Here is what you do
2020 is ending and you’re feeling burnout
What’s seen as fragility is actually the refusal to accept the ever-increasing societal demands or the glamorisation of exhaustion in a world built on productivity. ~ Tigist Kebede ~
IF, like me, you’ve lost all sense of time this year, you’ll be shocked to learn 2020 is almost behind us.
This realisation has triggered some (bleak) conversations among my friends, along the following lines: “I’m so over this year, I can’t wait for it to end!” “You think 2020 has been bad? Things are only going to get worse.”
“How is this year almost over?! I’ve achieved nothing!” If your conversations are going anything like this, there’s a chance this year has burnt you out. And there are plenty of reasons why.
Burnt out or stressed out?
I called on Naarm-based counsellor Tigist Kebede to help me understand my own burnout a little better.
The first thing Ms Kebede assures me: “Burnout is not an individual failing.”
In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially recognised burnout as a “syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed”.
More recently, this focus on workplace burnout has shifted, with greater awareness of parental/carers burnout, Black burnout (or activist burnout), and thanks to 2020, even “societal pandemic burnout”.
While individual circumstances are relevant, Ms Kebede says “burnout is not a personality flaw or a mental health disorder”.
Experiencing burnout can make us more sensitive to anxiety or depression — with data showing women, people in insecure work, and frontline workers have been disproportionately affected during the pandemic.
“It may muddy the waters for people with a history of mental health illness or concerns, which is why it is helpful to talk these experiences through.”
Despite what some people may tell you, burnout isn’t due to a lack of ‘resilience’.
“What’s seen as fragility is actually the refusal to accept the ever-increasing societal demands or the glamorisation of exhaustion in a world built on productivity,” Ms Kebede explains.
And while stress causes burnout, feeling burnt out is different to feeling stressed out.
“Whereas stress can feel like over-engagement or being overreactive, burnout feels like disengagement or lacking motivation.”
Exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficiency
Those end-of-year feels I mentioned earlier? Burnout’s unholy trinity.
According to Ms Kebede, 2020 has been a perfect storm of burnout triggers — be it professional, care-related, or Black/activist burnout — as “the idea of a work-life balance and the space for self-care have been almost non-existent” for most people.
“Zoom fatigue, a loss of idealism or faith in our leaders, a feeling that you haven’t accomplished what you wanted to — how many people could truly say they weren’t experiencing burnout this year?”
You experience burnout “when your ability to complete day-to-day life tasks — including work, being with family, and socialising — is impacted”, Ms Kebede says.
“That’s when I’d encourage people to talk to friends, family and if need be, organise a mental health plan with a GP.”
Help! I’m burnt out. What should I do?
If you find yourself burnt out: “Remember, it’s not you, it’s the environment you’re in,” says Ms Kebede.
“It’s important to have compassion for yourself.” Here are a few strategies she suggests to cope.
1. Rest
Listen to what your body is telling you: you need a break. Rest means time away from the specific thing causing you burnout, which is not easy when that thing is paying the bills.
“If it’s work, you need to also renegotiate whatever is causing you burnout. If it’s the feeling of helplessness in a social movement, you need to negotiate how much you can give without it depleting you,” says Ms Kebede.
“You will come back to your work with better ideas and more energy than if you force yourself to push through.”
While rest is vital, it is also political. Your class, race, gender, sexual identity and abilities are just some of the factors that determine your access to it, which is why selfcare isn’t always the answer.
“Community care is critical,” she explains. “It can help us redistribute resources and responsibilities to enable everyone to rest.”
2. Use positive reappraisal
Not to be confused with toxic positivity, positive reappraisal does not involve ignoring difficulties or pushing down feelings of frustration or despair.
“Rather than turn away from the difficult feelings, facing them with self-kindness and compassion will bring you greater clarity about why you are burnt out and what your needs are,” says Ms Kebede.
For me, this has been crucial in a year that’s exposed misunderstandings and imbalances in some relationships.
“It can hurt to realise that some friendships aren’t as strong or supportive as you thought they were,” she says.
“But you have also gained insight about your needs, and that clarity makes this experience meaningful.”
3. Know what you can and can’t control
Burnout is the result of multiple, dynamic and sometimes unavoidable triggers, which is why it’s not always possible to avoid.
“But you can control what you do, who you engage with, and how you engage,” says Ms Kebede.
She says to “keep scrolling” rather than comparing yourself to how others operate; it’s hard but necessary.
“Learning what is helpful and harmful to you, your capacity, and your wellbeing” will help you to meet your deadlines “without sacrificing your mental, physical, or emotional health”.
Ms Kebede says creating a burnout plan can help. “Use this plan to identify your warning signs: what behaviours are you engaging in, and what helps you to cope?”
Finally, distinguish between what you can change and what needs to be done on a social or structural level to remove the barriers that keep us in these cycles of trauma.
“We often work in industries where burnout has been normalised as part of the job, whether it’s because of the nature of the work, the long hours, or the high stress.”
Models of shorter working hours may seem far removed from our hustle culture, but they’re a reminder of what can be achieved when we prioritise social wellbeing over productivity.
When it comes to activist burnout, “the only way to combat inequalities and discrimination such as racism, transphobia, ableism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia and fatphobia, is social change,” Ms Kebede explains.
And while social change is slow and incremental, it’s what we all really need.
As Ms Kebede says: “You can only do so much for selfpreservation, but who wants to live forever in self-preservation”?
This is general information only. For detailed personal advice, you should see a qualified medical practitioner who knows your medical history.
■ BETHIA BURGESS
is a collaborative social researcher living on unceded Kulin Nations lands and a strong advocate of puppy therapy as a part of your burnout plan. The views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.