Symptoms of burnout: founders, leaders, high-achievers, type A’s…what should we look out for?
Burnout. It sounds so extreme, yet it’s so common. I remember when I began to hear folks talking about it (circa pandemic time, 2020) and thinking to myself, “I won’t let this happen to me.” Burnout seemed like something that happened to CEO’s, C-suite executives, and people doing fundraising on the front-lines of war zones or helping refugees. I was on the other side of that. I’d founded my own business in Spain in 2013, but I was selling champagne for a living and having fun. In 2019, I'd been the Director of Development for a non-profit helping Syrian refugees out of Greece and I managed to avoid burnout. In 2020 I was comfortably nestled in my lovely condo in Vancouver; I wouldn’t burnout, how could I? Burnout seemed intense, crippling, extreme, harrowing; enough to make you quit your work and have to go on leave. Surely, not me.
The reality is, burnout is insidious and it can happen to everyone. Founder or not, frontlines or not, it doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t demand McKinsey style workweeks or PhDs, nor does it exclusively happen to high-achievers and type A’s. Unfortunately, with the current cultural sentiments around anxiety as all part of the “new normal”, burnout has slunk into the background as something we all hear about, but rarely give attention to. Before it gets to you, here are some common and well trodden burnout symptoms to watch out for (you can find these on most medical websites):
Headaches
Stomachaches/intestinal issues
Fatigue
Being frequently sick
Changes in appetite/sleep.
A feeling of helplessness
Cynicism
Sense of failure or self-doubt
Decreased satisfaction
Feeling disconnected or alone in the world
Demotivation and loss of enthusiasm
Reduced performance in everyday tasks
Withdrawal or isolation
Procrastination
Outbursts
Substance abuse and using substances to cope
The problem is, looking at that, it’s likely most of us can identify with at least a couple of these. I’ve definitely felt isolated, cynical about my work, or been prone to procrastinating before…. But was I actually burned out? Or was the job simply wrong for me and that was the demotivating factor? I mean, I’ve certainly drunk more wine than I wanted to some evenings, lost my appetite, and felt helpless. Was it burnout or was I in the wrong relationship?
I’ve been in situations where I’ve worked 15 hour days, barely left my study, juggled a million things but felt utterly energised and excited about life. I’ve also been in situations where I had a shiny new job, rested in abundance, worked just 4 hours a day but felt like I was dragging my carcass out of bed each day. I can even recall a point in my life where I was literally going to bed at 7pm just to make the day end faster.
So, what are the signs and symptoms of burnout to look out for when so many factors come into play? Here are some more that I’ve identified both in myself, and in others:
Despondency. Feeling despondent about life - like, really despondent. Feeling like there’s virtually no point or value to your work or output, and like nothing really matters anymore. There might be a glimmer of sense of something else that might be more meaningful and worthy of doing, but the sheer effort and labour of getting there feels so ghastly and like such a slog, it’s overwhelming.
Exhaustion. Deep, aching, nerve-wracking exhaustion that seems to cut through to the bone. Day to day, running around on adrenaline feels manageable. Endless cups of coffee, sprinting to the gym, forcing our bodies to go through the motions, but as soon as we stop, the body collapses out of sheer exhaustion. Finally succumbing to taking naps throughout the day despite not being a nap taker. That sort of exhaustion. The type that feels like it’ll take months to recover from.
Grief. Finding yourself crying or getting frustrated at the slightest thing. Endless emotions seeping out against your will, just leaking everywhere - whether masked as sadness or even anger. But oh, the sadness! For me, burnout manifested as a deep bone-aching grief that I couldn’t seem to run from or solve for. No matter how much therapy I booked or how many comedy shows I watched, I felt sick with grief. The grief of life, the grief of human existence. Just…grief.
Sickness. It’s mentioned in all the clinical studies and medical websites, but there’s a different type of sickness to burnout that I found. It wasn’t so much dramatic diseases or forever being down with the flu, but a sense of dis-ease in my body. Literal dis-ease. I just felt ‘off’. I felt wrong. I felt bloated, uncomfortable, unwell. I didn’t look it, but I felt it. I felt like a sick animal without any real symptoms. It was invisible but I could feel it inside of me.
Feeling misunderstood. This builds on the sense of isolation they often associate with burnout, but for me it was more about feeling misunderstood. Like l had some deep grief-inducing knowledge of something dark and terrifying about the human condition that no one else could really understand. My cynicism was such that other people’s laughter and joyousness felt alienating and confusing to me. Could they not see the futility of it all? The pointlessness?
There are more symptoms of burnout of course, and it will manifest in everyone in unique ways. Equally, I am sure many of these symptoms can also point to depression rather than burnout. Perhaps (at least for me) most importantly, so many of these point to me simply being in the wrong context, the wrong situation for me. I learned over time that my burnout wasn’t because I was sick, or weak, or working too hard, or a perfectionist workaholic or anything like that. I was just literally living out of integrity for who I am. For my needs, my values, my embodied and most authentic self. I just didn’t know it, nor how to fix it.
The beautiful thing is - it can be fixed, and we can do something about it. And it doesn’t require taking a 6 month vacation to Costa Rica or quitting life to disappear to a beach in Thailand. More in my next blog post.
