Burnout - is not an individual issue it is a societal one
In this article we discuss how burnout is a societal issue not an individual one. If you have suffered burnout and are curious how you can adapt your life personally and professionally keep reading to learn how you can make the changes in your life which feel more aligned with the life you want to live not the life you have been living.
With a significant increase in the daily demands of our personal and professional lives, it is not surprising that in a recent survey by a business think tank Conference Board of HR Executives stated that 77% of companies had seen an increase in the number of employees who identified as being burned out. According to Glassdoor an anonymous survey of employees showed that mentions of burnout had increased more than 40% since 2019.
Burnout is a significant issue for employers and employees alike.
Hustle culture
Experiencing burnout is a symptom of hustle culture, a culture which reveres the action of working non-stop at the expense of all else for example your relationships, finances, health and well-being.
While the birth of hustle culture occurred around 1970, the advancement in technology since this time has further exacerbated the issue. Following the economic downtown of 2008 which saw mass redundancies in all sectors, the habit of overworking to prove your worthiness to retain your role was born.
Hustle culture is built upon two core aspirational beliefs:
If you work hard enough, you will achieve success
If you have success you will be powerful
The ideology of hustle culture makes people act more aggressively and quickly to get things done regardless of the personal consequences.
Under this ideology working more hours than you are contracted to work is seen as the norm while answering work emails and calls in your free time is expected. In essence your commitment to work consumes every aspect of your life. Taking time for rest, recreation and play is not the norm under hustle culture and in many cases those that attempt to take time for these activities find themselves in such dysregulated states that the practice of slowing down further exacerbates the individual´s stresses and anxieties.
Hustle Culture is a vicious circle, where working too much leads to burnout and thinking about how not working enough also leads to burnout.
What is burnout?
Burnout is defined in the 11th Revision of International Classification of Diseases as: ´a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterised by three dimensions:
Feeling 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.´
At its core burnout leaves you feeling frustrated, fatigued and overwhelmed as a result of your professional commitments.
Burnout syndrome
The term burnout syndrome was coined by a New York psychoanalyst called Herbert J. Freudenberger. The concept of burnout resulted from Freudenberger´s acknowledgment that while he found his own work fulfilling it was also leaving him to feel frustrated and fatigued in general, a common trend he noted amongst his physician peers also.
Together with Gail North, Freudenberger established a 12 stage model of burnout.
The 12 stage model of burnout
Excessive ambition - Possessing a deep desire to prove your worth with an inability to set boundaries
Working harder for long hours and not shutting off - Answering work emails at the weekends, late at night, constantly checking your phone, not taking holiday or vacation days
Neglecting your needs - Such as sleep, food, connection and exercise.
Displacement of conflicts - You dismiss problems and can feel jittery, panicky or threatened
Revision of values - You only have time for work related demands, work becomes your only focus
Denial of emerging problems - You become increasingly intolerant, cynical or aggressive towards others, and see time as a limited resource wasted on interacting with others
Withdrawal from your social life and interactions with loved ones - You isolate yourself from others and find your social circle becoming smaller and smaller.
Behavioural changes and psychological reactions - Such as memory loss, heightened sensitivity, inability to concentrate
Depersonalisation - Not feeling your value or worth as a human being, feeling a loss of contact with yourself, feeling numb and hopeless
Inner emptiness - Anxiety, addictive behaviour such as overeating, or drinking alcohol excessively to overcome the empty feeling inside
Depression - Increasing lack of interest in work and/or personal life
Complete burnout - Mental and physical exhaustion and collapse. Can experience symptoms of autoimmune. At this stage, seek medical attention.
How stress and burnout affects your body, brain and nervous system
While our bodies are well equipped to handle stress in small doses, long-term or chronic stress and burnout can have serious effects on all systems in your body including the musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, respiratory, endocrine, nervous, gastrointestinal and reproductive systems.
Chronic stress and burnout over long periods of time can result in a long term drain on the body. Continuous activation of the nervous system can dramatically affect other body systems which can become problematic. People who find themselves under severe stress are often in a fight, flight, freeze or fawn mode inside of their nervous system. These states designed for protection become their ´normal´ way of reacting and experiencing all situations.
While on the other hand stress and burnout affects your brain´s ability for long term memory function and can damage the prefrontal cortex which is essential for focused attention and executive function, which is utilised for planning, solving problems and controlling your impulses.
When you are not able to fully engage your executive functions or move from a state of regulation in your nervous system your ability to show up in your personal and professional life as you wish to, is significantly impaired.
How to deal with burnout and stress – decrease demands and increase resources
Decreasing your demands involves assessing your current commitments and deciding which ones you can delegate, step away from or refuse to carry out going forward. Increasing your resources means increasing your capacity to feel safety in the act of decreasing. This means working with your brain and nervous system to understand how they are functioning and training them for safety and decreasing your demands.
With stress and burnout playing such a significant role in how you experience your overall health and well-being it is essential that you learn to spot the warning signs that chronic stress and burnout are having on your body, mind and spirit.
If you are suffering from chronic stress, anxiety or burnout it is important that you realise that your body, brain and nervous system are in such heightened states of dysregulation simply taking some time off, trying not to think about the issue and doing some meditation will prove ineffective. The body will always return to what it perceives as its normal state of being and as a result you will find the anxious and stressful thoughts coming back regardless of how much you try to slow down and not think about work.
Learning how to find your way safely and sustainable back to regulation is the first step to dealing with chronic stress and burnout before any quick fix solutions like meditation, taking things off your calendar and simply saying no/creating boundaries are implemented. Without being able to get yourself into a regulated state before taking these actions, you may find that they in fact further aggravate the issue inside of your body, brain and nervous system rather than help.
Being able to get yourself into a regulated state is how you will effectively increase your most precious resources such as time and energy. It is also important that you increase your capacity for connection and receiving social support from others so that you do not feel isolated and are unable to reach out to ask others for help.
Practice Essentialism
Finding harmony between decreasing demands and increasing resources can be found in the practice of essentialism. A philosophy which Greg McKeown describes in his book Essentialism: the Disciplined Pursuit of Less as one where you ´learn how to do less but better so you can achieve the highest possible return on every precious moment in your life.´
This approach is not a time management tool but instead the disciplined practice of discerning what is absolutely essential in your life and then eliminating everything that is not.
This philosophy is an excellent tool to help you take back control of your own choices and discern how you spend your most precious resources: time and energy. However, it should be noted that applying this philosophy to your life while in a state of dysregulation may prove more harmful than helpful unless you first learn how to regulate your brain and nervous system before embarking on any drastic strategies.
Burnout is a societal issue, not an individual issue
When you suffer burnout it is very normal to think that you are the problem, your window of tolerance inside of your nervous system is so compromised you can´t always see how your environment particularly in work is contributing to your acute stress and burnout.
As mentioned at the top of this article burnout is a symptom of hustle culture which exploits and extracts employees for more than they are physically and mentally able to give. Companies are taking advantage of the people who work within them, and as a result of a normalised state of dysregulation in society in general burnout is present in all levels of companies, from the bottom to the top.
It can be very difficult when you are suffering mentally and physically from acute stress or burnout to see the environment and culture as the issue rather than yourself.
But this is not the case.
The role of leaders and businesses in burnout culture
Burnout is a result of a dysfunctional workplace and it is therefore important that company and business leaders/ managers are aware of the role they play in the burnout equation.
How often have you heard a manager or leader say that their employees are their greatest asset?
While this may be true and indeed a nice sentiment, how many managers or leaders have you worked for do you truly believe embody this statement and treat their employees as assets?
Because here is the dichotomy, the definition of an asset according to the Oxford English Dictionary is – ´A person or thing that is valuable or useful to somebody or thing.´
While on the other hand the accounting definition of an asset according to Investopedia is - ´An asset is a resource with economic value that an individual, corporation, or country owns or controls with the expectation that it will provide a future benefit.´
It is important to note the phrase – owns and controls in the second definition.
This difference in definitions is perhaps where the lines blur for most company leaders and managers, who are conditioned to sweat the assets in order to maximise output. Which is a valid strategy when it comes to a piece of machinery or equipment which is designed for continual use and receives the appropriate maintenance and downtime as directed by the manufacturer.
The first definition is human centred and implies empathy for the human experience and contribution. While the second definition is devoid of human empathy and awareness of the human experience.
It is important therefore that managers and leaders adopt an empathetic leadership style, where they help their employees navigate their roles in a way that feels supported, safe and social. Management teams who understand the benefit of having regulated employees are investing in their assets and do not seek to own and control them.
If you are a leader, manager or CEO who recognizes the signs of burnout either personally or in the team you manage, it might be time for you to consider how you can better support yourself and your team, by decreasing demands and increasing resources.
Clients have successfully used Human Design to retrain their brains and nervous systems for regulation giving them more capacity to manage their workload and employees in a way that feels cool, calm, collected and connected. Clients have reported higher retention rates, more cooperation amongst team members, increased creativity, innovation and problem-solving capabilities and higher levels of efficacy in working towards quarterly goals.
It is possible to become the type of CEO, manager, business owner, parent, partner, team leader, sibling and friend you have always wanted to be. A more embodied and aligned way of being these roles in all areas of your life is possible when you learn to retrain your brain and nervous system for the life you want to live.
