People who haven't been there often confuse burnout with stress. You can't blame them really. To an outside observer it looks pretty much the same. And the worst thing of all is: they will accuse you of being weak - of "not being able to cope" [with normal everyday stress of the job] - while what's happening to you is actually on a whole other level altogether.
This essentially sums it up:
"Stress, by and large, involves too much: too many pressures that demand too much of you physically and psychologically. Stressed people can still imagine, though, that if they can just get everything under control, they’ll feel better."
...
"Burnout, on the other hand, is about not enough. Being burned out means feeling empty, devoid of motivation, and beyond caring. People experiencing burnout often don’t see any hope of positive change in their situations."
With burnout, I got to the point where absolutely nothing seemed to matter anymore. It wasn't an "active", suicidal sort of depression and emptiness - but more like an extremely passive, detached, and disengaged state of mind. It got to the point where I had a dream that the world was ending: earthquakes were destroying my city, giant rifts were opening up in the ground, volcanoes were erupting, asteroids were crashing into the Earth, cataclysmic events were about to swallow up our world as we know it...and all I could think was: "YES! I won't have to go to work anymore!"
The important thing to take from this is exactly what the linked article says: burnout is about "not enough". With stress, a person is not able to cope. With burnout, a person is beyond caring about coping. They just want to somehow be knocked out of the situation that's causing it, no matter the cost. But by that time they are often so numb and disengaged that they're not able to be assertive and energetic enough to make any positive change happen.
I currently score a 7 out of 7 on the burnout category. The only thing what's different though is that I see a way out and make a positive change. I've decided again to get my bachelors degree in CS. So instead, I only have to cope for 3 more months, then I'll have 2 months off and after that I'll be starting my study.
ReplyDeleteIt's that outlook that gives me hope and allows me to go on. It took some time (a lot!) to figure out I was actually burned out (on top of that I also got other health issues) and how to handle it.
Before I had figured out what was wrong and what to do about it I literary felt like "Fire me, please. Give me an easy way out". Which I'm glad didn't happen, as that probably would've worsen the situation. As due to health issues I currently can't do my work properly, and getting fired would mean no work and no income at all.
It really did take a long time before I realized what the hell was going on though. It was a process that spanned about 1 tot 1.5 years. I was warned by those close to me that I had to lookout for myself not to get burned out, because the way things were going I would, according to them. I blew it off with a simple excuse like "well, I just work at a fast pace. Can't get slower than that". And slowly and steadily the burnout sneaked up on me.
Thank you for your blog and please do keep posting. I feel like I'm in almost the exact same situation as you (only I'm about 10 years younger? I'm 23) but you're a couple of steps ahead of me. So reading this blog is actually of help to me.