We all experience a range of emotions every day, some positive and some negative. Think of your mental wellbeing like the weather: just as it rains or snows sometimes, we all feel negative emotions every now and then. These emotions aren’t bad in small doses – in fact, they’re an important part of your brain regulating itself. Normally, with a little self-care, they pass in time. If it rained every day for a year, though, things would get difficult. When negative emotions, like sadness, anger and anxiety, stick around for too long, things can feel overwhelming.
What is burnout?
Burnout is the physical, mental and emotional exhaustion you feel when you’ve been stressed or anxious for a long period of time, usually triggered by a long, overwhelming time at work, school or in your personal life. It can present in lots of different ways, from headaches and stomach aches to irritability, lack of motivation, and depression. If you’re feeling like this, you’re not alone – about one in five adults in the UK have experienced burnout in the past year [1]. But what causes burnout? And how can we deal with it?
What causes burnout?
Burnout can be caused by cognitive overload [2]. This occurs when your working memory, the executive function that lets us keep track of what we’re doing as we’re doing it (located in a part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex – try saying that five times fast!), gets overwhelmed. When you have too many different things to do, and don’t have time to rest and switch off, our working memory reaches capacity and we start to feel exhausted and burned out. You may struggle to focus, or find yourself getting snappy and unmotivated.
Cortisol, sometimes called the ‘stress hormone’, can also be responsible for burnout [3]. In reasonable amounts, cortisol plays an important role in protecting us, making sure we’re alert and energetic when faced with a threat (even if that threat is just a mountain of work!). However, if your brain keeps producing cortisol over a long period of time, it starts to affect your sleep, immune system, appetite, and emotional reactions.
Scientists used to believe that burnout and chronic stress were caused by your body over-producing cortisol, causing your adrenal glands (glands located near your kidneys, which produce hormones that help your stress responses) to get fatigued and ‘run out’ of hormones. Now, we know that our glands can’t ‘run out’ of hormones. Instead, our systems get so used to the cortisol that your stress responses don’t work properly any more, leading to burnout.
How do I prevent burnout?
So how do we tackle burnout? Here are some things you can do to help look after your mental wellbeing when you’re feeling stressed.
Reduce your workload
The easiest way to deal with burnout is to remove the source of stress. Unfortunately, we can’t all leave school, quit our jobs, and go to live on a beach, but you may be able to take a few things off your plate to free up your cognitive load. Is there anything that can wait til later? Or something you can ask someone else to help out with?
Take breaks
When you’re super busy, it can be difficult to stop and breathe, but taking time out is extra important when you’re working hard. Working flat-out will eat up your cognitive load and make you more likely to make mistakes and burn out. Take regular breaks and step away from your work. If you can, try to get outside and move around.
Have fun
Use your free time to do something you enjoy. Research shows that doing relaxing creative activities can help you switch off and prevent burnout [4]. Taking part in activities that make you happy releases endorphins. Sometimes called ‘happiness chemicals’, these neurotransmitters help your amazing brain function more easily.
Ask for help
You don’t have to go it alone, particularly when you’re having a difficult time. Having a support network is so important. Look around and think about who you can go to for help. This may be asking a teacher, coworker or manager to help you rearrange your workload, venting to a friend, or simply having a bit of a cry and a hug from someone you love.
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