Instant Genius - How to beat burnout

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

Whether its from work, home life or just general pressure, more and more people are suffering from burnout. But what is it, and how can you beat it? We spoke to Sarah Boss, clinical director at The Balance to find out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Burnout is something that many of us have suffered from whether that's because of work, relationships or just daily struggles in our lives. But what actually is burnout and how can we address it? I'm joined by Sarah Boss to discuss this topic. She's the clinical director at The Balance, a mental health clinic with offices around the world. She explains the science behind burnout

addressing possible symptoms and signs, as well as what is going on inside the brain when it happens. So what actually is meant by the term burnout? Well, burnout is actually, it's started to be used this term in regard to work. Overloaded work to feeling literally burned out, stressed so much over a long period of time to develop chronic, this chronic syndrome, how we call it, that burnout is a chronic syndrome that can consist of many different symptoms that might also vary in each person. The diagnosis is usually due to stresses on the job.

What is it that actually causes burnout? It's not just from being in the office. It can be from being at home as well? Yes, exactly. So it can be an overload, an overload at work, like the typical situations we hear off a lot, or there is most evidence and studies and research about, is the typical overload situation at work with people that have too much pressure or don't get any reward at work or there are these high demanding jobs or very boring jobs or chaotic, high pressure kind of environment. with no recognition, these kind of risk factors we know already. So that's a typical work situation. But it can also be an overload in a family, for example, or in the social environment.

The typical situation is somebody that has to take care of somebody, for example, in a sickness, disease, many years. These caregivers have an immense overload as well and have the same kind of symptoms and develop the same. burnout syndrome and then it can also come from being under challenged or feeling neglected it can look the same to have too much or not enough of stimuli I would say so it's an experience of the extreme you know either your brain is not experiencing enough or is experiencing too much yes exactly that both course then in the end if we would look at it physiologically it causes a massive stress reaction, cortisol increasing stress reaction in the whole body and the brain and the nervous system. And why is it that we are getting these overloads in the brain and the body?

Is it that because if you're saying it can be both oversimulation and under, is it just an intense feeling that's causing this? Yes, a feeling or I would say a reaction in our nervous system. because it depends then on how we cope with something. It depends on how we take care of ourselves in difficult situations, in pressuring situations. How is, for example, our sleep hygiene or how much exercise or relaxing techniques we apply every day in our life?

And it can then all end that way in that overload of our system regarding how much pressure we can cope and how well we are at dealing with stressors because stress itself is something positive in our life. We need it sometimes. We all know these situations starting at school when we had tests, exams. We need a certain amount of stress to perform well or to feel motivation, to study, to be focused. But then the natural thing would be that this curve, of increasing cortisol would go down again and we go back into the calm, restorative state

of the parasympathetic nervous system. But if that doesn't happen anymore, and we are in a chronic state of stress, then we can develop this burnout syndrome. And how do you draw the line? Where does stress end and burnout begin? That's a very good question. The easiest way to see is as soon as we develop changes or symptoms. As soon as we see that we don't come back into the restorative state we should be in. So as soon as we notice differences or we notice that our nervous system can't come back into the resting state anymore. And that can be, you know, when we already develop symptoms like the pulse going up or the

heart rate going up, that's already a long way we've gone into the stress mode. So we should be able to detect it much earlier and be more aware of our body and how we feel inside of our body and already notice slight changes. And the sleep, like I mentioned, is a really good indicator for it usually. And how do you differentiate between burnout and, let's say, anxiety or depression or lots of the mental health illnesses that may carry similar symptoms? or is it just a case that they overlap? Well, somehow in the symptoms, I think they can all potentially overlap. But in the definition, the main difference is the cause. So Bernard would always have a cause per definition why you got to that point.

Versus anxiety or depression, you usually don't have a cause, a single cause, but develop like any mental disease through time or maybe already. at early age and not depending on an event or a period of time. And is there any, I guess, predisposition to burnout or is every single person just as likely to suffer from this? No, I think there is predisposition. I mean, one thing we see is, of course, the personality trait somebody has. If, for example, somebody is very perfectionist or a high performer, high achiever,

for example, they grew up in a family or in a surrounding where there was a lot of pressure to achieve and to focus on performance. I think these kind of people are more at risk to develop these kind of symptoms. But then also on the other end of the spectrum, people that don't have a lot of resources or don't have a lot of awareness of their body and their health. and they don't have a lot of sensations about what's going on within their nervous system or their body, they're also at risk because they might not notice what's going on or they might not know how to cope with changes in their life or with stress.

You talked then about overachievers. I assume this can create burnout in every kind of direction of their life. If you're an overachiever, then you're pushing to work. especially hard, but then also, like you were saying earlier, about not doing much and underachieving, there's a stress there because it's in battle with their personality. Exactly. Absolutely. Because it's just as big as a stressor, an internal stressor then.

Or a good example is the pandemic. We know that the pandemic caused an increase of burnout, especially in women because they didn't get their job back that easily. or also the whole topic of child care, the child care crisis, there was so much pressure on women in this pandemic or still is after it, that also caused a rise of burnout symptoms. So we should always look at it in the context of what's happening also in our society. Also, for example, the whole group of young adults,

below 30 years that were also severely hit by that instability of work in the pandemic and after the pandemic with that also had a huge impact so yes like you said then I think the uncertainty something is really hard to deal with especially workwise and financially though that is a huge stressor to ourselves this podcast is sponsored by name audio and focal with over For a hundred years of combined expertise, Name and Focal have been bringing music to listeners just as the artist intended. Since day one, this mantra has shaped every innovation in high-fi design, technology and acoustic engineering, balancing craftsmanship and tradition with pioneering thinking. Name Audio pushes cutting-edge technology to ensure digital

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It seems to be that there's more attention paid to the issue of burnout in these younger generations. Is this quite a generational thing? Or is it more the problems that a younger generation is facing around work and housing and cost of living? Yeah, I think it's a mix because this generation has, I mean, every generation has its challenges. But this generation, I think, has new challenges

like the mentioned pandemic already, with all that uncertainty of even getting a stable, job, then the work at home and then all of a sudden back to the office, but then cutting down jobs and massive insecurity in the job world, especially these kind of young workers have to face. And then also what I see and plays a big part of it, I think, is the whole social media in internet generation. That is also something that generates so much insecurity and constant strength. on these young people that we sometimes can't even imagine, but how many contacts they have

every day, how many information they have to process every day just on their phone and on their devices. So that's something that causes another huge amount of extra stress that's not even at work or in their social life, but a part of their everyday life already that I find a huge risk factor and that could also have something to do with that. So social media alone can be something that's causing burn up for people. Yeah, maybe that would just add on to their stressful life already because this is in the end, it's an extra stress to be so present on social media, to be worried to miss out on something, to not be able to disconnect in the end because we know that we as human beings, we really need to disconnect and we should really learn that and focus on that.

And all these social media generation, I think that's really hard for them to ever even train that, not even practice it, but to even start practicing it. Do you think this is, I guess, more of a prevalent issue in recent years? Or is it like we're saying now with the use of social media, just something that is more put in front of us, we're more aware of burnout because we talk about it more. I think it's both, part of both. Because I think it seems to be that I hear about it more now, but then at the same time, I think it's just more a conversation people seem to have.

Yes, exactly. That's also true. That through the more awareness or reading a lot about it, like we said earlier, that all of a sudden it's not just the work context. it can be part of many different areas of our life. So people are a lot more aware of it and use the term more often. And also we understand how it works. Now we don't call it society anymore, for example,

or this kind of physiological reasons we saw behind them, like heart conditions or high blood pressure or all these kind of things, but are sometimes also a symptom or all the gastric symptoms like changes. in our digestion or in our appetite, all these kind of symptoms are also now something we're more aware of and we wouldn't leave out anymore out of the spectrum of burnout. So if someone starts to experience the symptoms of burnout themselves, what's the best way to deal with it? What's the appropriate way for them to try and battle that? I think it's important to understand what's going on, maybe to read about it, more to understand the whole process, because it's like a process and steps to develop burnout and also the severity of it and ask for help and support in all areas.

So that should involve resolving the issues at work if that's where it started, maybe with the coach, for example. that deals a lot with work, but then also maybe in psychotherapy to work on personality traits. We might have perfectionism. We might have things that contribute to us how we deal with stress and how we deal with performance situations and what kind of coping strategies we use. A lot of people might, for example, start to abuse substances to try to regulate themselves. So that's also something that would need be needed to be addressed. And also maybe have a checkup also physiologically by a family, a general practitioner,

to see how the body, the nervous system is already reacting to it. And then what's very important is to change the whole lifestyle. To sleep a lot. Sleep hygiene is most important. to sleep and rest, to start to be able to relax again, to exercise, maybe to start practicing mindfulness or meditation, and there can be easy exercises. You know, there are these great courses now,

like the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program, that is only 12 weeks in total, where everybody can learn easy techniques that we can all apply in our everyday life, even if it's just three times 10 minutes and that already make a huge difference to how we perceive stress and how resilient we are.

So that's something we should actually always implement already as a preventive factor. And if you maybe aren't suffering from burnout yourself but you know someone that is, is there something people can do from the outside? Yes, I think it would be really good to address it And to address, for example, if they observe changes in the behavior of a person, because that's what we usually notice then, that they might withdraw or there might be irritable,

or they might just be different than they were before. And I think it's very important to address that and to make the person aware that there's something serious going on that they might notice yet. They might not yet notice yet. and that is something that can really then lead to some major problems later on. Something that might be quite interesting is this concept of if a lot of burnout is happening within the in someone's work life or in the office, is there ways that companies can take on some of the load and reduce the culture of burnout? You know, there's a lot of talk of four-day weeks or all these other different solutions.

Does that make much of a difference? Yes, it does, absolutely. We can do so much at work from basic things like giving more recognition, like the whole workplace, how it is, if there's stresses that can be like light or like noise or how we work together, how many people, how much space, how much natural light, windows, how much possibility to disconnect, all these kind of things. We have a huge effect already. or that they're also already big companies that incorporated mindfulness exercises in their everyday life and have really good effects on it. So there is a lot that can be done.

And then it's also good to have somebody to be more aware of it and to be in charge of the whole environment of the people there, to overlook it, to be there if in case of needed for changes, or also to create more awareness. And the four day week is of course a good option or maybe also during the day you have these little breaks, have good quality breaks and a healthier work environment. We've talked a lot about burnout in the younger generation

and I guess that this idea that within social media it seems like a bigger issue than it used to be. Is it something that's getting worse? Are we experiencing it more? Or is it more that we're just finally starting to understand how we deal with this? And going forward, we're in a better place. I think it's a mixture of both. Because if we look at the world, it is more stressing than ever.

Because no generation had so much information to process all the time because there was no internet and there was not this overload of information. We really can't compare that with any other generation that had other big problems at their time and a lot of trauma. But it's, I think, a different story. So this overload is something that is very specific, I think, in this generation now. And something we should also always keep in mind. And also this instability. You know, if we think about generations ago, it was clear that if you have a certain job,

you might keep it and maybe for the rest of your life. It's another story if it made you happy or not, but that safety was somehow there sometimes. Now it's very common that young people change their jobs many times or that they have different several jobs or that they constantly, everything is constantly in change. And that is also creating an instability. And instability is also always threatening,

even if we're not aware of it, but threatening to our nervous system and it's also a stressor. And we also see, for example, with all the crisis that there are now, you know, we have more and more helpers now, which is great and of course what we need. But all these kind of jobs, they're even more at risk. You know, all the people that help others, that support others, or also the people that are in in direct contact with a lot of customers or with a lot of patients or whoever it is, they start learning sometimes to have to suppress their emotions because it's just no place and no space to express them.

And it's also a high risk factor. So I think it is also something we face now in our modern world that is where that increase in burnout comes from. Thank you for listening to this. episode of Instant Genius. That was Sarah Boss, talking about burnout. The Instant Genius podcast is brought to you by the team behind BBC Science Focus magazine, which you can find on sale now in supermarkets and newsagents, as well as on your preferred app store. Alternatively, you can come and find us online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. The texture and emotional

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