The timing of this video is uncanny. It’s 3am in Australia and I just woke up from another stress dream about my job where I was STILL doing it in my SLEEP. 13 hour days 6 days in a row really cooks your brain, so this is exactly what I needed right now at the end of my work week. Thanks Dr K. 🙏
Ayeee I’m from Australia too. I just got off from work and I’m waiting for uber eats to deliver my food but they’re taking forever. I guess ordering food at 4am is like that.
I worked 6 days recently, they even tried to get me to do 7 days but I said NO, and it cooked my brain a little. Thankfully I finally feel better, it was getting dicey. The work is easy and the shifts are short, but I hate that place.
It happened to me when I installed solar panels. I work in mexico and was doing about 60 to 70 hours a week and often I would wake up at 2 am because I was dreaming of falling of a ceiling or fcking something off.
Burn out to me is something that kinds of lurks in the background: It makes time seem longer, verbal exchanges with others become more of a show to get on with it rather than an actual human moment, makes you cut corners on tasks, and I am never even sure if I have burn out or not until I notice consistent mistakes and lapses in judgement. It sucks.
Idk if you mean something different but to me, burnout makes time feel shorter, because I'm thinking and working more slowly and I take longer breaks, so the day just runs out faster. Also maybe somewhat unrelated but I've always found most conversations to be a 'show to get on with' rather than anything enjoyable.
Burnout is easy to miss IMO because it's not just one thing, it's the result of longterm stress over many little things that by themselves aren't enough to complain about. And eventually we get overwhelmed. "Gotta go to work, oh I slept bad last night so the morning routine is harder. Missed the buss by just a minute. The customer has a billion tiny things they wanna change in the project last minute. The customer doesn't speak the native language well so it's hard to even communicate what they want. The boss now needs me to prioritize another task that needs to be finished today. I'm worried of all the other tasks I'm falling behind on now. I mess up one of the tasks so my colleagues have to correct my mistake. Now I'm tired and falling behind on personal projects in my free time as well. Family and friends are badgering me because I didn't call them lately. Tried to squeeze in some gaming but there's so little time for it that I end up staying up too late." Rinse and repeat until you're fed up with it.
I would say more - the system that doesn't care about your efforts(and quality), that only care about irrelevant numbers(aka "KPI"). This is so stupid shit in so much cases. It can be applied only for some primitive fabrics, and again it doesn't care about quality, only quantity.
That's literally what alienation is. Marx wrote about it a century and a half ago and people keep thinking they can solve these structural problems by offloading the responsibility of finding purpose in a meaningless menial existence as a cog in a cold and cruel machine unto the individuals.
@@RainerRilke3 Lemme guess. The solution is the same one that has always lead to 20M+ deaths at least every single time it was tried before for it to fail in the end due to human nature and greed? Yup let's give it a try, nothing can go wrong, history doesn't exist.
@@RainerRilke3 A note, the term "alienation" is older and comes actually from the conservative philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel, which Marx took from.
Thank you for clarifying something for me... Ive lost Empathy. A lack of ENERGY for other people. I was starting to wonder If I was just a bad person . Because I only want to focus on my own shit right now. Despite my whole life being told I'm too sensitive, and I'm a pushover, who cares too much about helping others. Yet this year, my parents died, after my fulltime caregiving for them finally ended, I've got grief, I face homelessness, my job is minimum wage hell, I have a toxic roommate, going back to school at 33.. and I just don't give a shit... Its true... I often think, when there's drama happening around me "how tf do people have energy for this shit!?." I don't even have energy for Netflix drama let alone real life. I have depression too... Some days if all feels so.. doomed. I have nothing.. my future feels dark...
Never give up on life. If you feel like your life is shit, think that there are people that were never even given the chances you had in your life. And I mean basic stuff like eating decent food or being able to even watch this video. Contact with other people, old or new are very likely to help. Maybe you meet a new friend one of these days, or get a decent SO for a chance. Or maybe you can try speaking to your shitty roommate and try to be nice for a change, even if you feel they don't deserve it. You might discover that they also go through hell deep inside. Anyway, life can be good if you try adapting a different perspective on a few things.
You should feel proud and accomplished with your mental and emotional fortitude up until this point. Really inspiring, because I and many other people can empathize or relate in some way. Keep on truckin gamer
I think I've been burnt out since 17 because none of my jobs have ever paid enough to meet my needs in life, barely scraping by from paycheck to paycheck is literally the only thing I've known and it caused me a severe nervous breakdown last week
It's being in 24/7 survival mode instead of thriving. I grew up in poverty and any whiff of money problems now (I'm pretty financially stable now) gives me a panic attack. I hate buying stuff.
@jonhadley5768 same here, been poor my entire life, working paycheck to paycheck, only to find out that those years I've worked were "the good" economic times. Now with inflation and this looming recession makes it even harder to make ends meet. I feel like I've been trying to keep my head up for the last 10 years, thinking that someday it'll all work out, only to find myself staring at an endless pit of despair now. I'm not sure I'll survive this. I have no energy anymore, can't see a way out of this mess.
What’s burning people out “the other factors” is all of the administrative work now put on professionals. They have eliminated admin assistants and now professionals are expected to complete the redundant and time consuming admin tasks AND the thought work and problem solving we are actually hired to do. I’ve noticed this change over my ten years as a lawyer. I used to have a secretary and a clerk and now I have to do everything from start to finish myself. There is also a LOT of technology to keep up with and clients expect immediate responses all the time. You also have to network on LinkedIn, etc. It’s a lot.
I have this problem as an engineer too. There are part/drawing/software release processes that require using a tool call Windchill, I only need to do it once every 6 months to a year, but the software is so bad and unintuitive that I want to quit whenever I have to open the tool up. I use it so rarely, that anything I learned the last time is now different so I almost have to start over. I’ve wasted so much time on that tool, and just having some administrator that knows it and keeps up with it that could take mine and other’s requests and just handle getting it through all the checks and balances would make a world of difference. I feel like far too much of my job now is administrative bs and not engineering. I hate it.
Same here with with my engineering firm. We've also gradually shifted to hiring contractor admins, so anything extra that isn't in their job description- they simply don't have to do it! The young admins are looking to job hop as soon as they are in as well because it's a leap-frog position.
@@HVDynamo I laugh because I was hired as an engineer for a project that was falling behind and 50% of my daily work is dealing with windchill. I work in validations and I spend most of my time doing this beaurocratic work instead of spending more time in the mfg. Area
Burnout is the most insidious and secretive mental issue plaguing workplaces. People don’t notice until they’re snapping at their friends or just not doing anything every day they’re not working. Just a few examples.
Yeah, for one, you don't notice it until it's too late, and for two, even if you did notice it, it's often difficult to do anything about it. Once you've gotten into a death spiral where you're underperforming due to stress, and being stressed out because you're underperforming it's very difficult to get out of it.
Unfortunately for me, I recently discovered my burn out in a disastrous job interview. I was the only candidate and came highly recommended by a friend who works in the agency. From start to finish I presented as a burnt out emotional wreck and didn’t get the job. That was a harsh wake up call which led to serious examination and coming to terms. Boy, was that painful.
I think the scariest part is when you start to realize that you really can't trust yourself anymore. I've reached the point where I have a lot of cognitive symptoms - worse memory, worse concentration, can't find words etc. I've messed up so many things in the last couple of months simply because I read something wrong, forgot something, or couldn't prioritize. I'm forced to ask people to double check my stuff and that inability to be independent feels awful. Thanks for a well-timed video!
This - this is where I am. I just realised today after missing yet another very important and very obvious thing… that my brain is no longer working. It’s so frustrating and I feel stupid 😞
I have OCD, anxiety, terrible memory, and not feeling like you're able to trust your own brain is absolutely terrible. There have been times where I feel I can't even trust my eyes and I need someone else to help me. Everything in your comment is something I swear I've felt, and you're right, it is scary. Like, where did my brain go?
There's probably a correlation between a rise in burnout and the fact that since 1950, productivity has gone up 253% but salary has gone up 115%. Talk about a disparity between effort and yield.
@@nebliik Yeah and? That automation always leads to "Great, now you can do your same job, BUT FASTER. More widgets per hour. Higher KPIs. Work, work, work." It's never "Cool, this actually takes pressure off me and makes my job easier."
The real question is how do we address this on a societal level? Because it seems like people are overwhelmingly burnt out, but for all their talk of promoting Mindfulness, companies don’t want to talk about burnout and their role in it.
This, but also the solution is massive and complex. I'd love to see our society have the capacity to experiment, I.E. adopting some of the European workplace ideology (considerably longer maternity/any paternity leave, 50-100% more vacation time throughout a year, etc.) just to see if they will have an effect. But we are so entrenched in the capitalist dogma that we will not budge in any meaningful direction.
@@ivers1001 It's not just vacation time, it's an environment that doesn't punish you for taking that vacation. I don't disagree with you, first off, but I have more vacation days than I know what to do with: summer hours, two weeks rollover from last year, four weeks this year. But I don't take it because I know my department is understaffed and I dread the pileup of work that would be waiting for me when I get back. It's a fundamental shift in how companies retain workers. Not just increasing benefits, though that helps. I feel like everyone is being asked to put out 100% as a baseline, and then any time it gets busy or someone has time off, people don't have the unused capacity to pick up the slack. But they do it anyway until they burn out and quit.
Well, you can thank the boomers for designating their children and grandchildren to a life where ours youths are filled with stress, toil, and grind. While Boomer Bob with IQ 75 who barely passed grade school was able to perform a job that afforded him a new house, new car, wife, and 3+ kids.
@@veyrichrin If you haven't already, read up on your employee handbook. I ended up losing about 4 days of PTO that went completely uncompensated when I left my last job. In my opinion, holding so many days in reserve is risky.
Productivity (an economic metric for how much work is done per time), has been increasing world-wide for ages. That is mostly a reflection of increased technological capabilities and societal sophisticatedness, but also because across industries, your average worker can get more done per time. Not sure if this is a major factor, but reckon it's contributing.
For me burn out happens when I try to take on too much work that I don’t want to do. I get overwhelmed trying to catch up to society’s standards and having adhd that’s extremely difficult. I also go on “hustle culture” binges where I do an extreme amount of work but then crash hard when I trip. A few burn outs in the past even resulted in melancholic episodes. I’m much more careful now and am now doing better everyday.
I was very similar to you but I took it (from what it sounds like) further than you. I squeezed every ounce of energy I had out myself week after week for almost 2 years and continued doing so even after severe health problems showed up because I didn't know what was causing them. I'm now working 20 hours a week at a very relaxed job and not putting much on my plate when I'm home. I'm still quite anxious and depressed but I now have a much more chill mindset and feel happier.
"working against a system that won't let them"... nail on the head for my experience. I'm a dev for a living and faced burn out about 5 years ago. I loved the job with a passion for years until a new manager joined who had micro management problems - made the job instantly miserable. I can remember most of the symptoms you described there very vividly. I ended up quitting on the spot after a meeting one day and it took 2 years working part-time as self-employed contractor before I was healed enough to go back to a corporate job again.
I don't usually comment. The moment I watched this video was actually so perfect. It made me realize that an special person in my life is most likely experiencing burnout. I tried not to take how their lack of empathy personally, but I set a boundary and told them that maybe we can pick things up again when they can settle those things and be present. It's quite hard being on the recieving end of someone burnt out too.
obviously idk you but I’m proud of that decision. I’m kind of in a similar situation except I haven’t set that boundary. I’ve been contemplating what to do because I’ve been holding out hope for like 8+ months that they would start feeling a little better and that that would be somewhat apparent in our friendship. They haven’t and I feel sorry for them, but it’s exhausting putting a ton of effort into growing my level of honest communication with them only to receive a side of them I don’t even enjoy speaking to anymore. I’m sure I’ve contributed but it’s hard to know when they won’t be honest with me and I have autism and BPD so it can be really difficult to make rational sense of social interactions.
The one good thing that came from the Pandemic is it taught me how unsustainable the life I was living pre-covid was. I was working 10 hours a day minimum at a high stress job that made me feel important, and paid better than any job I had before, and kept me from experiencing depression and for that reason I thought I was doing well. I describe working at this job as working with a gun to my head all the time, and even if I worked literally 24/7 it still wouldn’t have been enough to please everyone who needed stuff from me. Then 2020 hit and I learned that I was not needed, I was being used. And the second the lockdown happened I was out the door. Now I prioritize things that are mine. My art, my stories, my family, my friends. I am technically working just as much and as long as before now, but since it’s on the right things and it’s within my control, I am able to take appropriate breaks and I am avoiding burn out (so far at least).
Had the same experience in a microdosed moment last week as a manager having to juggle extra responsibilities as things kept going wrong in my job. I’m glad you mentioned that bit about depression, it really is insidious how the feeling of self importance and pride in your work can act as a ‘dirty fuel’ to allow you to keep going and push past your limits to get the job done. Coming to the realisation that the hobbies that bring you genuine joy are not vices that need to be excised so you can be even more ‘successful’, rather that they exist to help you to maintain your mental health, is so important. I think a lot of people implicitly know this but it can take a bout of experiencing burnout for it to really sink in.
I spent a better part of 3 years out of 6 taking care of a woman who didn't appreciate it. Worked over 12 hrs for 6 days starting off until my mental health started suffering. Then I had to decrease it to 4, 8 hr days and I was still worn out. Pandemic hit and I was canned, lost our apartment, had to move in with her parents, caught her cheating, and went to work in the "essential" industry with no benefits and no increase in pay during the pandemic. I absolutely refuse to step back in a kitchen as most of them are actively toxic and will use you without paying you. The job I lost at the apartment I was working 12 hrs at? I did 3 jobs and was being paid 9$ hr; I was a prep cook, dishwasher, and the dessert chef. I didn't start off doing all that, but when I got to that point and proved myself over months he still refused to give me a raise. Why work hard like that if I'm just going to be taken advantage of and not paid more?
@@wutzgedudel I swear I don’t get UA-cam comment notifications. The job that pays my salary is an administrative one where I more or less push emails around all day. The rest of the time I’m working on my personal projects, my drawing and my writing, that I hope will one day make me money.
Damn, this is the best description of burn out and I felt attacked directly. I love what I actually do, and get paid reasonably well, my life isn’t completely awful, I really like my peers, and I feel bad for complaining… but I’m declining financially slightly, doing less of the things I love at work, the workload keeps me from the things I love outside of work, I lack control where I need it, and the person I’m doing it for is literally making 10x what I am from my labor while not caring about the things I care most about… yeah, I’m burned out AF.
I usually don't comment but this really hit home for me right now. I'm 26 years old and burnt out. I'm so ashamed. The society in my country is all work-driven and I've always been an overachiever. I was never really poor but my family couldn't afford going on vacation every year either. Fast forward to my 20s and I find myself with 3 family members in need of care and somehow juggling my fulltime job (which was more than fulltime because of working overtime) and caring for them together with my mother. In January this year I had a breakdown. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat anymore. I didn't want to wake up anymore. I also experienced the lack of empathy for a long time that was described in the video and I felt horrible about it. I quit my job and haven't been working since January, I'm just so overwhelmed and therapy isn't helping me immensely. Although my boss' demands were way too many and unrealistic and although I'm aware that my mother, siblings or uncle should have taken on way more responsibility, it's my problem now. It's my responsibility to get better and honestly I feel like a failure.
Hi! Im a nurse and work in psychiatry. Im am currently burned out and I can only say that you described it perfectly. Ive been home since september and I still get triggered if I think about work. The exhaustion is better but its sooo slow! I did wait until I couldn't get out of bed. I do love my job and my patients. I have a high work ethic and I was told to not be as invested and just be good enough. To me that many times implied negligence and I can't. I tried to work things out with my boss for at least a year and I turned myself backward until I collapsed. I knew better, I just could not stop.
Man this hits hard. I work a 8-5 job but most days I start at 5am and end at 11pm! So I'm just in a bad cycle of: I don't finish work because I'm tired and not rested. So i work on weekends to catch up. And then comes the week again where I'm tired and unrested. Then work through the weekend again to finish. And it's not healthy.
I was listening to the list and realized that I kept working while burnt out for 2 years, unfair treatment, overworked with no community and complete lack of reward. This comprehensive breakdown was more valuable than most of my research on the topic. It also clarifies how much of burn out is personal which I also noticed while going through the list. Thanks 🙏
I have been told by my psychiatrist that I'm burned out. Since I have clinical depression with anhedonia traits it all seemed the same to me. I never actually thought much of it - the lack of energy, poor performance, being utterly uninterested about my job, and that constant "eh" feeling about everything. I was a little shocked to learn some of my symptoms were caused by actually being burned out. And not my depression per se. Everyone, please be attentive to what you are feeling and don't invalidate your struggle. And reach out for help when you need it, you might feel like you don't, but that is actually the problem.
@@tomorrow4eva I can't even surely say which one I "had" and which is not because there is no developed mental health-care system in mu country... It's just f*cking random. Tried once(with HUGE self-struggle and internal sacrifices) - only did things worse - quit it. First is was some personal/family problems and situation at work was "ok" for like 2 years, then some drastic episodes at work, then personal, then it was mixing up to the point it inducing each other and can't be differed anymore, and now its "too late" to fix anything of that. I always tried my best at work regardless of there is no "individual promotion", I loved to make beautiful result and it was boring to me to "just do stuff". But boss hired new workers that were "toxic" at the full definition of this term. And after time, because of his overly-high unrealistic ambitions he became more irritated and started to nitpicking more and saying to "re-do" the already done work under sauce "let's try [another way]" without actually telling what is wrong and why it need to be re-done. Well, I figured it out myself some time after - he expected photos to "sell" the goods without respect to other factors. But photos was already nice by that time and actually doesn't made SO much impact that he demanded/expected. And that stupid ever-changing conditions of how to do my work, ugh-_- It was so stupid and pointless. Changing background will not double the sellings, lol. And it's not "my fault", it's not because it's "bad photo", it's because things just doesn't work that way. What boss really needed is for someone to tell him like "stop this fucking shit dude, you are insane? You will not 'conquer the [market of] America!!!' with just white photo background, lol. Stop increasing the staff amount, can't you see that you will not have enough work for all in a few month with this tendency?". But imagine saying all of this and not even staying at the job, but receiving your money after being fired without a lawsuit XD That surely would be a "good thing" to do, yeah, but sadly - unappreciated and unrewarded.
Well this explains why us with ADHD burn out easier. We put so much effort but it doesn't get noticed and even get called lazy when we work so damn hard for things that comes easy for other people. On top of the usual life issues that every normal human being burns out from. Good video like usual.
@@RichyRich2607 I'm sorry you've got issues with people identifying with something. But your negativity isn't going to stop ADHDers from voicing our support for each other in the comments
@@RichyRich2607 we aren't mystical creatures like unicorns or something, ADHD is very common. More people have access to mental health care to be diagnosed and the shame of struggling through life in a world that's made for neurotypicals is no longer spent isolated and alone behind masks to fit in.
22:40 100% this is what every student feels every day I think. A constant state of burnout since your studies doesn't affect other people or have any significant yield except to your own future.
This channel is so valuable. I work in health care and people act like burnout is just part of the job and laugh about it. My problem with this is I work in an area where we diagnose cancer so apathy has no place there. But our overlords want to squeeze every ounce of energy out of you and act like we are privileged to work there. This is just the tip of the iceberg as I've experienced all of these things described in the video.
This was very interesting and I would appreciate a follow up in regards to students being burnt out. I can do great at university, but once I het home from the library I dont have energy to really do anything. I just end up watching youtube for hours. So that part was really relatable.
As a previously burned out student, what I can tell you is don't wait to consult about it if you can. I waited too long and reached a point where I couldn't even process simple questions anymore. Up until this point my grades were still some of the highest of my cohort, and because of that no one saw it comming, they all mistook my very short temper for being simply "stressed".
@@micheller3251 can you share more insights? I'm 4.0 student doing really well, but I'm 100% burned out and about to crash and burn... Started skipping irrelevant classes a lot more, haven't done job apps since it doesn't interest me to work, procrastinating an insane amount, etc.. I basically just watch UA-cam and avoid doing any work now.
@@nathan___gage skipping non-obligatory stuff is a good decision. At this point you want to do as little as possible, and take as many naps as possible. Or if you don't need to sleep, just laying down and doing nothing is still necessary. I don't know how close you are to graduation or what program, but I was able to use my credits to get a major(60 credits) instead of a bachelor(90 credits). If there's a similar move you can make or if can afford to pause your studies for a full semester I highly recommend it as it won't get better if you don't take a serious break
@@nathan___gage if you can, talk about it with a professional they will be able to pin point what you need in particular to get better and they might have some insight regarding financial help. Hope I answered some of your questions
I'm burnt out from life. The two past years, and ongoing, has just been a constant barrage of shit. First primarily emotional and stress from what the pandemic caused us, and since a year and counting, also physical health. My back is completely busted, and has resulted in loss of muscle strength and leg functionality. Financially it's now a complete nightmare, but physical health in combination with issues stemming from being autistic, currently is prohibiting any fix in the near future to this problem. It's literally impossible, and I've explored all types of avenues extensively over the past 3 months. WITH outside help from professionals - only to end up with a "sorry, you are screwed". About a month ago, my psyche and body just said stop. It can't take it anymore. I do vagusnerve exercises, some mediation. Take KSM66 and Neurol. Since. At least I don't get totally paralyzed and have muscle trembles, and extreme vertigo, now, whenever something triggers the body's stress response system. The tiniest things, could set it off as if I were about to get murdered by a cave lion any second. Absurd. But like. Issue remains. How the F do you combat burn out, when it's your entire life situation that is the cause of it? Especially now, when we're in unstable times and things look more complicated due to that. I live in Europe, and gas prices has skyrocketed, food prices are on the way up. Inflation is starting to pick up speed. My countrys farmers and those in the transport sector, was already in a bad situation prio to Russia invading the Ukraine. Now it's way beyond manageable. It'll be trying times even if one didn't have the issues as one has. Being burnt out is something I identify as a road block, it's actively standing in the way of finding some sort of solution to take me out of this mess. Eventually. Like, it is just going to make that road take so much longer and pose as a serious risk factor. Even if I'm not currently experiences depression, for how much longer can I keep that at bay? I legit have ZERO energy. Most of the days are just a constant state of tired, and being a husk of oneself. The physical issues also prevents me from living an active lifestyle. Exercise and nature hikes were big positives for me. Used to be able to recharge energy with that.
What's frustrating, and maybe is thats only in my background, is the individuals in life who tell you you're not burnt out or you shouldn't have a reason to feel that way. Then you'll get bombarded by examples of why you should feel guilty to feel wiped.
I am missing some things that are profound for me, which have helped me recover from burnout: 1. autonomic nervous system 2. convictions 3. desensitization 4. symptoms 5. recovery 1. Autonomic Nervous System. Burnout is an inability to recover from activities due to mismagagement/imbalance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system is the part of your autonomic nervous system that tells your body its time for action: the more active it is, the higher your heart rate, the more your breath is taylored to moving, the more energy is freed up in your muscles. On the other hand, the more active your Parasympathetic nervous system, the slower your heart rate, the more active your digestive and immune system, the more taylored your breath is for resting. In a healthy body these two systems alternate and fluctuate easily and fluidly. An over- or undertaxed body has forgotten how to do this in a healthy way, and will change from one to the other too abrubtly, go into extremes on either end, gravitate towards one or the other (in case of burn-out towards the overuse of the sympathetic nervous system, and in case of bore-out towards the Parasympathetic nervous system). Healing therefore means relearning your body this, which is very hard, and takes a long period of time. Getting guidance in setting myself a day- and week schedule that supported my body's needs and helped manage my autonomic nervous system, was hugely beneficial for me. 2. Convictions Burnout is caused by a person's conviction that some things are so important, it is worth a lot of endurance even if there is no/little reward and if it requires the disregard of one's health. People who are burned out are incredibly strong, strong enough to set aside their own needs in order to meet the expectations they set for themselves, strong enough to become insensitized to their own body. And as dr K says: there is a discrepancy between effort and reward. So that effort is not made for the reward, and doesn't even feel good (you have maybe stopped feeling how bad it feels). Instead the effort is made out of a conviction that This Effort Is Really Important. And as you cross more of your own boundaries to make that effort, you will become more convinced that All Will Go To Shit If YOU Don't Do This, because the alternative is that you have messed up your priorities and that is unthinkable. Millenials are often raised with the idea that anything is possible if you try, and will have to learn which things are outside their control an responsibiliry in order to learn to have healthy expectations of themselves. Other generations also each have their specific burnout-pitfalls. 3. Desensitization Symptoms may vary greatly, depending on what it is your life looks like. That makes it hard to recognize. Dr K talks about a lessening of empathy and a grwoth of scepsis, but I am not sure I recognize that. What I have learned is that generally a burnt out person is insensitized to their body, more than they realize. Other factors in your life may worsen this: things like loss, ptsd, depression. So even though burnout may enter an otherwise well-functioning life, it is definitly hastened on by other hardships and it may be hard to see where those end and the burnout begins. In my case, a severe heartbreak topped on housing insecuriry and work insecurity made me think I just had to get myself stability and healing time and all would be well; only when a year later I was still unwell did I get a diagnosis for burnout. Please realize: being insensitized to oneself, means also a clouded judgement. If you are burnt out, try to postpone big life decisions!!!! Consider your judgement somewhat unreliable. 4. Symptoms Haphazardly over/under/misusing your autonomic nervous system may have all kinds of results, other than the desensitization. These are the ones I've dealt with, but this is not the full scope. Not recovering well from you activities may mean your amigdala swells and your hippocampus shrinks, which may make it easy to panic and may make your emotional responses intense. There is probably a huge degree of survival mode - fight flight or freeze - going on there. Not recognizing yourself in your behaviour and thoughts is unsettling, it had me going through a state resembling depression early on - I hated myself for what I was becoming - but that symptom went away as I started to give myself more understanding and slack. Your ability to concentrate and direct your attention may be damaged. At my worst I was pretty much a goldfish, forgetting thoughts the instant I got them, not being able to count past five without losing track. The best way to get much needed recovery and to resensitize, is to meditate; and the hardest thing to do without an attention span is to meditate. Don't give up on yourself, don't blame yourself, just have the attempt as a basic part of your schedule and with time you will become able to do it. 5. Recovery Burnout on average lasts about 2,5 years. Treating it like an illness that will pass with bed rest is ill advised, better to give someone rhythm and make sure the burnt out person never does the same thing (eben taking a break) for longer than 1 hour, because there is no energy reserve for extended effort and the autonomous nervous system needs to be kind of shifted manually into different degrees of activeness or restfulness, and that is best done by alternating activities. If you have this it may seem like it will be forever, especially if it is already lasting more than a year. But trust me, you will recover!! Journalling, rating my health and energy everyday or even multiple times a day helped me a lot maintain a sense of direction and improvenent. It is normal for there to be fallback throughout recovery and even after, which feels really scary. But those, too, will pass. You will find better ways to care fir yourself, and you will recover. Examine your convictions; find out what it is you find so incredibly important that you have pushed yourself so, and learn to make peace with not meeting that expectation you've set yourself. I have noted with myself and others who have gone through burnout that one may develop a certain 'allergy' to the kind of situations in which you put the bar too high. If you notice a defensive or escape-like response in yourself in certain situations, it pays to find out what your expectations of yourself are in those situations, and what you need in order to get a more healthy stance in such instances. Those are my 5 cents! I have learned these things from my psychologist, from a course in body awareness that I followed, from my psycho-somatic fysiotherapist and from all kinds of online resources, all of which have helped me find my way out of the burnout.
Thanks for taking the time to share your insights in such detail! The insight about your body’s physical response and desensitization to it are spot on.
This made me reflect on my time when I was active duty until last year. Saying that you're burned out (in my experience) just gets a response of well there's nothing that we can do about it so tough it out, you need to be able to juggle working full time, school, volunteering, command involvement, etc. etc. Etc.
Go speak to a minister or pastor and get yourself heard. Just having a non-judgmental ear to listen to you can help. The military is trying to improve, but there's a cultural dimension on top, where people don't understand, empathise, or have the skills to help you. Pastoral care is what you need, and there is psychological help available, and things are getting better slowly. But don't just stew in your own juice. Find that listening ear.
I had a great team lead. All he did was check in every few weeks. "How are you feeling at work?" "Is there anything you would like to learn or do differently?" It's only now that he left that I notice how damn much this did for my motivation at work. Now I'm having a lot of those secret symptoms..
I would be interested in hearing your perspective on autistic burnout. I think there are some similarities to what you described in terms of the circumstances and factors leading up to typical burnout, but the consequences and experience of autistic burnout are markedly different. For e.g. many of us are hyper-empathetic - for me, my default state is empathy. I did not lose my empathy when I entered into a state of burnout (in some cases this can make symptoms worse, since we feel things more intensely - and have to process not only our own trauma but the feelings and needs of others as well, even in that low energy state). I was in fact still empathizing with my abusers even as they were knowingly inflicting trauma. Also, autistic people can end up with what amounts to brain damage in burnout - loss of skills and abilities that can sometimes be permanent. And in many cases we do know what is causing our burnout but we are unable to change the circumstances to make it better, for e.g. when we are affected by other people's biases and targeted hostility against us for aspects of our identity that we cannot control (hence the 85% unemployment rate among us). I experienced an extremely traumatic work environment where every attempt to better the situation - communication, requests for feedback, attempts to adapt, to advocate for reasonable accommodations, etc. ended up increasing the hostility and damage directed at me. The circumstances where harm is directed at you by default, yet action of any kind to mitigate that harm causes a backlash and even more harm, induces a state of complete paralysis and destruction. There is not enough research to paint a clear picture of the road to recovery for autistic burnout to help people like me find our way out. I have been unable to return to work since that experience, and every time I read a job description in the tech field or sit down to try to code again, it triggers my PTSD from what happened to me. It has been over a year and I don't know if I can get better, especially since I cannot imagine a scenario where anything I did differently could change what happened to me. I even tried to leave but they gaslit me and convinced me that my perception was wrong - until it was too late and the damage was already done. It's foolish to knowingly enter shark infested waters without any protection when you know the sharks are starving and have already mauled and fed on you in previous instances. In autistic burnout there is the twofold question of how to heal the physiological and neurological damage as well as how to address the psychological damage - and going forward, how to cope in circumstances where you will be harmed no matter what you do. What is the healthy adaptive response when one needs to engage with a debilitating environment and malicious people in order to obtain basic sustenance? Most allistic people can change their circumstances, avoid people or dynamics that are causing harm, and start over. But we autistics cannot (at least not to an effective enough degree) - we encounter this sort of bias and hostility in most work environments. Some of us can successfully mask, so that we are not identified and targeted directly, but that just drives the damage inward and prevents us from taking measures to meet our physiological and psychological needs. I'm curious if you've looked into autistic burnout and if you have any thoughts about how we might navigate out of it.
I’ve only started to feel the mental toll of the pandemic now that we’re post-pandemic. So much has happened to me both good and terrible over the pandemic, for example I graduated high school but I didn’t have any way of celebrating it. I was fortunate enough to receive unemployment but my habits made me irresponsible with it. I also gave half of my payments to my mom for rent. Then I had to lose two of my cats that I grew up with as my only emotional crutch at home, and my third one the youngest died before we moved. When apartment lease was up and we had nowhere to go because of money. Fortunately, a family friend took us in and gave us a “temporary” place to stay in their home out of town. This was two years ago and we still live w this friend in their home. I lost a lot and although I feel determined to earn it all back, but I really would just go afk irl. I always feel ashamed of myself at the end/start of every day because I know I can perform tasks extremely well if I’m just present for it, however, there’s just always something in the way now. All of the characteristics of burn out really popped out for me, as in a circumstance would easily come to mind each one of them. Ego, Isolation/community, control, reward, etc. I just never thought it could be burn out because I haven’t worked a job in two years, but I am slowly mounting the horse again. Thank you for this video man. There could be a lot of other things going on with me, but this one was insightful and I’m glad it came from someone reliable and understanding! :)
I feel like Covid really pushed things into overdrive. It was basically a learned helplessness situation where we were kept stressed for months/years while being gaslit about the severity of the stress and our internal alarm system is basically broken (sort of like insulin resistance in diabetes)
Agreed. And the US + Canada have been getting more fascistic and shit just keeps getting crazier, all while we're supposed to just perform business as usual. This system is fucked
thank you for this. I've been in an autistic burnout for years now, no specialized help, on top of chronic illness. I've been depressed before but this really helped articulate the distinction for me. i do experience loss of cognitive ability and can no longer independently compensate for many of my autistic traits, and it looks like a very severe depression on the surface since it's so much harder to perform basic tasks. but i experience little to no anhedonia. i cant confidently say when I'll receive help and i don't know how I'm supposed to change my situation without it. but with my status quo its easy to forget that there's a systemic problem, and i can only climb out of burnout for so long before i get sucked right back into it. if any healthy neurotypical person was in my position they'd be absolutely thriving. and i still have that motivation and joy and desire to do the things i would do if i were thriving, so it's easy to act as though im actually in a position to and end up making it worse. and i don't want doing things i love and are good on paper to be bad for me, and external sources only see the paper part, so there's pressure both from myself and outside to pretend I'm better off than i am. so even acknowledging it feels like I'm asking for too much or exaggerating. it doesn't help that that idea's been conditioned in my whole life because 14 years was far too long to go without any diagnosis of any kind and it took years after that to diagnose my actual chronic illnesses and autism.
Burnout is a distinctively modern problem. "Researchers studying burnout" is a really funny statement, they'll never point out that people are pressed to work more and more for less and it's gotten worse (at least in the US) since the 70s.
I think that limiting it to just being work related is too restrictive. It should be whenever you have to invest in something heavily emotionally. I feel burnout whenever I have to constantly engage with people. I can work at a job for dang near forever as long as I don't have to interact with anyone, but I suffer all the symptoms of burnout when I have to constantly interact with people, and that includes my personal life.
I love watching your videos because they really help me think objectively about my own mental health and it helps me figure out where my problems are. This entire video, you were talking about burnout at work. I kept thinking, "but it's not work that's making me feel burnt out," and I figured it out about half way through. My house is a mess because my ADHD prevents me from doing all of the work that I know needs to be done and I don't have the energy after work to make much of a dent in fixing it, so I'm constantly stressing over all of the things that I know I need to do but I don't have the time or energy to do all of them. Gonna be working on how to deal with that.
I hope he does a video on family burnout because sometimes living with my parents, constantly fighting while getting NOWHERE really gets me down and doesn't make me want to do anything. I feel both depressed and burnt out at the same time
Recently I ve been reading a book called Island by Audlous Huxley and there was this interesting idea of having multiple families that you can always go to for a day or more if you want to and change enviorment even if you love your personal family and everything is fine. I really liked that idea, sometimes just the same patterns appear over and over again at home and that is so annoying and tiring. Going to some other place just to learn how other people live and their philosophy on life and stuff would be so refreshing…
same. my parents using the threat of refusing to feed me and expecting me to live off of cup noodles and ramen sucks. Narcissism in using food to manipulate your child sucks.
When you open up to coworkers about how you’re feeling: They think you are ungrateful or just need to change the way you work or your outlook. In my opinion, you can acknowledge that nothing drastically toxic is going on at work and still feel like you may want to move on. If everyone was complacent or had that same attitude, we most likely will be robbed of people’s talents and interests in other lines of work.
Shi~~~~ how'd you know i needed this? My mom has metastatic breast cancer and I'm a caregiver, I'm only 27 I've been doing this since i was 25... I'm burnt out from work.... And also depressed.. i feel like you spoke to me specifically in this video. I struggle with control, SOOOOO much! 😭
Sorry to hear this I am turning 25 and faced my mom's mortality when she got diagnosed with thyroid cancer for the 5 months it to to declare remission after surgery (and radioactive iodine, in case any tissue was missed). Disturbing to imagine she wouldn't have this good of an outcome. I hope you can keep copping
As someone who is looking into finding a mental health professional and has struggled with both depression and burout it was really helpful explaining how it differs from depression was extremely helpful. Over the many years I have become rather numb to depressed feelings since they have been so common which has made it really hard for me to understand what I should be focused on working with depression and grief counseling or stress and burnout. I recognize that I have some depressive episodes but this helped make it crystal clear that I have burnout and stress as the focal points that I need help with. Thank you for always providing knowledge around these topics.
This video has made all the difference. I used to say I was tired until I realized I was actually burned out. Just understanding is a weight off my shoulders. Thank you.
Impeccable timing of this video as usual 😅 I didn’t realize it until recently how burnt out I was at work. This video really resonated with me; on the surface work was fine, I like my job, and I’m being paid well, but I had no motivation to do anything. It was mainly the community and reward aspect, where I felt extremely isolated from the rest of my coworkers socially and professionally (since I’m about 10 years younger than everyone else, and my work didn’t really overlap much, resulting in a lack of collaboration). Because of that isolation it really felt like my contributions were meaningless and I had less value as an employee compared to everyone else. I’m not really sure where I’m going with this comment lol. I’m still working through it but it’s nice to feel seen by this video. ❤️
I think you’re right on about burnout - it isn’t just about having to do things that are hard and exhausting, it’s about doing more things that you have to do than things that you choose to do. Creating personal goals and working toward them is just as important to recovering from burnout as decreasing how much time you spend on your job or other responsibilities. Good luck with your new routine!
the constant feeling where the things you put effort towards don't really matter, then questions like "why do it in the first place?" pop up, you become depressed and have low energy because there's no motivation... i feel that a lot of in my corporate job, more so in huge companies, you feel your contributions don't change anything for your workplace, or society... i worked in little company (60 employees or so), i worked more, and they payed less, but i felt more fulfilled than now that i work for a giant company... at least my coworkers and bosses are awesome people and help curb that feeling a lot edit: a lot of people need more recognition for their work, and visibility of the impact the things they do make on their company/environment, i think it would help a lot of people, but the feeling of unfairness could be accentuated this way... such a difficult problem to tackle
I know that medical workers are a good example of burnout but us teachers/childcare providers are also suffering immensely from burnout. Teaching is an incredibly underpaid, overworked, and unappreciated job and it’s terrifying the lack of empathy that slowly creeps in after years of dealing with parents that don’t care about their children, admin that only care about profits/cutting costs, and coworkers that are also losing their empathy… it’s sad and scary and I every day I feel myself losing my passion for my job bc I can’t let go of my ideals of what we should be doing to support children based of current studies, which just simply will never change in my lifetime bc the ppl in charge care about the status quo from the old days.
I'm watching this after supposively having been cured of my burnout with therapy (with focussed on social anxiety which is definately a contributor) but listening to your description of how a person with burnout feels and how they act I fit the bill and will contact my doctor tomorrow about this for sure
Hang in there man, a lot of people feel the way you do but this life has so much to give and you have a lot to feel and see. We just gotta do it one day at a time. I feel you.
@@disasterallosaurus thank you man, life is just so stressful rn and I don’t really have an outlet to express my feelings, I just listen to music because that’s my therapy lol, but seriously, thank you man
I have gotten better in taking risks and not fear failure, but as a much as I like that I feel like I can do anything no matter how difficult, and am often determined, I don't realize I am putting a lot on my plate. I kind of tunnel vision myself to get things done which ignores some basic needs sometimes like eating properly and sleep. In times where I'm supposed to have fun and relax I'd sometimes think about working on something. I don't give myself that moment to just sit and enjoy the present, keep thinking what's next. I often feel unfilled and upset, and feel like I am loosing time. Thing is, this is referring to my own projects and goals, this is not even about my full time job. So on top of all of that, yeah, I am stressing myself out in my free time. Home is work, work is work, I'm also a student, and I am trying to stay in touch with friends, and ultimately this is not leaving time to take care of myself. I realize... where's me in the schedule? I left an important person out. I am working towards giving myself breaks and make sure I am also taken care of, I need this guy to kind of... stay alive and healthy or something like that? Yeah let's do that.
Ohhh man, this hit HARD. I’m a 35-year-old single mom to a 6-and-a-half-year-old son who inherited my ADHD and ODD (and the emotional dysregulation that goes with it), living with parents who are only supportive financially, and who often actively disrespect and undermine me as a person and especially as a parent, so I spend far too long having to act as psychologist/therapist for my son to mitigate/prevent the psychological damage they’ve been doing to him (never mind to myself). I’m also a full-time mostly remote college student working towards a bachelor’s in int’l business in hopes of moving to Japan in a handful of years, and after a 15-year summer break, and as a former gifted kid who wasn’t diagnosed with “moderate-to-severe ADHD” until I was 29 and a half, it’s been HARD. Yeah, I’m pulling a 4.0, but I’m drowning just trying to keep up with the work itself-it just so happens that I only produce high-quality work. If I wasn’t smart enough to understand most of the material on the first pass, I’d be absolutely screwed because I genuinely cannot imagine having time for anything resembling “studying” (review). I’ve also been working for a dive casino’s hotel that I can’t stand working for (values clash), and while I love my coworkers and my direct boss, I’ve been minimum wage for SIX YEARS despite being the second most senior person there (high turnover rate), and regularly praised as The Best at all the Things, and everyone’s go-to, etc. (reward/fairness disparity). Now, I realize a huge part of this is the fact that I have never gotten up the nerve to try to negotiate my wages, partially because as an unofficial accommodation, my bosses have overlooked the fact that I am routinely 5-to-10 minutes late to every shift (once I’m there, I barely take breaks and pull more than my weight). The primary reason I’ve stayed (besides risk aversion) is the fact that they’ve been so accommodating for allowing me to work only a day or two a week while I’ve been in school, which I cannot imagine I would be able to find starting at a new job, especially as those workdays occasionally shift around depending on my school schedule, etc. (I have always made it a point to keep one of both of those days our busiest days to keep “pulling my weight” when I’m most needed.) I’m especially appreciative of the fact that the accommodations my boss has made for me started a year or so BEFORE I got my diagnosis and knew “what my problem was,” and she’s continued to be supportive and encouraging as I started on different meds and we all saw how much my performance improved. It doesn’t help that I USED to be an ambivert, but dealing with the public at the front desk has put my extrovert half in a coma, and due to severely depleted energy and increasingly nonexistent free time, I’ve stopped going out with friends, and stay home as much as possible, usually working on schoolwork. I have had to learn the hard way (and am still learning) to enforce boundaries (starting with myself) regarding my availability, time, and energy, and learning to say no to more work, and to reduce my current workload, but my internal drive is constantly screaming that it’s never enough, and I “should” be doing so much more with all this *~*PoTeNtIaL*~* and… yeah, I’ve been burned out to varying degrees for years, and it’s lead to more than one breakdown over the course of the pandemic (I started college the summer of 2020, and my son started kindergarten at the same time). As much as I appreciate the Anti-Work movement and as much as I realize a livable wage would be double what I make, assuming we were ever allowed to work enough hours that they’d be forced to call us full-time and give us benefits (upper management is extremely shady and exploitative), I just feel stuck until I graduate and can either yeet myself across the Pacific or begin to explore non-min-wage options, which is at least three years out, and it’s exhausting.
It is ok to be unhappy with a good-enough life. We are taught humility and guilt in equal measure, to be grateful is good but we are taught to go beyond and stop asking for things we need, because some arbitrary minimum is is met. It is okay, and indeed good, to ask fof more so that you can be sustainably happy.
@@tomorrow4eva it also will not help that even if things like the minimum wage being jacked up to $25 (which is actually a living minimum wage) and payment for services is now kept commensurate with inflation or deflation, every thing else is so much worse. Companies control the world, and government kowtow to them or national addictions or national shows of power or national ego. Everyone is far more distant. No one is going to actually solve the climate crisis, and when a solution does appear it will be shut down immediately then converted to a form that reinforces the status quo or companies will zealously enforce it to punish competitors. Respect may be given but it’s only because everyone is generally hostile to everyone else. And it won’t solve the lack of any community anywhere. While better wages would solve the problem of security it will not solve the quadrillions of malaises that make up today. Furthermore, said solution will usually not future-proof itself meaning the status quo will slam harder than before, taking into account new technologies.
Often, people don't leave jobs... they leave managers. When my boss/manager/owner dismisses my knowledge and professional knowledge/expertise... burnout happens to me. Every time. I look much younger than I actually am (36 but look ~22), so I find this has been a chronic issue in my life at various workplaces. Facing a, "What do YOU know- you're just a kid" kind of attitude. I am underpaid for my twelve years of expertise and this is when I notice it the most, which reinforces the bad feelings. The other year when I was feeling burnout I asked for a raise and got relatively large one, and that helps. But I know that I place more value in his trust in my integrity, knowledge, and ability than in my pay and each negative experience has a cumulative effect. So those bad feelings are rarely far away now. I'll be asking for another raise soon. Perhaps, because I do not have his trust, I feel he might as well pay me more because my work has value and makes the company a lot of money. I am no longer invested in the company at all. I am only invested in MY work and the patients I work with. I love my patients. I don't care anymore about the rest of it. The owner's sister happens to be the payroll officer and she basically told me I make too much money. So now I refuse to do any work off the clock, easy work that I didn't mind doing before. I feel like I'm not helping the team because I'm not helping them when I can... but I am worth my pay. Why should I work for nothing for a company that doesn't value me? I do my work but I just had to remove myself from investing in a company that wasn't interested in investing in me and it's a healthier place for me. For now. I just focus on the positive: my patients and my treatment relationships with them.
Holy crap everything that was just described matches exactly what I’m going through right now, I was beginning to feel like a narcissistic Selfish cynical asshole who only cared about himself burnout has really torn me out I couldn’t even begin to tell you how much per now has affected my life in all aspects I’m so glad dr.k made this video now I know Who I really am.
Thank you. I'm going through burnout right now and, I really love what I do, but be treated very unfairly by my boss, over and over again, is getting every will to work that I have. I never thought I'd pass through gaslight at work. I have constant feedbacks about it and have set boundaries with him, but talking to a wall would be a better use of my time. Even that I know what is causing it, this video/exercise will help me analyse if I'm not missing anything. You're the best, Dr. K!
Amazing breakdown. One hour ago "burnout" to me was just a fancy modern speak for being bored and intentionally irresponsible (which can be justified) at work. Now completely get what burnout is about and I see why I actually feel burned out, everything that's wrong with some of my approaches and why I feel "down" but it doesn't really feel like depression. And I see how both myself but also management/org (the nice and the horrible ones) both are to blame. Kind of sucks because when you get to a company you want thanks to a manager there, and the team is actually like a family, of course you'd like to go above and beyond and contribute. But that burnout gap between effort and reward simply needs to be addressed or it will be fuel for explosion. If they expect me to be another incompetent uncaring wage slave then there's no point trying to keep banging against the wall and try to perform above expectation, save that energy for something else.
I'm mostly over my burn out now. I basically work less, earn more, and started exercising and socialising more. The most important one was to start working less. Couldn't really start doing the others until I had reduced my workload for a long time.
I never lost my empathy for others, but my ability to focus and do my job correctly took a big hit. In fact, I just got let go. I've been so stressed I've been having stress-induced pseudo-seizures. That hasn't happened since I was in my abusive relationship 15 years ago. The dishes and laundry keep piling up, and doing anything about it takes as much effort as pushing a car off my broken legs.
As someone that works in Finance, I absolutely see the "so and so gets paid more and does less" argument. Everytime there is a minimum wage increase, you will hear people say "the wage gap is even smaller". I never hear them complain about the amount, it's always the relation to other people's wages and the value they derive from being paid more. It is a downside of being in a job role where you know what everyone is paid Great video as always!
What if it’s just life burning you out? And it’s all you and there’s nothing you can do? I feel like I’m in that boat. I’m older and it’s either that or a midlife crisis. No home no family working a dead end retail job despite three college degrees. School is easy but when I’m done I’m just “over it” and try looking for something else. Ruined plenty of relationships over my mind doing this. Can’t find any motivation. Don’t even know what goals I have if any. Just very tired of everything. Mentally spiritually emotionally.
You just made me realize that all this time, when I thought I was just becoming a bad person that is irritated by a lot of things in life, was actually because of Burnout. I've almost lost my wife because of it ! This video was one of the most useful I've seen in my 33 years of existence. Burnout is becoming so frequent and our society don't really take this problem seriously enough IMO. Good information is hard to find and the definition of Burnout for most people couldn't be more wrong. Thank you so much for making this for free, I'm so grateful I've stumbled upon this ! Hard to describe how much help and hope you've just giving me.
I always felt a sick sense of relief whenever we went into lockdown because I felt burnt out. Luckily in Australia we got a decent amount of government support so for me lockdown just meant stay inside and earn more money than you get from your 40hr work week anyway.
My sister got 70% government pay replacement and 15% by the company... because the union negotiated for that. Us Americans are baffled every time I mentioned it, let alone her student job at the cinema covering living expenses and tuition at 15 -20 hours a week (weekend nights)
In the US half the population was ANGRY that people made more from govt support than they did from their jobs. So they KILLED the support for all. Now we have record homelessness and foreclosures are up 700%. Never come here. Save yourselves.
@@caralho5237 they stop when people file according numbers (10k a year ish) in taxes in order to mittigate inflation, except the payments supposed to impact behavior, infrastructure subsedise and it's own maintenance. But given the inflation target is above 0 there's some leverage
burnout for me happens because I'm juggling self care (working out + self-studying), my emotional issues, a full time job, and being fully independent. If I worked 35-36 hours a week instead of 40 I would be much more okay. an emotional trigger will tax my system too. Broke up with my girl in Feb, so I'm handling loneliness/not having any love/support creeping back into my life
Wow. By far the most significant upload I’ve witnessed thus far following Healthy GamerGG these short two years. I am experiencing compassion fatigue in My line of work as a cannabis consultant for medical card-holding patients in My respective u.s state. I’ve become a glorified cashier in most cases, and in others an emotional tampon for people to unleash their repressed and resented emotions. I quite literally do not know what to do with Myself most days. Edit: spelling
I'm glad I found this video, as I do come across your videos from time to time. I am in a burnout state that I've tried to recover for 3 or 4 years now. An analogy I made when speaking to a therapist was that my brain is like an enclosure, like the ones where you have sheep or horses. So it is fenced but you can still see outside of the fence, and sometime something escapes from the fence (e.g. when you get the occassional anxiety). So when I got forced by a therapist to take sickleave and rest, that fence just shattered. What I mean with that is that my anxiety went haywire. I couldn't even go an hour without my anxiety spiking. My mind couldn't focus on anything. I have barely any memories of the first couple of months, since all I did was trying to cope the anxiety and sleep. The recovery for me during that period was to rest, a lot of rest. Let the brain heal and recover. For the analogy it was to get a fence up asap so that the sheep (anxiety) could get contained. It took me about 2.5 years to get back to a state that I could work at a 100% capacity again. I still had anxiety issues that limited my life heavily, but it felt that it was going to the correct direction. 6 months later I get hit with a new burnout. The work got very stressing, we were overworked and there was drama in the workplace that made me feel stressed and irritated. The new burnout started 1.5 years ago and I'm still recovering, and this time it is going a lot slower than the first time. I hope you get to talk to someone that is also suffering from burnout, as it would be interesting to hear someone else's perspective how it affected them, how they recovered from it and how that journey was. Also, thank you for lifting this subject! I feel that this doesn't get highlighted enough, and with the thoroughness!
So I watched this video when it first came out and remember thinking then that I might be starting to get burnt out. Now, a few months later, I've come across it again and 5 minutes in I'm just thinking, "How did it get so much worse and I didn't realize it?" I'm really glad that you talked about this topic. I need to make some changes with my life and environment.
Was writing an essay...tldr. Hit veeery close to home. I wish I came across this value point years ago. Values are the absolute elephant in the room in my life. I´m very truthseeking, no bullshit, rightious and value honesty and authenticity very highly. Studying social sciences...the political, feminist and influence population part goes completely against everything I stand for. On the other hand the law, languages, sociology, psychology, communication and business/work/organization stuff was exactly what I was looking for. Man this has been eye opening or at least extremely reassuring to me. I´ll just have to completly navigate around the stuff that frankly said disgusts me. I completly isolated myself btw, but tbh it was better than pretending to be one of them. Ur the best Dr. K and HG Community.
I never realized how isolation could be a factor in burnout until you pointed it out here. I'm doing freelance work in a field I love, but working at home constantly and rarely talking to anyone (besides my family) has been taking a toll on me. Because there's not much to do once work is done, I take on more work which eventually stresses me out later on. It's an insiduous cycle to break out of.
I'm burned out also because of my home issue with the bad neighbor actually stealing a portion of my land. We were wanting to sell the property and this scumbag was starting to bring his equipment onto a part of it... the best analogy is like having cancer, but with no real endpoint and with the possibility of real violence. I let key people and 'teammates' (which is another BS term at work) at my employer know...and the most they could offer was to take time off if I needed to deal with anything. I thankfully was able to get it resolved without suing (and the buyers not even knowing about what was going on), and sell at a profit. I've basically gone to working a quiet-quitting status, and work at my own pace at work for the time being while I'm still settling into the new home (which is in an area where that will never happen again.)
This is such a helpful talk. My small biz was acquired by a bigger fish last year and both staff and management are seriously burned out with this transition. The staff, especially, are getting inundated with BD support requests from leadership and that seems to be all that’s celebrated. The value discrepancy example (stay late for insurance billing v patient care) is such a helpful example.
For the longest time I thought that my lack of energy, cynicism and short fuse was because I had some sort of vitamin deficiency. After trying all sorts of supplements, nothing made a difference, I had to concede that the problem lies elsewhere. I thought I had depression, but after reading on the subject, I concluded that either I don't have it, or it's somewhat atypical. Only 20 minutes in this video, and I must admit that burnout actually fits how I feel almost perfectly. I long thought that I probably should visit a professional about my problem, but I have reservations about finding a good one that can actually fix my issue. Also, being inherently neurotic, introverted and existentially oriented just complicated the problem, because anything good that I happen to achieve, the analytical-cynical part of my personality just picks it to pieces, like a carrion bird does with a carcass, until nothing remains. I also picked up smoking as a coping mechanism, and I can't kick it no matter what I do. Oh, and the compulsive shopping. I always loved gadgets of all types, so I keep buying all this stuff, for that dopamine rush, only to realize that it's useless, and I end up hating myself for it, only to repeat the cycle over and again. It's almost like I'm trying to fill an internal bottomless pit, a void that can't be filled... I'm not even sure what I want, even worse, I'm not sure I want anything anymore. I only feel the most powerful of emotions, like misplaced lust or anger, as they're the only ones still capable of piercing the nothingness of my emotional void. I desperately want to feel something other than anger or lust, to have direction again, dreams, something to move towards, like in my teens. But I feel nothing. My compass, psychological and moral, is utterly shot. I hate this so much...
I feel you and can relate to your inherent character. I’m in a similar predicament. The bottomless pit is solved by going within, it’s just being forced to do work that is hated tears our soul apart until we find work we enjoy, and that is the issue. Kinda keeps us down while it’s keeping us down. And then we have to recover from burnout which might take some time. But going within or writing/typing everything down that’s bothering you might be a good step to clarity and processing this overload that our society gives on a tarnished platter.
i think i understand that. i think i have a few adaptations, like having fun with myself. i make myself laugh or sing in the car. that might be the one thing keeping it all together
Going to go out on a limb and disagree with you on the antiwork reddit forum. I started my work career around the time of the 2008 crash and every job I had a really abusive boss because they knew I had so little options to go against them. And everywhere paid so little I could barely make ends meet. Even today if something were to happen to my husband my entire paycheck would barely cover the cost of rent. I don't particularly like my current boss so I've been looking and the majority of jobs in the area pay less than what I'm making right now. I would say that contributes pretty well to burnout.
Just hearing these symptoms and their possible causes layed out in front of me was hugely healing! I work at a big tech company and with this last crunch I was constantly struggling with that whole “but I’m so lucky to be here” mentality. I actually did also notice I wasn’t as empathetic as usual and it kinda spooked me, but had no idea it was related. I just thought I was becoming a terrible, irritable, negative person. I kept googling burnout because I wasn’t sure what was happening but knew something was. My teammates and I were all acting like this, and had new physical ailments popping up too. This video was incredibly useful in a ton of ways, thank you so much
I'm sure you've done your research, but for me these tension headaches come from bad posture. Since I've been mindful of my posture, I've had way fewer.
I have a real imbalance... Bipolar 2, clinical depression, PTSD. These vids are really helping. And the logical side of understanding reasons& causes is real for me. Medications: Lamictal &Prozac
My problem is that for me, burnout is about 6 hours more work than functionally disabled. Incredibly hard to pace myself. 😐 Just can"t keep up with the pack.
How do you heal from burnout when you've already set those intentions, gotten another job that's a better fit, but STILL feel exhausted and irritable and unable to concentrate? It's been a year since I left my toxic job that absolutely hit all those 6 factors. Took time off then started a really great situation a few months ago, but still feeling hardcore burned out. Thought that finding the right fit would be enough but it's clearly not. Maybe it just needs more time?
Maybe there is just too much work and you dont have any time left. I've had similar symptoms from too much mobile gaming, now that I dropped 5 grindy boring games I can manage my own time and even managed to plan when I go to sleep
I think it's normal to take more than a year to recover. Be patient with yourself and pursue as many support structures as you can implement (e.g. therapy, rest, good boundaries, supportive relationships, etc)
I started a new job with carryover burnout and ended up getting fired after 3-4 months. The new job wasn’t exactly great either. I don’t know how we recover from it except to be unemployed for months
From my own research, burn out takes up to a year to heal, and can take longer in extreme cases. So my strategy is to continue living my life simply and going easy on myself - pretend your burn out is a broken leg and don't try to walk at the same pace as everyone else yet.
This explains so much. Thank you. So its doing to much effort (not nescesary work) and not seeing the fruits of it yourself and or not being recognised for the effort you put in. And it being devaluated often by either internal thoughts and,or external pressure , misunderstanding and judgement. And resulting in not even enjoying what you normally enjoy even tho youre not depressed. Everything is flat. Boring but you cant have fun.
Thank you for discussing this topic! I quit my social work job in late 2020 after having a mental breakdown as a result of built up burnout up. It took me a year and a half of not working to recovery from it and I only did recover and go back to work (not social work!! Never again!) a month ago. I truly feel this is an epidemic. I put a lot of the blame on Neoliberalism/austerity/diminishing workers’ rights and social safety nets.
Hi Dr. K! I enjoyed how you address the serotonergic simplification of defining the multifactorial etiology of depression! I also enjoyed your take on what is essentially learned helplessness, scopes of control, and aligning with and discovering your core values. Though there were many discussed topics in this video, you mention the importance of social influences, natural remedies, and observations like time and context when assessing depression and burnout. How do you view controversial criticisms like diagnostic inflation? Additionally, the general perception and understanding of mental illness is gaining positive traction in popular media, but conversations in the real world amongst family, friends, or colleagues often hold a different tune. In the same breath, the role that we play in our own recovery is indispensable. As you mention, responsibility often lays on both sides. How do you pragmatically address the belittlement of mental well-being while still maintaining personal accountability in social contexts? I find it stressful to bite my tongue when misinformation is spread but often do or say little to nothing in what is otherwise an opportunity to promote compassion and understanding. Thank you for your time! - A curious student
I got extremely burned out during COVID. It's the community aspect that was lost. And it never really came back after COVID. That combined with me in general not finding my work fulfilling most of the time. It was enough to push me deep into burnout and when I was just treading water before, well I haven't really stopped drowning since.
I've found sort of a trend that seems to work, not in a clinical trial setting, but this makes sense. Taking away one thing at a time until equilibrium is reached, then deciding where to go from there. I think, because modern life is about more more more, that could be a solid plan going forward. Not really less less less, just finding the "more or less" and being content with it.
I got down to two things: work, and keeping up my house. That was it. That was all I was trying to actively do. I was so scared I would have to quit and have to get a different job at much lower pay. Now I am close to a planned quit and a cheaper lifestyle, so here's hoping I can use that to build back up to having interests again.
@@tomorrow4eva I met someone who had a high paying job, who took a new job at a pay cut, but in exchange they had an hour or two more each day to themselves removed from commuting and was content with it. Lower pay rates arent so bad if things balance out accordingly 😋
@@EvilNeonETC I agree, but I where I live any new job would not be in my industry, and I'm pretty central so no commute time savings. Just the same hours working for less money.
I'd really love this in the context of how to sort this out in places not work, I'm currently in school, super burnt out and there's basically no 'employer' to negotiate with. No way to leave, no way to bargain or set boundaries.
When I was faced with my first burnout diagnosis, I wasn't even working yet. I had graduated and was job-hunting (for half a year at that point). I got rejections left and right, was beating myself up for being a dumbass and having picked graphic design and illustration, not being good enough at what I do (because of course you apply with portfolios in that field). It was an awful time because I was beating myself up daily and constantly about being a fuckup freeloading at my parents', my temper got really bad (and I already have a short fuse for certain things) and because it all came from inside, there was nothing stopping myself on really trampling on my crumbling self-esteem. So the parts about internal factors REALLY got me. The funny thing is, when I was at my worst at that time, I said f it and decided to self-employ, started working as a freelance illustrator when an old collegue from uni asked me if I could do some small illustrations for a magazine he was working at. I started working part-time on the side to support my (obviously shaky) beginnings as a freelancer and what do you know, it actually helped. I may not make the big bucks but all I apparently needed was *something* to work. I do accounting part-time which is the least creative thing I can think of but I grew up handicapped and unable to do anything all my life, so just feeling useful working slowly but surely did away with nearly everything I was told was due to burnout.
I kind of had a suspicion that I was burnt out at work but... I did not expect almost every single one of these points/areas to be more or less spot on. It definitely feels like it all just feeds into itself and bleeds into the other areas.
I dont think ive ever had a day job that didnt burn me out and now im 33 and i can tell its taking its toll on me. Ive only ever been truly healthy when i was able to set and abide by MY own schedule. Im honestly dissillusioned with being gaslit that IM the stupid one for not finding meaning in exploitive work ethics. to me its not amenable that Im expected to trade the entirety of my free time and youth to employers who dont care about me, my health, my growth, goals or my contributions, for a "market rate" wage that is several times less than im worth. my reward being that i can simply survive and maybe engage in some frivolous consumerism and MAYBE get a decade or two of free time during my twilight years when i simply have no energy or living freinds left to enjoy life with. Im expected to ignore objective reality in favor of a blindly profit motivated capitalist fantasy that, much like cancer, isnt going to right itself if we just keep avoiding dealing with it.
The thing with "just changing your job" is that you are actually burnt out from your last job. Now you start a new job while already being burnt out. A new job is always a bit stressful, this is a recipe for desaster. I am not saying you should not change your job, I quit a shit job that was burning me out and it was the best decision ever, but you need to work on all these other issues that increase your mental load.
The timing of this video is uncanny. It’s 3am in Australia and I just woke up from another stress dream about my job where I was STILL doing it in my SLEEP. 13 hour days 6 days in a row really cooks your brain, so this is exactly what I needed right now at the end of my work week. Thanks Dr K. 🙏
Ayeee I’m from Australia too. I just got off from work and I’m waiting for uber eats to deliver my food but they’re taking forever. I guess ordering food at 4am is like that.
@@BigJMC did you get your food? Wha'dya get?
I worked 6 days recently, they even tried to get me to do 7 days but I said NO, and it cooked my brain a little. Thankfully I finally feel better, it was getting dicey. The work is easy and the shifts are short, but I hate that place.
@@deadinside8781 They cancelled it unfortunately 😔
It happened to me when I installed solar panels. I work in mexico and was doing about 60 to 70 hours a week and often I would wake up at 2 am because I was dreaming of falling of a ceiling or fcking something off.
Burn out to me is something that kinds of lurks in the background: It makes time seem longer, verbal exchanges with others become more of a show to get on with it rather than an actual human moment, makes you cut corners on tasks, and I am never even sure if I have burn out or not until I notice consistent mistakes and lapses in judgement. It sucks.
This is an excellent description of burn out, thanks!
"Verbal exchanges with others become more of a show to get on with rather than an actual human moment"
That hit home.
Idk if you mean something different but to me, burnout makes time feel shorter, because I'm thinking and working more slowly and I take longer breaks, so the day just runs out faster.
Also maybe somewhat unrelated but I've always found most conversations to be a 'show to get on with' rather than anything enjoyable.
Damn I am in that boat then
I have made a severe and continuous lapse of my judgement
Burnout is easy to miss IMO because it's not just one thing, it's the result of longterm stress over many little things that by themselves aren't enough to complain about. And eventually we get overwhelmed.
"Gotta go to work, oh I slept bad last night so the morning routine is harder. Missed the buss by just a minute. The customer has a billion tiny things they wanna change in the project last minute. The customer doesn't speak the native language well so it's hard to even communicate what they want. The boss now needs me to prioritize another task that needs to be finished today. I'm worried of all the other tasks I'm falling behind on now. I mess up one of the tasks so my colleagues have to correct my mistake. Now I'm tired and falling behind on personal projects in my free time as well. Family and friends are badgering me because I didn't call them lately. Tried to squeeze in some gaming but there's so little time for it that I end up staying up too late."
Rinse and repeat until you're fed up with it.
Your narrative burnt me out lol
@@BOSSDONMAN haha same
Just described my life right now. I'm so tired.
It's the death of a 1000 tiny cuts. Absolutely right.
This is so accurate!
"A system that does not allow your efforts to be seen." This is it. 100%
I would say more - the system that doesn't care about your efforts(and quality), that only care about irrelevant numbers(aka "KPI"). This is so stupid shit in so much cases. It can be applied only for some primitive fabrics, and again it doesn't care about quality, only quantity.
That's literally what alienation is. Marx wrote about it a century and a half ago and people keep thinking they can solve these structural problems by offloading the responsibility of finding purpose in a meaningless menial existence as a cog in a cold and cruel machine unto the individuals.
@@RainerRilke3 Lemme guess. The solution is the same one that has always lead to 20M+ deaths at least every single time it was tried before for it to fail in the end due to human nature and greed? Yup let's give it a try, nothing can go wrong, history doesn't exist.
@@NightLancerX not to mention that it doesn’t care about humans required to do the work. Without humans no KPI can be achieved, none, nada.
@@RainerRilke3 A note, the term "alienation" is older and comes actually from the conservative philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel, which Marx took from.
Thank you for clarifying something for me... Ive lost Empathy. A lack of ENERGY for other people. I was starting to wonder If I was just a bad person . Because I only want to focus on my own shit right now. Despite my whole life being told I'm too sensitive, and I'm a pushover, who cares too much about helping others. Yet this year, my parents died, after my fulltime caregiving for them finally ended, I've got grief, I face homelessness, my job is minimum wage hell, I have a toxic roommate, going back to school at 33.. and I just don't give a shit... Its true... I often think, when there's drama happening around me "how tf do people have energy for this shit!?." I don't even have energy for Netflix drama let alone real life.
I have depression too... Some days if all feels so.. doomed. I have nothing.. my future feels dark...
Don't give up brah, we gon make it
its sounds really hard what you are going through, send you lots of hugs and strenght.
Never give up on life. If you feel like your life is shit, think that there are people that were never even given the chances you had in your life. And I mean basic stuff like eating decent food or being able to even watch this video. Contact with other people, old or new are very likely to help. Maybe you meet a new friend one of these days, or get a decent SO for a chance. Or maybe you can try speaking to your shitty roommate and try to be nice for a change, even if you feel they don't deserve it. You might discover that they also go through hell deep inside. Anyway, life can be good if you try adapting a different perspective on a few things.
You should feel proud and accomplished with your mental and emotional fortitude up until this point. Really inspiring, because I and many other people can empathize or relate in some way. Keep on truckin gamer
Dood, I wish you all the best!
Your life doesn't sound easy but I hope you can get your shit together!!!
I think I've been burnt out since 17 because none of my jobs have ever paid enough to meet my needs in life, barely scraping by from paycheck to paycheck is literally the only thing I've known and it caused me a severe nervous breakdown last week
It's being in 24/7 survival mode instead of thriving. I grew up in poverty and any whiff of money problems now (I'm pretty financially stable now) gives me a panic attack. I hate buying stuff.
i feel both of you, really.
@jonhadley5768 same here, been poor my entire life, working paycheck to paycheck, only to find out that those years I've worked were "the good" economic times. Now with inflation and this looming recession makes it even harder to make ends meet. I feel like I've been trying to keep my head up for the last 10 years, thinking that someday it'll all work out, only to find myself staring at an endless pit of despair now. I'm not sure I'll survive this. I have no energy anymore, can't see a way out of this mess.
What’s burning people out “the other factors” is all of the administrative work now put on professionals. They have eliminated admin assistants and now professionals are expected to complete the redundant and time consuming admin tasks AND the thought work and problem solving we are actually hired to do. I’ve noticed this change over my ten years as a lawyer. I used to have a secretary and a clerk and now I have to do everything from start to finish myself. There is also a LOT of technology to keep up with and clients expect immediate responses all the time. You also have to network on LinkedIn, etc. It’s a lot.
I have this problem as an engineer too. There are part/drawing/software release processes that require using a tool call Windchill, I only need to do it once every 6 months to a year, but the software is so bad and unintuitive that I want to quit whenever I have to open the tool up. I use it so rarely, that anything I learned the last time is now different so I almost have to start over. I’ve wasted so much time on that tool, and just having some administrator that knows it and keeps up with it that could take mine and other’s requests and just handle getting it through all the checks and balances would make a world of difference. I feel like far too much of my job now is administrative bs and not engineering. I hate it.
Same here with with my engineering firm. We've also gradually shifted to hiring contractor admins, so anything extra that isn't in their job description- they simply don't have to do it! The young admins are looking to job hop as soon as they are in as well because it's a leap-frog position.
@@mattb9664 Hire a full time admin then
As a teacher I have this problem as well
@@HVDynamo I laugh because I was hired as an engineer for a project that was falling behind and 50% of my daily work is dealing with windchill. I work in validations and I spend most of my time doing this beaurocratic work instead of spending more time in the mfg. Area
Burnout is the most insidious and secretive mental issue plaguing workplaces. People don’t notice until they’re snapping at their friends or just not doing anything every day they’re not working. Just a few examples.
Yeah, for one, you don't notice it until it's too late, and for two, even if you did notice it, it's often difficult to do anything about it. Once you've gotten into a death spiral where you're underperforming due to stress, and being stressed out because you're underperforming it's very difficult to get out of it.
Yes. Also. I've just booked a week off for a mix of resting / catching up on core work tasks offline at home
I've noticed lately that whenever I have a little bit of free time I don't even know what to do with myself.
Unfortunately for me, I recently discovered my burn out in a disastrous job interview. I was the only candidate and came highly recommended by a friend who works in the agency. From start to finish I presented as a burnt out emotional wreck and didn’t get the job. That was a harsh wake up call which led to serious examination and coming to terms. Boy, was that painful.
@@basedbuddhist you took a time off and you are going to work???
I think the scariest part is when you start to realize that you really can't trust yourself anymore. I've reached the point where I have a lot of cognitive symptoms - worse memory, worse concentration, can't find words etc. I've messed up so many things in the last couple of months simply because I read something wrong, forgot something, or couldn't prioritize. I'm forced to ask people to double check my stuff and that inability to be independent feels awful. Thanks for a well-timed video!
This - this is where I am. I just realised today after missing yet another very important and very obvious thing… that my brain is no longer working. It’s so frustrating and I feel stupid 😞
Oh man I feel this!
I'm there😢...it is a struggle,
I have OCD, anxiety, terrible memory, and not feeling like you're able to trust your own brain is absolutely terrible. There have been times where I feel I can't even trust my eyes and I need someone else to help me. Everything in your comment is something I swear I've felt, and you're right, it is scary. Like, where did my brain go?
It’s not your fault! This world is not built for us and our health. Time to rebuild. ☮️
There's probably a correlation between a rise in burnout and the fact that since 1950, productivity has gone up 253% but salary has gone up 115%. Talk about a disparity between effort and yield.
What about all those people that spout work smarter not harder.. how are they going
Productivity has risen due to automation…
@@nebliik Yeah and?
That automation always leads to "Great, now you can do your same job, BUT FASTER. More widgets per hour. Higher KPIs. Work, work, work."
It's never "Cool, this actually takes pressure off me and makes my job easier."
@@nebliikAnd without pay raises that match productivity, where does that leave everyone who has to earn a salary?
The real question is how do we address this on a societal level? Because it seems like people are overwhelmingly burnt out, but for all their talk of promoting Mindfulness, companies don’t want to talk about burnout and their role in it.
This, but also the solution is massive and complex. I'd love to see our society have the capacity to experiment, I.E. adopting some of the European workplace ideology (considerably longer maternity/any paternity leave, 50-100% more vacation time throughout a year, etc.) just to see if they will have an effect. But we are so entrenched in the capitalist dogma that we will not budge in any meaningful direction.
@@ivers1001 It's not just vacation time, it's an environment that doesn't punish you for taking that vacation. I don't disagree with you, first off, but I have more vacation days than I know what to do with: summer hours, two weeks rollover from last year, four weeks this year. But I don't take it because I know my department is understaffed and I dread the pileup of work that would be waiting for me when I get back.
It's a fundamental shift in how companies retain workers. Not just increasing benefits, though that helps. I feel like everyone is being asked to put out 100% as a baseline, and then any time it gets busy or someone has time off, people don't have the unused capacity to pick up the slack. But they do it anyway until they burn out and quit.
Well, you can thank the boomers for designating their children and grandchildren to a life where ours youths are filled with stress, toil, and grind. While Boomer Bob with IQ 75 who barely passed grade school was able to perform a job that afforded him a new house, new car, wife, and 3+ kids.
@@veyrichrin If you haven't already, read up on your employee handbook. I ended up losing about 4 days of PTO that went completely uncompensated when I left my last job. In my opinion, holding so many days in reserve is risky.
Productivity (an economic metric for how much work is done per time), has been increasing world-wide for ages. That is mostly a reflection of increased technological capabilities and societal sophisticatedness, but also because across industries, your average worker can get more done per time. Not sure if this is a major factor, but reckon it's contributing.
For me burn out happens when I try to take on too much work that I don’t want to do. I get overwhelmed trying to catch up to society’s standards and having adhd that’s extremely difficult. I also go on “hustle culture” binges where I do an extreme amount of work but then crash hard when I trip. A few burn outs in the past even resulted in melancholic episodes. I’m much more careful now and am now doing better everyday.
We believe in you admiral. You are truly grand.
I was very similar to you but I took it (from what it sounds like) further than you. I squeezed every ounce of energy I had out myself week after week for almost 2 years and continued doing so even after severe health problems showed up because I didn't know what was causing them. I'm now working 20 hours a week at a very relaxed job and not putting much on my plate when I'm home. I'm still quite anxious and depressed but I now have a much more chill mindset and feel happier.
proud of u bro
"working against a system that won't let them"... nail on the head for my experience. I'm a dev for a living and faced burn out about 5 years ago. I loved the job with a passion for years until a new manager joined who had micro management problems - made the job instantly miserable. I can remember most of the symptoms you described there very vividly. I ended up quitting on the spot after a meeting one day and it took 2 years working part-time as self-employed contractor before I was healed enough to go back to a corporate job again.
I don't usually comment. The moment I watched this video was actually so perfect. It made me realize that an special person in my life is most likely experiencing burnout. I tried not to take how their lack of empathy personally, but I set a boundary and told them that maybe we can pick things up again when they can settle those things and be present. It's quite hard being on the recieving end of someone burnt out too.
obviously idk you but I’m proud of that decision. I’m kind of in a similar situation except I haven’t set that boundary. I’ve been contemplating what to do because I’ve been holding out hope for like 8+ months that they would start feeling a little better and that that would be somewhat apparent in our friendship. They haven’t and I feel sorry for them, but it’s exhausting putting a ton of effort into growing my level of honest communication with them only to receive a side of them I don’t even enjoy speaking to anymore. I’m sure I’ve contributed but it’s hard to know when they won’t be honest with me and I have autism and BPD so it can be really difficult to make rational sense of social interactions.
The one good thing that came from the Pandemic is it taught me how unsustainable the life I was living pre-covid was. I was working 10 hours a day minimum at a high stress job that made me feel important, and paid better than any job I had before, and kept me from experiencing depression and for that reason I thought I was doing well. I describe working at this job as working with a gun to my head all the time, and even if I worked literally 24/7 it still wouldn’t have been enough to please everyone who needed stuff from me. Then 2020 hit and I learned that I was not needed, I was being used. And the second the lockdown happened I was out the door. Now I prioritize things that are mine. My art, my stories, my family, my friends. I am technically working just as much and as long as before now, but since it’s on the right things and it’s within my control, I am able to take appropriate breaks and I am avoiding burn out (so far at least).
So what are the tasks you would describe as being your job right now?
Had the same experience in a microdosed moment last week as a manager having to juggle extra responsibilities as things kept going wrong in my job. I’m glad you mentioned that bit about depression, it really is insidious how the feeling of self importance and pride in your work can act as a ‘dirty fuel’ to allow you to keep going and push past your limits to get the job done. Coming to the realisation that the hobbies that bring you genuine joy are not vices that need to be excised so you can be even more ‘successful’, rather that they exist to help you to maintain your mental health, is so important. I think a lot of people implicitly know this but it can take a bout of experiencing burnout for it to really sink in.
Dayum. What country are you from? :o
I spent a better part of 3 years out of 6 taking care of a woman who didn't appreciate it. Worked over 12 hrs for 6 days starting off until my mental health started suffering. Then I had to decrease it to 4, 8 hr days and I was still worn out. Pandemic hit and I was canned, lost our apartment, had to move in with her parents, caught her cheating, and went to work in the "essential" industry with no benefits and no increase in pay during the pandemic. I absolutely refuse to step back in a kitchen as most of them are actively toxic and will use you without paying you. The job I lost at the apartment I was working 12 hrs at? I did 3 jobs and was being paid 9$ hr; I was a prep cook, dishwasher, and the dessert chef. I didn't start off doing all that, but when I got to that point and proved myself over months he still refused to give me a raise. Why work hard like that if I'm just going to be taken advantage of and not paid more?
@@wutzgedudel I swear I don’t get UA-cam comment notifications. The job that pays my salary is an administrative one where I more or less push emails around all day. The rest of the time I’m working on my personal projects, my drawing and my writing, that I hope will one day make me money.
Damn, this is the best description of burn out and I felt attacked directly. I love what I actually do, and get paid reasonably well, my life isn’t completely awful, I really like my peers, and I feel bad for complaining… but I’m declining financially slightly, doing less of the things I love at work, the workload keeps me from the things I love outside of work, I lack control where I need it, and the person I’m doing it for is literally making 10x what I am from my labor while not caring about the things I care most about… yeah, I’m burned out AF.
I usually don't comment but this really hit home for me right now. I'm 26 years old and burnt out. I'm so ashamed. The society in my country is all work-driven and I've always been an overachiever. I was never really poor but my family couldn't afford going on vacation every year either. Fast forward to my 20s and I find myself with 3 family members in need of care and somehow juggling my fulltime job (which was more than fulltime because of working overtime) and caring for them together with my mother. In January this year I had a breakdown. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat anymore. I didn't want to wake up anymore. I also experienced the lack of empathy for a long time that was described in the video and I felt horrible about it. I quit my job and haven't been working since January, I'm just so overwhelmed and therapy isn't helping me immensely. Although my boss' demands were way too many and unrealistic and although I'm aware that my mother, siblings or uncle should have taken on way more responsibility, it's my problem now. It's my responsibility to get better and honestly I feel like a failure.
Hi! Im a nurse and work in psychiatry. Im am currently burned out and I can only say that you described it perfectly.
Ive been home since september and I still get triggered if I think about work. The exhaustion is better but its sooo slow! I did wait until I couldn't get out of bed.
I do love my job and my patients. I have a high work ethic and I was told to not be as invested and just be good enough. To me that many times implied negligence and I can't. I tried to work things out with my boss for at least a year and I turned myself backward until I collapsed.
I knew better, I just could not stop.
Man this hits hard. I work a 8-5 job but most days I start at 5am and end at 11pm!
So I'm just in a bad cycle of:
I don't finish work because I'm tired and not rested.
So i work on weekends to catch up.
And then comes the week again where I'm tired and unrested.
Then work through the weekend again to finish.
And it's not healthy.
I was listening to the list and realized that I kept working while burnt out for 2 years, unfair treatment, overworked with no community and complete lack of reward. This comprehensive breakdown was more valuable than most of my research on the topic. It also clarifies how much of burn out is personal which I also noticed while going through the list. Thanks 🙏
I have been told by my psychiatrist that I'm burned out. Since I have clinical depression with anhedonia traits it all seemed the same to me. I never actually thought much of it - the lack of energy, poor performance, being utterly uninterested about my job, and that constant "eh" feeling about everything. I was a little shocked to learn some of my symptoms were caused by actually being burned out. And not my depression per se.
Everyone, please be attentive to what you are feeling and don't invalidate your struggle. And reach out for help when you need it, you might feel like you don't, but that is actually the problem.
I have had depression diagnoses off and on, but burn out feels to me like depression that just keeps getting worse.
I'm moreso just traumatized from working
@@tomorrow4eva I can't even surely say which one I "had" and which is not because there is no developed mental health-care system in mu country... It's just f*cking random. Tried once(with HUGE self-struggle and internal sacrifices) - only did things worse - quit it. First is was some personal/family problems and situation at work was "ok" for like 2 years, then some drastic episodes at work, then personal, then it was mixing up to the point it inducing each other and can't be differed anymore, and now its "too late" to fix anything of that.
I always tried my best at work regardless of there is no "individual promotion", I loved to make beautiful result and it was boring to me to "just do stuff". But boss hired new workers that were "toxic" at the full definition of this term. And after time, because of his overly-high unrealistic ambitions he became more irritated and started to nitpicking more and saying to "re-do" the already done work under sauce "let's try [another way]" without actually telling what is wrong and why it need to be re-done. Well, I figured it out myself some time after - he expected photos to "sell" the goods without respect to other factors. But photos was already nice by that time and actually doesn't made SO much impact that he demanded/expected. And that stupid ever-changing conditions of how to do my work, ugh-_- It was so stupid and pointless. Changing background will not double the sellings, lol. And it's not "my fault", it's not because it's "bad photo", it's because things just doesn't work that way. What boss really needed is for someone to tell him like "stop this fucking shit dude, you are insane? You will not 'conquer the [market of] America!!!' with just white photo background, lol. Stop increasing the staff amount, can't you see that you will not have enough work for all in a few month with this tendency?". But imagine saying all of this and not even staying at the job, but receiving your money after being fired without a lawsuit XD That surely would be a "good thing" to do, yeah, but sadly - unappreciated and unrewarded.
@@NightLancerX Yeah, I think my current job has been the major factor in my mental health challenges.
So, how are you doing now?
Well this explains why us with ADHD burn out easier. We put so much effort but it doesn't get noticed and even get called lazy when we work so damn hard for things that comes easy for other people. On top of the usual life issues that every normal human being burns out from. Good video like usual.
Burnout and my ADHD have just been a cycle for the last 15 years 🤷♀️
Why is a ADHD comment under every freaking video? I really call this ADHD wtf. Its not always about adhd
@@RichyRich2607 I'm sorry you've got issues with people identifying with something. But your negativity isn't going to stop ADHDers from voicing our support for each other in the comments
@@Shimezu Ofc not. Seems like another adhd thing ironically.
@@RichyRich2607 we aren't mystical creatures like unicorns or something, ADHD is very common. More people have access to mental health care to be diagnosed and the shame of struggling through life in a world that's made for neurotypicals is no longer spent isolated and alone behind masks to fit in.
22:40 100% this is what every student feels every day I think. A constant state of burnout since your studies doesn't affect other people or have any significant yield except to your own future.
Imo we should bring back apprenticeships. Learning where you can see actual practical results for your work.
This is 100% how I'm feeling right now and I'm 2 weeks away from graduating.
@@liachee Hi Lía its quite ironic for me to see the comment cause im in the same position right now😞
lmao she left you on read, get lost L bozo jajaj@@savybeanie
This channel is so valuable. I work in health care and people act like burnout is just part of the job and laugh about it. My problem with this is I work in an area where we diagnose cancer so apathy has no place there. But our overlords want to squeeze every ounce of energy out of you and act like we are privileged to work there. This is just the tip of the iceberg as I've experienced all of these things described in the video.
This was very interesting and I would appreciate a follow up in regards to students being burnt out. I can do great at university, but once I het home from the library I dont have energy to really do anything. I just end up watching youtube for hours. So that part was really relatable.
As a previously burned out student, what I can tell you is don't wait to consult about it if you can. I waited too long and reached a point where I couldn't even process simple questions anymore. Up until this point my grades were still some of the highest of my cohort, and because of that no one saw it comming, they all mistook my very short temper for being simply "stressed".
@@micheller3251 can you share more insights?
I'm 4.0 student doing really well, but I'm 100% burned out and about to crash and burn... Started skipping irrelevant classes a lot more, haven't done job apps since it doesn't interest me to work, procrastinating an insane amount, etc.. I basically just watch UA-cam and avoid doing any work now.
@@nathan___gage skipping non-obligatory stuff is a good decision. At this point you want to do as little as possible, and take as many naps as possible. Or if you don't need to sleep, just laying down and doing nothing is still necessary. I don't know how close you are to graduation or what program, but I was able to use my credits to get a major(60 credits) instead of a bachelor(90 credits). If there's a similar move you can make or if can afford to pause your studies for a full semester I highly recommend it as it won't get better if you don't take a serious break
@@nathan___gage if you can, talk about it with a professional they will be able to pin point what you need in particular to get better and they might have some insight regarding financial help. Hope I answered some of your questions
I'm burnt out from life. The two past years, and ongoing, has just been a constant barrage of shit. First primarily emotional and stress from what the pandemic caused us, and since a year and counting, also physical health. My back is completely busted, and has resulted in loss of muscle strength and leg functionality.
Financially it's now a complete nightmare, but physical health in combination with issues stemming from being autistic, currently is prohibiting any fix in the near future to this problem. It's literally impossible, and I've explored all types of avenues extensively over the past 3 months. WITH outside help from professionals - only to end up with a "sorry, you are screwed".
About a month ago, my psyche and body just said stop. It can't take it anymore. I do vagusnerve exercises, some mediation. Take KSM66 and Neurol. Since.
At least I don't get totally paralyzed and have muscle trembles, and extreme vertigo, now, whenever something triggers the body's stress response system. The tiniest things, could set it off as if I were about to get murdered by a cave lion any second. Absurd.
But like. Issue remains. How the F do you combat burn out, when it's your entire life situation that is the cause of it?
Especially now, when we're in unstable times and things look more complicated due to that. I live in Europe, and gas prices has skyrocketed, food prices are on the way up. Inflation is starting to pick up speed. My countrys farmers and those in the transport sector, was already in a bad situation prio to Russia invading the Ukraine. Now it's way beyond manageable. It'll be trying times even if one didn't have the issues as one has.
Being burnt out is something I identify as a road block, it's actively standing in the way of finding some sort of solution to take me out of this mess. Eventually.
Like, it is just going to make that road take so much longer and pose as a serious risk factor. Even if I'm not currently experiences depression, for how much longer can I keep that at bay?
I legit have ZERO energy. Most of the days are just a constant state of tired, and being a husk of oneself. The physical issues also prevents me from living an active lifestyle. Exercise and nature hikes were big positives for me. Used to be able to recharge energy with that.
That's exactly what I was about to write. I have burnout from mere existence!
@@MakeDemocracyMagnificientAgain sorry to hear you too are struggling.
What's frustrating, and maybe is thats only in my background, is the individuals in life who tell you you're not burnt out or you shouldn't have a reason to feel that way. Then you'll get bombarded by examples of why you should feel guilty to feel wiped.
It isn't just you, believe me
I am missing some things that are profound for me, which have helped me recover from burnout:
1. autonomic nervous system
2. convictions
3. desensitization
4. symptoms
5. recovery
1. Autonomic Nervous System.
Burnout is an inability to recover from activities due to mismagagement/imbalance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system is the part of your autonomic nervous system that tells your body its time for action: the more active it is, the higher your heart rate, the more your breath is taylored to moving, the more energy is freed up in your muscles. On the other hand, the more active your Parasympathetic nervous system, the slower your heart rate, the more active your digestive and immune system, the more taylored your breath is for resting. In a healthy body these two systems alternate and fluctuate easily and fluidly. An over- or undertaxed body has forgotten how to do this in a healthy way, and will change from one to the other too abrubtly, go into extremes on either end, gravitate towards one or the other (in case of burn-out towards the overuse of the sympathetic nervous system, and in case of bore-out towards the Parasympathetic nervous system).
Healing therefore means relearning your body this, which is very hard, and takes a long period of time. Getting guidance in setting myself a day- and week schedule that supported my body's needs and helped manage my autonomic nervous system, was hugely beneficial for me.
2. Convictions
Burnout is caused by a person's conviction that some things are so important, it is worth a lot of endurance even if there is no/little reward and if it requires the disregard of one's health. People who are burned out are incredibly strong, strong enough to set aside their own needs in order to meet the expectations they set for themselves, strong enough to become insensitized to their own body. And as dr K says: there is a discrepancy between effort and reward. So that effort is not made for the reward, and doesn't even feel good (you have maybe stopped feeling how bad it feels). Instead the effort is made out of a conviction that This Effort Is Really Important. And as you cross more of your own boundaries to make that effort, you will become more convinced that All Will Go To Shit If YOU Don't Do This, because the alternative is that you have messed up your priorities and that is unthinkable.
Millenials are often raised with the idea that anything is possible if you try, and will have to learn which things are outside their control an responsibiliry in order to learn to have healthy expectations of themselves. Other generations also each have their specific burnout-pitfalls.
3. Desensitization
Symptoms may vary greatly, depending on what it is your life looks like. That makes it hard to recognize. Dr K talks about a lessening of empathy and a grwoth of scepsis, but I am not sure I recognize that. What I have learned is that generally a burnt out person is insensitized to their body, more than they realize. Other factors in your life may worsen this: things like loss, ptsd, depression. So even though burnout may enter an otherwise well-functioning life, it is definitly hastened on by other hardships and it may be hard to see where those end and the burnout begins. In my case, a severe heartbreak topped on housing insecuriry and work insecurity made me think I just had to get myself stability and healing time and all would be well; only when a year later I was still unwell did I get a diagnosis for burnout.
Please realize: being insensitized to oneself, means also a clouded judgement. If you are burnt out, try to postpone big life decisions!!!! Consider your judgement somewhat unreliable.
4. Symptoms
Haphazardly over/under/misusing your autonomic nervous system may have all kinds of results, other than the desensitization. These are the ones I've dealt with, but this is not the full scope.
Not recovering well from you activities may mean your amigdala swells and your hippocampus shrinks, which may make it easy to panic and may make your emotional responses intense. There is probably a huge degree of survival mode - fight flight or freeze - going on there. Not recognizing yourself in your behaviour and thoughts is unsettling, it had me going through a state resembling depression early on - I hated myself for what I was becoming - but that symptom went away as I started to give myself more understanding and slack.
Your ability to concentrate and direct your attention may be damaged. At my worst I was pretty much a goldfish, forgetting thoughts the instant I got them, not being able to count past five without losing track. The best way to get much needed recovery and to resensitize, is to meditate; and the hardest thing to do without an attention span is to meditate. Don't give up on yourself, don't blame yourself, just have the attempt as a basic part of your schedule and with time you will become able to do it.
5. Recovery
Burnout on average lasts about 2,5 years. Treating it like an illness that will pass with bed rest is ill advised, better to give someone rhythm and make sure the burnt out person never does the same thing (eben taking a break) for longer than 1 hour, because there is no energy reserve for extended effort and the autonomous nervous system needs to be kind of shifted manually into different degrees of activeness or restfulness, and that is best done by alternating activities.
If you have this it may seem like it will be forever, especially if it is already lasting more than a year. But trust me, you will recover!! Journalling, rating my health and energy everyday or even multiple times a day helped me a lot maintain a sense of direction and improvenent. It is normal for there to be fallback throughout recovery and even after, which feels really scary. But those, too, will pass. You will find better ways to care fir yourself, and you will recover. Examine your convictions; find out what it is you find so incredibly important that you have pushed yourself so, and learn to make peace with not meeting that expectation you've set yourself.
I have noted with myself and others who have gone through burnout that one may develop a certain 'allergy' to the kind of situations in which you put the bar too high. If you notice a defensive or escape-like response in yourself in certain situations, it pays to find out what your expectations of yourself are in those situations, and what you need in order to get a more healthy stance in such instances.
Those are my 5 cents! I have learned these things from my psychologist, from a course in body awareness that I followed, from my psycho-somatic fysiotherapist and from all kinds of online resources, all of which have helped me find my way out of the burnout.
Commenting so I can come back later and read your comment
Same
Thanks for taking the time to share your insights in such detail! The insight about your body’s physical response and desensitization to it are spot on.
Dedication - Respecc
Wow thank you so much!
This made me reflect on my time when I was active duty until last year. Saying that you're burned out (in my experience) just gets a response of well there's nothing that we can do about it so tough it out, you need to be able to juggle working full time, school, volunteering, command involvement, etc. etc. Etc.
Go speak to a minister or pastor and get yourself heard. Just having a non-judgmental ear to listen to you can help. The military is trying to improve, but there's a cultural dimension on top, where people don't understand, empathise, or have the skills to help you. Pastoral care is what you need, and there is psychological help available, and things are getting better slowly. But don't just stew in your own juice. Find that listening ear.
I had a great team lead.
All he did was check in every few weeks. "How are you feeling at work?" "Is there anything you would like to learn or do differently?"
It's only now that he left that I notice how damn much this did for my motivation at work. Now I'm having a lot of those secret symptoms..
I would be interested in hearing your perspective on autistic burnout. I think there are some similarities to what you described in terms of the circumstances and factors leading up to typical burnout, but the consequences and experience of autistic burnout are markedly different. For e.g. many of us are hyper-empathetic - for me, my default state is empathy. I did not lose my empathy when I entered into a state of burnout (in some cases this can make symptoms worse, since we feel things more intensely - and have to process not only our own trauma but the feelings and needs of others as well, even in that low energy state). I was in fact still empathizing with my abusers even as they were knowingly inflicting trauma.
Also, autistic people can end up with what amounts to brain damage in burnout - loss of skills and abilities that can sometimes be permanent. And in many cases we do know what is causing our burnout but we are unable to change the circumstances to make it better, for e.g. when we are affected by other people's biases and targeted hostility against us for aspects of our identity that we cannot control (hence the 85% unemployment rate among us). I experienced an extremely traumatic work environment where every attempt to better the situation - communication, requests for feedback, attempts to adapt, to advocate for reasonable accommodations, etc. ended up increasing the hostility and damage directed at me.
The circumstances where harm is directed at you by default, yet action of any kind to mitigate that harm causes a backlash and even more harm, induces a state of complete paralysis and destruction. There is not enough research to paint a clear picture of the road to recovery for autistic burnout to help people like me find our way out. I have been unable to return to work since that experience, and every time I read a job description in the tech field or sit down to try to code again, it triggers my PTSD from what happened to me. It has been over a year and I don't know if I can get better, especially since I cannot imagine a scenario where anything I did differently could change what happened to me. I even tried to leave but they gaslit me and convinced me that my perception was wrong - until it was too late and the damage was already done. It's foolish to knowingly enter shark infested waters without any protection when you know the sharks are starving and have already mauled and fed on you in previous instances.
In autistic burnout there is the twofold question of how to heal the physiological and neurological damage as well as how to address the psychological damage - and going forward, how to cope in circumstances where you will be harmed no matter what you do. What is the healthy adaptive response when one needs to engage with a debilitating environment and malicious people in order to obtain basic sustenance? Most allistic people can change their circumstances, avoid people or dynamics that are causing harm, and start over. But we autistics cannot (at least not to an effective enough degree) - we encounter this sort of bias and hostility in most work environments. Some of us can successfully mask, so that we are not identified and targeted directly, but that just drives the damage inward and prevents us from taking measures to meet our physiological and psychological needs.
I'm curious if you've looked into autistic burnout and if you have any thoughts about how we might navigate out of it.
I’ve only started to feel the mental toll of the pandemic now that we’re post-pandemic. So much has happened to me both good and terrible over the pandemic, for example I graduated high school but I didn’t have any way of celebrating it. I was fortunate enough to receive unemployment but my habits made me irresponsible with it. I also gave half of my payments to my mom for rent. Then I had to lose two of my cats that I grew up with as my only emotional crutch at home, and my third one the youngest died before we moved. When apartment lease was up and we had nowhere to go because of money. Fortunately, a family friend took us in and gave us a “temporary” place to stay in their home out of town. This was two years ago and we still live w this friend in their home. I lost a lot and although I feel determined to earn it all back, but I really would just go afk irl. I always feel ashamed of myself at the end/start of every day because I know I can perform tasks extremely well if I’m just present for it, however, there’s just always something in the way now. All of the characteristics of burn out really popped out for me, as in a circumstance would easily come to mind each one of them. Ego, Isolation/community, control, reward, etc. I just never thought it could be burn out because I haven’t worked a job in two years, but I am slowly mounting the horse again. Thank you for this video man. There could be a lot of other things going on with me, but this one was insightful and I’m glad it came from someone reliable and understanding! :)
I feel like Covid really pushed things into overdrive. It was basically a learned helplessness situation where we were kept stressed for months/years while being gaslit about the severity of the stress and our internal alarm system is basically broken (sort of like insulin resistance in diabetes)
Agreed. And the US + Canada have been getting more fascistic and shit just keeps getting crazier, all while we're supposed to just perform business as usual. This system is fucked
@@Cobalt985This. I'm like we just had millions of people just disappear and we're just supposed to work more? No wonder people don't act right.
You nailed it--a mass experiment to see if they could push us into a violent revolution.
thank you for this. I've been in an autistic burnout for years now, no specialized help, on top of chronic illness. I've been depressed before but this really helped articulate the distinction for me. i do experience loss of cognitive ability and can no longer independently compensate for many of my autistic traits, and it looks like a very severe depression on the surface since it's so much harder to perform basic tasks. but i experience little to no anhedonia. i cant confidently say when I'll receive help and i don't know how I'm supposed to change my situation without it. but with my status quo its easy to forget that there's a systemic problem, and i can only climb out of burnout for so long before i get sucked right back into it. if any healthy neurotypical person was in my position they'd be absolutely thriving. and i still have that motivation and joy and desire to do the things i would do if i were thriving, so it's easy to act as though im actually in a position to and end up making it worse. and i don't want doing things i love and are good on paper to be bad for me, and external sources only see the paper part, so there's pressure both from myself and outside to pretend I'm better off than i am. so even acknowledging it feels like I'm asking for too much or exaggerating. it doesn't help that that idea's been conditioned in my whole life because 14 years was far too long to go without any diagnosis of any kind and it took years after that to diagnose my actual chronic illnesses and autism.
Burnout is a distinctively modern problem. "Researchers studying burnout" is a really funny statement, they'll never point out that people are pressed to work more and more for less and it's gotten worse (at least in the US) since the 70s.
Not as modern as you might think, i suspect. But also is that really a researchers job?
I think that limiting it to just being work related is too restrictive. It should be whenever you have to invest in something heavily emotionally.
I feel burnout whenever I have to constantly engage with people. I can work at a job for dang near forever as long as I don't have to interact with anyone, but I suffer all the symptoms of burnout when I have to constantly interact with people, and that includes my personal life.
I love watching your videos because they really help me think objectively about my own mental health and it helps me figure out where my problems are. This entire video, you were talking about burnout at work. I kept thinking, "but it's not work that's making me feel burnt out," and I figured it out about half way through. My house is a mess because my ADHD prevents me from doing all of the work that I know needs to be done and I don't have the energy after work to make much of a dent in fixing it, so I'm constantly stressing over all of the things that I know I need to do but I don't have the time or energy to do all of them. Gonna be working on how to deal with that.
I hope he does a video on family burnout because sometimes living with my parents, constantly fighting while getting NOWHERE really gets me down and doesn't make me want to do anything. I feel both depressed and burnt out at the same time
Oh hey, same
Recently I ve been reading a book called Island by Audlous Huxley and there was this interesting idea of having multiple families that you can always go to for a day or more if you want to and change enviorment even if you love your personal family and everything is fine. I really liked that idea, sometimes just the same patterns appear over and over again at home and that is so annoying and tiring. Going to some other place just to learn how other people live and their philosophy on life and stuff would be so refreshing…
It’s essentially a condition where you’ve been on an elevated stress level for so long that your alarm system is basically broken
@@jedrekpawlowski9645 Huxley goated
same. my parents using the threat of refusing to feed me and expecting me to live off of cup noodles and ramen sucks. Narcissism in using food to manipulate your child sucks.
When you open up to coworkers about how you’re feeling: They think you are ungrateful or just need to change the way you work or your outlook. In my opinion, you can acknowledge that nothing drastically toxic is going on at work and still feel like you may want to move on. If everyone was complacent or had that same attitude, we most likely will be robbed of people’s talents and interests in other lines of work.
Shi~~~~ how'd you know i needed this? My mom has metastatic breast cancer and I'm a caregiver, I'm only 27 I've been doing this since i was 25... I'm burnt out from work.... And also depressed.. i feel like you spoke to me specifically in this video. I struggle with control, SOOOOO much! 😭
Sorry to hear this
I am turning 25 and faced my mom's mortality when she got diagnosed with thyroid cancer for the 5 months it to to declare remission after surgery (and radioactive iodine, in case any tissue was missed).
Disturbing to imagine she wouldn't have this good of an outcome.
I hope you can keep copping
@@fionafiona1146 sigh~ the struggle is so real. Virtual hugs to you too
Great content, glad some light is being shone on this!
As someone who is looking into finding a mental health professional and has struggled with both depression and burout it was really helpful explaining how it differs from depression was extremely helpful. Over the many years I have become rather numb to depressed feelings since they have been so common which has made it really hard for me to understand what I should be focused on working with depression and grief counseling or stress and burnout. I recognize that I have some depressive episodes but this helped make it crystal clear that I have burnout and stress as the focal points that I need help with. Thank you for always providing knowledge around these topics.
This video has made all the difference. I used to say I was tired until I realized I was actually burned out. Just understanding is a weight off my shoulders. Thank you.
Impeccable timing of this video as usual 😅 I didn’t realize it until recently how burnt out I was at work. This video really resonated with me; on the surface work was fine, I like my job, and I’m being paid well, but I had no motivation to do anything. It was mainly the community and reward aspect, where I felt extremely isolated from the rest of my coworkers socially and professionally (since I’m about 10 years younger than everyone else, and my work didn’t really overlap much, resulting in a lack of collaboration). Because of that isolation it really felt like my contributions were meaningless and I had less value as an employee compared to everyone else.
I’m not really sure where I’m going with this comment lol. I’m still working through it but it’s nice to feel seen by this video. ❤️
Perfect timing!
Same here
Ikr I literally got the notification and went 'perfect giming, Dr K.'
I think you’re right on about burnout - it isn’t just about having to do things that are hard and exhausting, it’s about doing more things that you have to do than things that you choose to do. Creating personal goals and working toward them is just as important to recovering from burnout as decreasing how much time you spend on your job or other responsibilities. Good luck with your new routine!
the constant feeling where the things you put effort towards don't really matter, then questions like "why do it in the first place?" pop up, you become depressed and have low energy because there's no motivation...
i feel that a lot of in my corporate job, more so in huge companies, you feel your contributions don't change anything for your workplace, or society... i worked in little company (60 employees or so), i worked more, and they payed less, but i felt more fulfilled than now that i work for a giant company... at least my coworkers and bosses are awesome people and help curb that feeling a lot
edit: a lot of people need more recognition for their work, and visibility of the impact the things they do make on their company/environment, i think it would help a lot of people, but the feeling of unfairness could be accentuated this way... such a difficult problem to tackle
I know that medical workers are a good example of burnout but us teachers/childcare providers are also suffering immensely from burnout. Teaching is an incredibly underpaid, overworked, and unappreciated job and it’s terrifying the lack of empathy that slowly creeps in after years of dealing with parents that don’t care about their children, admin that only care about profits/cutting costs, and coworkers that are also losing their empathy…
it’s sad and scary and I every day I feel myself losing my passion for my job bc I can’t let go of my ideals of what we should be doing to support children based of current studies, which just simply will never change in my lifetime bc the ppl in charge care about the status quo from the old days.
How long have you been teaching, and how do you feel now?
I'm watching this after supposively having been cured of my burnout with therapy (with focussed on social anxiety which is definately a contributor) but listening to your description of how a person with burnout feels and how they act I fit the bill and will contact my doctor tomorrow about this for sure
Bro I’m burnt out on life man I’m tired of this shit
Hang in there man, a lot of people feel the way you do but this life has so much to give and you have a lot to feel and see. We just gotta do it one day at a time. I feel you.
@@disasterallosaurus thank you man, life is just so stressful rn and I don’t really have an outlet to express my feelings, I just listen to music because that’s my therapy lol, but seriously, thank you man
same man life is rough af
bro
@@yehaw666 bro life is tough, we gotta make it man thats it dude
I have gotten better in taking risks and not fear failure, but as a much as I like that I feel like I can do anything no matter how difficult, and am often determined, I don't realize I am putting a lot on my plate. I kind of tunnel vision myself to get things done which ignores some basic needs sometimes like eating properly and sleep. In times where I'm supposed to have fun and relax I'd sometimes think about working on something. I don't give myself that moment to just sit and enjoy the present, keep thinking what's next. I often feel unfilled and upset, and feel like I am loosing time. Thing is, this is referring to my own projects and goals, this is not even about my full time job. So on top of all of that, yeah, I am stressing myself out in my free time. Home is work, work is work, I'm also a student, and I am trying to stay in touch with friends, and ultimately this is not leaving time to take care of myself. I realize... where's me in the schedule? I left an important person out. I am working towards giving myself breaks and make sure I am also taken care of, I need this guy to kind of... stay alive and healthy or something like that? Yeah let's do that.
20:52 - "individuals who try really hard against a system that doesn't let them" - that really hit me hard
Ohhh man, this hit HARD. I’m a 35-year-old single mom to a 6-and-a-half-year-old son who inherited my ADHD and ODD (and the emotional dysregulation that goes with it), living with parents who are only supportive financially, and who often actively disrespect and undermine me as a person and especially as a parent, so I spend far too long having to act as psychologist/therapist for my son to mitigate/prevent the psychological damage they’ve been doing to him (never mind to myself). I’m also a full-time mostly remote college student working towards a bachelor’s in int’l business in hopes of moving to Japan in a handful of years, and after a 15-year summer break, and as a former gifted kid who wasn’t diagnosed with “moderate-to-severe ADHD” until I was 29 and a half, it’s been HARD. Yeah, I’m pulling a 4.0, but I’m drowning just trying to keep up with the work itself-it just so happens that I only produce high-quality work. If I wasn’t smart enough to understand most of the material on the first pass, I’d be absolutely screwed because I genuinely cannot imagine having time for anything resembling “studying” (review). I’ve also been working for a dive casino’s hotel that I can’t stand working for (values clash), and while I love my coworkers and my direct boss, I’ve been minimum wage for SIX YEARS despite being the second most senior person there (high turnover rate), and regularly praised as The Best at all the Things, and everyone’s go-to, etc. (reward/fairness disparity). Now, I realize a huge part of this is the fact that I have never gotten up the nerve to try to negotiate my wages, partially because as an unofficial accommodation, my bosses have overlooked the fact that I am routinely 5-to-10 minutes late to every shift (once I’m there, I barely take breaks and pull more than my weight). The primary reason I’ve stayed (besides risk aversion) is the fact that they’ve been so accommodating for allowing me to work only a day or two a week while I’ve been in school, which I cannot imagine I would be able to find starting at a new job, especially as those workdays occasionally shift around depending on my school schedule, etc. (I have always made it a point to keep one of both of those days our busiest days to keep “pulling my weight” when I’m most needed.) I’m especially appreciative of the fact that the accommodations my boss has made for me started a year or so BEFORE I got my diagnosis and knew “what my problem was,” and she’s continued to be supportive and encouraging as I started on different meds and we all saw how much my performance improved. It doesn’t help that I USED to be an ambivert, but dealing with the public at the front desk has put my extrovert half in a coma, and due to severely depleted energy and increasingly nonexistent free time, I’ve stopped going out with friends, and stay home as much as possible, usually working on schoolwork. I have had to learn the hard way (and am still learning) to enforce boundaries (starting with myself) regarding my availability, time, and energy, and learning to say no to more work, and to reduce my current workload, but my internal drive is constantly screaming that it’s never enough, and I “should” be doing so much more with all this *~*PoTeNtIaL*~* and… yeah, I’ve been burned out to varying degrees for years, and it’s lead to more than one breakdown over the course of the pandemic (I started college the summer of 2020, and my son started kindergarten at the same time). As much as I appreciate the Anti-Work movement and as much as I realize a livable wage would be double what I make, assuming we were ever allowed to work enough hours that they’d be forced to call us full-time and give us benefits (upper management is extremely shady and exploitative), I just feel stuck until I graduate and can either yeet myself across the Pacific or begin to explore non-min-wage options, which is at least three years out, and it’s exhausting.
ADHD-parent-of-ADHD-kids club!! I hope things are going better for you more than when you posted this last year : )
I hope you’re doing better at this point, rooting for you!
It is ok to be unhappy with a good-enough life. We are taught humility and guilt in equal measure, to be grateful is good but we are taught to go beyond and stop asking for things we need, because some arbitrary minimum is is met.
It is okay, and indeed good, to ask fof more so that you can be sustainably happy.
I feel like I was oversold on what was achievable. Probably because what used to be achievable a generation or two ago is so much harder now.
@@tomorrow4eva it also will not help that even if things like the minimum wage being jacked up to $25 (which is actually a living minimum wage) and payment for services is now kept commensurate with inflation or deflation, every thing else is so much worse. Companies control the world, and government kowtow to them or national addictions or national shows of power or national ego. Everyone is far more distant. No one is going to actually solve the climate crisis, and when a solution does appear it will be shut down immediately then converted to a form that reinforces the status quo or companies will zealously enforce it to punish competitors. Respect may be given but it’s only because everyone is generally hostile to everyone else. And it won’t solve the lack of any community anywhere.
While better wages would solve the problem of security it will not solve the quadrillions of malaises that make up today. Furthermore, said solution will usually not future-proof itself meaning the status quo will slam harder than before, taking into account new technologies.
@@iantaakalla8180 Yeah, I try not to think about it too hard.
Often, people don't leave jobs... they leave managers. When my boss/manager/owner dismisses my knowledge and professional knowledge/expertise... burnout happens to me. Every time. I look much younger than I actually am (36 but look ~22), so I find this has been a chronic issue in my life at various workplaces. Facing a, "What do YOU know- you're just a kid" kind of attitude. I am underpaid for my twelve years of expertise and this is when I notice it the most, which reinforces the bad feelings. The other year when I was feeling burnout I asked for a raise and got relatively large one, and that helps. But I know that I place more value in his trust in my integrity, knowledge, and ability than in my pay and each negative experience has a cumulative effect. So those bad feelings are rarely far away now. I'll be asking for another raise soon. Perhaps, because I do not have his trust, I feel he might as well pay me more because my work has value and makes the company a lot of money. I am no longer invested in the company at all. I am only invested in MY work and the patients I work with. I love my patients. I don't care anymore about the rest of it. The owner's sister happens to be the payroll officer and she basically told me I make too much money. So now I refuse to do any work off the clock, easy work that I didn't mind doing before. I feel like I'm not helping the team because I'm not helping them when I can... but I am worth my pay. Why should I work for nothing for a company that doesn't value me? I do my work but I just had to remove myself from investing in a company that wasn't interested in investing in me and it's a healthier place for me. For now. I just focus on the positive: my patients and my treatment relationships with them.
Holy crap everything that was just described matches exactly what I’m going through right now, I was beginning to feel like a narcissistic
Selfish cynical asshole who only cared about himself burnout has really torn me out I couldn’t even begin to tell you how much per now has affected my life in all aspects I’m so glad dr.k made this video now I know Who I really am.
Thank you. I'm going through burnout right now and, I really love what I do, but be treated very unfairly by my boss, over and over again, is getting every will to work that I have. I never thought I'd pass through gaslight at work. I have constant feedbacks about it and have set boundaries with him, but talking to a wall would be a better use of my time. Even that I know what is causing it, this video/exercise will help me analyse if I'm not missing anything. You're the best, Dr. K!
Amazing breakdown. One hour ago "burnout" to me was just a fancy modern speak for being bored and intentionally irresponsible (which can be justified) at work. Now completely get what burnout is about and I see why I actually feel burned out, everything that's wrong with some of my approaches and why I feel "down" but it doesn't really feel like depression. And I see how both myself but also management/org (the nice and the horrible ones) both are to blame.
Kind of sucks because when you get to a company you want thanks to a manager there, and the team is actually like a family, of course you'd like to go above and beyond and contribute. But that burnout gap between effort and reward simply needs to be addressed or it will be fuel for explosion. If they expect me to be another incompetent uncaring wage slave then there's no point trying to keep banging against the wall and try to perform above expectation, save that energy for something else.
I'm mostly over my burn out now. I basically work less, earn more, and started exercising and socialising more. The most important one was to start working less. Couldn't really start doing the others until I had reduced my workload for a long time.
I never lost my empathy for others, but my ability to focus and do my job correctly took a big hit. In fact, I just got let go.
I've been so stressed I've been having stress-induced pseudo-seizures. That hasn't happened since I was in my abusive relationship 15 years ago. The dishes and laundry keep piling up, and doing anything about it takes as much effort as pushing a car off my broken legs.
As someone that works in Finance, I absolutely see the "so and so gets paid more and does less" argument. Everytime there is a minimum wage increase, you will hear people say "the wage gap is even smaller". I never hear them complain about the amount, it's always the relation to other people's wages and the value they derive from being paid more. It is a downside of being in a job role where you know what everyone is paid
Great video as always!
What if it’s just life burning you out? And it’s all you and there’s nothing you can do? I feel like I’m in that boat. I’m older and it’s either that or a midlife crisis. No home no family working a dead end retail job despite three college degrees. School is easy but when I’m done I’m just “over it” and try looking for something else.
Ruined plenty of relationships over my mind doing this. Can’t find any motivation. Don’t even know what goals I have if any. Just very tired of everything. Mentally spiritually emotionally.
You just made me realize that all this time, when I thought I was just becoming a bad person that is irritated by a lot of things in life, was actually because of Burnout. I've almost lost my wife because of it ! This video was one of the most useful I've seen in my 33 years of existence. Burnout is becoming so frequent and our society don't really take this problem seriously enough IMO. Good information is hard to find and the definition of Burnout for most people couldn't be more wrong. Thank you so much for making this for free, I'm so grateful I've stumbled upon this ! Hard to describe how much help and hope you've just giving me.
I always felt a sick sense of relief whenever we went into lockdown because I felt burnt out. Luckily in Australia we got a decent amount of government support so for me lockdown just meant stay inside and earn more money than you get from your 40hr work week anyway.
My sister got 70% government pay replacement and 15% by the company... because the union negotiated for that.
Us Americans are baffled every time I mentioned it, let alone her student job at the cinema covering living expenses and tuition at 15 -20 hours a week (weekend nights)
In the US half the population was ANGRY that people made more from govt support than they did from their jobs. So they KILLED the support for all. Now we have record homelessness and foreclosures are up 700%. Never come here. Save yourselves.
@@939449
The other half of people is mildly displeased with how little people used to be making?
@@fionafiona1146 damn...the government is magical
its like the money comes out of nowhere
why dont they just pay us everyday?
@@caralho5237 they stop when people file according numbers (10k a year ish) in taxes in order to mittigate inflation, except the payments supposed to impact behavior, infrastructure subsedise and it's own maintenance.
But given the inflation target is above 0 there's some leverage
burnout for me happens because I'm juggling self care (working out + self-studying), my emotional issues, a full time job, and being fully independent. If I worked 35-36 hours a week instead of 40 I would be much more okay. an emotional trigger will tax my system too. Broke up with my girl in Feb, so I'm handling loneliness/not having any love/support creeping back into my life
you got this bro! remember it's all a proces and you don't need to be perfect in everything straight away. 🙏
Wow. By far the most significant upload I’ve witnessed thus far following Healthy GamerGG these short two years.
I am experiencing compassion fatigue in My line of work as a cannabis consultant for medical card-holding patients in My respective u.s state. I’ve become a glorified cashier in most cases, and in others an emotional tampon for people to unleash their repressed and resented emotions. I quite literally do not know what to do with Myself most days.
Edit: spelling
I'm glad I found this video, as I do come across your videos from time to time.
I am in a burnout state that I've tried to recover for 3 or 4 years now. An analogy I made when speaking to a therapist was that my brain is like an enclosure, like the ones where you have sheep or horses. So it is fenced but you can still see outside of the fence, and sometime something escapes from the fence (e.g. when you get the occassional anxiety). So when I got forced by a therapist to take sickleave and rest, that fence just shattered.
What I mean with that is that my anxiety went haywire. I couldn't even go an hour without my anxiety spiking. My mind couldn't focus on anything. I have barely any memories of the first couple of months, since all I did was trying to cope the anxiety and sleep. The recovery for me during that period was to rest, a lot of rest. Let the brain heal and recover. For the analogy it was to get a fence up asap so that the sheep (anxiety) could get contained.
It took me about 2.5 years to get back to a state that I could work at a 100% capacity again. I still had anxiety issues that limited my life heavily, but it felt that it was going to the correct direction. 6 months later I get hit with a new burnout. The work got very stressing, we were overworked and there was drama in the workplace that made me feel stressed and irritated. The new burnout started 1.5 years ago and I'm still recovering, and this time it is going a lot slower than the first time.
I hope you get to talk to someone that is also suffering from burnout, as it would be interesting to hear someone else's perspective how it affected them, how they recovered from it and how that journey was.
Also, thank you for lifting this subject! I feel that this doesn't get highlighted enough, and with the thoroughness!
So I watched this video when it first came out and remember thinking then that I might be starting to get burnt out. Now, a few months later, I've come across it again and 5 minutes in I'm just thinking, "How did it get so much worse and I didn't realize it?" I'm really glad that you talked about this topic. I need to make some changes with my life and environment.
The timing on these videos lately have been spooky. From the bottom of my heart, thank you Healthy Gamer team. Thank you, Dr. K.
These videos are so helpful thank you for making them❤️
Was writing an essay...tldr. Hit veeery close to home. I wish I came across this value point years ago.
Values are the absolute elephant in the room in my life. I´m very truthseeking, no bullshit, rightious and value honesty and authenticity very highly. Studying social sciences...the political, feminist and influence population part goes completely against everything I stand for. On the other hand the law, languages, sociology, psychology, communication and business/work/organization stuff was exactly what I was looking for.
Man this has been eye opening or at least extremely reassuring to me. I´ll just have to completly navigate around the stuff that frankly said disgusts me. I completly isolated myself btw, but tbh it was better than pretending to be one of them.
Ur the best Dr. K and HG Community.
uh yea im thiking based...
wow this video came at the perfect time. watching now
Very in depth and in formative explanation
I never realized how isolation could be a factor in burnout until you pointed it out here. I'm doing freelance work in a field I love, but working at home constantly and rarely talking to anyone (besides my family) has been taking a toll on me. Because there's not much to do once work is done, I take on more work which eventually stresses me out later on. It's an insiduous cycle to break out of.
Go to a park for an hour look at birds
Honestly I think the isolation speeds up the breakdown of the illusion of importance and family and all the other corporate stuff...
This video is 1h of pure gold. Thank you!! 🙏🏼
I'm burned out also because of my home issue with the bad neighbor actually stealing a portion of my land. We were wanting to sell the property and this scumbag was starting to bring his equipment onto a part of it... the best analogy is like having cancer, but with no real endpoint and with the possibility of real violence. I let key people and 'teammates' (which is another BS term at work) at my employer know...and the most they could offer was to take time off if I needed to deal with anything.
I thankfully was able to get it resolved without suing (and the buyers not even knowing about what was going on), and sell at a profit.
I've basically gone to working a quiet-quitting status, and work at my own pace at work for the time being while I'm still settling into the new home (which is in an area where that will never happen again.)
This is such a helpful talk. My small biz was acquired by a bigger fish last year and both staff and management are seriously burned out with this transition. The staff, especially, are getting inundated with BD support requests from leadership and that seems to be all that’s celebrated. The value discrepancy example (stay late for insurance billing v patient care) is such a helpful example.
For the longest time I thought that my lack of energy, cynicism and short fuse was because I had some sort of vitamin deficiency. After trying all sorts of supplements, nothing made a difference, I had to concede that the problem lies elsewhere.
I thought I had depression, but after reading on the subject, I concluded that either I don't have it, or it's somewhat atypical.
Only 20 minutes in this video, and I must admit that burnout actually fits how I feel almost perfectly.
I long thought that I probably should visit a professional about my problem, but I have reservations about finding a good one that can actually fix my issue.
Also, being inherently neurotic, introverted and existentially oriented just complicated the problem, because anything good that I happen to achieve, the analytical-cynical part of my personality just picks it to pieces, like a carrion bird does with a carcass, until nothing remains.
I also picked up smoking as a coping mechanism, and I can't kick it no matter what I do.
Oh, and the compulsive shopping. I always loved gadgets of all types, so I keep buying all this stuff, for that dopamine rush, only to realize that it's useless, and I end up hating myself for it, only to repeat the cycle over and again. It's almost like I'm trying to fill an internal bottomless pit, a void that can't be filled...
I'm not even sure what I want, even worse, I'm not sure I want anything anymore. I only feel the most powerful of emotions, like misplaced lust or anger, as they're the only ones still capable of piercing the nothingness of my emotional void.
I desperately want to feel something other than anger or lust, to have direction again, dreams, something to move towards, like in my teens. But I feel nothing. My compass, psychological and moral, is utterly shot.
I hate this so much...
I feel you and can relate to your inherent character. I’m in a similar predicament. The bottomless pit is solved by going within, it’s just being forced to do work that is hated tears our soul apart until we find work we enjoy, and that is the issue. Kinda keeps us down while it’s keeping us down. And then we have to recover from burnout which might take some time. But going within or writing/typing everything down that’s bothering you might be a good step to clarity and processing this overload that our society gives on a tarnished platter.
i think i understand that. i think i have a few adaptations, like having fun with myself. i make myself laugh or sing in the car. that might be the one thing keeping it all together
You could not possibly understand how timely and reassuring this is, along with a handful of your more recent videos. That's all.
Going to go out on a limb and disagree with you on the antiwork reddit forum. I started my work career around the time of the 2008 crash and every job I had a really abusive boss because they knew I had so little options to go against them. And everywhere paid so little I could barely make ends meet. Even today if something were to happen to my husband my entire paycheck would barely cover the cost of rent. I don't particularly like my current boss so I've been looking and the majority of jobs in the area pay less than what I'm making right now.
I would say that contributes pretty well to burnout.
Just hearing these symptoms and their possible causes layed out in front of me was hugely healing! I work at a big tech company and with this last crunch I was constantly struggling with that whole “but I’m so lucky to be here” mentality. I actually did also notice I wasn’t as empathetic as usual and it kinda spooked me, but had no idea it was related. I just thought I was becoming a terrible, irritable, negative person.
I kept googling burnout because I wasn’t sure what was happening but knew something was. My teammates and I were all acting like this, and had new physical ailments popping up too.
This video was incredibly useful in a ton of ways, thank you so much
I have chronic tension headaches for the past 3 years till now. I''m burned out from being burned out.
I'm sure you've done your research, but for me these tension headaches come from bad posture. Since I've been mindful of my posture, I've had way fewer.
I have a real imbalance... Bipolar 2, clinical depression, PTSD. These vids are really helping.
And the logical side of understanding reasons& causes is real for me.
Medications: Lamictal &Prozac
My problem is that for me, burnout is about 6 hours more work than functionally disabled. Incredibly hard to pace myself. 😐 Just can"t keep up with the pack.
This is the single most educational video and best explanation of burnout I've ever seen. Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge 🙏
How do you heal from burnout when you've already set those intentions, gotten another job that's a better fit, but STILL feel exhausted and irritable and unable to concentrate? It's been a year since I left my toxic job that absolutely hit all those 6 factors. Took time off then started a really great situation a few months ago, but still feeling hardcore burned out. Thought that finding the right fit would be enough but it's clearly not. Maybe it just needs more time?
Sounds like you should go talk to a professional
Maybe there is just too much work and you dont have any time left. I've had similar symptoms from too much mobile gaming, now that I dropped 5 grindy boring games I can manage my own time and even managed to plan when I go to sleep
I think it's normal to take more than a year to recover. Be patient with yourself and pursue as many support structures as you can implement (e.g. therapy, rest, good boundaries, supportive relationships, etc)
I started a new job with carryover burnout and ended up getting fired after 3-4 months. The new job wasn’t exactly great either. I don’t know how we recover from it except to be unemployed for months
From my own research, burn out takes up to a year to heal, and can take longer in extreme cases. So my strategy is to continue living my life simply and going easy on myself - pretend your burn out is a broken leg and don't try to walk at the same pace as everyone else yet.
This explains so much. Thank you. So its doing to much effort (not nescesary work) and not seeing the fruits of it yourself and or not being recognised for the effort you put in. And it being devaluated often by either internal thoughts and,or external pressure , misunderstanding and judgement. And resulting in not even enjoying what you normally enjoy even tho youre not depressed. Everything is flat. Boring but you cant have fun.
Thank you for discussing this topic! I quit my social work job in late 2020 after having a mental breakdown as a result of built up burnout up. It took me a year and a half of not working to recovery from it and I only did recover and go back to work (not social work!! Never again!) a month ago. I truly feel this is an epidemic. I put a lot of the blame on Neoliberalism/austerity/diminishing workers’ rights and social safety nets.
I love this new preview slideshow edit thing! It's so satisfying
Hi Dr. K!
I enjoyed how you address the serotonergic simplification of defining the multifactorial etiology of depression! I also enjoyed your take on what is essentially learned helplessness, scopes of control, and aligning with and discovering your core values. Though there were many discussed topics in this video, you mention the importance of social influences, natural remedies, and observations like time and context when assessing depression and burnout. How do you view controversial criticisms like diagnostic inflation?
Additionally, the general perception and understanding of mental illness is gaining positive traction in popular media, but conversations in the real world amongst family, friends, or colleagues often hold a different tune. In the same breath, the role that we play in our own recovery is indispensable. As you mention, responsibility often lays on both sides. How do you pragmatically address the belittlement of mental well-being while still maintaining personal accountability in social contexts? I find it stressful to bite my tongue when misinformation is spread but often do or say little to nothing in what is otherwise an opportunity to promote compassion and understanding.
Thank you for your time!
- A curious student
Feeling the burnout so hard.
I got extremely burned out during COVID. It's the community aspect that was lost. And it never really came back after COVID. That combined with me in general not finding my work fulfilling most of the time. It was enough to push me deep into burnout and when I was just treading water before, well I haven't really stopped drowning since.
I've found sort of a trend that seems to work, not in a clinical trial setting, but this makes sense. Taking away one thing at a time until equilibrium is reached, then deciding where to go from there.
I think, because modern life is about more more more, that could be a solid plan going forward. Not really less less less, just finding the "more or less" and being content with it.
I got down to two things: work, and keeping up my house. That was it. That was all I was trying to actively do. I was so scared I would have to quit and have to get a different job at much lower pay. Now I am close to a planned quit and a cheaper lifestyle, so here's hoping I can use that to build back up to having interests again.
@@tomorrow4eva I met someone who had a high paying job, who took a new job at a pay cut, but in exchange they had an hour or two more each day to themselves removed from commuting and was content with it. Lower pay rates arent so bad if things balance out accordingly 😋
@@EvilNeonETC I agree, but I where I live any new job would not be in my industry, and I'm pretty central so no commute time savings. Just the same hours working for less money.
I'd really love this in the context of how to sort this out in places not work, I'm currently in school, super burnt out and there's basically no 'employer' to negotiate with. No way to leave, no way to bargain or set boundaries.
When I was faced with my first burnout diagnosis, I wasn't even working yet. I had graduated and was job-hunting (for half a year at that point). I got rejections left and right, was beating myself up for being a dumbass and having picked graphic design and illustration, not being good enough at what I do (because of course you apply with portfolios in that field). It was an awful time because I was beating myself up daily and constantly about being a fuckup freeloading at my parents', my temper got really bad (and I already have a short fuse for certain things) and because it all came from inside, there was nothing stopping myself on really trampling on my crumbling self-esteem. So the parts about internal factors REALLY got me.
The funny thing is, when I was at my worst at that time, I said f it and decided to self-employ, started working as a freelance illustrator when an old collegue from uni asked me if I could do some small illustrations for a magazine he was working at. I started working part-time on the side to support my (obviously shaky) beginnings as a freelancer and what do you know, it actually helped. I may not make the big bucks but all I apparently needed was *something* to work. I do accounting part-time which is the least creative thing I can think of but I grew up handicapped and unable to do anything all my life, so just feeling useful working slowly but surely did away with nearly everything I was told was due to burnout.
I kind of had a suspicion that I was burnt out at work but... I did not expect almost every single one of these points/areas to be more or less spot on. It definitely feels like it all just feeds into itself and bleeds into the other areas.
I dont think ive ever had a day job that didnt burn me out and now im 33 and i can tell its taking its toll on me. Ive only ever been truly healthy when i was able to set and abide by MY own schedule. Im honestly dissillusioned with being gaslit that IM the stupid one for not finding meaning in exploitive work ethics. to me its not amenable that Im expected to trade the entirety of my free time and youth to employers who dont care about me, my health, my growth, goals or my contributions, for a "market rate" wage that is several times less than im worth. my reward being that i can simply survive and maybe engage in some frivolous consumerism and MAYBE get a decade or two of free time during my twilight years when i simply have no energy or living freinds left to enjoy life with. Im expected to ignore objective reality in favor of a blindly profit motivated capitalist fantasy that, much like cancer, isnt going to right itself if we just keep avoiding dealing with it.
Very well said. Hope you find happiness and im rooting for you!
This was really great. Thank you
The thing with "just changing your job" is that you are actually burnt out from your last job. Now you start a new job while already being burnt out. A new job is always a bit stressful, this is a recipe for desaster. I am not saying you should not change your job, I quit a shit job that was burning me out and it was the best decision ever, but you need to work on all these other issues that increase your mental load.
This may be the best analysis of all the issues I've faced in my 22 year career I've ever heard.