Millennial Burnout And Coping With It

This post was first published on Chaaipani and has been written with inputs from qualified psychologists.

You got up this morning with a sinking feeling and now, on the way to work, you feel nothing. You are not angry, you are not upset. You are not excited. You feel nothing. You do the job, come back home, eat, Netflix, sleep, repeat. Still feeling, nothing. You are just....tired.

The World Health Organization officially acknowledged burnout as a condition, defining it as “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”

According to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) one of the main criteria for burnout is “feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion.”

This is exhaustion that no good night’s rest can fix. You may take a whole weekend off and would still go back to work on Monday feeling no more rested and energized. It’s feeling empty and tired and run down even when you’re with friends and family.

What Burning Out Feels Like

So what's burning you out?

1. All Work No Play

“Increased mental distance from one’s job” is another official criteria of burnout. You now finish the day without a sense of accomplishment and find yourself “phoning in” deadlines.

It’s really feeling just this lack of motivation and procrastination towards tasks that used to come very easily. This + excessive work that breaks your bandwidth can put you into an endless cycle of burning out till you break down.

2. An Endless to-do list

It's endless, your to-do list. You put something on your weekly to-do list and roll it over to next, and it'd keep haunting you for months. This is also called "errand paralysis"

Burnout is not caused solely by stressful work or too many responsibilities. Other factors contribute to burnout, including your lifestyle and personality traits. In fact, what you do in your downtime and how you look at the world can play just as big of a role in causing overwhelming stress like work or home demands. Some other lifestyle causes to burnout are:

3. Lack Of Social Support

4. Financial Stress or Poverty

5. Living With Chronic Illness

6. Losing a Loved One

How To Cope With Mental Burnout

A lot of the time the problem might be that you’re experiencing all this stress, but you don’t fully understand what’s going on. Mindfulness can help you begin to observe your mind and help develop an insight.

Dealing with burnout requires the “Three R” approach:

Recognize – Watch for the warning signs of burnout

Reverse – Undo the damage by seeking support and managing stress

Resilience – Build your resilience to stress by taking care of your physical and emotional health

Make yourself a priority

Burnout is an undeniable sign that something important in your life is not working. Take time to think about your hopes, goals, and dreams. Are you neglecting something that is truly important to you? This can be an opportunity to rediscover what really makes you happy and to slow down and give yourself time to rest, reflect, and heal.

2. Exercise!

Aim to exercise for 30 minutes or more per day or break that up into short, 10-minute bursts of activity. A 10-minute walk can improve your mood for two hours.

Rhythmic exercise, where you move both your arms and legs, is a hugely effective way to lift your mood, increase energy, sharpen focus, and relax both the mind and body. Try walking, running, weight training, swimming, martial arts, or even dancing.

To maximize stress relief, instead of continuing to focus on your thoughts, focus on your body and how it feels as you move: the sensation of your feet hitting the ground, for example, or the wind on your skin.

3. Take Daily Tech-Breaks

4. Get a life!

Socialize outside your professional group. This can provide fresh perspectives, stimulate new ideas, and help you discover previously undiscovered resources.

4. 'No' is very powerful.

Don’t overextend yourself. Learn how to say “no” to requests on your time. If you find this difficult, remind yourself that saying “no” allows you to say “yes” to the commitments you want to make.

5. Seek a Therapist

Pay attention to how long you have been feeling out of sorts. Treat burnout as seriously as you would any other illness and talk to a mental health provider about what changes in your mood and body you have been feeling. When you realize you have more bad days than good days, that’s when it’s time to examine your patterns much more closely.

Money spent on a therapist >>> money spent on quick-fixes like getting drunk. Speaking from experience.

6. Find Meaning In Your Work

You are not your work! 

If you feel like a good day depends on your workday going well, you may need to get a new perspective on your career’s importance to your life. If your work is where you feel good about yourself, diversify your self-esteem, so that you can build a sense of identity in other places of your life. 

Learn a new language on your lunch break, take a fitness class, learn to bake, volunteer at an NGO. Throw yourself into something else where you can feel a sense of progress and mastery and momentum because you’re not having that met at your job.

7. Nourish Your Mental Health

Give yourself permission with burnout to take a break and slow down. Be with yourself, so you can see how your habits have contributed to the burnout symptoms. Getting to trust and listen to yourself again is something that a lot of people don’t do, they just dive into another job to try to fix it.