Burnout is one of the biggest issues for many people who work a lot and who work hard. Burnout is a phenomenon that involves feeling excessively fatigued, unmotivated, distracted, and having more issues. The problem is associated with serious health consequences, in regards to emotional and physical health.
Burnout is common among people who have emotionally taxing jobs, like nurses and social workers, as well as those who work long hours, have a difficult roles or a conflict between what they have to do and the tools they have, and other issues. When we are burned out, sometimes we feel like we are just being lazy and not trying hard enough.
So here is a guide for allowing you to recognize if you might be having burnout.
Feeling disconnected and disengaged from everything
The first sign of burnout is that you stop caring. Even if your work is important and is something you used to care about, now you just can’t find yourself motivated or engaged. You might still do the tasks but they feel meaningless or hollow.
This is a danger sign especially if you used to care more or if, intellectually, you know it is something you should still care about, for example, something involving other people’s well-being. A lack of engagement, when everything feels like it happens behind a glass wall and doesn’t quite seem real, is a clear sign of burnout.
You isolate yourself
You might be introverted, but if you find yourself withdrawing from even your close friends and family members, then there might be a problem. Isolation involves you saying no to events or situations you would like to participate in or have enjoyed in the past. You might always feel too tired to socialize with other people or unwilling to go beyond your home.
Isolation and a lack of desire or energy to engage with other people is a sign of burnout. You should pay more attention to a lack of desire to meet even those close to you or a marked change from your usual social habits.
Lack of motivation
You used to feel motivated to pursue specific goals and tasks. Now, it might feel like it is all too much. Sometimes, we will not feel motivated but if motivation is a rare experience, then something might be going wrong.
Motivation is the foundation of everything we do. If you don’t feel motivated at all, you might struggle with daily tasks. This is an especially important danger sign when you used to be motivated but now find yourself lacking it at work and other areas of your life.
You stop enjoying things that you used to enjoy
A loss of enjoyment and pleasure is another clear sign of burnout. It involves not enjoying anymore one’s usual hobbies and activities, foods and more. It all feels pointless or boring or even annoying.
It can feel like a gradual change or a sudden shift. It can be sometimes harder to catch because we might expect that it is the things that have lost their shine or quality. But it is important to consider whether the experience is due to internal or external factors.
You feel moody and irritable
Another sign of burnout is a sense of irritability and a low mood. You might feel upset or angry a lot of the time without a clear cause or have a hard time recognizing a positive mood in yourself. Instead, it seems as if there was always something wrong.
Moodiness that reflects a change from your usual can be an important marker for burnout, so it’s useful to pay attention to how we feel most of the time.
You struggle with your work, even the easy parts
As burnout usually is associated with work, you might start to experience difficulties completing your tasks on time. Maybe your productivity drops a lot or you find you have to make a huge effort to do the things that used to come easy.
Burnout can affect your work situation in an especially remarkable way because it is tied to your experiences with your job. You can find some tasks become unbearable and others annoying, but you will probably see a noticeable change in how easy or hard it is for you to do your work.
