Burnout can take different forms, affecting a person physically, emotionally, and behaviorally. Some characteristics of burnout include: frequent illness; disengagement and detachment; blunted affect; feelings of frustration, helplessness, and hopelessness; and loss of motivation.
How Long Does Burnout Last? It takes an average time of three months to a year to recover from burnout. How long your burnout lasts will depend on your level of emotional exhaustion and physical fatigue, as well as if you experience any relapses or periods of stagnant recovery.
Anyone exposed to chronically stressful conditions can experience burnout, but human services employees, first responders, and those in educational services are at an even higher risk, especially as the public continues to resist COVID-19 prevention measures.
Burnout is a form of exhaustion caused by constantly feeling swamped. It's a result of excessive and prolonged emotional, physical, and mental stress. In many cases, burnout is related to one's job. Burnout happens when you're overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to keep up with life's incessant demands.
“Burnout” is now classified as a mental illness caused by unmanaged stress at work. Many lifestyle factors can be adjusted to help reduce the effects of Burnout such as changing diet, effective supplementation and self-care protocols.
1 Burnout symptoms include feeling exhausted, empty, and unable to cope with daily life. If left unaddressed, your burnout may even make it difficult to function.
Feeling tired or drained most of the time. Feeling helpless, trapped and/or defeated. Feeling detached/alone in the world. Having a cynical/negative outlook.
Younger men, and women aged between 20-35 and 55 years and over are particularly susceptible and should be targeted for programmes to reduce risk of burnout.
Job burnout risk factors
You have a heavy workload and work long hours. You struggle with work-life balance. You work in a helping profession, such as health care. You feel you have little or no control over your work.
Burnout and depression have overlapping symptoms, including low energy, trouble with sleep, and lack of focus. Despite this overlap, burnout and depression are different. Burnout can usually be resolved by taking time away from the activities that cause you stress.
Burnout is when a person reaches a state of total mental, physical and emotional exhaustion and it has some similar signs and symptoms to a nervous breakdown. Your doctor can prescribe medicines for many mental health conditions, and refer you to other healthcare professionals, such as psychologists or psychiatrists.
The best way to recover from burnout depends on how severe your symptoms are. For example, with a less severe job burnout, you may feel immediate benefit from: prioritising rest, whether that's longer nightly sleep, reducing your work hours or taking a holiday.
Burnout recovery may take as long as three years: A study of coping: Successful recovery from severe burnout and other reactions to severe work-related stress.
For instance, in a review of this research, Kahill (1988) found that burnout often leads to poor physical health, depression, turnover, unproductive work behaviors, proble- matic interpersonal relations, and reduced job satisfaction.
People don't burn out because they're weak. They burn out because they overdo it and live with stress for so long that their bodies take over in defense. But by the time the body takes over, it's usually too late. Even after making professional and personal changes, the effects of burnout might linger for a lifetime.
With stress there is an end in sight, but getting there may be difficult. Burnout on the other hand is a cycle of negative emotions and withdrawal that result from investing too much into something emotionally, intellectually, or physically without doing anything to restore yourself.
"It is better to burn out than to fade away". It's a reference to a candle or a fire. Burning out is a metaphor for living an exciting, ambitious life; one where you expend all of your energy early on, possibly even dying young like many rock stars. Fading away would be to simply live safely, not take any risks, etc.