even be anxious about his future career prospects if he perceives that the supervisor could be a barrier to him moving forward in his career. James may also feel physical exhaustion simply from being kept up at night, having insomnia, worrying about how this conflict will result in further barriers. And James might also feel anxiety about going to work or interacting with the supervisor or manager. So, there are a lot of symptoms that I just listed here, but we can conclude that James, in conflict with his supervisor, is feeling these negative symptoms, suggesting that he is feeling burnt out.

Another example is Laurie, who perceives that there is no recognition for her achievements at work. Some people in their work really don't care about achievements, whereas for other people, such as Laurie, this may lead to them feeling resentment towards supervision or leadership for the lack of recognition of what they've achieved. They may also feel a sense of anxiety about being compared to others who may have achieved more or less than her. Because of this, Laurie may actually have reduced productivity and procrastinate tasks because she might figure, well, if no one's going to recognize me for what I've done, what's the point of doing it? Another symptom could be her distraction with careers. She could spend her time job searching or be so focused on the achievements that she's not getting. Another symptom is that she could simply be cynical about the value of her work. If she has no recognition that what she's achieving actually means anything, she might figure, again, why am I doing this?

So, from these two examples, James and Laurie, we see two different stressors resulting in two different sets of symptoms of burnout. So, what it means to be burnt out to one person may be different to another, given the symptoms they've experienced. And that can really lead to difficult conversations of, well, are you actually burnt out? Because you don't have similar symptoms to those I've seen in other people who have been burnt out.

Okay, so we've discussed what it means to be burnt out, but what can we do to help us no longer be burnt out? Now, recovery solutions will depend on the stressor, different stressors and even different people require different solutions.

So, let's go back to our examples. We have James, who is feeling in conflict with his supervisor. One of his symptoms was feeling anxious about going to work and interacting with this supervisor. James may need to practice or pursue training, increasing his skills and confidence in conflict management and resolution. I'd hope that his organisation would have some form of mediation resources available, perhaps from human resources support. It might be necessary for James to practice and learn mindfulness to help him have a rest from processing this conflict with the supervisor. He may also need to seek emotional support, whether it's informal or formal through a qualified professional, if he feels that he's unable to process through the conflict.

What about Laurie, who feels that there is no recognition for her achievements? As we discussed, she may feel resentment towards leadership for her lack of recognition, and she may need to learn or practice identifying that her recognized achievements are not necessarily an accurate representation of her knowledge, skills, or experience. She might need to recognize that each of her achievements, large or small, needs to be acknowledged by herself and she might need to learn to celebrate her own achievements. She might need to also identify that the lack of achievement recognition may simply be due to a lack of communication or misunderstanding about the achievements of her tasks. If she believes this is the case, she might need to communicate her achievements to her supervisor in the context of how it relates to the tasks, roles, and organizational goals. She could go to her supervisor and say, "One of our goals was to increase the number of sign-ups this month and I believe we've done that."

So to wrap it up, what it means to be burnt out is that there are symptoms in our lives to which we need to pay careful attention and consider solutions that not only address the symptoms but also the stressors to prevent feeling burnt out in the future. Often we can do this by taking some time to think through the best solutions to the given stresses, but sometimes we need the help of a trusted friend or professional guide to help us identify the true stresses and come up with informed solutions.