The Simple, Practical Trick to Overcoming Burnout
Priya Sonty
Burnout, or a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress, is a thing that many of us are experiencing these days. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, unable to keep up with all the pressures and demands, and generally drained, you are likely experiencing burnout.
The simple, practical trick to overcoming burnout is...experience it fully.
What does that mean? It means that you should try embracing your feelings and giving in to the overwhelm and frustration of it all. Let yourself be a little angry, annoyed, and exhausted on purpose. Feel it in the body, take a deep breath and simply be in the moment. As coaches often tell their clients, ‘Feel it to heal it’.
Burnout is the result of a collection of emotions. We think that it’s from a collection of actions - working too hard for too long at something too difficult - but it really is about the negative emotional reaction we have to being in that situation. The problem is, even though we know that we feel that deep level of exhaustion at an emotional level, we tell ourselves it’s not that bad, it’s part of life and to keep going. In that way, we are responding to our emotions with logic and reason instead of actually addressing them, which ultimately does nothing to make us feel better and overcome burnout.
The simple reasoning is because it’s not always socially acceptable to talk about burnout or negative emotions. We’re far more likely to say we’re doing good or fine when asked how we are than actually admit we’re at the end of our rope. And even when we do admit our exhaustion, it’s commiseration with others we are usually seeking rather than an actual solution to the problem. In other words - talking about burnout is not cool, so we assume that feeling burnout is also not cool and then we avoid the breakdown that we may need to have in order to work through it.
So, to overcome your burnout, you have to let your emotional pot boil over a bit. Let yourself complain or vent to a trusted friend, scream into a pillow, have a good cry, take a nap, or even get support from a therapist or coach to unpack and process your emotions. We worry that when we give our emotions airtime, we’ll suddenly derail our lives completely and drown in the drama of feelings. But consider this - when you actually process those emotions completely, you’ll be able to return to your normal life feeling relief much faster than if you keep your head down and avoid addressing them.
Try out the act of practicing kindness to yourself and see if it doesn’t help you eliminate burnout when you feel it coming on. Let other people in on the secret, too. Overcoming burnout starts with each of us learning how to identify and process it within ourselves and supporting others to do the same.