Mood swings. Being overwhelmed. Constant urge to just run away.
Burnout can literally make you feel on the edge, and the worst part is it is not often visible in obvious ways. With the help of this Reddit thread, we decided to point out a few subtle signs of burnout to help you differentiate between what you think is just random stress and burnout.
1. “Apathy. Apathy towards work and things that used to motivate you to drive your career forward. Eventually, you accept that work is your life and you just don’t care. At that point, you’re burnt out.”
2. “Not getting mad anymore. Not being able to make a decision; even as simple as what to get for lunch. Desperately wanting to take a nap; especially at the most inconvenient time. Missing time. I don’t remember taking some classes. Thinking that getting an injury would be nice. I could stop working for a while.”
3. “For me it was the lack of a desire to get out of bed. I didn’t want to go to that job and sleep sounded better. That led to irritability and then to write-ups. Ultimately I left the job because of it.”
4. “You start having to convince yourself to do things you used to enjoy, you sleep either much more or much less, people you used to like annoy the piss out of you, you look for more ways to escape, sometimes with mindless hobbies, sometimes just maladaptive daydreaming, and it gets hard to get excited about anything.”
5. “You tend to procrastinate at the smallest of tasks. There is this constant urge to just run away. Also, there is this feeling of isolation, and low self-esteem and confidence.”
6. “For me, burnout correlates with other things such as stress, anxiety, and depression, so the symptoms and signs kind of intertwine. So speaking from personal experience, my signs of burnout are – difficulty focusing on tasks, back and neck pain, skin breakouts, forgetting to do everyday things (eat, shower, take medication).”
7. “Well, gonna go for a really obvious one here and say probably if you start crying and feel like dying wouldn’t be so bad.”
8. “Being overwhelmed, especially by simple tasks that you used to be able to accomplish easily. For example, your inbox at work may take twice as long to get thru (or you may not be able to do it at all) and each email seems daunting. Personally, when I was burnt out, I wasn’t very articulate and I’d just stare at the most simple requests in my inbox.”
9. “Lethargy. A desire to do nothing every weekend because you don’t have the energy. Never feeling rested. Irritability over lots of stupid, small things. Severe, mini-depressive episodes when you get to Sunday night. Not wanting to sleep because it gets you to the morning faster.”
10. “The feeling of just keeping your head above the water. You survived today, and it was rough. So rough you can’t enjoy anything. And you dread waking up tomorrow to do it again.”
11. “When you start to feel burnt out you will also lose your will to fight back against the thing that’s causing you stress/fatigue. You begin to wonder whether this is just normal for everyone and you doubt the validity of your own tiredness. ‘Maybe I’m just over-reacting?’ and as a result, you may even slightly resent the people around you trying to help – like if your partner or friends tell you to take a break you may feel annoyed because ‘it’s not that simple or that I have a responsibility to continue.”
12. “Thinking, “It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to be done” all of the time and alternating between immense guilt at not doing the work and procrastinating for hours under the excuse of “self-care” and staying up really late doing the work that was procrastinated out of guilt. Basically, lots of self-hatred and having no interest in the work.”
Read more: 14 People Reveal Why They Don’t Want Work From Home To End.