The 7 Signs of Emotional Burnout and What To Do About It

Are you feeling constantly drained? Do you feel like you can't keep up with your usual routine? You may be experiencing signs of emotional burnout.

In this episode, we explore the 7 signs of emotional burnout and what to do about it.

In This Episode, You Will Learn About: 

• 7 Signs of emotional burnout

• 5 Steps to breakthrough burnout

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How to Identify Emotional Burnout

Employee burnout is a global concern. In a survey of over a thousand respondents by Deloitte, 77% say that they have experienced burnout at their current job. On the other hand, 91% say that unmanageable stress or frustration impacts the quality of their work. And 83% say that burnout can negatively impact personal relationships. 

How do you identify the signs of emotional burnout, and why is it so important? Because it’s a key to preventing emotional burnout from happening. Here are the seven signs:

• First, are you feeling overwhelmed and stressed constantly?

• Second, are you overcome by fear? Perhaps all you can see is the hurdle ahead and the threat in front of you. 

• The third is feeling restless or irritable. Do you find that the little things that happened throughout the day seem to irritate you?

• Fourth, are you escaping situations? Rather than facing challenges head on, perhaps you may be turning to alcohol or bury yourselves in work? We turn to activities that falsely sometimes fill the void.

• The fifth sign of emotional burnout is we push ourselves past our limits. We try to do everything for everybody else. 

• The sixth is perhaps we find ourselves complaining a lot: complaining at work, complaining at home. We just tend to be in that negative state. 

• And the seventh is, we wrongly convince ourselves that we are not worth living. There are some people out there right now that are so emotionally burnt out that they feel the only way of escaping and the only way of relieving the pain that is going on in their lives is by taking their lives.

I have shared with my listeners before and previous episodes that in March of 2020, I lost my mom to suicide. This topic is very near and dear to my heart. It is why I’m such an advocate in speaking about burnout and mental health. Suicide is a permanent situation to a temporary problem. If you are experiencing these signs of emotional burnout, I’m going to share with you what to do and how to get yourself out of this emotional burnout and back to a good, healthy emotional state. 

Now I want to emphasize, I am not a psychologist. I’m not a psychiatrist. I did take psychology classes as my minor in college, but I am not a psychologist. So if you are experiencing any type of suicidal thoughts, I first wanto to say seek help. Go talk to a counselor. Some of the topics that I’m going to be discussing right now, on how to get through emotional burnout will probably be helpful, but still I see the benefit of always speaking to a professional. 

Way to Prevent Emotional Burnout

If you are experiencing any of these seven signs of emotional burnout, here’s what you can do to prevent it from happening. 

First, be honest with yourself. Acknowledge your feelings. Don’t ignore them. Often when we are experiencing burnout, we continue to just push them down without truly acknowledging how we’re feeling. If you are experiencing emotional burnout, grab a piece of paper and describe the emotions that you are feeling when you are burnt out. Put words to those emotions, and when you are able to put words to the emotions that you’re feeling, it helps create this self-awareness to prevent it from happening again. 

The second is make sure you schedule time for rest and relaxation. I know that we’ve probably heard this several times, the importance of rest and relaxation, but even just a few minutes each day will help in preventing burnout. We live in a culture where we live in this state of busyness all the time, and we almost wear it as a badge of honor, but it’s really not serving us in life. When you are burnt out and overwhelmed, we have a hard time focusing. We have a hard time having clarity on the tasks that we’re doing and what we get to accomplish that day. But when you take time to actually give your body time to rest and relax, you can build more energy through that process. Our body needs it. When you wake up in the morning, do you dedicate time to meditation or exercise? Do you dedicate time throughout your day to take breaks? For example, if you have an Apple watch, you have a little alarm or a little notification that goes off that it’s time to stand, or it’s time to do deep breathing, or it’s time to just step away from our computer and actually take a break. 

The third step to overcoming and preventing burnout is to talk to someone about what you’re going through. A friend, a therapist or a clergy member, can all support and be a great source to help you get through challenging times. Taking time to talk to somebody about what you’re going through. Share the emotions of what you’re going through. People want to help, but it’s a matter of us speaking up and telling people what is going on. 

The fourth is don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. There is no shame in admitting that you need a break. Is there someone you can ask who can help you with the project at work? Who can take on more responsibility in your household, someone in your life that you may be able to ask to watch your kids so that you could have a minute? It’s important that we ask for help when we’re feeling burnt out or overwhelmed. We’re even just taking the emotional time to be proactive about asking for help so that we don’t get to a place where we’re burnt out and overwhelmed.

And the fifth is to refine what is working and what is not working in your life. What can you do to change your current situation? If you are feeling burnt out and you’re feeling overwhelmed, what changes can you make in your life that can prevent that from happening? Is it readjusting your schedule? Is it reprioritizing where you’re spending your time and who you’re spending your time with? Is it asking for help with projects? Is it, maybe outsourcing some support around the house, whether it's bringing in somebody to clean the house so that you can spend more time with your family so that you’re getting a break.

What can you do to change your situation? What would make you happier if you were able to change some of the challenges that are going on in your life? These are the seven signs of identifying when you’re in an emotional burnout and the five steps you can take to prevent emotional burnout. You matter, your wellbeing matters. Your happiness matters. And if there is something that is not working in your life, you get to ask yourself, what are some of the changes that you get to make to ensure that you are living the life that you want? And if you know someone who is experiencing burnout right now, who could use some encouragement to get themselves out of that, I invite you to share this episode with the, 

We're going to be doing a series of episodes on burnout. We’re going to be talking about how to overcome burnout. We’re going to be talking about how to boost energy, and we’ve done some episodes on improving our sleep. Our body is a machine. In order to live our best life, we’ve got to take care of ourselves first.  

I know we’ve probably grown up to always say, “Take of others, take of others,” and yes, I’m a big believer of that. I love doing volunteer work. There is a lot of fulfillment in helping others, but in order to help others, we’ve got to take care of ourselves first. And when we’re able to quickly identify the signs of burnout, then we can take the appropriate steps to prevent it or to course correct when we’re experiencing burnout.