Dallas County Living Well Magazine November/December 2017 | Page 36

Getting
and Staying
Free From
Burnout
By Rachele Slotman
“B
urnout” is the worst night-
mare of everyone. The
unrelenting, breakneck
pace of modern Ameri-
can life means that burn-
out is a potential threat for everyone.
But what can a person do? You have
to go to work to provide for your fam-
ily and/or take care of all the things
that happen at home and with family
and friends. It can feel like you have
no other options. But take heart. If you
know what burnout is and how to treat
it, you can move toward a healthier
lifestyle.
What is burnout? Burnout is the result
of ongoing stress and demands creating
an unstable, lethargic and exhausted
frame of mind. People with burnout
are usually over-achieving, hard work-
ers that take on unreasonable amounts
of responsibility (whether at work, at
home or both), overcommit and give all
of themselves to the point that they are
frazzled, angry, tired, passionless, de-
pressed and unable to function normally
due to sheer exhaustion.
What are the physical
signs of burnout?
Most of these symptoms will be less se-
vere the earlier you are in the burnout
mode and will worsen the longer the
burnout goes untreated. Some of the
symptoms include:
• Chronic fatigue. Because the body
and mind have been under stress non-
stop, the person with burnout will feel a
constant, clinging sense of tiredness—
with a distinct sense of foreboding and
34
dread of the smallest things in latter
stages.
• Insomnia. Stress keeps your body
awake because of various chemicals
that keep your brain from “shutting
down.” While this might affect you only
a few nights a week in the early stages,
it becomes chronic in the latter ones,
where you cannot sleep at all despite
being exhausted.
• Various physical problems. These
include chest pain, heart palpitations,
headaches, dizziness, shortness of
breath and gastrointestinal pain.
• Frequent illness. Your immune system
is shot, so expect to have more colds,
flus and infections.
• Anxiety and depression. What begins
as initial worry and preoccupation and
mild sadness will blossom into obses-
sive, uncontrolled anxiety preventing
you from doing normal work and rela-
tionships, and to a deep, immobilizing
depression and hopelessness.
• Regular forgetfulness and inability
to concentrate. While these symptoms
may be mild in the early stages of burn-
out, they only increase as time goes on.
You’ll eventually find yourself unable to
focus and unable to get much done.
• Diminished appetite. You may begin
to lose weight due to skipping meals.
Your interest in food wanes and you
care less and less about eating.
• Anger. Everyone experiences anger
from time to time, but with burnout it is
more present than normal. It may start
as little tiffs or minor irritations, but over
time it grows until it becomes uncontrol-
lable.
• Inability to enjoy life. With depression
and exhaustion comes an inability to
enjoy life. The hobbies that once held
your attention seem bland and boring.
DALLAS COUNTY Living Well Magazine | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017
You have difficulty knowing what to do
with yourself and don’t feel interested in
much at all.
How can burnout be treated?
Involve your primary care physician
as they can be of invaluable help with
diagnosis, evaluation and treatment.
Because burnout is a stress-related dis-
order, the only way for it to be com-
pletely solved is to dramatically reduce
the amounts of stress in your life.
The simplest way to start is to
take an inventory of your life
and circumstances (ask for help
from a friend or relative if you have
trouble doing this). Look at every part
of your life and write down all of the
things that are causing you stress. Too
many deadlines at work? Too much
volunteering? A difficult romantic rela-
tionship? Leave nothing out!
Then, try to think of one thing
you can do in each area to re-
duce the stress. Sometimes this one
thing will remove the stress entirely in
that area. Other times, it will merely
remove just enough so you can make
another decision that will reduce it fur-
ther, and then further and so on. But
the important thing is you must think
of something (1) doable and (2) ef-
fective. Even if it’s small, a bunch of
little choices will accumulate to have a
big difference, if they are done consis-
tently—and this is exactly how you got
burnout in the first place!
It is even possible to recover from
burnout while remaining in your cur-
rent job. It’s important to underscore