The Anatomy of Burnout
I first encountered the term “burnout” in college. A friend of mine was working several jobs while taking a full load of classes started to sleep all day, pull away from friends, and talk about leaving school entirely. He felt trapped between what life required of him to survive and his dreams for his future. Later I heard burnout described by pastors, almost with a shrug and a bewildered expression, as if it were something that comes out of nowhere to devour a leader in ministry. Like a casualty of war. A freak accident. I heard nurses and caretakers describe caregiver syndrome and therapists used terms like compassion fatigue. Now, as I work in the DFW metroplex, I hear business owners, executives, and employees talk about burnout either a badge of honor or of a sign of their ultimate weakness. That somehow, they just couldn’t hack it.
Even if you have never experienced burnout yourself, in any of its many forms, odds are that you know someone who has. You know how much it can drag your life down, how it can begin to sap your energy to enjoy the life right in front of you. So, what exactly is burnout and what can therapy do to help?
The Symptoms
Let’s first start with what burnout can look like. This list is by no means complete, but is merely a summary of common signs that I have seen in the therapy space with my patients.
- Procrastination. This looks like putting off even the smallest of tasks. It often involved dreading what you have to do each day.
- Your concentration and memory are reduced, which impacts your ability to focus and complete tasks right in front of you.
- Physical and emotional exhaustion. Sometimes even when you sleep you still wake up exhausted.
- Self-care stops happening. Or when you do take time for yourself you feel guilty or anxious.
- You have increased urges to numb out and escape stress. This can be through binging food, TV, alcohol, endless scrolling, etc.
- Disconnection from people around you. You may start avoiding social situations because it seems to draining. You may experience increased isolation and loneliness because it feels like no one gets it.
- Lack of pleasure from work that you used to enjoy and find purposeful.
The Cause
What is burnout? How does it happen in the first place?
I have heard some describe the cause of burnout like physics: Burnout is caused by the burning of energy and effort that is not met with a worthwhile reward or a value that is met. The gist of the idea is cause and effect. You exert a lot of effort to obtain a goal but once that goal is obtained the reward you get from it is not compensation enough or does not fulfill you in any way. It might not be too hard to imagine a situation like this. Imagine your manager promises you that if you improve in a few areas, then you will be a shoe-in for promotion come next year. So you work as hard as possible for a year, you are even awarded "employee of the month" a few times, and when you sit down for a meeting with your manager they inform you that the promotion is only a 1% raise. If this were to happen in a hundred small ways over and over in a company, any employee would be frustrated and unmotivated to continue working at their previous stellar pace.
This physics description of the cause is fine, but it doesn’t get deep enough into the root of the problem. It makes the cause to be an unfulfilling work environment or unfair compensation, and while that can contribute to burnout, I find that more personal reasons are at play.
Burnout is not just about working too much. It is about something deeper. It is about you.
The more psychological cause of burnout looks like this: Your unconscious beliefs or schemas are driving you to behave in such a way that will lead you to burnout over and over again. What you believe about yourself at a core level (“I’m not enough”, “I have to prove myself”, “Perfection at all costs”, etc.) shapes the way you interact with your work, your marriage, and your friendships.There are underlying patterns that you learned as a child in order to survive and find connection that are actually perpetuating your burnout.
This is the scarier truth about burnout, I know. It’s not your fault, but you also won’t be able to figure it all out on your own.
Therapy and Recovery
So how is therapy supposed to help? To put it simply, therapy provides a space for us to explore all the things that are contributing to your burnout and then heal them together. Patterns you have gotten stuck in, unconscious beliefs you hold, defense mechanisms, attachment, and drives are all things that are addressed in therapy.
When I work with patients experiencing burnout, I find that our work together moves in 3 general stages:
- Ask for help, slow down, and rest. This is honestly the hardest part because it requires bravely admitting that you don’t know what to do. It means doing the hard work of saying “No” to some things, setting boundaries, and creating space for real rest.
- Recalibrate your nervous system to a rhythm of work and rest. Here is where we address the aspects of your personality and unconscious that led you to burnout in the first place. We also begin to incorporate in what makes life enjoyable and meaningful for you.
- Integrate what you have learned into a meaningful work and life balance. You may need to find a new job, or at the very least find a new way to do your job that aligns with what you value in life.
Burnout does not have to ruin your life. Therapy provides a way that you can heal and re-discover a new way to live. So, if you find yourself interested in this kind of work or if you find yourself relating to several of the symptoms listed above, don’t hesitate to reach out. You don’t have to do this alone.
