Burnout
Hi everyone and happy Friday! I hope everyone is doing well and staying safe in these really stressful but important times around the world. Lately, I've been dealing with a lot of both emotional and physical burnout. Also known as "a slump" or a "rut", burnout has just been me crossing out 1-2 items from a massive to do list and just feeling like a failure. I wanted to talk a bit about this feeling today since student burnout is incredibly important and happens often (unfortunately).
First of all, what exactly is burnout?
Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion and tiredness caused by a lot of pent-up stress! Burnout often results in us feeling really lazy and unproductive and bad about ourselves. These feelings of being lazy and unproductive often hinder us to doing tasks that we need to do, such as studying! Unfortunately, burnout is incredibly common in students and in many jobs. Burnout often feels like extreme exhaustion, feeling unappreciated, and feeling numb as well. There are also other symptoms of burnout like frustration with family and friends, isolating, and withdrawing from all responsibilities.
How can I prevent burnout?
There are many ways to prevent burnout! First, it's important to recognize the symptoms and realize what led you to feel the way you feel right now. After recognizing what is causing you to feel so helpless and exhaustion, it is time to act. There is an approach to helping burnout called the "Three R" approach that includes recognizing the signs of burnout, reversing the damage of burnout by supporting and managing stress levels, and building the resilience to stress by taking care of yourself.
Other tips for burnout include:
Reaching out to those close to you such as friends or family
Being sociable with peers or co-workers
Limiting contact with negative or toxic people
Discussion questions:
1) When have you felt burnt out before? Feel free to share that experience.
2) What helps you get out of a burnout stage or rut?
3) What's your favorite sport to play and watch?
@TheAtticusFinch
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Not exactly an answer to your questions but one thing I've noticed is that there is a big difference between when I'm burnt out and when I'm just not spending my time wisely.
Burnout looks like losing my sense of meaning and purpose in my everyday work and goals. It can be addressed through reevaluating my ideals and my position, and taking actions to realign my reality with my goals.
Mismanaging my time sometimes leads to the same feelings of fatigue and meaninglessness, but it doesn't require a reimagining of my work and goals. It just requires working on them directly and intentionally instead of watching youtube videos or going on instagram.
@nordurnStar
Hi Star! thanks for responding <3 For sure, I definitely agree that there's a difference between falling into burnout mode and just being distracted/not spending your time wisely on things and I'm super glad you know the difference! The way that you re-identify your values and goals when you're burnt out is great, I do the same and I'm glad you do too. For sure... mismanaging time requires some more effort to get out of and I'm glad you've got that figured out for you as well. Thanks for responding and sharing!
@TheAtticusFinch
1) I felt burnt out during my freshman year of college because I was trying to work 50 hours a week and attend school full time. I ended up getting really sick because I sacrificed sleep to try and complete all of my homework and maintain enough hours to afford tuition.
2) I ended up failing that semester and have learned that the best way to get out of burnout is to take a break.
3) I enjoy playing tennis but I don't love watching it. There isn't any sport I actually enjoy watching but I do like playing most sports.
@CSstudent92
Hey there! I'm so sorry to hear that happened in your freshman year of college.. that sounds terrible and so difficult for you to go through! That definitely sounds like way too much work and not enough rest at all and failing that semester must have been really hard for you as well. I'm glad you took a lesson out of that, that's really good and mature of you.You're absolutely correct and breaks are incredibly important. I have a friend who plays tennis so I'm going to make an effort to watch her games next year!
@TheAtticusFinch
1) When have you felt burnt out before? Feel free to share that experience.
I felt the most burnt out during college application season.
2) What helps you get out of a burnout stage or rut?
I think music and simply hanging out with people helped a lot. It lets my mind focus on something other than school.
3) What's your favorite sport to play and watch?
I love to watch volleyball, but I love to play tennis.
@StanDaMan78
Hi there Stan <3 I actually have friends who were seniors in high school this year and I've heard about their college application stress so I understand where you're coming from. :( I hope I won't get burnt out by then! Music and people are definitely great. Before quarantine, I would make it an effort to hang out with friends more and I definitely am going to focus on that once this is all over. And music is awesome as well! I've been listening to music with friends over quarantine to distress. Those are two sports that are pretty rad Stan :) thanks for replying!
1) When have you felt burnt out before? Feel free to share that experience.
I fell into a bit of a burnout pretty recently, actually. I (a high school incoming sophomore) signed up for 3 college-level courses for the summer, and I was stressed partly because I was afraid I signed up for too much at once and partly because of other factors in my personal life.
2) What helps you get out of a burnout stage or rut?
What helped me get out of this one was just spending time with my family and generally relaxing.
3) What's your favorite sport to play and watch?
My favourite sport to play is tennis, and my favourite sport to watch is probably cricket.
@TheGoodFairy
Hey Fairy! Hey we're the same age and I actually took several courses in the beginning of quarantine too (what a coincidence!). I understand how stressful that must have been and I'm so sorry to hear that it burned you out. Other surrounding factors definitely play into burnout and I can heavily empathize with taking on too much at once. I hope you've been able to get back to them and I hope we can both find the balance in everything we do! Relaxing is good and those are two awesome sports. :) Thanks for replying!
@TheAtticusFinch Hey, I'm loving this thread, first off because I was burnout reading this and I didn't even realize it, only in my case, I'm burnout with my fitness/weight loss/working out goals.
It's a long story and I won't burden all of you with the details of it right here, so, long story short I'm losing all motivation because I take care of myself and mind what I eat and work out and I wind up gaining weight. It sucks.
Anyways, what's helped me in the past is taking a couple of days to feel burned out, you know? If I start feeling that demotivation and numbness, I naturally go into a state when I just feel it. I used to do it automatically, but now that I do it mindfully I know that it's totally cool to be like that for a couple of days. Think of it as your mind and body resetting so that you can look at things with a clearer outlook. Of course, I still feel burned out as I write this so I'm only hoping it helps me and that the feelings of lack of motivation and frustration will vanish and I'll be back on my feet again, but my current situation just seems to unfair for me to be hopeful about it.
And, to answer the third question, my favorite sports to watch and play are swimming, hockey and figure skating, not always in that order. They're really fulfilling. It's a shame Corona (and university) won't let me do them anymore.
But well, I'm hoping if you're reading this you're doing fine and well and if you happen to be in a rut, that you may get out of it soon because you deserve all your goals to be achieved and, of course, to be happy :)
@Neptune2100
What an insightful response! Hi there Neptune <3 I've loved all the responses in this thread as well. I'm sorry to hear that you're loosing motivation with your fitness goals. I've been there a year ago and I know it sucks to see no progress. But please remember that progress is slow <3 especially with physical changes. Keep going, I know you got this. And that's such an important thing! Lately, my therapist has been asking me to feel my emotions more instead of procrastinating them or distracting them and I think that applies heavily to my burnout moments as well. It's important, as you said, to just feel it and to get back up once it's over. I'm glad you shared that message. :) I know it sucks that corona isn't allowing us to watch and play those sports in person but I hope you get to soon and eventually. And thank you for the sweet message! I'm doing well and I hope you are too. Take care!
@TheAtticusFinch Thank you!! <3 I've taken the week to reflect and I feel much better now that I'm not stressing about progress. You're totally right, physical progress is slow. I'm closer to making my peace with that and hopefully I can keep on progressing.
