Preventing Burnout 2021
What is burnout?
Coined by the psychologist, Herbert Freudenberger in the 1970s, burnout describes a severe stress condition that leads to severe physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion.
Much worse than ordinary fatigue, burnout makes it challenging for people to cope with stress and handle day-to-day responsibilities.
People experiencing burnout often feel like they have nothing left to give and may dread getting out of bed each morning. They may even adopt a pessimistic outlook toward life and feel hopeless.
Burnout doesn’t go away on its own and, if left untreated, it can lead to serious physical and psychological illnesses like depression, heart disease, and diabetes.
Who gets burnout?
Anyone who’s continually exposed to high levels of stress can experience burnout.
What are signs of burnout?
Worried that you may be experiencing burnout but unsure of the signs? Some of these signs are:
Exhaustion. Feeling physically and emotionally depleted. Physical symptoms may include headaches, stomach-aches, and appetite or sleeping changes.
Isolation. People with burnout tend to feel overwhelmed. As a result, they may stop socializing and confiding in friends, family members, and co-workers.
Escape fantasies. People with burnout may fantasize about running away or going on a solo vacation. In extreme cases, they may turn to drugs, alcohol, or food as a way to numb their emotional pain.
Irritability. Burnout can cause people to lose their cool with friends and family members more easily. Coping with normal stressors like driving kids to school and tending to household tasks also may start to feel insurmountable, especially when things don’t go as planned.
Frequent illnesses. Burnout, like other long-term stress, can lower your immune system, making you more susceptible to colds, the flu, and insomnia. Burnout can also lead to mental health concerns like depression and anxiety.
10 Ways to avoid Burnout in exams
During exams, you face stress, you’re hyperactive, can’t switch off, overreacting to everything, swamped with adrenaline but lacking in energy. A state that is by no means fun, but it can get you through those few weeks and out the far end. But during a tough year, you face burnout, a state where you’re exhausted, can’t motivate yourself, struggling to react fully to anything, detached, and still lacking in energy but without any kind of adrenaline buzz to get you through. Stress isn’t fun, but burnout is worse, and the long challenge of an exam year is exactly the kind of thing that causes it. So how do you avoid it? Here are some tips to help:
1. Get a little help from your friends
You might find that shared exams can actually strengthen your friendships.
It’s very easy to notice when you’re stressed, buzzing around like a caffeinated hamster but not feeling like you’re getting anything done. But noticing when you’re approaching burnout can be considerably harder because it doesn’t involve the intensification of emotion that goes with stress, but rather a blunting of emotion. You might find yourself getting irrationally annoyed with people, but you might also find yourself becoming increasingly indifferent towards things that you probably ought to care about. And when it’s over a long haul, you might adjust to a new “normal” that isn’t normal at all.
This is where supportive friends and family are invaluable. If you can, agree with your friends at the start of the year that you’re going to keep more of an eye on each other than might have been necessary previously, because it can be easier for others to spot the warning signs of burnout in you than it is for you to notice them in yourself. Once you’ve noticed warning signs, it’s easier to do something about it.
2. Don’t compete over who can be the most stressed
Humans are naturally competitive, but sometimes we compete over unnecessary things. Think about the diet group that competes so much that its members are pushed into unhealthy levels of weight loss, or the running group where the runners want to be the best so much that they end up with otherwise avoidable injuries.
3. When you’re eating, focus just on eating
Preparing delicious healthy meals can actually offer a welcome break from study.
During exam times, it does make sense not to worry too much about what you’re eating or when you’re eating it, so long as it contains a decent amount of vitamin C and you’re not going to be facing a sugar crash halfway through an exam.
4. Focus on one thing at a time
Our world is set up to help us multitask, you can have your morning coffee while on the bus, while listening to an audiobook, while scrolling through social media. This is great if you’re at peak productivity, bouncing full of energy, but if you’re struggling to keep afloat, it can feel less like you’re doing lots of things at once than that you’re failing to do lots of things all at the same time. The feeling of trying to juggle too many balls at once is a warning sign of both stress and burnout.
If you’re going to put your feet up, you may as well do it properly.
Focusing on one thing at a time can help a great deal with this. If you’re doing schoolwork, focus on each specific topic at a time; if there’s more information you’d like to look up and cross-reference, great, but it might be best to write down what you’d like to look up and come back later.
5. Take care of yourself if you feel unwell
Prevention is better than cure when it comes to illness during exam time.
So, if you start to feel unwell, take good care of yourself before it snowballs into something worse. It will feel hard, perhaps even lazy to take a couple of days off when you are just about well enough to study or go to school, but better that than running the risk of getting very ill and then setting back your work schedule by a week or more.
6. Take breaks
Bubble baths not your thing? Have a think about what really helps you to relax.
If you enjoy yoga, bubble baths, running or hiking, then by all means take this sort of break. Setting aside regular “me time” every day is an excellent idea. But the crucial thing is that the way you take a break is relaxing. It shouldn’t need to be virtuous as well.
7. Find something fun to do that doesn’t involve a screen
If you work at your computer, and you socialise at your computer through social media, and you relax at your computer by watching Netflix or playing games, it can make it harder to relax fully just as it is harder to sleep in bed if your mind is full of non-sleep associations. This is one of the reasons people do recommend worthy sounding means of relaxation, because they’re likely to be distinctly different from the work you’re doing, which helps you relax. So, among the things you do when you’re relaxing, whatever they may be, build in something that takes you away from a screen.
8. Get things down on paper
Treat yourself to some new stationery and improve your focus at the same time.
When you’re feeling worn out from studying and like you’re losing focus, one thing that can help is getting your thoughts down on paper. For some people, this means writing a diary, or starting a journal where they can put down whatever is on their mind, with no intention of rereading it. For others, this can mean something much simpler like a series of to-do lists.
9. Plan for the long run
…and just like a marathon, you’re not alone!
There are two parts to this point. The first is that when you get yourself into a schedule of study, remember that this is for the long haul. Previously, you might only have had to work at full intensity for a few short weeks in the run-up to exams, and you might plan to work at the same rate now, but that almost certainly won’t work. You need to work out a schedule that you can stick to…. plan for a marathon, not a sprint.
The second is to have a backup plan. This doesn’t have to be complicated or fleshed out. But remember that things don’t always work out how we hope. What if you end up seriously ill halfway through the year? Can you repeat the year? Can you manage with lower exam results than you would have hoped for? This isn’t about doom and gloom; this is about the reassurance of knowing that if things don’t work out precisely as you’d like, you still know that there are good options available.
10. Ask for positive feedback
An emphasis on positive feedback can make all the difference for your final push.Top of Form
Ask for help
During stressful times, it’s important to reach out for help. If asking for assistance feels difficult, consider developing a self-care “check-in” with close friends and family members so that you can take care of each other during trying times.
