Extinguish The Flame of Burning Out And Light Your Inner One

December. The streets are decorated with fairy lights; you can feel the atmosphere of enjoyable before the New Year holiday. It seems there should have no reason for sadness. But why do we often hear the phrase “I can’t take it anymore!”?

Recently, I rarely see people with the “flame” in them. The ones who enjoy little things, the ones who are happy to do their thing, the ones who work not only for themselves, but also try to be useful for society.

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I notice how people who were happy and cheerful lose any interest not only in their activities but even in their life. It happens to people of all ages and there is only one reason to it — it is their job. In education or in the professional field, each of us has found a personal motivation and desire to reach a goal. But what happens when the person doesn’t keep up with their tasks? First of all, their interest in the activity disappears: it seems as if the goals are not reachable at all. This thought appears in every job. The person feels insignificant and worthless.

Psychologists Herbert Freudenberger and Gail North offered 12 stages of burnout, including revision of values (values are skewed, friends and family dismissed, hobbies seen as irrelevant, work is only focus), depersonalization (seeing neither self nor others as valuable, and no longer perceive own needs), the compulsion to prove oneself (demonstrating worth obsessively, tends to hit the best employees, those with enthusiasm who accept responsibility readily).

Emotional burnout is the origin of such phenomenon. The American psychiatrist Herbert Freudenberger offered this definition in 1974. It shows in growing emotional exhaustion, entails personal change: hard work is replaced by chronic fatigue and positive thoughts are destroyed by stress.

The main risk group are people of social professions. Let’s not forget about students. We live in the society, constantly communicating with other people and it causes emotional exhaustion.

Such condition shows up significantly especially before the exams. Anxiety, misunderstandings with loved ones, massive study material: all of that makes the daily student life monotonous, destroys the motivation and previous aspirations.

To fight emotional burnout successfully you need to understand when you can possibly get emotionally exhausted.

Herbert Freudenberger named these symptoms of emotional exhaustion:

P h y s i c a l : problems with sleeping, stress, tiredness, fast fatiguability.

E m o t i o n a l : feeling of emptiness, indifference, aggression and hysterics.

B e h a v I o r a l: procrastination, minimal physical activity.

S o c i a l : worsened relationships with family, friends or co-workers, loneliness appears.

How do we fight such condition?

First of all, accept the problem and find the sources. Secondly, don’t refuse the care from your loved ones. You can try returning to the happy life with a new hobby, sports or just by separating your job and housework.

Emotional burnout can also be a display of protective reaction. It is better to feel empty than to feel nothing at all. The feeling of emptiness can be cured. You can add some colors into your life again. However, feeling nothing entails depression which is difficult to fight alone.

Remember that the burned-out soul is irreplaceable. Sometimes you have to free it out of the cage of casual indifference.

text Tatyana Fedyaeva
translated in english Anastasia Guslyakova
edited by Lai Yen Xing, Reshma Durai