Signs of Emotional Burnout

What does it mean to feel burnt out? Well, generally, you'd say you're burnt out after a long day of work or after studying for your final exams. But emotional burnout isn't just a phrase people throw around when they're tired; it's actually a real psychological syndrome.

A few decades ago, a group of psychologists published a book that not only defined burnout but also taught people how to recognize the signs. If someone is experiencing burnout, they're almost always facing a combination of these three things: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. In other words, they have trouble giving a hundred percent at work or in their relationships, they start acting like a different person, and they struggle with motivation and self-perception.

As you can see, it's more than just feeling tired. This condition can cause damage to your mental and your physical health if you're not careful. Obviously, in the workplace, burnout is detrimental to confidence and productivity. That's the biggest reason why people started taking emotional burnout seriously. This psychological syndrome prevents people from doing their jobs and handling their responsibilities.

This new attention led to a significant increase in studies conducted on emotional burnout. Thanks to that research, psychologists have identified many reliable indicators of emotional burnout. They even put together a 22-item scale, which has been used by researchers around the world. These studies also revealed that many people demonstrate the symptoms of burnout without realizing that there's anything wrong.

When left unattended, these symptoms can worsen until they start negatively impacting your choices, your relationships, and your lifestyle. So, to help you get ahead of your symptoms, here are 10 signs that you may be emotionally burnt out.

1. Patience

If you're feeling overworked and exhausted, patience is usually the first thing to go. Patience is your ability to tolerate inconvenient, annoying, or difficult things without getting upset. Now, normally when something goes wrong, it isn't that hard to stay calm and try again. But what happens when you have zero patience?

Let's just say you're writing up a few pages for work. You just spent the last half hour grinding away when suddenly your computer crashes, and you realize you didn't save any of it. You try desperately to recover what you lost, but you're going to have to start over.

This will always be frustrating no matter what mental state you're in. However, when your patience is abnormally low, it isn't just frustrating; it's completely heartbreaking. You might feel angry, sad, or even hopeless. It might feel impossible to get back to where you were, even if you only lost a half hour of work. If every inconvenient thing seems like a huge roadblock in your life, well, you may be experiencing emotional burnout.

2. Unusual Forgetfulness

Burnout has a major impact on attention. It creates significant fogginess, which diminishes both your concentration and your attention span. You'll notice yourself having trouble staying focused on your work and during conversations.

To make matters worse, you're especially prone to common distractors like TV and social media. That's because your exhausted brain is searching for ways to relax and just zone out. Since you aren't paying as much attention, you might have trouble remembering details. You'll make clumsy mistakes simply because your mind isn't nearly as sharp as it usually is.

Your work becomes sloppy and absent-minded, even if most days you're extremely productive. In the workplace, employers often mistake this decrease in performance for carelessness, but that's not actually what's happening. If your focus is uncharacteristically low, it may be time to give your mind a break.

3. Persistent Hopelessness

Do you feel like everything you do seems pointless? People experiencing burnout may lose sight of the purpose behind the things that they do—not just their work but their habits, their routines, and relationships too. When you're consistently exhausted, long-term gratification is an incredibly challenging idea to wrap your head around.

You don't spend as much time maintaining self-discipline. Your goals start to slip, and your dreams feel further and further away. If everything you do feels hopeless, burnout is something you should seriously consider.

4. Short Fuse

Sudden bursts of anger are often a direct product of emotional burnout. Because it lessens patience and heightens negative emotions, your temper tends to get shorter. You might notice yourself yelling and screaming over things that would never normally bother you.

That's because you're holding in all this pent-up anger. Unfortunately, that anger often gets displaced on friends and family, and it can have a detrimental effect on your relationships. But it doesn't have to. By reducing the amount of stress in your life, you can relieve burnout and keep your anger under control.

5. Lack of Organization

You might recognize burnout in the way you organize your life. When you're feeling productive, it's rewarding to keep your life in order. You feel on top of your work, and you know how to manage your time. But emotional burnout takes away that sense of control.

Your responsibilities start to pile up. You get so overwhelmed that you either forget, or you just don't feel motivated to stay organized. Something as benign as a messy room can be a symptom of burnout, but only if it's out of the ordinary. If you almost always keep your room clean, then suddenly stop caring what it looks like, well, there's something wrong.

Don't just roll your eyes and pretend like it's no big deal. Organizational changes, even the small ones, can signal that you're emotionally exhausted.

6. Unexplained Headaches

Sometimes burnout appears through physical symptoms. Unexplained headaches are one of the most common, though they're almost always ignored. People will just take an aspirin and get on with their day. But you should listen to your body. If you're experiencing pain, it means your body is trying to tell you something.

High levels of emotional stress can make you susceptible to both tension headaches and migraines. When you're stressed out, your brain releases emergency fight-or-flight hormones. Your heart rate increases, and your muscles begin to tense up. All of these reactions take a toll on your body and your brain.

This inevitably leads to inflammation and pain. Now, at first, these stress headaches may only last a few minutes, but they can become chronic over time. So try to identify this physical symptom as early as you can.

7. Dramatic Mood Shifts

Burnout can make your emotions strong and volatile. Your brain may be stressed out so often that it begins overreacting to everything. The tiniest trigger can make you jump from one emotional extreme to the next. If you're experiencing these strange mood shifts, well, it may mean you're overwhelmed at work or at home.

Something in your life may be creating a huge amount of tension and pressure. Unfortunately, if you continue to ignore it, this symptom can evolve into more severe mood disorders like depression.

8. Cognitive Execution

Attention isn't the only cognitive function that suffers during burnout. You might notice you just can't perform as well as you did before. Your work takes longer, you get confused by simple problems, and you aren't as creative as you used to be.

Hey, don't worry; you're not somehow worse at your job. Emotional burnout triggers significant deficits in several executive functions. The most important ones are planning, problem-solving, and information processing. When you overuse your brain, these normal everyday functions require a lot more energy, and it only gets worse when you factor in all the pressure of your demanding lifestyle.

So don't let your cognition decline any more than it has to. Recognize this symptom of emotional burnout and take steps to get yourself back on track.

9. Lopsided Responsibilities

The best way to avoid burnout is to strike a balance between work and your personal life. It's important to care about your job and be committed to your success, but not all the time. It's just as critical that you explore personal passions and connect with friends and family.

Individuals who live an unbalanced life, usually because of an extremely demanding job, are prone to emotional burnout. Doctors and nurses, for example, have taxing schedules and an overwhelming number of responsibilities. They have very little time to focus on themselves because they're spending it all on other people.

That's why medicine has one of the highest rates of burnout of any field. Even if you're not a doctor or a nurse, your job can still take over your life. Whenever you're struggling to make time for yourself, the emotional burnout may be just around the corner.

10. Relentless Apathy

Do you find yourself struggling to care about your work? Are you getting sloppy and disorganized because you just don't feel like trying anymore? Emotional extremes are a reliable sign of burnout, but total apathy is nearly as common.

A lack of emotional connection can lead to significant personal dysfunction. You might stop showing up for work, and all your good habits might go down the drain. Now keep in mind that people aren't usually apathetic on purpose. They want to care; they just can't.

It's often because they've invested too much time and effort into one particular thing. No matter how much you love it, you're going to get drained eventually. Hey, don't worry; it's very possible to rediscover your passion, but working yourself into the ground is never the answer.

Table of Burnout Symptoms

Sign	Description
Patience	First thing to go when feeling overworked and exhausted.
Unusual Forgetfulness	Major impact on attention, creating significant fogginess.
Persistent Hopelessness	Lose sight of the purpose behind actions and goals.
Short Fuse	Sudden bursts of anger due to heightened negative emotions.
Lack of Organization	Responsibilities pile up, leading to disorganization.
Unexplained Headaches	Physical symptom of burnout, often ignored.
Dramatic Mood Shifts	Emotions become strong and volatile due to stress.
Cognitive Execution	Decline in planning, problem-solving, and information processing.
Lopsided Responsibilities	Unbalanced life due to demanding job and lack of personal time.
Relentless Apathy	Struggling to care about work and personal life.

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