How is your neurasthenia coming along? Neurasthenia is the term the Victorians used to describe what we would now recognise as Burnout. And having lived with the Covid-19 pandemic for what feels like a lifetime now, there are signs all around of folk heading full pelt into Covid burnout.
Last week I was musing here about some of the physical effects of burnout, which have been exacerbated by working at home. This includes the impact of not-ideally-ergonomic environments, too much screen time, and loss of boundaries between work and whatever we call the rest of life.
What is the impact on mental health of all this?
I touched on this with reference to the increased viscosity of our brain soup.
I don’t know about you, but when my brain is full of sludge, my emotions are frayed and ragged and my margins are diminished, I tend to adopt one of two behaviour patterns.
Negativity and Numbing.
It is all-too-easy to be sucked downwards into an ever increasing vortex of negativity that depletes us of any residual joy. Turn on the news for only a few minutes or stop and pay attention to the griefs and losses caused by the last 18 months and the weight of it all can feel overwhelming.
When we focus on what is negative and fill our minds with difficult, painful, frustrating or depressing input, the output will by design by negative. This is the law of exposure:
The law of exposure states that our mind thinks most about what it is exposed to.
Yes, there is a lot of difficult, disheartening and disturbing news out there. There are many circumstances that are beyond our control. The impact on mental health is clear to see.
But what the law of exposure inspires in us is the possibility of choice. We cannot change circumstances beyond our control. But we can limit how much we fill our minds with the associated negativity. We can choose instead to fill our minds with what is good, positive and life giving.
So if one side effect of the Covid pandemic, and potential Covid burnout for you is negativity, stop and ask yourself this question:
What am I exposing my mind to on a regular basis?
This can be news, music, social media, people, films. Think about how much of that input is negative. Then consider the potential outworking of that. What is the impact on your day of cynicism, self pity, self-defeating behaviour and excuses, apathy, inconsistency, sarcasm, worry, procrastination…..not a very pretty list is it? And the impact of that level of negativity in your head is only going to have a negative impact on mental health, your productivity, your general enjoyment of life.
Enter numbing.
When we are feeling thus demotivated and thoroughly discouraged, why not anaethetise our senses with some lovely form of instant gratification? You will have your vice of choice – rubbish TV, food, alchol, online shopping, sleep, internet. An insidious destructive negative cycle can easily be set up here. We feel rubbish inside, and it is easier and initially satisfying to be snarky with those around us as a means of expressing some of that frustration.
But that leads to unpleasant interactions with those who – actually – really matter to us, which makes us feel even worse. You can read more about negativity and numbing here – go on, it’s not all doom and gloom, there is some good food for thought in there.
So how to address this?
First of all, stop and notice. No surprises there – this is of course about awareness. Notice how you are feeling and notice what direction your thoughts tend to take you. Become aware of the triggers that point towards negativity and potential numbing behaviours. I know that for me, I leak snarkiness, irritation and impatience. Those are all triggers to me to stop and pay heed to what is going on inside my head.
Then take action:
Phone a friend (remains a very useful lifeline!) who makes you laugh and brings energy, and arrange to meet. Or ask a friend for help: we all need someone to lean on.
Indulge in a spot of nostalgia.
Practice gratitude – do this every day consistently for a week and see how different you feel. More here on why it works so powerfully to combat negativity.
Put boundaries round negative input – news, social media, people who are draining (remembering that you will be a draining person to others at some point in your life).
Switch off all screens and do something creative/physical/bonkers instead.
Help someone else (loads of evidence as to why this works).
Get outside somewhere beautiful (doesn’t need to be far away) and really look at and absorb what you see of the natural world. The importance of nature to our well being has been documented more than a century before Covid became a thing.
Do some vigorous cleaning and sorting – oh, is that just me then?
Covid burnout has had a devastating impact on mental health. But there are many small steps we can take to avoid negativity and numbing and restore some joy to our lives.