This blog post was written by Stephanie Brady and originally published on retailinmotion.com
Lost your mojo, empathy and sense of humour? Dread Mondays and can’t concentrate? It’s highly likely you may be experiencing burnout. It is rife. An increasingly stressful life with no way to burn off steam has left lots of us feeling like pressure cookers about to blow. With the increased use of technology and social media during the lockdown, our brains are over-stimulated and emotionally thirsty.
However, have you ever noticed someone using inverted commas when they use the word “burnout”, even if it’s related to themselves? It’s a word that’s met with cynicism and shame.
- Pushing through the cynicism and shame makes tackling this complex problem even more challenging than it is when it stands alone with no judgement attached to it.
- One difficult element of burnout is that we don’t tend to see it creeping up on us or our teams until it’s too late. It can take you by complete surprise, which is why dealing with it early can be challenging.
- Unlike tiredness, it’s chronic emotional and physical fatigue. Emotional fatigue takes far longer to recover from and often requires a new mindset to work and our challenges, as well as interventions from the workplace. Overcoming the shame associated with burnout can take a long time and causes a delay in dealing with the root of the problem.
- The quickest way to deal with burnout is to leave your current job. However, not dealing with the shame associated can also make you susceptible to experiencing burnout again.
- In my experience, people (including myself) want a quick fix, we want this pain to go away fast. We tend to push back on any suggestions that we could be working and thinking differently. This is totally normal, as we literally can’t see the wood for the trees when we are in this much pain and stress. We are unable emotionally to helicopter up and look down at our situation with zero judgement.
