Is it really burnout?

Burnout or Boreout – in a recent issue of the ‘Counseling Corner’ I already mentioned that people being ‘bored out’ often show similar symptoms to people suffering from high amounts of work-related stress. Interestingly, on a physiological level, the neurological and hormonal changes are quite similar between both of them, and their consequences are as well. Just as burnout, being ‘bored out’ is seen as a cause for diseases of the cardiovascular system (heart, veins and arteries), the digestion system, and it also might raise the risk for autoimmune diseases.

Here are 3 typical indicators for a burnout dynamic:

– Physical, Mental and/or Emotional Exhaustion: Free time snaps away in a blink without any feeling of recovery or relief (burnout) or it seems to be never-ending with eating being one of the few highlights of the day (boreout).

– Depersonalization / Cynicism: Unfeeling and impersonal attitudes and reactions towards others, particularly with people you are dealing with on a regular basis. The goal of this behavior is seen as an effort to create distance between oneself and the ones who are causing discomfort.

– Reduced Appraisal of Accomplishments: You might feel that you don’t achieve anything remarkable anymore, wasting your time. A feeling of failure and insufficiency is indicating an increasing loss of trust in our abilities.

The main problem in dealing with progressed forms of burnout is that we don’t have access to our usual resources of energy, creativity and a positive mindset anymore that could help to gain ground again. Instead, you as a ‘burned out’ person might make your situation even worse by trying harder to succeed or to gain control again.

Basically, every strategy to deal with the burnout process must relate to reducing the workload and finding balance again. But for that, quite dramatic turns might be required, like to take some time off or maybe even a ‘sabbatical’ leave.

It might also turn out that organizational changes or adaptations to one’s self-management might be required in order to avoid ending up in the same situation again. Often enough, it doesn’t help to blame a company or a ‘situation’ for one’s burnout since to a very high extent, it is actually our own psyche that makes us vulnerable and causes us to have a tendency to drift towards boreout or burnout. It is also us who have to find means to find back to happiness again.