Replay: What Does Burnout Look Like? 10 Signs You're Reaching Extreme Fatigue

Hey, my name is Teresa Hildebrand and this is Organized Chaos. We take a deep dive into living with intentionality, focusing on what's important in our lives so we can truly feel our best. It may feel chaotic at times, but with a little organization, the right mindset and a ton of self-love, we can still thrive. Join me as we talk to other busy moms and experts who will share tips and strategies to help you reach your goals. Hope you enjoy this episode of Organized Chaos. Now on to the show. Hey friends, welcome to the show. So today we're going to be talking about what burnout looks like and the 10 signs that you're reaching extreme fatigue. Now, I want to talk about this because there's a lot of people that are burning out or getting to the point of burnout, and it's because we're just doing way too much. But it's not as simple as that. So I also want to cover some of the causes, but also the physical and mental signs that you are either burnt out or reaching burnout, and then also what the next step is. So if you start to listen to some of these signs and you're like, okay, that's me, that's me, that's me. Oh my gosh, I'm burning out, then I'll give you some of the next steps that you can take so that you don't get to the point where you completely shut down. So first let me define what burnout is. So according to the Cleveland Clinic, where they cite the APA Dictionary of Psychology quote, burnout is defined as physical, emotional and mental exhaustion accompanied by decreased motivation, lowered performance and negative attitudes towards oneself and others. So they say it's not a medical condition or a medical diagnosis, but it is a result of some of these things that we're going to be talking about. So some of the causes can be that you've hit a tipping point, or you've hustled hard for a really long period of time, maybe you've lost control over some of your circumstances, maybe you've taken on too much with little to no help, or you have a lack of sleep, or all of the above. Really, there's actually a lot more causes, but I just wanted to keep it simple and kind of give you a few of them that you may be able to relate to. Now, before I go into some of the signs, I want to talk about a point that I feel that I reached burnout. This was many, many years ago. I was working full-time, my kids were really little and, of course, my husband was a police officer and probably at the time was doing a lot of overtime. It was kind of like that period in our lives that everything was super chaotic, and I remember that it was just like this constant thing of going from one thing to another without any breaks. Now just imagine you're working all day and then you're dealing with traffic. So I had to deal with traffic in LA and it's just frustrating because you feel like, man, I'm wasting all this time in traffic. What else could I be doing? What other productive things could I be doing? Or even sleeping. And that was one thing that I was lacking on was sleep, because first off, I had small kids and also I had to leave my house really early so that way I can come home at a pretty decent time. And it was really just like our schedules were kind of all over the place, because I never really knew what our schedule was going to be like, because Mark's job schedule was so unpredictable, and there was some days where I feel better than others. But I remember a few times that I felt a physical like response to everything that was going on, and the only way I can describe it is I felt like I was drowning. You know that feeling and you know maybe you've gotten to a point where you know you're in the water and you can't pedal anymore, you can't keep your head above water and there's like this exhaustion and almost this feeling of just like giving up and just like letting go. But you know that if you don't keep pushing, that, you know something bad is going to happen. That was kind of the feeling that I got and I feel like that was the point where I was reaching burnout, because I was lacking sleep, I wasn't taking care of myself because I couldn't find the time to do it. I was feeling frustrated because, you know, either at home or at work, things were happening and my mindset was just really, really down in the dumps. So that's the feeling that I got and I kept feeling it and it was getting more frequent. So at that point I was thinking something's got to give. I have to do something, because I don't like this feeling and if I don't take care of it, you know it could get so much worse. And that is when I started to, you know, think about actually putting in more effort to taking care of myself, which obviously eventually changed everything for me, but I just wanted to give you an idea of what that felt like as a working mom with small kids and, you know, with married to someone who had a really unpredictable schedule. Okay, so now I'm going to go into some of the signs. I'm going to start with the physical signs first, and I have a few of those, and then I have some of like kind of like the mental signs that you can look out for. But number one is you just plain feel exhausted, like you're physically exhausted and you're mentally exhausted, but you just feel like there's you can never feel that you know energy and just like spunk. It's just this feeling of over exhaustion. Sometimes, when I'm doing too much, I can tell. When, like, let's say, I'm just relaxing and I'm sitting in front of the TV watching a movie, like I can't stay awake anymore. I was never like that, because I usually enjoy movies and I like to meet, especially if they're interesting, I really like to pay attention. But even if it's an interesting movie, like I can't keep my eyes open and I know that if it's kind of like a wake-up call for me, because I'm like okay, something's going on, because that's not normal, especially if it's like during the day. Okay, number two is your stomach hurts or you have aches and pains. So a lot of these things will manifest into physical ailments and you know this can kind of be associated with anxiety as well, where you know you have digestive issues. Your stomach hurts frequently or maybe your neck and back hurt. You know, there are times when I have a lot of pain in my neck and I actually had to go to physical therapy with that. And you know, sometimes it's because, let's say, if I'm working out and I like pull a muscle or something happens because I'm putting in like the physical activity and maybe I wasn't using good form or any of those things. But sometimes it's because you're just holding stuff in and there's a lot of tension and normally it'll be like on your neck or your shoulders. So if you start to experience that, that could be a sign. Number three is you get sick often. So this is something where your immune system is down because you're not really taking care of yourself and you're taking on too much and you're reaching the point of burnout. Your immune system is not as strong, so you're more likely to get sick. So if you have kids, that's a problem, because if you're not healthy. You know they bring home germs and all of that, so you're more likely to get sick. So if you start to see that you're getting sick more frequently and you know it could be kind of tricky because of the period of time that we're on this weird time, but just you know, keep an eye on that. The next one, number four, is your appetite starts to change. So maybe you're eating more more frequently, or you find yourself gravitating more towards overly processed foods, or you're just not hungry. You don't have an appetite, so it could be either way. All right. Now let's get into the more mental signs of burnout. Number five is you're not excited about anything. So this is what the definition of burnout according to the Cleveland Clinic was. You have this loss of motivation. You're not really excited about anything. Nothing really even brings you joy. It's kind of like you're always blah. Okay, the next one, number six, is you don't feel creative. I mean, if you have any of these signs, you're not going to feel motivated, which will affect your creativity. I'm not just saying creative in this artsy sense. I mean creative in generating new ideas, whether it's generating new ideas for your business, generating new ideas to do special things with your family or anything like that. If you get creative in your work and you start to see a lack of performance, that could be a sign as well. Okay, the next one is you can't think. You have a lot of brain fog. This could come from many, many different things, but brain fog is really common when you're starting to burn out because it's just too much for you to handle physically and mentally and you just can't think straight. Okay, the next thing is you're forgetting things. Now, some of us tend to forget things, no matter what. It's just our personality, and I'm one of them. Like, there's a running joke in my house that I forget everything, so I have to write things down. But if you find that you're forgetting things that you probably shouldn't forget, then that could be a sign, right, that we need to look into this a little bit more. The next one is you're super moody. This is number nine, and obviously there are times every month that we can be super moody, and that's understandable. I mean, that could be another whole different topic. However, if you find yourself being super moody, I mean this could be a result of a lot of these different things, like you're not creative because you're not motivated. So being super moody could be a sign. And number 10 is you feel helpless or you think you know why bother do X, y and Z. Now this could probably get into a whole other thing where you probably would get medically diagnosed with something like depression or severe anxiety. But this could be kind of like a first sign where you really need to pay attention. Now, a bonus sign I guess you could say is if you find yourself that you're procrastinating a lot more. Now this could be related to, like I said, the very first thing is that you're just not motivated. So you start to procrastinate on things because you're like why bother do it? Or I really don't feel like doing it because I'm really moody. So this can kind of be like the effect of all of these different things. Now, to kind of recap these signs because there was a lot and I gave you 11, so I'll go over them really quickly you feel exhausted. So these are the physical ones you feel exhausted, your stomach hurts or you have aches and pains, you're getting sick often, or your appetite changes, and some of the mental signs could be you're not excited about anything, you don't feel creative, you can't think, you have brain fog, you're forgetting things, you're super moody, you're feeling helpless and you're procrastinating. So if you find yourself saying yes to a lot of these signs, like yeah, that's me, I'm feeling this, then I'll give you one tip to kind of help mitigate that, and that is to keep a journal. It may kind of seem repetitive because you're like well, I know I have these signs, but the reason I want you to keep a journal is not necessarily to write down when you're feeling like this. It's like what's surrounding, like what are the circumstances that you find create some of these signs? So let's say, I'm super moody, okay, well, what's happening when you're super moody? Like what's your environment like? Like what kind of led you to that? How did you start your day? So what I want you to do is to have a journal and kind of write your experience of when you're feeling some of these signs, but more along the lines of what's going on around you. Now, usually I say, you know you can kind of get past your environment and really kind of push yourself to do something different. But in this case I just kind of want you to have like an overall picture of what is going on so you can start to take some steps in the direction you want to go, because, yeah, you can say, yeah, I have a lot of these signs, okay, I am burning out, but what is happening? So that I can either pull myself from that environment or do something different and then take some corrective actions, whether it's to go see a professional or to start making changes to my environment so that way you can start to see if maybe some things change, maybe some of these signs start to get less frequent or go away altogether. So, you know, don't want to give you a bunch of steps to take, I just want to give you something that is super doable and they could start doing right now. You have like some type of journal that doesn't have anything on it, it's just lines and, you know, write down when you start to feel how you're feeling some of these signs and what is happening around you. Now there's a lot more that I can talk about when it comes to this subject and you know, one of them is just about time and I mentioned a little bit earlier. It was like we're taking on too much. So that's, you know, one of the things that can cause burnout because we are taking on too much and it's causing all of these signs. You know, and this is something that I really really specialize in, you know, it's one piece of the program that I have and something that I really really took control of. Okay, so that is all I have for you today. I you know, I just want to let you know that. Well, first off, thank you for listening and I just want to let you know that you're doing an amazing job and I know that sometimes, even if you know you listen to this podcast and you're like I have so many of these signs, it's okay, it's doable, you can get out of that, you can improve things, and I'm proud of you for listening to this podcast, because I know that you're doing it because you want to grow and you want to make improvements in your life and you're taking the effort into doing that. So just want to say thank you for listening and I'm super proud of you. All right, I hope you have an amazing rest of your day and I'll see you next week.