5 Surprising Causes of Burnout
Are you stuck in a job so demoralizing or stressful, you look at Sisyphus and think, “That doesn’t look so bad.” The Savvy Psychologist explains 5 surprising causes of burnout (aka, why you want to quit in a blaze of glory).
Like a tomato, which could arguably be a fruit or a vegetable, burnout can arguably be a diagnosable disorder or not. While it’s not recognized as a disorder in the U.S., it is in Sweden and it makes an appearance in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) as a “state of vital exhaustion.”
Regardless of whether you call it burnout or vital exhaustion, it’s a state known to many of us, and it ravages the body, contributing to everything from hypertension to substance abuse. Therefore, while we’ve talked about burnout on the podcast before, namely here and here, it demands another look.
To review, burnout has three hallmark symptoms. First, there is emotional exhaustion, which also bleeds over into physical exhaustion. With this symptom, dragging yourself to work takes heroic effort and being productive is out of the question.
Next is reduced personal accomplishment, which is exactly what it sounds like. It takes more effort to get less done, and you wonder what the point is anyway. Even successes feel like the equivalent of a dead-eyed, slack-jawed sarcastic confetti toss.
The last symptom, depersonalization, is being cynical, critical, and resentful with co-workers and clients. If you frequently mutter, “What is with these people?”, “Idiots!”, or any number of NSFW labels, you may be on your way to depersonalization.
All of this may sound eerily similar to depression, but burnout is distinct in that it’s constrained to the domain of work. Folks who are depressed will still be depressed sitting on a tropical beach, but those with burnout often feel better once they’ve taken time off and are surrounded not by demanding customers and autocratic supervisors, but by palm trees, a stack of novels, or woodworking tools—whatever floats your boat. In other words, in depression, the little black raincloud follows you everywhere, but in burnout, it stays squarely over your work station.
And while it’s normal to have ambivalent feelings about work, look at job listings over your lunch break, or fantasize about taking a baseball bat to the unruly printer (“PC load letter?!”), you know you’ve crossed a line if burnout symptoms interfere with your best efforts to function.
So what causes burnout? Some of the contributors are intuitive: a never-ending avalanche of tasks, a toxic work environment, or all work and no life. It makes sense that you’d feel drained by a boss who tells you to work through pain, a coach that sprays angry spittle in your face, or a colleague who has loud phone conversations about her sex life while you pick up the slack.
But the other factors aren’t so clear. This week, we’ll walk through 5 surprising causes of burnout.
Cause #1: Pressure to Achieve
Oftentimes, when bosses, teachers, or coaches hold high standards, we rise to the occasion and meet them. We achieve because someone believed we could do it.
But at a certain point, high standards hurt us. A study of around 200 young British athletes found that when the kids engaged in what’s called perfectionistic concerns, it put them on the fast track to burnout. These concerns included pushing themselves to reach overly exacting standards by their coaches or parents, or being made to feel like they weren’t good enough.
Cause #2: Pessimism
Not all burnout comes from external pressure. A study in the journal Personality and Individual Differences asked over 1,000 participants to read 24 short scenarios, six of which were job-related, and all of which were ambiguous—they could be interpreted positively or negatively. It’s the same principle as the duck-bunny drawing, or the young lady-old lady optical illusion, except in words. For example, “You are going to see a very good friend at the station. You haven’t seen them for years. You feel emotional, thinking about how much they might have changed.”
Next, participants were asked to rate how pleasant each scene was in their mind’s eye. So an image of feeling anxious and sad about how the friend might have changed would rate lower, while an image of feeling excited and affectionate about the arriving friend might be rated higher. Because all the scenarios were ambiguous, unpleasant ratings reflected a tendency to see the glass as half empty, while pleasant ratings reflected a tendency to see the glass as half full.
And what do you know? Turns out that pessimistic interpretations—seeing the glass as half empty—coupled solidly with burnout.
Cause #3: Isolation (But Not in the Way You’d Think)
It’s unsurprising that people we trust and care about—that is your “social support” in psycholo-gese—would be helpful in preventing burnout, but it is surprising that support is not a cure-all.
A study out of Wayne State University looked at prison guards and found that, counterintuitively, the support of family and friends didn’t impact burnout at all. What did? It depends: coworker support went along with lower depersonalization. But supervisor support took a bite out of emotional exhaustion.
The take home? Just like burnout isn’t one monolithic thing, neither is support. Just like you wouldn’t use a coffee maker to make bread (though apparently you can use it to steam broccoli), it’s important to match social support to your particular needs.
Cause #4: Mindless Social Media Consumption
After you’ve Marie Kondo-ed your clothes and pondered whether or not that fondue set “sparks joy,” it’s time to turn to your online life at work.
A study published in the Journal of Health Psychology found that social media use at work tends to increase burnout in individuals who are lower in mindfulness—those of us who scroll through Facebook or Instagram as a distraction, filler, or when bored. But for those who have higher levels of mindfulness, social media was a burnout buffer. So take a page from the digital minimalism movement, use only the technology you love, use it deliberately and mindfully, and fight burnout in the process.
Cause #5: Income Inequality
This is what I mean by saying causes of burnout are at the same time intuitive—like, yeah, that makes sense—but also oh so intricate. A study in the Journal of Applied Psychology examined almost 24,000 people in 48 U.S. states and 30 different countries and found that income inequality contributes to burnout.
Here’s how it works: First, when a country has widely disparate income inequality, that fact is just in the air—you can sense it—and the 99% perceive themselves to be deprived compared to their 1% counterparts.
Next, stable employment is sought after and valued—it’s a way to pay your rent, your car payment, and the grocery bill, but 49% of American workers worry about the permanence of their jobopens PDF file . It’s well-established that showing up at a job you’re not sure will exist tomorrow puts you on the fast track to burnout—it’s easy to get emotionally exhausted and feel callous and uncaring if you think you’re about to be pink-slipped.
But if you’re working in a state or country with high income disparity, that context only intensifies the connection between job insecurity and burnout.
Burnout has many more factors than just the 5 listed here, but suffice it to say burnout comes from both your external work environment and your internal wiring, with many degrees of depletion, devaluation, and wondering why you work here.
But that’s actually good news. With many causes, there are many ways to combat it. Even better—not all of them involve a baseball bat and that unruly printer.
Man with burnout image courtesy of Shutterstock.
You May Also Like…
About the Author
Dr. Ellen Hendriksen was the host of the Savvy Psychologist podcast from 2014 to 2019. She is a clinical psychologist at Boston University’s Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders (CARD). She earned her Ph.D. at UCLA and completed her training at Harvard Medical School. Her scientifically-based, zero-judgment approach is regularly featured in Psychology Today, Scientific American, The Huffington Post, and many other media outlets. Her debut book, HOW TO BE YOURSELF: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety, was published in March 2018.
