When you wake up dreading the day ahead, or when you see getting the stomach flu as a welcome break from your responsibilities, it might be a sign you're experiencing burnout.
That’s what happened to Emily Ballesteros, who realized that her detachment, resentment, and exhaustion were symptoms of a severe case of it. It was this realization that led to her career as a burnout management coach and ultimately led her to write her new book, The Cure for Burnout: How To Find Balance and Reclaim Your Life.
In it, Ballesteros lays out five areas for the chronically burned-out to focus on, and offers tools to the reader to begin to own their time again.
Ballesteros, who has a background in organizational psychology, joined LAist's daily news program AirTalk to share some tips on how to recognize when you're burning out, and what to do about it.
What is burnout?
"Burnout is prolonged exhaustion," Ballesteros said. And it's this prolonged exhaustion that she identified as the hallmark sign of burnout, and because exhaustion pervades all aspects of one's life, it's usually clear when the pieces start to fall apart.
Stress and burnout certainly go hand in hand. But unlike regular stress, which we often can detect, burnout can be much quieter and more insidious.
"Stress is a portion of burnout," said Ballesteros, "but with burnout a lot of time we see constant anxiety about work. There's a lot more physical, mental, emotional fatigue because you are expending more resources than you might have."
Ballesteros said you might notice yourself thinking in extremes, not feeling like yourself, or having big parts of your life start to fall apart. Resentment starts to build as well. Ballesteros says the difference between burnout and stress is that "the drain and exhaustion comes from all areas of life instead of one item in particular."
This doesn't mean it's always immediately obvious to us when we're experiencing burnout. But when you have the right resources at your fingertips, self-diagnosing burnout can be swift.
How do you know if you have it?
While working full-time in corporate training and development and getting her master's degree, Ballesteros said she reached a breaking point.
"I was so tired that I was open to getting sick or in a minor accident; anything that would give me a break," she said.
She had a hunch that she was experiencing something more than stress and different than depression.
"That line between burnout and depression is circumstance," she added. "If you alleviate all of the stress and your circumstances completely change, usually your burnout is completely alleviated." But she said that's not typically the case with depression.
When Ballesteros started to do some research into the feelings she was experiencing, she said the word that kept coming up was "burnout." Instead of simply addressing her own burnout and moving on, she decided to focus her professional work on creating a methodology that could address burnout with individuals, groups, and organizations.
"That line between burnout and depression is circumstance."
In her new book, Ballesteros addresses three types of burnout: burnout by volume, social burnout, and burnout by boredom. Tackling each, she said, begins with acknowledgment.
"Most people can look at their life and point the finger at what it is that is causing them the most exhaustion or overextension. Once these areas are identified, they can be addressed."
What can you do about it?
Ballesteros outlines five pillars for managing burnout in her new book:
- Stress management
- Time management
- Holding boundaries
- Mindset
- Personal care
Ballesteros said she recognizes that setting boundaries can feel like an emotionally charged conversation, but added it can feel much simpler when we look at it in terms of our time management.
"A lot of times communicating a boundary is just communicating that resource, which a lot of times is time. Once we decide how we want to manage our time, we often no longer have the energy to give to people who might be draining us or contributing to our stress," Ballesteros said.
She also stressed the importance of mindset.
"You could put two people through an identical spa day; person A is thinking how much else they have to do the entire time so they leave the spa day feeling wound up. Person B sees the experience as positive and leaves the same exact spa day feeling relaxed," she said. "The impact of how you manage your internal experiences determines the quality of your day."
Knowing your limitations and capacity is also critical to stress management. Ballesteros said if you know you're in a season of your life where you can only give so much, you can set expectations early on with yourself and others around you.
"Take a sincere look at your personal care and how you can make your life as easy as possible around the demands of work," she said. What can you automate and outsource? Can someone else walk your dog? Can you plan a Pilates class at 6 pm so you have to leave work?"
Ballesteros said the steps might feel small and inconsequential at first, but if you care enough to address your burnout, you're already setting yourself up for a light at the end of the tunnel.