Have you experienced symptoms of burn out? Do not ignore.
Burnout is one of those road hazards in life that high-achievers really should keep a close eye out for, but sadly—often because of their “I can do everything” personalities—they rarely see it coming. Because high-achievers are often so passionate about what they do, they tend to ignore the fact that they’re working exceptionally long hours, taking on exceedingly heavy workloads, and putting enormous pressure on themselves to excel—all of which make them ripe for burnout. Burnout is a state of chronic stress that leads to:
- physical and emotional exhaustion
- cynicism and detachment
- feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment
Symptoms of burn out are:
- Signs of physical and emotional exhaustion.
Chronic fatigue, insomnia, forgetfulness/impaired concentration and attention, physical symptoms such as, chest pain, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, gastrointestinal pain, dizziness, fainting, and/or headaches, increased illness due to weakened immune system, loss of appetite, anxiety such as, mild symptoms of tension, worry, and edginess, that becomes so serious that it interferes with your ability to work productively and may cause problems in your personal life, depression, such as, feeling mildly sad and occasionally hopeless, and you may experience feelings of guilt and worthlessness as a result, anger, which may present as interpersonal tension and irritability.
- Signs of cynicism and detachment.
Loss of enjoyment, which may extend to all areas of your life, including the time you spend with family and friends, pessimism, which at its worst, may move beyond how you feel about yourself and extend to trust issues with coworkers and family members and a feeling that you can’t count on anyone, isolation, which may cause anger when someone speaks to you, or you may come in early or leave late to avoid interactions, detachment, which is a general sense of feeling disconnected from others or from your environment.
- Signs of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment.
Feelings of apathy and hopelessness, which presents as a general sense that nothing is going right or nothing matters, increased irritability, which often stems from feeling ineffective, unimportant, useless, and an increasing sense that you’re not able to do things as efficiently or effectively as you once did, lack of productivity and poor performance, which seems that as hard as you try, you can’t climb out from under the pile.
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