What is burnout and how do you avoid it?

Psychologist Herbert Freudenberger coined the term burnout in 1974 according to The National Center for Biotechnology Information “[Fredenberger] used it to describe the consequences of severe stress and high ideals in “helping” professions. Doctors and nurses, for example, who sacrifice themselves for others, would often end up being “burned out” – exhausted, listless, and unable to cope.” 

Today the term burnout is used to describe a person who is experiencing pressure that causes them so much stress and exhaustion they are unable to cope with everyday life. (Basically they can’t even) Professionals today still debate the exact definition, but the general consensus is that burnout causes mental, physical and emotional exhaustion from extreme and prolonged stress.

People who are dealing with burnout feel like they have nothing left to give, the stress is so intense it makes even small daily activities hard to accomplish. They often become pessimistic and may feel hopeless. They tend to isolate themselves, and feel irritable. Some people can experience “escape fantasies” where they fantasize about running away and starting a new life and in some extreme cases people turn to drugs and alcohol to numb themselves.

Now that we understand the basics about burnout here are 10 tips on how to avoid burnout.

1.)     Don’t push yourself too hard. It is important to try but understand that you are only human and no one expects perfection from you 24-7. It’s okay to make mistakes and ask for help.

2.)    Schedule free time. Even if it’s only 30 minutes a day allow yourself time to relax. You could take a nap, or catch up with your favorite shows.

3.)    Set boundaries. I often struggle with this myself but you are allowed to say no to people. Your workload will often feel challenging but if it feels overwhelming reach out for help and understand your limits.

4.)    Find your work life balance. Manage your time you can create a work schedule and stick to that schedule.

5.)    Take care of your basic needs. Make sure you are taking care of your body like drinking water, exercising and eating a balanced diet.

6.)    Play to your strengths. Working on something you feel passionate about makes your work feel more rewarding and less like a chore.

7.)    Be realistic. You know how much you’ll realistically accomplish in one day, instead of putting a huge task off until the last-minute schedule time to work on a project in smaller parts.

8.)    Get enough sleep. Sleep is critical for your health, the typical adult needs eight hours of sleep a night.

9.)    Do something for yourself. Do something that makes you happy that doesn’t involve work, this could be eating your favorite meal, starting a new hobby or even shopping.

10.)  Talk to people. It’s important to express your feelings instead of bottling them up. Other people could offer help or new ideas for your project. If they can’t help it still feels good to vent out your frustrations.  

11.) Reflect. Think about what tasks are really important and try to cut out unnecessary tasks that are adding to your workload. You should also take time to think about how you’re going about completing your work and if you could get the same results an easier way.

Overall, the key takeaways I’ve noticed from researching burnout are that is it critical to manage your stress levels before you reach the point of burnout. It is okay to ask for help, even in a professional setting you can schedule a private meeting with your supervisor and work out a plan for dealing with your workload. Remember that you aren’t perfect mistakes will happen, you only have one life take time for yourself.

I found this crash course about dealing with burnout in the workplace that offers helpful tips and advice on the topic.

7 signs someone is lying to you

I picked to put this subject in my mental health vlog because when someone it doesn’t feel good to be lied to, it can be stressful thinking about why someone is lying and if you care about that person their lies will have negative consequences on your own mental health. 

1.      Vague stories- when someone is lying, they are less likely to give details about a story they might just say “I was at Sarah’s house last night” and that is the end of the story. No details, and they aren’t conversational about the topic like if you usually ask someone “Where did you go last night?” someone who is telling the truth will be more likely to respond with more details like “I went over to Sarah’s last night, Ben was in town and we ordered a bunch of Chinese food for dinner and after I was so full, I feel asleep on her sofa.”

2.       Inconsistency- this is a huge red flag for example if someone tells you about this crazy party they went to with their friend and then later on the conversation resurfaces and certain elements of the story has changed that person is lying.

3.       Exaggerated expressions- when someone is lying, they will exaggerate their facial expressions to seem like they feel upset or angry or whatever emotion they need to betray so people think they feel strongly and won’t question the lie. The facial expressions also might seem like they are lasting longer than they typically would.

4.       Not maintaining eye contact- this one can be tricky because we don’t stare deeply into everyone’s eyes while we talk but if the eye contact feels like it’s drifting often even when you’re looking into their eyes or the person isn’t even looking at you while they tell you a story most likely they are lying.

5.       A lot of blinking- research has shown that a lot of blinking is tied to trying to hide emotions and stress. That research can be found here

6.       What they are saying doesn’t match up with what they are showing. If someone is telling you a sad story and only their face looks sad but their body language, isn’t they might be lying. This could also work in the opposite like if someone is slumped over but smiling when they talk. Body language is very critical part of communication.

7.       Nervous- do they look and or act nervous when telling you something they shouldn’t have a reason to be nervous over? They are probably nervous because of the lie.  

10 Tips On Improving Your Self-esteem

 Self-esteem is the confidence you have in yourself, in your abilities and in your self-worth. Everyone’s self-esteem fluctuates, it’s part of being human.

Tip one: Stop using negative self-talk. Negative self-talk is when you say or think bad things about yourself. You are not stupid, you are not ugly, you are not worthless. I know online it’s normal for people to call themselves “human trash” but that isn’t cool or quirky it’s honestly damaging to your self-esteem.

Tip two: Put less thought into what other people think of you. I’m aware that it’s difficult to stop caring about what other people think of you but think of it this way: more likely than not other people aren’t analyzing you as much as you’re analyzing yourself. I’ll have mini panic attacks over something awkward I said ten years ago and I bet the people that heard me say that don’t even remember that happening. Do you remember something awkward someone else did ten years ago? Most likely not, stop being so hard on yourself.

Tip three: Let the past go. Working off of my point in tip two people probably don’t remember that awkward thing you did. Also, you aren’t that person anymore, the past is in the past and try as we might we can’t change it now. Dwelling on past mistakes will only damage your current self, use past mistakes as learning opportunities and grow from them.  

Tip four: Be prepared. If an upcoming event like an interview is making you feel anxious do some research on the company, you can also research mock job interview questions to have a thought-out response instead of just coming up with something on the fly. Another example of being prepared is if you’re going somewhere new look into the area to relieve your anxiety, you can map out where to park and how long it will take you to get there, things of that nature.

Tip five: Look good, feel good. It’s true when you think you look good you feel better about yourself. Spend a few extra minutes getting ready in the morning, wear your favorite outfit.

Tip six: Set boundaries and stick to them. You know what you are comfortable doing and what you’re not. This doesn’t mean never step out of your comfort zone but if your gut is telling you to not do something you should probably listen to it. This could also apply to when you say “no” to someone sticking to that answer, you don’t have to make yourself feel bad for saying no.

Tip seven: Remove toxic people from your life. Sadly, not all people have good intensions, some people just use people. If you have someone in your life that upsets you regularly, isn’t a good friend, belittles you, things of that nature remove that person from your life. Their energy is only dragging you down.

Tip eight: It’s okay to fail at something. Allow yourself to be a beginner when trying something new. Failure is a part of life, use it as a learning opportunity and try again.

Tip nine: Forgive yourself. Mistakes happen, it is okay.

Tip ten: Think of the things you are good at. Everyone is good at something, even if it is something small be proud of the things you can do well. For example, I can make a great quesadilla, will that change the world? No but it does make me feel good about my cooking abilities.

Overall be kind to yourself! You can do anything!

What is gaslighting?! 10 examples to help you identify gaslighting

The term gaslighting actually comes from a 1938 play called “Gaslight”. The story is about a husband that manipulates his wife into thinking she is going crazy by dimming their gas-fueled lights in their house, and telling her the lights aren’t changing. The husband convinces the wife that she is hallucinating due to a mental illness.

Gaslighting is a form of manipulation (can be psychological abuse) where someone makes you question your sanity, perception of reality, and or your own memories. Gaslighting typically happens slowly so it can be hard to spot. People gaslight other people to control them, make people dependent on them and gain power.

Gaslighting is a hard concept to understand just based the definition, the most helpful way to understand what gaslighting is through examples: (disclaimer these examples are used to the extreme and a pattern of behavior for a reason not just a once or twice thing.)

Example one: Doubting your memory. If you tell a story and someone tells you “are you sure it happened that way?” or something along the lines of “you’re remembering that wrong it happened like this…” misremembering does happen and we all have a different perception but if you are positive something happened a certain way and someone is challenging that idea, they are most likely gaslighting you. Another way this could happen would be a person telling you “remember when you did this” and it was something you’ve never done. It could be a simple case of mixing you up with someone else and if you bring up that idea and they insist it was you that person is making you question your own memories which is gaslighting. This can lead to self-doubt and confusion.

Example two: Trivializing your emotions. Someone consistently telling you that you are too sensitive and or overreacting. Sometimes it can be good to have an honest person in your life that can tell you when a situation isn’t as dramatic as you think it is but the key word here is consistently.  When someone consistently tells you that you’re too sensitive and or overreacting they are trying to make you doubt your emotions making you think something is wrong with you.

Example three: Frequently lie and exaggerate. When someone is trying to make you question your own reality they will frequently lie and exaggerate to make you feel sorry for them, question your own memory and or own behavior. This plays a key part in making their victim feel dependent on them. Some people are just liars but someone who is gaslighting will use those lies to their advantage instead of the typical reasons to lie like protecting someone’s feelings or avoiding an awkward conversation.

Example four: They escalate when challenged. People who gaslight use manipulation to control another person and have power over them. Instead of having a normal reaction to be challenged such as asking questions to better understand the other person’s point of view a person who is attempting to gaslight someone will have a strong emotional reaction. This strong emotional reaction can cause their victim to feel bad about questioning them and may cause the victim to avoid questioning in the future to avoid another “fight”.

Example five: Using stereotypes to justify their thinking. An example of this would be a male telling a female that they are overreacting to a situation because “women are so sensitive”. Using common stereotypes makes the victim question their feelings because stereotypes are ingrained in us from an early age. They can also use stereotypes about a person’s race, age, sexuality and or ethnicity.

Example six: They create codependency. The definition of codependency (according to Oxford) is: “excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner typically one who requires support on account of an illness or addiction.”. Codependency can happen without an illness or addiction. I want to focus on the first half of the definition an excessive emotional/psychological reliance on a partner, People who gaslight often want their victims to feel dependent on them because when someone is dependent on them the victim is easier to isolate from their family/friends and they are more likely to be forgiving because they feel like they need their partner.     

Example seven: They call you names. Names like “stupid” “awkward” etc. I feel like everyone can be guilty of having a weak moment and calling someone names when they are upset or feel attacked. However, a normal person will typically apologize for these actions someone who is gaslighting uses name calling to make their victim feel less than to control them. They can also use name calling to make their victim question their reality/emotions.

Example eight: They deflect blame, in order to gaslight someone their victim has to trust them. A gaslight-er will often deflect blame to build credibility with their victim, keep the victim under their control and or make the victim feel sorry for them.   

Example nine: They give you false hope, like in example eight I said the victim has to trust the gaslight-er. If someone is constantly making you feel bad you will most likely begin to question the relationship with that person, so gaslight-ers will create false hope to make their victim feel positive before ripping them down typically. A gaslight-er can also create false hope when confronted with a problem to give the illusion that they will change for their victim.  

Example ten: They claim to know you better than you know yourself. Claiming to know someone better than they know themselves can be comforting to a victim, they could think “wow this person knows me so well.”. This claim links back to the building codependency example, and the making you doubt your memories example. The gaslight-er uses this claim to make their victim act/think a certain way because this person “knows everything about them”

I found this video that explains gaslighting and some of the signs if you’re interested in learning more about the topic.

Also the articles I used to explain what gaslighting is and the examples can be found here and here.

Overall if you think you are a victim of gaslighting, talk with others and see what they think, follow your gut, if possible, cut that person out of your life, if not possible to cut ties distance yourself and make it harder for that person to control you. You are stronger than you think, you can survive change!