Beyond Burnout

What to do when (or ideally, before) stress reaches epic proportions

- Leslie Finlay

THE WORLD IS Seriously stressed out. According to The American Institute of Stress, even before the pandemic 94 per cent of workers said that they regularly felt stressed. A peak-pandemic Gallup poll concluded that 2020 "officially became the most stressful year in recent history." We all get busy sometimes, but feeling constantly and chronically swamped, worried and overwhelmed can lead to burnout, which can have serious consequences.

Think of burnout as stress taken to another level. "Typically, burnout is defined as an extreme state of psychological strain," says YoungAh Park, an associate professor at the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois. It's a response to facing prolonged, chronic stressors that go beyond your ability or available resources to overcome.

Because so many of us frequently feel stressed, it can be hard to recognize when the line has been crossed. True burnout is different from feeling overextended. Michael Leiter, a professor of psychology at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, explains, "Burnout combines three key dimensions: overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and a sense of discouragement, inadequacy or low accomplishment." Feeling exhausted when you begin working is a red flag. "This is a sign that demands are building faster than you can recover from them," he says.

That fatigue evolves into feelings such as pessimism and withdrawal, "becoming grumpy and cynical about work you used to love-especially feeling that way towards people you're supposed to care about." That's the end stage of burnout, but it takes a while to get there. "At first, we might find ourselves experiencing hyperactivity, trying to manage our stressors by frantically working to reduce them, and juggling more and more simultaneously," says Emily Balcetis, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at New York University.