By Natasha Josefowitz, ACSW, Ph.D.
You wake up exhausted after a good night’s sleep. You take no pleasure in your activities. You have difficulty concentrating, tasks take longer than usual, at times you find yourself irritable for no obvious reason. Maybe you feel “keyed up” all the time, or as if your energy goes through ups and downs. You keep misplacing things, forgetting appointments, not remembering what others have just said. This is the third time you’ve had to re-read this paragraph.
Is it COVID fog? Maybe. Are you just getting older? Perhaps. Nevertheless, it’s also quite likely that you are suffering from a common affliction: BURNOUT.
There are three types of burnout: at work, at home, and what you impose on yourself by never finding satisfaction with what you have achieved and who you are. At work, a good example is the inevitable burnout felt by doctors and nurses when there are surges of COVID-19 in hospitals, with not enough beds available for patients and too few personnel. The entire country is currently dealing with teacher burnout; many are leaving their jobs in droves.
Burnout can affect anyone providing service that cannot be done realistically within the expected timeframe or to the desired quality. So doors get closed, events get cancelled, and the public receives poor service, or no service at all. This is the reality we are all struggling with today.
At its worst, burnout can feel inescapable. However, there are methods and techniques that can help push through those feelings and regain your energy and spirit.
At work, are the deadlines self-imposed or do others expect too much? Can the workload be reduced? Can resources be added? Is the stress time bound? Will it be reduced in the foreseeable future? Or will it go on relentlessly with no relief in sight? Is there someone you can talk to to help reassess your priorities? Can anything be delegated, postponed, or even dropped from your tasks? Burnout wreaks havoc with our health if continued for too long unabated.
Burnout can be from working longer hours, dealing with staff shortages, or being overextended at home. Single parents often suffer from burnout—too many responsibilities with little to no support. People who work from home can feel burnout with children at home, a new baby, a demanding job, or running a household. The major culprit is the expectation that not only can you do it all, but that you can do it all well. Ask yourself the following questions: What can I do more of? What can I do less of? What can I start? What can I drop?
What is the cure? I’m not going to advise to go to the Caribbean for two weeks and lay in the sun (although that would help temporarily) because when you return, if the situation has not changed, then burnout will eventually recur.
You need to problem-solve, ask others to help you think through whether unrealistic expectations, either yours or others, are causing the burnout. If you have burnout in your own home, where can you get help? Are there other parents as exhausted as you are with whom you can take turns with childcare?
A potential remedy, both at home and at work, is to stop and stretch, drink a cup of tea, sit still for five or ten minutes with your eyes closed, and breathe deeply. Exercise can help, but is difficult to do when you’re exhausted just trying to stay upright and sane.
A third type of burnout is one that affects far too many people: striving for more – more success, more money, more prestige, more power and influence. There is a very short pause of satisfaction in the successful achievement in any endeavour. Soon the striving resumes… enough is never enough. Our acquisitive instincts for more don’t find a permanent resting place. There is no respite from chronic dissatisfaction. This type of burnout keeps us in a permanent state of anxiety as we are always scanning our environment, searching for ways to get ahead. American culture emphasizes doing rather than being. We should care more about who we are rather than what we do. Ultimately real contentment can only be achieved when we are satisfied even with our smallest accomplishments as well as ourselves.
Burning the candle at both ends results in burnout. We have to learn to burn our candle one end at a time, thus making the flame last longer.
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© Natasha Josefowitz. This article appeared initially in the La Jolla Village News. You may comment to natasha.josefowitz@sdjewishworld.com