Burnout. A word that has been around for a long time, but now has a new dimension:
Covid Burnout.
The impact of the pandemic on our mental and emotional well being has been much documented. What is interesting is the dynamic of being too busy in a virtually virtual world and how that changes how we experience the perhaps familiar symptoms of burnout. I have written before about burnout here, but the subject warrants revisiting.
Exploring the idea of burnout, two things strike me.
First, it is not a new concept. It has been around since the Victorians; well, it has possibly been around a lot longer, but it was the Victorians who first documented it and came up with a fabulous name:
Neurasthenia.
The sypmtoms described back in the 19th Century included emotional and mental weariness, anxiety, aches and pains, sluggishness and sleeplessness, and general malaise.
Any of that sound familiar? Or like Covid Burnout perchance?
The second thing that strikes me about the burnout as described by the Victorians was that it corresponded with an increase in forms of communication due to the advent of the telephone.
You can read more about this here.
But it does not take a rocket scientist to draw some immediate comparisons between what the Victorians experienced with the dawning of a new communications era, and what we are experiencing with Covid burnout.
So much of our communication over the last 18 months has been online. Video calling and conferencing, WhatsApp, texting – we have spent literally hours a day in front of screens trying to keep up with work, family, friends. This drains and saps us of mental energy in a way that face to face communication does not. Of course, there are advantages to working remotely and many businesses have realised that virtual meetings and remote working have many benefits.
But the change in communication and how suddenly and shockingly it was imposed on us as the world shut down has taken it’s toll.
That very altered form of communication, coupled with all the other impacts of the pandemic and associated lock-downs have meant we are have been living with new stressors for months now. The line between work and home has become so blurred as to almost disappear altogether. Our lives have looked so radically different and many of the normal parameters of life have been removed. We have had to adapt quickly, and continually. Plus a culture of being always-on and needing to socialise in a necessarily-virtual way makes it harder to switch off.
As this article in Psychology Today points out, burnout is not new – back to those Victorians again. Covid has simply exacerbated the issue.
None of this makes for very cheery reading.
Sorry about that.
And there is no quick fix.
So, as a starting point, before we delve further into this topic over the coming weeks, what can we do?
How can we start to address our Covid Burnout?
As always, this starts with awareness. Hindsight in advance would be a marvellous thing. But this is about learning to stop and notice the triggers to the perfect storm before that storm consumes us. This then allows us to make different choices.
So if you resonate with this, take a few minutes this week to remind yourself:
These last few months have been hard. I am very weary and have diminished capacity for life. This is OK.
I need to say no to some things this week and I give myself permission to do that.
People are more important than tasks. Who I am when I am with people is more important than what I am doing.
I am not indispensible.
I am not for one second saying that you are dispensible. Far from it: you are a precious, unique and wonderful person with a precious, unique and wonderful purpose in life.
But it is not necessarily you who has to do-and-be-all-things-for-all-people-all-the-time.
It’s OK to say: “I can’t”.
I believe that this is about our perception of ourselves and our lives, and what it is that we are telling ourselves. Burnout, and Covid burnout especially, is an awful and worsening affliction of our modern society.
Can we change our perception of how we live each day and the importance of how we use our time? Can we give up busyness and choose a different path?