How To Identify & Beat Burnout

Have you heard of “burnout?” More people are struggling with higher levels of anxiety, pressures, and complex work-related stress during the pandemic. These rising mental health concerns highlight the need for healthy solutions to effectively address burnout and improve long-term wellness. Here’s how to identify burnout, and some tips to naturally beat it. 

The term burnout relates to a health condition of severe mental, physical and emotional exhaustion that comes from chronic and unresolved stress. Burnout often occurs when there is long-term stress revolving around work, parenting, caregiving, major life events, and other circumstances that may require high total-body energy and investment. Burnout can make it difficult to cope with regular daily responsibilities and activities, engage in productive work, and resist future stress. Studies show burnout can be debilitating and take a serious toll on both home and work life.

People who are at highest risk of burnout include healthcare providers, emergency responders, social workers, teachers, caregivers and parents of young children. However, anyone with an intensive, high-stress work role that doesn’t take the necessary steps to destress, relax, and prevent burnout, can experience this downward spiral of fatigue and poor performance. Perfectionists, workaholics, and people with “type A” personalities are also at higher risk. 

Symptoms of burnout often overlap with mental health issues like depression, making it difficult to tell it apart from other common mood disorders. However, experts state that burnout has its own distinct set of signs and symptoms that manifest gradually in stages.  

While there are many signs of symptoms of burnout, the most common that can be identified include:  

Burnout can make you feel exhausted, the experience of being physically and emotionally tired, fatigued, and depleted.  

When you feel stressed and overwhelmed, you may experience headaches, brain fog, muscle pain, and even insomnia.  

Ongoing stress can cause digestive upset, loss of appetite, and depleted energy. 

A key trait in those with burnout is the feeling of being overwhelmed. People with severe burnout generally stop socializing, withdraw from hobbies and daily activities, feel loss of motivation, and maintain distance from friends, family, and co-workers.

Burnout can cause extreme irritability and sensitivity, reducing your resilience to minor stress overtime. Burnout can cause anger issues and overreactions, with small stresses feeling too overwhelming and unmanageable.

The long-term stress of burnout can suppress your immune system and increase your risks of catching colds, flu, and other infections.

Burnout, feeling empty and overwhelmed can cause anxiety, and other mental health issues like depression, and may even lead to more serious mental health conditions, breakdowns, or physical collapse.   

Burnout tends to happen gradually, moving through multiple stages and symptoms as you lose your resilience to ongoing stress. From being overworked, pushing yourself too hard, not taking care of yourself or your mental health, to anxiety, and loss of control, burnout can lead to serious issues and health problems, so it’s important to look out for the signs and take steps to prioritize your mental health.  

Once you recognize the risks and signs of burnout, you can take steps to restore physical and mental energy and find ways to relieve stress to support your health long-term. Try these tips for beating burnout:  

Take a much-needed break! When you’re feeling overwhelmed, it may be difficult to take a step back. But frequent small breaks and daily stress relief habits are more effective against burnout than one longer annual vacation (while taking one can certainly help).

Practice healthy stress relief! With yoga, meditation, breathwork and exercise, you can recharge your batteries and prevent burn out, while improving your overall stress resilience. Daily exercise also reduces your stress hormones, creates sustainable energy, and improves your mood.  

Get a good night’s sleep! When you’re stressed, your mind and heart can race, which can make it difficult to relax and find calm needed for sleep. But without deep, quality sleep, your brain and body systems can’t repair themselves to support you and your mental health to fight off the impacts of stress and burnout. Proper sleep habits and getting 8 hours a night can help your body destress from the inside out.  

Support your mood and gut! Having a healthy, nutritious diet to support your mood, and mental and physical health is key. With natural ingredients and unprocessed foods, and avoiding high sugars and fats, your gut will be clean and healthy, your mind will be clear, and give you the energy you need to take on your to-do list. 

Natural ingredients and supplements can help support healthy stress responses in the brain and body to reduce the impacts of burnout and promote calm, relaxation, and energy. With pure honokiol, you can support your mood and mental health, and beat the symptoms of stress and burnout. Extracted from magnolia bark, pure honokiol extract is a traditional mood-boosting staple of Chinese herbalism that improves relaxation and balances stress responses.

HonoPure is 98% pure honokiol, for the highest potency and purity, to give you powerful antioxidant and neurological support to promote a sense of calm, healthy inflammation responses and support total-body health and wellness. With a wealth of brain, relaxation and mood support benefits, HonoPure is the best mood support supplement to help prevent burnout.  

In today’s age, we are all at risk of burnout from our schedules and daily lives. Knowing the signs, and taking steps to replenish your mental and emotional health supports greater stress resilience, so you can beat burnout and find your Zen amid the chaos. 

Sources:  

Julie Fraga. A Guide to Burnout. Healthline website. Updated May 18, 2019. Accessed Aug 10, 2021.