Imagine you’re a car. No, wait – a fire. No, wait – a candle. Imagine you are anything other than a human. That’s normally how these conversations start, right? With some therapeutic analogy, designed to help you understand your emotions and/or relate to your own experience.
Consider that for a second. That we use inanimate objects to make an example of why someone isn’t taking care of themselves, and then we wonder why people treat themselves like machines.
Now consider this. If you ask someone how their job is going, the answer is almost always some version of ‘Fine!’ In today’s hustle culture, we’re told that we should value being busy, that we should prize productivity above all else, and that stress is the ultimate sign of working hard. The term ‘burnout’ has somehow bound itself to the idea of grafting, and gone as far as to become a badge of honour for the people making it happen for themselves. Even the World Health Organisation defines it as ‘chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed’.
“Not successfully managed”. As if burnout is a question of fault. Of being unable to cope. Of not handling your shit. It’s not.
At its most basic, burnout is caused by being overworked and under-recovered – but that means different things for different people. Everyone processes stress differently, and what may cause one person to feel pressure may cause another to feel chronic stress. It doesn’t help someone to prescribe what circumstances should cause them to burn out.
What does help is describing what it feels like when you’re there. So here it goes.
Burnout is a bone-tired, soul-tired, heart-tired kind of exhaustion. It’s going through the motions, debilitating fatigue. It’s losing interest in the things that mattered to you until nothing matters anymore. It’s feeling so overwhelmed, anxious and irritable that you begin to feel numb. It’s self-sabotaging because what’s-the-point? It’s setting yourself on fire to keep other people warm and burning yourself out in the process.
Burnout is when you say ‘I’m tired’ and you can’t remember feeling any other way.
But you can. So let’s talk about how we can either prevent it or start to work on it.
- Talk to a medical professional. Your first responsibility to yourself is to not let the situation get any worse.
- Speak to people around you. Talking is the only way it will get better.
- Confide in your manager. Let them know how you’re feeling and that you need support. Even taking a few shifts off can make a huge difference.
- If in doubt, zoom out. Think about where you’ll be in six months’ time if you don’t change your current habits or actions and make decisions with foresight, not hindsight.
- Take time off. If burnout seems inevitable, try to take a complete break from work. Go on vacation, use up your sick days, ask for a temporary leave-of-absence, anything to remove yourself
- from the situation.
- Create boundaries. Connect with who you are when you’re not a hospitality professional and create a life for yourself outside of the industry.
- Remove the pressure to always be busy or productive or improving and recognise that you are enough as you are
And if you’re wondering whether they work, So Let’s Talk was the result of making it out the other side.
