Mindfulness and Burnout

I want you to take this time and think about a time when you felt burned out?  This could be burned out from work, burned out from a sport or instrument you played growing up, burned out from school, burned out from caring for family members, burned out from social interaction, or burned out from day to day life?  It’s not uncommon, as most of us have felt burned out at some point in our life.  Now think of a time when you felt calm, satisfied, content?  We have also felt this too, but, when was the last time you felt this?  When was the last time you did some mindful breathing, or you sat down to eat and taste your food?  And I mean, really taste your food and it’s flavor in a slow manner?  During these times you felt calm and slowed down, you may have been practicing mindfulness.

Let’s discuss burnout and mindfulness.  And what better time than around the holidays, the New Year, AND as we begin rounding in on 2 years of the pandemic.  Did you know that burnout has become so widespread that it has been given its own diagnosis code in the medical community?  It’s true, the World Health Organization has added burnout as a disease and formal diagnosis in the ICD-10 system.  

We have almost spent 2 years in a pandemic. The pandemic has completely uprooted our lives and changed our mindset in certain ways. We also spent much of the 2020 year in isolation, quarantine, and with severely reduced social interaction. Many people have found themselves working from home in one room, while their children are also at home on zoom calls for online learning. While others, have to go into work and have to find care for their children while their children continue remote learning. As stores and services have opened up, mask mandates lifted (then mandated again), vaccines available, and travel returning, we find ourselves moving from isolation to indulgence in social interactions and responsibilities. Society has moved from 0 to 100 all in the span of a year, which is an aggressive acceleration and drastic change. And this may have left many of us feeling burned out or tired, and our mindfulness has fallen to the wayside. With the new year approaching, let’s discuss mindfulness, try to reconnect with ourselves, and most importantly, place ourselves first.

What is burnout exactly?  Burnout was first described in the 1970s and focused primarily on people in professions that provided aid or services to others in need.  This could mean human services, healthcare, and educational professions.  Over the years, burnout has been characterized as “inadequate response to chronic occupational stress with three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and lack of personal achievement.”  Burnout can present as depression, blunted affect, aggression, decreased commitment to clients or patients, psychosomatic manifestations, or decreased cognitive and mental performance, motivation, and judgement.  Psychosomatic manifestations occur when a physical illness or condition can be caused or aggravated by a mental factor such as internal stress or conflict.  Physical ailments such as increased blood pressure, cardiovascular issues, anxiety, and depression can all present as a result of burnout.  Unfortunately burnout affects so many people in the workforce and out of the workforce and it can impact our own health and those around us.  Fortunately, we can find ways to improve burnout, improve our mood, and increase our satisfaction through mindfulness.

Let’s shift into mindfulness.  Mindfulness is defined as “the awareness that arises when paying attention to the present moment, nonjudgmentally.”  In this definition, I believe that awareness, present, and nonjudgmental are the keys to self improvement.  Awareness is knowing what you feel in the moment: smells, touch, what you see, how you feel.  Present, meaning, at this moment, right now.  Lastly, nonjudgmental; feeling objective, unbiased, freeing yourself from opinion and standards.  Feel and be present as you ARE.  Not necessarily, who you want to be or what you were.  This nonjudgement piece is crucial.  So often, we find ourselves using the term “should” “will” “going to” and this can place us into a feeling not worthy or thinking we need to be different or better.  And while there may be space for growth and changing, we need to be able to appreciate who we are without judgement and to just be.  This is crucial into how we feel and necessary to be able to make a change and move forwards.

It is important to make a distinction here, that mindfulness is not meditation and the two words have been used interchangeably.  It is possible however, to perform mindfulness meditation in which the goal is to “pay attention to present-moment experience with an orientation of curiosity, openness, acceptance, nonreactivity, and nonjudgement” and can be used with yoga, pilates, and other activities.  Furthermore, mindfulness meditation is active and engaging and not necessarily relaxing.  

Mindfulness and mindful meditation have been studied more in depth recently and have a large breadth of symptoms and diagnoses it can treat.  Mindfulness has been shown to help with initiating behavior change for eating behavior, diet, tobacco smoking, violence, self injury and suicide, and other high risk behaviors.  It also improves sleep, persistent pain, and reduces chronic illness such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.  Mindfulness can also decrease job burnout.  So often we go through life and our routine without paying attention to ourselves, our mind, our bodies, our emotions, and how we each feel; through doing this we can initiate a positive change in our body.

The key to addressing burnout is not necessarily self care such as getting your hair done, nails done, a massage, rather it is setting boundaries.  Don’t get me wrong, all of these things are wonderful and can supplement reducing burnout, but boundaries are key to reducing burnout.  Setting boundaries may be a good new year's resolution for many of us and we can talk more about this in the next post.  

For now, I urge each of you to take 2 minutes during your day; it can be all at once, or two-one minute sessions, or even four- thirty second sessions to check in with yourself.  Feel what you feel, see what you see, smell what you smell, and then do one thing to either help you continue to feel that way, or make a small adjustment to help yourself feel better.  This could mean standing up from your desk during the work day because you feel stiff, grabbing a glass of water because you notice you are thirsty, walking around the block because you feel pent up energy.  Listen to what you need and do it.  At the end of the day, you have to look out for yourself.  My dad gave me advice years ago and he said, “Monica has to take care of Monica.”  And he’s right, no job will tell you to take a mental health day, no one else will tell you exactly what you need at that time except for you. With that said, “you have to take care of you!” 

Cheers to a safe and healthy holiday season!  We will talk more in 2022!