5 signs you’re heading for burnout
Burnout is a phrase we use for a complete physical and emotional crash. It’s when we can no longer go on because our mind and body stop us. It is a car crash that halts us in our tracks and stops us from taking another step forwards until we take a break.
When I was 26 I experienced something similar and, as a result, I can see other people heading for burnout in the same way that I was.
Burnout happens when we mentally or physically exert ourselves to such an extent that we can no long sustain the level of energy and effort we are putting into our lives.
It can be the result of a culmination of intensely stressful events. It can be a long, slow build-up of pressure that reaches boiling point, or it can be a sharp decline due to a series of circumstances that we are just not emotionally or physically capable of dealing with anymore.
Burnout is the collapse of our wellbeing
Either way, burnout is when our inner fire of vitality and lifeforce extinguishes itself in exhaustion.
It is not a big, red warning sign, rather, it is the end of the road. The warning signs are already communicated to us through our symptoms and this is why we need to pay attention to what our body is telling us. It is this innate intelligence system and our intuition which tell us when something is drastically wrong.
When our body is throwing off symptoms, illness and pain, when our minds feel dizzy, tired and foggy, when our emotional state is weary, joyless and flat, it is a huge indicator that there is something severely wrong.
So, below I’ve highlighted 5 signs you’re heading for burnout.
All sorts of things go wrong in your body
This is probably the biggest sign that something is wrong and that you’re heading for a fall.
Symptoms are messengers, telling us that there is an imbalance in our body. When I was experiencing burnout, I felt a range of physical symptoms that I didn’t understand. I was putting on weight, a sign that my digestive system was paralysed in a stress response and wasn’t able to efficiently do its job.
I was also extremely tired but my mind was completely wired. This is another typical indicator that the body is extremely stressed. It’s the inability to relax despite exhaustion. Other physical symptoms might be stiffness or pain around the shoulders and neck as this is where we carry our burdens and problems.
Other ways the body will flag that you’re heading for a burnout is pain and inflammation. Whether it’s back pain, knee pain, headaches or any kind of inflamed area of the body, including the skin, is a sign that your body wants you to stop immediately.
Feeling constantly run down and exhausted
When we are heading for burnout, our body is doing everything it can to keep us functioning. However, this is at the expense of healthy immune function which, as a result of the constant stress and tension in our lives, is completely repressed.
Your immune system is not a stand-alone part of your body, it is a system of intelligence that is connected to every, single cell in your body. Stress hormones shut down the immune system to conserve energy for fight or flight. So, when you’re stuck in a stress state, your sympathetic nervous system, your body cannot rest, repair and protect, it has no capacity to do this.
This is why feeling constantly run down, experiencing colds, flu and other viral-like conditions, is a sign that you are heading for burnout. If you’re not taking adequate rest and making time to recover, this is even more detrimental and the body will slide even further into a state of illness and exhaustion.
Feeling emotional and on the verge of tears
When I was experiencing burnout I was constantly on the verge of tears for no apparent reason. Anything would tip me over the edge, whether it was a comment, the smallest thing that went wrong in my day, missing a train, loosing and not being able to find something.
The way my body told me that my nervous system was highly stressed and unable to cope much longer at the pace I was setting was through crying. If you imagine yourself as a bottle that is filling up to overflowing, tears are the body’s way of releasing the stress which you are no longer capable of carrying. When tears brim over at the smallest thing, you know you are reaching that tipping point.
Feeling emotional is a clear sign of nervous system distress. Irritability is a big indicator of stress, as is anxiety, fear and feeling low or depressed. Tears of frustration, despair and grief are ways for the body to release stress.
Interestingly, the PH balance of tears is shown to contain cortisol, meaning it’s another way the body releases stress hormones out of your system.
Feeling flat, joyless and at the end of the road
Burnout is emotional more than anything else.
The mind and body are one unit so emotional stress will transfer into physical symptoms and physical stress will transfer into emotional symptoms. However, a not-so-common sign of burnout is a listless and joyless feeling, like you’ve been run down by life and can no longer summon up the courage to continue.
If you’re feeling depressed and hopeless about your life it can be a huge sign that you’re stuck in a place that is so uncomfortable that your soul is screaming out at you to change. The best way to describe it is a flat hopelessness, like a pit of despair that feels like an insurmountable challenge to crawl out of.
Being in a depressed state is a state of weariness at living a life that is not true to you. It’s the unbearable weight of the mask you wear to get by in life.
While chronic joylessness and despair are huge emotional indicators of burnout, most likely, your body will also be feeling exhausted, painful and completely out of sorts. If you’re feeling like you just can’t go on in the state that you’re in and feel like you’ve reached the end of your tether of what you are capable of bearing, it is a sign that burnout is around the corner.
Feeling stressed, overwhelmed and anxious
Feeling anxious and fearful indicates a highly wired nervous system that is heading for collapse.
When burnout happened in my life, it had been the result of over a year of a constantly stressful job in a toxic environment that pitched my nervous response into a place of high alert, adrenals firing and body tensed up and ready to go at any moment.
A feeling of overwhelm, like everything is too much, you have too much to juggle and it’s all becoming unbearably heavy, is a sign that you need to stop. When we are overwhelmed, the smallest of things can feel like too much. Even going shopping, deciding what clothes to wear or making a meal seems like too much to bear.
Chronic anxiety is also a common symptom of deep stress and potential burnout. When we are so anxious about our lives that we are taken out of the present moment and flung into future ‘what if’ scenarios, we are heading for a fall. Anxiety is all about a lack of trust, a lack of knowing everything will be ok and living in deep stress.
When we are pushed to our limits, emotionally or physically, it’s hard to land in a place of trust and acceptance, so we veer into panic and fear, two emotional states which create further stress and lead to burnout.
Want to receive the latest blog posts straight to your inbox? Sign up for my newsletter and you’ll also receive your FREE ‘Discover Your Fear Saboteur’ guide, the ultimate guide to identifying the fear sabotaging your potential!
