7 Signs You're Burned Out And Something Has to Change

Why Burnout Is So Damaging

The most common affliction for people who have finally looked into self-care of some kind is burnout. It damages you mentally, physically and emotionally. It can take years to get to burnout, but the fallout is swift, my friend. Once the damage is done, it can take a terribly long time to undo it.

The good news is that it CAN be undone!

A lot of people don’t realize that they’re actually suffering from burnout. Humans tend to blame themselves if they feel like their lives aren’t perfect, and burnout is no exception. It can be easy and very convenient to not recognize burnout, and instead think that you’re just in a slump, doing something wrong, or need to adjust your attitude.

This is especially true if you are surrounded by a culture of toxic positivity. When you can’t speak out about how drained you’re feeling because the default is “stay positive!,” not speaking about it only makes it worse, and having everyone around you “positive” makes you wonder why you aren’t feeling the same.

So, here you are, completely drained, not understanding exactly what’s happening and, more importantly, not knowing what to do about it. Are you burned out? Here are 7 signs you just might be.

Common Signs of Burnout:

1. “Doing Something For Fun” Means Nothing

2. You Are Tired All Day Every Day

3. You Do Everything on Autopilot

4. Your Body Is Trying To Tell You Something

5. You’re Miserable, And It Feels Like Nothing Will Ever Change

6. Your Reactions And Emotions Are Extreme

7. Old Patterns Become The Norm Due To Overwhelm

1. "Doing Something For Fun" Means Nothing

When was the last time you thought of something you could go do for fun? Not something that a friend of family member planned. Not something that you got talked into doing. Something that you wanted to do and planned yourself.

For a lot of people suffering from burnout, “doing something for fun” not only means nothing to them because they have no idea what they would do for fun, it also sounds damned exhausting.

When you are suffering from burnout, you don’t have the mental energy to devote to anything outside of getting through your day, and you’re so tired (see #2) that you don’t have the physical energy to think about going out.

If going out sounds more like a chore than anything else, you need to ask yourself why.

2. You Are Tired All Day Every Day

Can you remember the last time you didn’t feel tired? Can you remember a time recently that you woke up and felt rested and looked forward to your day?

A permanent state of exhaustion is NOT a status symbol. It doesn’t mean you’re more successful than everyone else. It doesn’t mean you’re more important either. It means you’re more exhausted than everyone else, and that impacts your body and your mind in so many detrimental ways.

The culture of “busyness” that has been created in our society is beyond harmful, and one of the main things that leads to such a high rate of burnout. Not only busyness at work, but busyness at home, busyness for kids, everyone stays busy. This narrative that if you’re not busy you’re lazy is also complete bullshit. Rest and sleep and leisure time is essential for our health and well-being.

Being tired all day every day means that you are wearing your body down. This will catch up to you eventually, and it will not be pretty. Trust me on that.

Image by @HOWLINGRED70

3. You Do Everything On Autopilot

Do you remember everything that you did most days? What did you eat for lunch yesterday? Did you listen to music on your way home? What did you do after dinner? Most of the time, a big ol’ helping of burnout means that you are on complete autopilot throughout your days.

You get up, you go to work or you run your errands or you take care of the kids (or all three!). Somewhere in there, hopefully, you eat something. In the evening you might watch TV or read a book or cook dinner. Then you go to bed and get up and do the whole thing again the next day.

If you were pressed, though, to name specific instances of things on certain days you probably wouldn’t be able to. Reason being that you are moving through your days mostly on autopilot.

You’ve overloaded your system by trying to keep doing all the things even though you’re completely drained. You can’t function at 100%, so you’re doing what you can by rote.

4. Your Body Is Trying To Tell You Something

Have you noticed that you feel kind of weird lately? You may not be able to say exactly what feels weird, but you just feel “off”?

Are you sleeping more, or have you lost your appetite, or is there something else you can’t explain but that is unusual?

Friend, your body is trying to tell you something. Deviations in how your body usually feels is a big, huge, major red flag. It’s also one of the MOST ignored signs of burnout and fatigue.

Doctors and the healthcare system at large can be a scary, complicated mess. That said, ignoring cues from our body is the worst thing you can do. If you will pay attention to the messages your body is sending, and care for it accordingly, you can prevent a lot of wear and tear and future issues.

This was the ultimate lesson for me that led me to self-care. Ignoring my body literally almost killed me. Today, if something seems odd, I am on the phone to someone who can evaluate it ASAP.

Image by: @kellysikkema

5. You're Miserable, And It Feels Like Nothing Will Ever Change

I bet you’ve said it. To yourself, to your friends, maybe to your family. Maybe you’ve done a couple hundred things trying to fix yourself so that you can stop saying it.

“I can’t live like this. Something has got to change.”

Again, most of the time, when you say that to yourself, your automatic assumption is that the “something” that needs to change is YOU. Not true.

If you are completely burned out, your circumstances and environment is probably what needs to change. The problem is, in the middle of a big burnout cycle, it does not feel like anything will EVER change. You start to really believe that, and that makes the despair of the burnout worse. It turns into a vicious cycle.

I can assure you that things WILL get better. Nothing is wrong with YOU.

6. Your Reactions and Emotions Are Extreme

Small things can feel like very big things in the middle of burnout, and very big things can feel like something that you need to just ignore. It can be extremely difficult to deal with “one more thing” or feel unsupported when dealing with the mental, emotional and physical fallout from burnout.

I will make the caveat here that if there is an aspect of neurodiversity or mental illness in your life, it can be a contributing factor to burnout. It can also make burnout worse. It can also masquerade as burnout. If you are dealing with that, I know that having a mental health partner, whether it be a therapist or some other practitioner, can be immensely helpful.

You may find yourself very tearful, or exceptionally sensitive to things. It may be hard to articulate WHY you feel that way.

Burnout makes everything harder, and having to deal with your emotions and interacting with others is harder, too.

Image by @icons8

7. Old Patterns Become the Norm Due To Overwhelm

Any time you become incredibly overwhelmed, falling into old patterns feels comforting and easier than keeping new patterns in place and fighting the fatigue and hardship of burnout at the same time.

One way I always know I am doing too much at one time and getting closer to crashing and burning is that I start running late to things. I have worked so hard over the years to combat running late all the time. As soon as overwhelm hits, I am once again tardy to all the things.

Are you snoozing your alarm more? Skipping certain routines? Maybe ordering takeout instead of cooking? It’s burnout, babe.

Some of this is related to not having the mental or physical bandwidth to certain things, like cooking. Some of it is the fact that your body is trying to slow you down and you aren’t paying attention to it. If you’re noticing that you’re falling into patterns you haven’t been in for a while, check for overwhelm, and adjust where you can.

Surviving Burnout

Burnout can be incredibly hard to break through, and doing so takes some work and willingness to try new things. It is absolutely worth it.

Long-term burnout can be devastating to your body physically, and to your mental and emotional health. If you believe you are suffering from burnout, working to recover from it NOW is the key.

In my burnout recovery, I found self-care, and I believe that it can relieve the effects of burnout and help you to not fall into burnout again in the future.

Experiencing burnout? Want some beginner ideas for ways to reverse it? Click here for the link to my free Beginner Self-Care Video Workshop!

Bath Bombs Aren't the Only Form of Self-Care: The Problem With Self-Care Cliches

The Problem

You can't fix your life with bath bombs and massages, but you can radically transform your life and the way you're living it if you will do deep self-care work with those bath bombs and massages thrown in.

How do you balance both?

Should you be paying attention to anything that has a “self-care” label on it? Should you be paying attention to all of it?

Make no mistake, a hot bath with a bath bomb can ABSOLUTELY be a valuable piece of your self-care, but it needs to be part of a larger self-care routine that is all-encompassing, and the cliches out there make it really hard to determine what will work for you and what won’t.

Two Forms of Self-Care: Passive vs. Active

When it comes to self-care work, there are two ways that you can go about caring for yourself at any given time.

One way is active self-care. This is the deep work that comes when you are learning about yourself, rewiring your learned patterns, and working on loving yourself enough to care for yourself well. You are actively involved in this work at all times. Without your diligent and active involvement, this deep work does not get done and you don’t progress as quickly.

Passive self-care consists of those wonderful and loving things you do for yourself that you can do once and be done with. You can do them more than once, and do them routinely, but you can only do them once in a given session, and you aren’t necessarily the one doing the work. These are the things like hot baths, yoga classes, and solo weekend trips.

Active self-care is ongoing and dynamic, while passive self-care is restorative and temporary.

Image by @mutzli

Both Forms of Self-Care are Legitimate

Active and passive self-care are both completely legitimate forms of self-care, but I would argue that you cannot put long-term, transformational self-care in place without both.

If you are working and working and working on learning how to care for yourself, but don’t know what passive actions to put in place that will help you along the way, you’re going to burn out and decide that self-care is draining and not worth it.

Conversely, if you're only applying the passive forms of self-care without doing any kind of deep work around your internal self-talk, your level of self-compassion, or any other complication that needs to be addressed for you to know your true needs and wants, true transformational self-care won’t happen, either.

I love your bath bombs but if you're depressed your self-care is going to need to be more than just a bath.

Since self-care cliches are a thing, many many people fall into the trap of thinking passive self-care is all there is, and it’s difficult to escape that thinking. This leads to many people trying one thing after another that has “self-care” attached to it, and not understanding why they don’t feel better.

They’re also afraid to ask for any real guidance from family and friends, because all those cliches and buzzwords have also made self-care seem trendy and even selfish.

Self-Care Cliches Make Self-Care Seem Selfish

This may be my biggest pet peeve about everyone and everything out there having a solution that is “self-care” based. It creates an environment in which self-care looks complicated and expensive. Therefore, anyone who is invested in it can be accused of being selfish for sinking so much time and money into it.

To this, I say BULLSHIT.

You do not need every single thing out there that has a “self-care” label on it. Hell, a lot of things out there with a self-care designation was created by people that don’t even fully understand it, but really really want to sell it.

You are not selfish for wanting to care for yourself better and prioritize your needs.

The trick is to cut through all the crap and find those things out there (yes, some might even be cliches!) that are actually truly helpful for you.

Individualized self-care does take time to create, but knowing yourself and your needs will help you find what you need in the sea of self-care buzz and leave the rest.

Some Self-Care Cliches are Helpful

There are actually a lot of self-care “cliches” that have turned out to be super helpful to a lot of people working to build their passive self-care regimens. Baths, massages, exercise and retreats are just a few. Of the many Instagram ads out there, some have actually led people to really helpful items (for me it was Silk + Sonder).

The trick when evaluating these things is to remember that it has to actually work for you in your current life.

All of the cliches out there - from the mani/pedis to the face masks - are marketed as if anyone and everyone can be helped by them and level up their self-care regimen at the same time.

Here’s the thing - everyone on the planet needs something different from their self-care routine.

So, does the thing look like something that you could genuinely use? Can you afford it? Have you used something like this before and been disappointed? If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Don’t let the shininess and glitter or ability of this thing to “fix your life” keep you from honestly evaluating it.

Another way that some self-care cliches are helpful is to give you ideas about how you might incorporate something similar into your routine. What is the point of the bath? What is the goal of the journaling? Can you translate it to something equivalent in your life that you would actually enjoy and take part in?

Your self-care is yours, boo boo. Do what you want!

Get Past the Cliches and Do the Work

Eventually, even if you have all the passive self-care in the world, you will find that active self-care is a necessity. You have to do the deep internal work that will allow you to honor yourself and your needs in your everyday life.

It can be incredibly hard to remember this or to think that you need it (you’re the exception, right?) when you are creating short bursts of happiness by engaging in passive acts of self-care.

Do not fall for it. IT’S A TRAP.

You must do the work. You can do the work. It will feel amazing to do the work.

image by @heypreslie

The Payoff of Doing the Work

I will not lie and tell you that the work is really easy and you can do it really quickly and you’ll be crushing your own self-care goals in no time.

The work is hard. Sometimes, it even sucks, but it's absolutely necessary to get to a place where you can look back and say, “Wow. Look how far I’ve come.”

The work, plus the loving passive things you do for yourself, like using bath bombs, will help you arrive at a place where most days, everything feels manageable. You feel more serene and rested, and even when you don’t, you still function at a higher level than you ever did before.

You may even - GASP - feel some real joy.

You suddenly realize that you are prioritizing yourself and your relationships are improving. You’re able to tackle hardships and challenges head on, without avoidance, procrastination, blame, or shame.

You’ll end your days feeling less drained. You’ll gain clarity about what you’re needing and how you want to move forward.

You’ll find yourself able to shift out of negative thinking quickly and easily, creating compassion and a better relationship with yourself in the process.

In time, you’ll even find yourself helping others learn to love and care for themselves too.

There is no substitute for the real work of self-care, and there is no reason to not mix bath bombs and wine nights and spa days in with that real work. In fact, you must mix the two. There is also no feeling like the feeling that comes when you realize that you are truly taking the very best care of yourself possible.

Ready to do the work but don’t know where to start? Let me help you! Schedule a free Introductory Call here.