Let's talk about burnout
In this 26-minute podcast, I speak to En Masse Head of Psychology Dr Andrew Stock about burnout, including some of its distinguishing features and impacts, as well as some important risk factors and protective factors to consider.
A transcript is available further below.
Broader, ongoing changes outside our area of influence can be particularly challenging because you’re putting all this hard work in to deal with all these stressors and you’re thinking ‘is that even going to make a difference?’
— Dr Andrew Stock
Transcript
HK: Hello everyone, and welcome to this podcast on burnout. I'm Helena Kuo, the Managing Director for En Masse, and I'm delighted to have with me today our Head of Psychology, Dr Andrew Stock. Hello Andrew.
AS: Hi Helena. Great to be here. It's an important thing to be talking about, this topic of burnout.
HK: It is, absolutely, and haven't we been hearing a lot about burnout lately? I seem to hear people saying “I'm really burnt out”, “I'm really, really tired”. So I'm really interested to understand Andrew, is burnout a real thing? Is it a valid concern that people have and is it a mental illness?
AS: Well it's interesting that you bring that up, Helena, because only recently the World Health Organisation recognised burnout as a condition that people experience, and so it is recognised by WHO. It's not listed in any sort of manual that diagnoses mental health conditions, and so while it doesn't have that particular category, it is certainly something that describes a real experience for many, many people. The research backs this up. Based on those definitions researchers suggested that over 70% of Australians in the past 12 to 18 months have reported experiencing some level of burnout, and so that's the majority of working people here in this country. So it's a very common experience, and of course it's been affected by all the massive changes that have occurred not only nationally but internationally.
HK: Wow, that's significant. I didn't realise it was 70% – that is a really big number isn't it? What are some of the components, the big blocks of burnout, and within those components what might be some of the indicators that someone actually might be struggling or experiencing burnout?
AS: The way that the World Health Organisation has defined burnout is as “a state of emotional physical and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress”.
So one of the things that you'll certainly notice in someone who is experiencing burnout is that level of physical exhaustion, and they might be doing their best to cover over that, utilising caffeine or other measures to deal with that, but you will notice an impact on their energy levels, I would say, very regularly. It's different for different people – no two people are the same in their experience of burnout.
But other things that we often see more on the psychological and emotional side of things is a level of detachment; someone seems a little bit withdrawn, and that might be from relationships, that might be from team meetings, that might be from the way they typically behave within the workplace, perhaps a lack of motivation, a negative outlook. Things like that will begin to show up for someone who's experiencing burnout most likely.
From a behavioural perspective we might see it impacting their work performance. So a real lack of motivation to actually engage with their tasks in the way they normally do, their roles and responsibilities, perhaps also the way that they deal with challenges with adversity within those roles is impacted and they don't navigate those things as well as they typically would because of the burnout that they're experiencing; that psychological, emotional and physical exhaustion means they just don't have their usual capacity to be able to engage well with that role. In some ways Helena you might think the way that I'm talking about it psychologically and emotionally actually sounds a lot like some of the more common mental health diagnoses that we talk about.
HK: You’re reading my mind, Andrew, because I was actually thinking ‘oh that does sound like one of the common mental illnesses’ and I was actually thinking ‘is it depression?’ It sounds a little bit like depression.
AS: Whether we talk about depression or whether we talk about burnout, we're talking about concepts that help to describe our experience. So just because these concepts overlap doesn't mean that they're the same thing or that we need to be sure absolutely that it's completely one or the other. Quite often I imagine you could be experiencing to a certain level both of those things. What's more important is to recognise, just so you can address and implement healthy coping things and strategies and ways to deal with what's going on, are strategies that more specifically address what it is, and so one of the really helpful things that distinguishes burnout from depression is that burnout specifically results from an unhealthy work situation.
HK: So it's directly work-related.
AS: Depression on the other hand can be the result of many different factors. Again, they're not mutually exclusive, but at the end of the day if your work life is really causing you that fatigue and that level of stress, and you're finding it very difficult to cope, that means that we're more likely to look at burnout as opposed to depression (what typically impacts more broadly and is involved with more areas of your life). The other really important thing to remember about burnout is that it's not only defined by that ‘feeling fatigued and overwhelmed and stressed’.
I'm sure many of us, probably all of us, who work have at some point felt those things in our work role. I've felt that multiple times over the past 12 to 18 months. However I haven't necessarily felt detached; I haven't had that experience of not really caring about my work that's also characteristic of burnout, so I was feeling at times stressed and overwhelmed, but also still had that sense of ‘this is important, I care about this and I want to be here, I want to be engaged with it, even though it is particularly hard right now’ – and so that's also another helpful thing to think about when we're trying to really understand what might be the most significant indicators that someone's experiencing burnout.
HK: Interesting, I hadn't thought about that distinction, but that's really helpful. What about some of the risk factors then? What should we be aware of in terms of risk factors for burnout?
AS: The one that most people think of is actually backed by the research in being a very significant risk factor, and that is work overload. So one of the things I say to people that I work with on this stuff is that on the one hand you do have to listen to your mind and your body and your emotions, and if you're feeling fatigued and overwhelmed one of the most important things you might be able to do is just address some of the sources of that overwhelming stress, and that might include a level of work overload. It's not just that though.
There are other factors that really do contribute quite significantly to burnout, and that includes a lack of reward – feeling relatively unacknowledged for the hard work that you're doing, something that's particularly challenging in the age of remote work and flexible work arrangements where perhaps you don't have the advantage of being in the same physical space and getting that sense of reward from your work.
Lack of community, and again in the same manner the fact that we might be feeling a little bit more disconnected from our community could play a role in that. A lack of fairness is another significant predictor, and so if we feel like things are not equitable within our workplace then we're much more likely to feel overwhelmed and also feel ‘well what's the point? I'm not being looked after the way I should be either.’
There's also this idea of a values gap, and when our own values aren't aligned with our workplace that's challenging to begin with; if that's combined with work overload for example, then we really start to throw up our hands and say ‘hey what's the point?’ So that's why it's so important for organisations to invest in their values and to bring people on board who are aligned with those values so that that values gap is minimised.
Last but not least, I want to talk about this sense of a lack of control because us human beings we like to believe that we're in control. Sometimes we can be. There are areas of our lives, including most specifically our own behaviours, that we do have a level of control of. But when it comes to broader changes, and those ongoing changes that means we don't even know what tomorrow is going to bring perhaps, that sense of a lack of control and things happening above our head and outside of our area of influence can be particularly challenging as well because you're putting all this hard work in to deal with that work overload and all these stressors and you're thinking ‘is that even going to make a difference?’
HK: Yes, lack of control is a big one and I can certainly think of times when I have felt out of control with my workload as well. So that's really interesting on those risk factors. So if we flip the coin then and think about what might be some of the protective factors – what would be some of the things for us to be aware of in terms of those factors?
AS: There are absolutely some protective factors that I'd like to address and I'll speak to in just a minute.
In terms of risk factors, sometimes we think of risk factors as these foreboding, terrible things that we just want to either ignore or get rid of. But again, if we approach them mindfully, we can recognise ‘well if these are the risk factors and I have an awareness of what these risk factors are, then one of the first things I can do which is protective in its own right is to try to address which one of these risk factors are within my sphere of control’. Now some of those things might be completely out of your control and sphere of influence, so I would suggest veering away from them, and instead focusing on something like perhaps lack of community. Maybe there's something you can do within your workplace, within your immediate team, to build that sense of community, for example. Something that you can influence which will give you a greater sense of control that is rewarding and impactful and counterbalance some of those other risk factors that you really do have very little control over. So that's one thing I wanted to point out before speaking to some of these other protective factors that the research has revealed to us, one of the most important ones being a high level of job support.
Of course we want support from the people who manage us and look after us. What the research though Helena has suggested is even more important interestingly is peer support. There's a sense of solidarity that can come around that in terms of, ‘if my colleagues, who are my peers, if we come together around this then we can support each other, we can understand each other.’ There's not those natural influences of sometimes hierarchy and responsibility that can sometimes impact that sense of being supported, and so peer support is something that's a two-way street. Hopefully we receive it from our peers and we can also provide it to them. I know that in my role I certainly feel an awful lot of support from my peers and it makes a significant difference to me and so it's something i can speak to both professionally and personally as I'm sure you can too Helena.
HK: Absolutely. I certainly do agree with you. I feel the support of my peers and colleagues and team as well, so teamwork and getting on with your team and your peers and friends at work is just so important in this space.
AS: Absolutely, absolutely. When we do think more about the management level, on top of what the support we're getting from our peers, things like workplace justice and fairness of course not only from a legal perspective but I think also from an ethical perspective are important to try to prioritise, as is autonomy. When there's all these changes happening and we're anxious and we’re uncertain, sometimes we want to take total control and micro-manage and be on top of everything, but we know from the research very clearly that that doesn't bring the best out of people. So having a sense of self-efficacy and a sense of being able to handle things with your strengths and not being overly managed or directed is also an important thing to try to balance, especially during these uncertain times.
The last protective factor I want to highlight carefully is this idea of individual and personal healthy habits. Because we've all heard about them – exercising, eating well, etc, but sometimes we can be a little bit too quick to emphasise those things without considering them within the broader picture. So I want to speak more to this relationship between healthy habits and burnout. I don't know about you Helena, but I've had this experience occur in my own life when I've been overwhelmed with a workload that's way too high.
HK: Absolutely – I've been there too, yes.
AS: And I've thought, ‘You know what? In order to cope with this, what I need to do is do more meditation, get some exercise in, so that I can just stay afloat.’ But what I've found actually is that all of a sudden it just feels like my to-do list has gotten a little more unmanageably longer, and it actually doesn't really help in the way that it typically would. We know that for the vast majority of people, something like meditation is a really healthy activity. But when I was overwhelmed, I was finding it particularly difficult to notice any benefit from the practice, because I think what I was doing is I was not actually addressing some of the root causes; what was causing me to feel so overwhelmed. So do you understand what I'm getting at here with the way that we navigate these healthy habits?
HK: Yes, look when you say it, it sounds like ‘well that makes absolute sense – why didn't I think about that?’ Because we do think all of those messages are ‘do your exercise daily, do meditation, do all of these things, do these healthy habits, have these healthy habits, because these are the things that are going to protect you’ but if you're already feeling overwhelmed and then you load that expectation onto yourself, you've got to get out and do your walk or do your mindfulness practice. When you say it, you think ‘well yes that actually makes sense, I'm just loading myself up even more.’
AS: Yep. So i like this term mindful action. Meditation is all about mindfulness, about doing things with awareness and remembering what's most important in those moments. So if we're taking mindful action then we're not just slapping something on to the end. What we're doing is we are instead saying ‘hey, let me step back – maybe I'll talk to my peers or a manager or with someone else that I trust about how I can navigate this overwhelming schedule, and then I can implement these healthy habits in a far more mindful way.’ Not as a band-aid, not as a way of just covering over something, but actually addressing the root cause and then really making sure that we're looking after ourselves and as best we can, with a lot of things sometimes outside of our control, sometimes workload will spike based on things out of our control, but as best we can if we're managing that. I find then that meditation becomes far more beneficial and meaningful for me because it's just something that's part of a healthy, balanced day as opposed to sort of a bit of a covering of what’s going on for me.
HK: I think part of what I'm hearing you saying to take that mindful action actually is to just slow down for a minute and have a think about ‘okay so what is going to really be helpful for me in a work sense and probably also in a personal sense?’ Because when we're busy and we're feeling overwhelmed, I know what my default is – I go ‘okay I've got my to-do list, I need to do this, I've got to get through these 10 things today’ – and often I find I'm multitasking and by the end of the day I am completely exhausted.
AS: That's exactly right. One way I've heard it put that i think is a really helpful and catchy way to remember it is not to prioritise what's on your schedule but to schedule your priorities. If any of us sat down and really thought about what our priorities are – as much as work is an important part of our lives, I don't want to diminish that – what's probably far more important is our health, our relationships and things of that nature, and so they are the non-negotiables and then we decide as best we can how work fits in around those things, and that's a great way to have a foundation for a healthy way to implement these healthy habits in our lives in a way that means that we're not going to get funnily enough burned out on burnout remedies.
HK: It's really helpful and it's even just sitting here Andrew talking with you it's just such a great reminder, what are the priorities, what are my life priorities, because we do want to do a good job at work and we want to get through our day and deliver high quality work and we don't want to let our peers down and all of those things, and we get so caught up in that that just those little reminders are really really important and really helpful.
AS: Exactly, and I want to speak to one particular aspect of that, because I certainly don't want this to be an opportunity for anyone listening, or for ourselves Helena, is to bash ourselves up and say ‘oh I'm not doing a very good job of that’. But it's this awareness piece again, and a healthy dose of self-compassion.
If we recognise that things are out of balance, that we don't think ‘oh how did I let this happen, what's wrong with me?’ but I go ‘oh that's interesting’, we take a more curious approach to it and we say ‘hey I'm a human being, I'm flesh and blood, I experience stress and challenges, and sometimes get a little overwhelmed like the rest of us – how can I get some support and how can I turn a little bit in a healthier direction without beating myself up about it?’
HK: Very wise advice. So Andrew I'm interested, are there some practical things that we can ask ourselves in terms of just helping to get ourselves sort of back on track, if you like, or just to take care of ourselves?
AS: Absolutely there is. We know from the research, while it's different for different people and it's important that you find what works for you, one of the things that is so great for our mental health and for counteracting the effects of burnout is simply ‘how am I getting outside today?’ I mean, you mentioned going for a walk, and while it shouldn't be a to-do list necessarily, if we do have a healthy and mindful commitment to getting outside of the house, especially when things like lockdowns are happening, for example, restrictions, getting outside, moving our bodies, that type of thing, we just know that that's so important for us as human beings, is to get outside and move our bodies somewhat. When we're stuck in the house it can start to really close in on us and we don't feel that level of support necessarily that we’d otherwise experience. So whether we're stuck in the house, or even if we're just sort of couriering to and from the workplace, just increases that level of flexibility and healthy variation in our lives.
The other important one I'd really say I'd want people to ask themselves is ‘how am I connecting with the people that I care about, so that they can check in on me and be a support system for me [as we've already established is a very important protective factor] but also so that I can check in on them?’
One of the things that I think is characteristic of both burnout and depression is that we kind of get a little smaller and insular and self-focused, and we start to not be aware of the things and the people that we care about. So taking and making the commitment, and asking ‘who can I check in on today?’ actually gets us gets us outside of ourselves a little better and allows us to really feel as though it's not all about us, and we get a little bit more balance in our lives. So I'd say that's the other question that I'd want to emphasise today is when we help others we actually help ourselves.
HK: You're right, I think we do have a tendency, and I have that tendency when I do feel like i've got lots on my plate, to become a little bit more insular because I think ‘I've just got to get my head down and get through this.’ It's interesting that I might have a call with a colleague and we'll have a chat about work, but then we might have a bit of a chat about ‘how are you going?’ or something that's going on in their life, and I've actually finished the conversation and I feel a bit more buoyant after that because it hasn't been about me.
AS: Exactly right, and that's the way it works, and it's not about fixing any problems, it's just about stepping back, being aware and making that commitment to check in on the people that we care about, and yeah it's helpful and healthy for everyone.
HK: Really, really great advice again. So Andrew that's been a really helpful discussion. Just as we finish off the podcast today, just a few final tips for everyone – how do we move from burnout to engagement?
AS: What I really like about this other concept of engagement, as somewhat of a different way of thinking about burnout, is that it doesn't suggest that we've got to get rid of all the stress. It's just about relating to it in a more balanced and sustainable way. So I hope that people have already taken away some messages from today's podcast that really helps them to think about how to deal with burnout, because when we have that awareness and we respond mindfully and sustainably to that experience then we quite naturally find ourselves in a state of engagement. When I say engagement I mean engagement across the board with what we care about the most, so not only be ing engaged with our workload and our roles and responsibilities in a healthy and flexible manner, but also managing work relationships well and continuing to get a sense of purpose, and maybe even taking that appropriate amount of stress as we address the stressors in an effective manner so that actually the stress is an appropriate amount of motivation. Because stress in and of itself typically isn't completely unhealthy. Sometimes we hear stress and we think ‘ooh that's a bad thing’ but if we have the right amount of stress, and that varies for different people, then actually it can be energising, and when we respond to it in a way that's effective and helpful and gets the job done, we experience more of those protective factors, that sense of reward, that sense of self-efficacy and being on top of things even when times are tough.
HK: That's great. Really, really good advice. I love that about having that awareness about what's going on, prioritising what's really important for you, slowing down and self-compassion, another really important one. So, as always Andrew, some really, really important and sage advice. It's been wonderful talking with you this afternoon, thank you very much.
AS: My pleasure, Helena, thanks for having me on as always.
HK: Thank you, and we will be back soon with another podcast. Bye for now.
