Preventing Burnout: How to Detect Early Warning Signs

Understanding the Physical and Emotional Symptoms of Burnout

Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

The ICD-11 of the World Health Organization (WHO) describes occupational burnout as an occupational phenomenon resulting from chronic workplace stress that hasn't been successfully managed, with symptoms characterized by "feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and reduced professional efficacy."

Wikipedia

This definition is clear about the burnout condition.

Burnout is when you feel exhausted and less productive than you would like. You don’t understand why you feel that way, which frustrates you. Burnout is more common than we think and may occur in unexpected situations.

The worst thing about burnout is that you often don’t realize you are burning out until you are wholly burned out.

Crunchyroll Dr.Stone

While writing this post, I re-watched an anime called “Dr. Stone.”

In the story, a weird green light petrified all the people on Earth for more than 3000 years. Some of the characters in the story decided to rebuild civilization with the help of science. To save a sick girl, Senku, the protagonist, chooses to create the antibiotic; to do so, he needs sulfuric acid. In the story, there is a lake full of sulfuric acid, and Senku explains that the gas from the lake is toxic. He explained that if you try to walk towards the lake, you will die without realizing it.

I see burnout as a toxic gas capable of killing you without you even realizing it.

Burnout Warning Signs

The truth is, there are signs.

Our body and our mind give us warning signs. Sometimes, they appear as instinct or intuition; in other situations, they are physical manifestations. In the anime, characters use a silver spear as a signal for toxic gas. The spear reacts with the gas in the air and becomes black when the gas concentration increases.

Here are some warning signs you can use as your black spear to prevent burnout.

1. Resentment

Resentment is usually the first sign.

It shows up very early, so it could be your best black spear if you are good at listening to it. While other signs show up at different times for different individuals, and some don’t show at all, resentment comes first almost every time. It is also the sentiment we usually shut up immediately in the beginning.

We might not recognize resentment until it becomes anger or frustration.

It might start with a meeting in which you feel you wanted to say something but didn’t because you didn’t want to hurt someone else. It shows up when you put your work before your well-being when you finish late work because you must meet a deadline.

Resentment makes you feel you live outside of your values.

2. Silence

Silence comes together with resentment.

They both show up when you feel you don’t respect your values and when you silence your opinions and ideas. Silence makes you feel like you are losing your integrity. Every time you don’t speak, you should ask yourself:

Is this silence building resentment?

This is the crucial question to distinguish good silence from bad silence.

I also like to speak in public, but I also really like being quiet and listening to others, especially when the person speaking is very quiet. Silencing my voice in a situation like this shows that I live up to my values.

I know this silence won’t build resentment.

In other situations, silence would make me live out of my values if I don’t speak. One of my values is the team. I firmly believe that in a team, you win and lose together. So, if something goes wrong, you can’t ask for a single person to be responsible for the error, and if you do, expect me to speak for the team.

Silencing myself during the witch hunt will build resentment.

3. Tiredness

Burnout shows up as exhaustion, but before that, there is tiredness.

Everyone has a period when they feel tired; it’s normal. The problem is when you always feel tired for an extended period. When you wake up, you already feel your head hasn’t rested.

Sleeping is our brain’s reset.

Waking up with a tired brain will result in being tired. When you wake up and your first thought is, “Oh my God, today I have so many things to do at work,” it means your brain didn’t reset. The worst thing is that some people confuse this feeling with being more productive.

“Ah, great; as soon as I wake up, I am ready to work.”

That’s not good if your brain remains focused on work at night. Some people manifest sleep-talking. A friend of mine was incredibly overwhelmed, and her husband told me he had heard her speaking about work while she was sleeping.

Can you guess how she woke up in the morning?

If you keep thinking about work, your brain cannot reset. The result is tiredness, which leads to exhaustion and burnout.

4. Loneliness

Loneliness shows up as tiredness.

It might sound weird, but our mind perceives loneliness as tiredness. When you feel lonely, you might not realize that immediately, but you might feel tired, which is different from the tiredness of point 3. In this scenario, you experience disconnection from others, and tiredness can appear in specific moments.

Have you ever been in a meeting where people talk, and you feel exhausted?

You watch people talking without being sure you understand what they are saying. You feel out of context, and you cannot focus. Your mind seems incapable of acquiring new information.

This is one way of loneliness masked as tiredness.

5. Somatic Symptoms

Last but not least, your body can explicitly tell you something bad is happening.

We don’t often listen to our body, but it has multiple ways to tell us we must stop. For example, when we touch something sharp, we feel a shiver down our spine. Our body can detect issues before we get cut.

This point is particular to each one of us.

Each person has their way of physically reacting. The most common symptoms are:

• Headache

• Stomach ache

• Stomach acid

• Diarrhea

Listening to our body is crucial to prevent burnout.