What is Burnout?
The word burnout originates from electrical devices. Think of a burned out lightbulb and what that means. It has all the energy it usually needs. Even when you flick the switch on, and power is going to the bulb, it still won’t work. This is because it's not the power source that's the issue, it's the bulb.
People, like lightbulbs, get burned out. However, people don’t run on electricity, we run on food, water, and sleep instead. That's not all we need to function though. We also need safety, social connection, joy, motivation, spirituality, and expression of self. We can think of these essential elements as the components of a lightbulb, including the filament, electric foot, and the glass that surrounds it all.
Imagine a ceiling fan with 3 burned out lightbulb bulbs. This represents a person with burnout. No matter how much electricity (food,water, and sleep) you give the light fixture (the human) it wont glow (function in life the way they want to) until you change the bulb (provide the element they’ve been missing). You can keep that one bulb going for a while, but it will burn out too. The ceiling fan isn’t broken. This is expected to happen and all our electrical devices do this, not because we want them to, but it just does. (I would try rephrasing this as two examples: First with the lightbulb, then applying it to the person. All the parentheses make it a bit difficult to digest)
Lightbulbs that are left on longer burn out faster and need to be changed more often. Light bulbs that burn brighter need to be changed more often. This applies to us too! The more we work and the harder we work the more we need our metaphorical lightbulbs changed. That doesn’t just apply to jobs we get paid for, it also applies to the work we do at home, in our social lives, and in the world. It’s also not just about physical effort or what we see. On average 20% of the energy a person expends is in the brain. Thinking is effort, feeling is effort, problem solving is effort, and learning is effort.
The ways we deal with burn out depends on our situations and our resources. Some of us can afford to decide to take a break at any time. Some of us are in charge of our own schedules, and our work is not as time bound. If that’s you, you can notice you’re burned out, take some time off to rest and reset, and in a perfect world we would all be able to do that. Not all of us can. Some of us have responsibilities that might suddenly ask us to function at a higher level than before with no warning, might require us to schedule time off far in advance, or coordinate with a coworker or loved one to take over our tasks. In that type of job we might not have time to change the lightbulb right away. If we can’t change the lightbulb we end up working in the dark, which isn’t always safe. When possible it’s better to change the lightbulb regularly. If we know we’re going to be changing the lightbulb we can bring a flashlight with us. This might not be easy. We might feel like we don’t have time to change a lightbulb (don’t have time to take a break) or that we would be wasting a perfectly good lightbulb before it’s out of juice (making too much of a fuss or asking for more than we’re owed). However, if you do not schedule time for maintenance (self care), your machine (brain) will schedule it (a mental breakdown) for you.
How do we actually change the metaphorical lightbulb?
Admittedly the metaphor falls apart a little here. Those other things that let you function; safety, social connection, motivation, joy, a sense of satisfaction, spirituality, self expression– are needs that can be met in a lot of different ways. It might be movie night with the pals to reconnect and laugh for a bit (laughter is important). It might be a camping trip that lets you disconnect from your phone and reconnect to your inner self and the majesty of this beautiful world we live in. It might be a weekend where you do nothing to remind yourself that you can, and feel safer by exercising some control over your life. It might be running a marathon, sewing a costume, taking a cooking class, knitting a sweater, climbing a mountain, or writing a book to show yourself what you’re really capable of and remind yourself you’re allowed to have goals outside of whatever it is exhausting you. It might be painting. It might be a check in on your own feelings. It might be getting some space and setting personal goals for yourself and your life to decide where you want to put your energy and remind yourself why this is worth it (or figure out that it’s not and what you should be doing instead). This isn’t one size fits all and it’s not one schedule fits all. These things can be daily, weekly, monthly, or annually, and in practice it’s probably best to have two or more easy things that we do very often and one or two big things that we do on rare occasions.
I also mentioned safety. That can mean more than one thing. The part of our brains that handles emotions will interpret a lot of situations as threats to survival that aren’t. Such as financial reports being due, a customer yelling at you, your kid being held back a grade, or a coworker hearing you fart. Unfortunately frequent stress from this threat your brain is receiving, will eventually lead to medical problems and actual risks to your well-being. There are also actual safety risks, like unsafe work environments, health issues, a person threatening you, etc. Both stress and actual safety threats are less like a burned out light bulb and more like a broken light bulb – at risk of setting fire to the room if you try to use the light. Changing the lightbulb in this scenario might mean taking a break from stress, might mean filing a report with HR, or it might mean a therapy, psychiatry, or doctor visit for you or a loved one.
This post will have some sequels discussing different circumstances that might cause different types of burnout and specific coping methods. Stay tuned, updates on Tuesdays at 2PM.