Do you show signs of undiagnosed burnout?

April 2005 was my initiation to a form of burnout. In our day we see so much of it. And there is so much of it undiagnosed. So many continue through it because it’s all they can do. Situations like this, we understand why people remain in denial, because an admission of a problem means the door to weakness and vulnerability is opened.

So, what are the signs to look for. These are the things I’ve found from my own experience and from the experience of others.

From a normally well-ordered person, you have become someone quite chaotic. Interest for structure has significantly waned. There is now an innate belief that you can’t manage what could once be managed. Even things like your own self-care, your health, your self-discipline—all seem interminably harder than they normally would be or have been.

You constantly feel you’re on the road somewhere, but you never arrive. You always seem to be doing something and never seem to be finished. There is ever growing list of tasks to do, and you never arrive at the bottom of the list. There is always more to do.

Your tenacity and commitment keeps you pushing and working hard, but despondency creeps in more and more regularly. And it happens that a strength—the ability to battle through and get the job done, day in day out—becomes the nemesis. You wonder just why your capacity for responsibility has become a snare.

It just seems that there is a never-ending stream of tasks and demands to get through and your mind, which is skilled at coping with a lot at the same time, hasn’t become more adept at managing the load, but less. There is a learned sense of defeat experienced, called learned helplessness, because despite ongoing excellent efforts, there is no reduction in the work coming and the quality of your outcomes seems to have become irrelevant, though you know it isn’t. Great results are increasingly unacknowledged. More is expected for less. And it’s unsustainable.

You cannot take a break. It feels like if you stop, everything stops. And even when people are telling you that you must take a break, you feel like stopping is impossible, let alone being still. Being still has become an unreachable goal. Even for five minutes, being still is torture. You need a break, you know it, but you cannot get out of your mind and the pattern of your ‘doing’ behaviours. You feel as if it’s easier to continue working, however inefficient or ineffective you may feel you are.

A more nuanced concern develops about this time; the incapacity to care, commonly called compassion fatigue. Imagine being a leader of people and suffering an unacknowledged burnout. You’re not aware that you’re suffering the incapacity to do your job well. Perhaps you don’t care. But those who normally do care should be concerned that the capacity to care is absent.

What happened? When did the capacity to care seem to ebb away? It isn’t good enough that it’s gone unchecked. And there will be carnage—people who rely on such leadership will be subjects of abuse, be it emotional, spiritual, neglect etc. Compassion fatigue is a serious assault on anyone who must care as a core competency of what they do—parents, pastors, managers, etc included.

When you finally realise it’s burnout that’s causing compassion fatigue, that’s causing you to abuse people in your care, and you’re an empathetic person, such an epiphany can cause a heartrending breakdown where you’re racked with guilt and riddled with shame. And what exacerbates this situation is just how unpredictable your moods can be; irritability is the gait of your emotional datum whenever a semblance of pressure is felt. When your words are quick and your tongue is sharp, people begin to walk around you like you’re all standing on eggshells.

There’s no doubt about the fact that in burnout permanent changes can begin to occur in our psyche if we don’t intervene. But interventions are tricky because if burnout is anything it’s an entrenched pattern of many behaviours and a mindset that drives the desire to keep up. Despite the circumstances even, it can feel impossible to install change.

And finally, I really think there’s a heavy correlation between burnout and trauma. Trauma changes us permanently and we must accept that a new normal is an opportunity we just must embrace. Trauma is not the end, even if it feels that way. Trauma is an invitation to a new reality and moving forward into it is positive and hope-giving, whilst being patient about triggering and regressions.

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One thing we must recognise in burnout is it’s so incredibly complex it requires a multidisciplinary effort and an extensive period of time to climb out of it.

Australian, Keith Farmer, a practitioner and researcher into burnout, estimates that the average time to recover from entrenched burnout is 12-21 months. He says it’s remarkably common in ministers. It requires the courage to consider and then implement significant change, which involves choosing for loss.

We just must embrace the idea that we can commence the process of change any given day, but we must also expect there will be many missteps along the way.