This image will make sense in a moment. Keep reading.
Burnout. How many times have you said that word recently? Or heard your friends use it?
Burnout has always been part of social change work, but lately, it feels like it's everywhere.
What happens when you feel like you’ve got nothing left to give? How do you recognize or help someone who is burning out? How do you prevent burnout in the first place? These are important questions.
First, we need to know what burnout is
Burnout is three things.
It's overwhelming exhaustion, the kind that can't be cured by sleeping in on Saturday.
It's alienation, feeling disconnected from your work and the people around you. You're cynical and numb, and joy is elusive.
And burnout is inefficacy, the sense of being inadequate or feeling like what you have to give will never be enough.
Burnout can spiral
The three dimensions of burnout fuel each other. Exhaustion makes the work harder, less enjoyable. You feel disconnected and want things to slow down or go away so you can catch your breath. The mountain of work and stress ahead of you seems to grow faster than you can climb it. When there's no end in sight, exhaustion deepens. The spiral downward continues.
Burnout carries a stigma (but it shouldn't)
Burnout is a response to prolonged stress. It's a reaction to something that is happening around you, not part of your personality or identity.
Organizations create the conditions for burnout. Whether it's an unavoidable part of the work (like chronic exposure to trauma or illness) or a symptom of bad leadership (impossible workloads, toxic team members), burnout starts in your environment.
Yet we still talk about burnout — and treat it — like it's an individual illness. Maybe you’ve even told yourself that burnout is your fault. A sign of weakness. Something that a smarter, stronger, more committed person would never experience.
That's bulls*$t.
You don't blame a cucumber for being a pickle. Let’s not blame people for being influenced by their environments.
Burnout is a sign of strength, not weakness
Burnout is most common amongst people who care. The word itself was coined to describe the impact of stress on people with high ideals in "helping" professions.
The social sector attracts people who are willing to work incredibly hard to achieve impossible results with few resources. That's an important part of the timeline. Before someone burnt out, they stood up. They tried to help. That's who they really are.
When I see people talking about burnout right now, I don’t wonder what balls they are dropping. I wonder what load they have been carrying, how heavy, how far, and for how long.
Ironically, the only reason you can feel numb now is because you cared so much before.
Burnout is a long time coming
I used to think that burnout was an event. I thought that someone was either burnt out or not burnt out, fine right up to the point where they weren't fine anymore.
That's not the way it works. Burnout actually starts long before a crisis. And sometimes the person who experiences it is the last to see it coming.
The truth is, we often encourage and reward the very behaviours that lead to burnout. We applaud long hours. We encourage leaders to set ever-higher social change goals. We sneer at hobbies like they’re for people who aren't serious about the cause. We romanticize low pay and crappy working environments.
This is burnout culture, and it needs to change.
We know what to do
The thing is, most social change organizations already know how to combat burnout in the “real” world. They do it for others every day.
We advocate for health and well-being. We create spaces for people to rest and recover. We energize and inspire people through stories and art. We promote civic and social engagement. We educate and empower. We celebrate milestones. We connect and network. We offer to help when we see people carrying heavy things. And we do our best to ensure people who are suffering don't suffer alone.
It's time to do the same for ourselves.
More reading
Burnout: A Pandemic Nested Within a Pandemic from Community Sector Council of Nova Scotia, Nicole Cammaert
Burnout From an Organizational Perspective from Stanford Social Innovation Review, Leah Weiss (<- This is also the source of the pickle analogy. I hope you love it like I do.)
Beating Burnout from HBR, Monique Valcour
Burnout: How Nonprofit Leaders Can Better Support Their Staff from Charity Village, Susan Fish
Depression: What is burnout? from the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care
Where did this post come from?
I was talking to a friend last year. We were chit-chatting about our professional lives and he happened to mention burnout in a tangential way. "Not that I mean to suggest you are burnt out," he hastily added. "Oh no, no," I said, "Of course not. I didn't take it that way." Afterwards, our words kept ringing in my head. Why had he been so quick to apologize? Why had I been so quick to reassure him? We obviously both felt a sense of ... something icky. Like we'd said or done something taboo. Ever since then, I've wanted to help normalize discussions about burnout. It's too rampant in the sector to be taboo. More people need to join the conversation about burnout culture, so organizations will make structural changes to help the people who are helping us.
Coming soon: Two more stories about burnout so you can recognize the early warning signs in your own organization and reject burnout culture.