What is Burnout?
If you look up “burnout” on the internet, the definition that comes up reads something like the following: “Burnout is a state of emotional, physical and mental exhaustion, caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It results in a sense of overwhelm, mental and physical exhaustion, loss of motivation, and the inability to meet further mental, emotional or physical demands.”
“Burnout” is a description, coined in the 1970s, by the prominent psychologist of his day, Herbert Freudenberger. The issues that lead to it are accumulative; it can develop so slowly that sufferers and / or their loved ones often not even realise what happening. It can affect every area of a person’s life, and if left unaddressed can lead to numerous other physical and mental health issues including anxiety disorders.
The sufferer may experience helplessness, despair, and confusion. If the situation remains unchanged, the effects of it can interfere with all aspects of everyday life, work, home and social.
Who Can Suffer From It?
According to psychologists, certain personality types have been identified as those who seem to be more prone to suffering burnout, these include “Type A” personalities (people who are very ambitious, highly driven, very motivated and expect high results from themselves), perfectionists, pessimists, people suffering from anxiety or depression and people who need to be in control.
One of the predominant effects of burnout is the ever increasing feeling of exhaustion, regardless of how much a person tries to rest. Having to push against this constantly, results in the sufferer becoming yet more exhausted and hence needing even more rest until it becomes unbearable. Thus in order to try and recover and recuperate, the individual starts spending less and less time on non-essential activities, hobbies, interests and social life, and eventually as much time as possible simply trying to rest.
The Symptoms of Burnout
The symptoms of burnout are many and varied but generally clear and should be taken seriously. The include, permanent exhaustion, mental fatigue or mental fog, frequent panic attacks, or overwhelming sense of melancholy and despair, sudden mood swings or uncontrollable anger, insurmountable stress and anxiety, along with a sense of isolation and helplessness. Everyday tasks can start to seem either unbearably mundane, or overwhelmingly difficult. For a more comprehensive list, please check the article below:
Psychological and Emotional Symptoms Triggered by Burnout
In severe cases where the condition has been left unaddressed, it may lead to physical symptoms that can include headaches, dizziness, nausea, buzzing in the ears, inability to focus ones eyes, weakness, unbearable fatigue, hyperventilation, fainting, and over time, even hypertension and heart arrythmia.
As many of these symptoms can be associated with other issues, like anxiety disorders, or attributed to temporary factors that can cause excessive stress such as deadlines at work, studying for examinations, or moving house, burnout can be often be misidentified. And all of the above can be extremely stressful, difficult to deal with, and give rise to similar symptoms to burnout.
Still, the main indicator of burnout is that the symptoms do not ease up by themselves, even after the stressful situation has ended. In other words, it’s not a condition that goes away on its own without proper treatment.
How Burnout Can Affect Life
Since people suffering from burnout find themselves unable to cope with their lives, their condition can start to affect their personalities. They may become prone to lashing out at family members, engaging in arguments more often than before, or having outbursts of uncontrollable anger, mood swings, and in severe cases, even sudden violent episodes.
Since people suffering from burnout find it increasingly harder to cope with normal everyday issues, they become more susceptible to turn towards external sources like alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs in order to try and maintain some form of control in their lives. The substances give a temporary sense of being able to cope better with some of the aspects of burnout like mental and physical exhaustion.
As the person struggles to meet the necessary commitments of daily life, feelings of disappointment, frustration and guilt, for not being able to meet family and social demands and obligations, set in. This sense of guilt leads to feelings of inadequacy and loss of self-respect can add to the stress levels being experienced by the sufferer. Since increased stress reduces the ability to cope, this may then lead to anger and frustration towards normal everyday essential commitments and obligations.
What Happened With Me
Since burnout happens gradually, I’m not quite certain exactly when it started, but due to my lifelong sleep problems, I started feeling the affects of mental exhaustion quite early on in my life, I’d struggle to stay awake during lessons throughout the course of my ‘A’ levels. And by the time I got to college for my degree, I had already suffered something that resembled a breakdown (only that its affects turned out to be permanent rather than temporary, as with what is medically classed as a ‘breakdown’).
Somewhere by the end of my career as an undergraduate, I started developing the symptoms of chronic fatigue, and I think as a result of that, in time I started experiencing the beginnings of what is known as ‘burnout’. I also had a badly depleted gut lining having suffered from anorexia as a teenager following my Mother’s death. It prevented my body from being able to absorb nourishment adequately. The result was that I was almost permanently exhausted.
I had always been extremely ambitious, but my permanent exhaustion and sleep problems had cost me the degree I wanted – I had nearly died trying to do it due to the state of my health (being malnourished had resulted in very poor immunity and I was almost always ill). I graduated with a lower second which destroyed my career plans to work in research, and I had had to settle for some other option…
When Things Started Going Wrong
So, while I tried to figure out what I should do, I started teaching. For a while, I worked as a private tutor, and then also took up a number of part-time posts as a science teacher in various private colleges around the Central London area. But very soon, the symptoms of chronic fatigue, caught up with me, and out of sheer exhaustion and overwork, I was forced to give up some of my teaching responsibilities. So, when one of the colleges, a science college, offered me a full-time post, I stopped the private tuitions, kept the post at the science college, and gave up the others.
The end of that academic year, was a relief for me, I really was totally exhausted. Nevertheless, I was reasonably happy to think that I had found a future career. Teaching was a good profession, and the summer holidays would help me recuperate my health. But, the college that I had chosen to continue working at, closed down unexpectedly due to a lack of science students and I suddenly found myself without a job. Initially being able to take some time off to recover my health seemed like a relief…
I had no idea at the time that a few months of rest wouldn’t help me – I was suffering from a condition that would eventually ruin my chances of ever having a career.
Trying to Salvage the Situation
Still, as it happened, it was around this time that I had been offered an opportunity to work in the United States by a friend of mine, and as I no longer had a job in England, I decided to take up the offer. So, soon thereafter, I found myself on a plane to LA, for a cross-flight to my final destination in Maryland. And finally after a sort of cross-country tour going from West to East, due to stop-overs and cross-connections via plain, train, bus and automobile – I finally reached my destination of Bethesda, Maryland.
It took me three weeks to get there and to cut a long story short, the job offer that I had travelled so far to take up didn’t materialise in the end anyway. After waiting several months to try and find out what had happened, I finally gave up on it.
Nevertheless, I was soon offered another opportunity to work at a computer consultancy, but it was all the way in Pittsburgh. As I was utterly bewildered about my current jobless situation, I gratefully accepted the offer.
Slipping Down Hill
By this time though, my chronic fatigue had really started affecting me. I found myself having to live in a flat (apartment) in a building where the residents did not allow cooking, due to cooking smells, despite a nice state-of-the-art fitted in kitchens in each flat. The owners of the flat, didn’t seem to mind, they were young bachelors, and lived on fried eggs, or simply ate out.
I was a vegetarian at the time (vegan now), but did not eat eggs or dairy products containing animal rennet. Nor could afford to eat out… The result was I ended up living on bread and butter, and tea. Furthermore, as a teenager I had suffered from anorexia which had badly damaged my gut lining, so not being able to eat properly seriously affected my strength.
Lunch times at the office, a local café brought sandwiches round, but it served nothing for vegetarians, so when I asked if I could have a salad, I was brought a serving of iceberg lettuce and two pieces of capsicum peppers. Vegetarian cheese was unavailable at the time in Pittsburgh. When I asked if the café could do me just some bread and butter, I was told that wasn’t possible as it wasn’t on the menu.
Sadly, I was unaware at the time of the famous Jack Lemmon line in one of his films, that got him some buttered toast at a roadside café: “I’ll have a toasted chicken-mayo sandwich, hold the chicken, hold the mayo, hold the lettuce.” Nevertheless, thankfully for me, the office was in a large industrial park, and there was a big hotel nearby about a quarter of a mile away, so I would walk there at lunch times and ask for a basket of bread and a pot of tea.
Things Came to a Head
It was too expensive for anything other than a basket of bread and butter, but it was a life saver all the same. Still after some time, I became totally run down. And given that I already suffered from chronic fatigue, this episode in my life totally floored me. I could no longer carry on. The company that had offered me this job decided that it wasn’t working working out and asked me to leave. I was utterly devastated. I had tried so hard, and come so far, and nothing seemed to be working out.
I returned to England shortly thereafter. A lot of time, effort, and money spent, hopes dashed, and nothing achieved. I had put everything I had into this trip. It had seemed like it was the last chance I had of putting a career together for myself… I felt lost, desperately insecure, and very, very sad.
I felt like a total failure and didn’t know where to turn. I considering giving private tuitions again, but I had done that for quite some time previously, and I knew the constant commuting from one place to another would be too much for me now. I started looking for other opportunities again but I was run too down and I knew I couldn’t do a normal day’s work anymore.
Trying Ever Harder
Endlessly filling up applications forms and reworking my CV (resumé) became my life. But I couldn’t find a job that I was capable of doing. I looked for part-time administration work, but part-time work that pays enough to pay the bills and still have enough left over for food let alone anything else is practically impossible.
I became more and more desperate. But it seemed no matter how hard I tried, nothing seemed to work. I couldn’t find jobs that I could cope with that paid enough for survival. And those that did, I wasn’t capable of doing. I thought of going back into teaching – at least the summer months, and regular breaks gave me time to rest and recuperate. But it had been several years since I had taught and I had forgotten so much, and my confidence had hit rock bottom.
Still, I started applying to schools to see if I could get part-time voluntary teaching work nearby. I wasn’t capable any longer of commuting far on a daily basis. But there were no positions at the schools surrounding my area, or places I could get to easily, only ones that required long complicated commutes. I knew my health wouldn’t allow me to undertake such posts,
I kept writing to all the local schools, in the hope that something may come up. But nothing ever did. They were only allowed to take on a certain number of volunteers, and never seemed to have any positions available. Suffice it to say I felt utterly disillusioned and desperately sad.
Some Useful Links
https://mentalhealth-uk.org/burnout/
https://www.healthline.com/health/tips-for-identifying-and-preventing-burnout#who-gets-it
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/stress/burnout-prevention-and-recovery.htm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279286/
Continued in Part 2…