What Is Burnout?

Burned-Out Shell
Progressions
Learned Helplessness
Connectedness
Dimensions
The Path
Chapter Summary
Discussion Questions

Before speaking about how to prevent something or recover from it, one must first understand what the "it" is. When it comes to burnout, the answers as to what it is aren't easy to come by.

The classic definition of burnout is a feeling of being exhausted, cynicism, and a loss of personal effectiveness (Maslach 2011). While these may (or may not) be useful criteria for assessing whether someone has burnout or not, for most people, it isn't meaningful. It doesn't separate those with burnout from those without. The problem is that everyone has felt exhausted at some point in their life. Everyone has been cynical. Everyone has felt like they are not being effective. These feelings can be as familiar as an old friend, yet they can signal burnout or a point on the pathway toward burnout.

Other approaches to defining burnout have focused on the belief that it's a mismatch between what an organization (of any sort) needs and what the person is able and willing to provide (Maslach and Leiter 1997). While this shifts the focus from the effects of burnout to potential causes and may be more helpful in trying to understand how to prevent and recover from burnout, it's still quite nebulous. Therefore, it does little to serve our purposes of figuring out what to do about it.

BURNED-OUT SHELL

If we go back into the first definition of burnout, the imagery is of a house that's been consumed by fire, with walls still standing. The structure itself remains, but everything inside is a charred ruin. In some cases, it may be that the damage is barely visible from the outside — perhaps some smoke char around the windows or in the soffits near the roof.

Visible or not, people who are experiencing burnout feel hollow. They know something feels amiss, but they're not sure what it is. Sometimes, to escape from the feeling, they work harder and try to do more. They will do almost anything to drown out the feelings of emptiness. No matter how hard they try to fill the gap with distractions or diversions, the hollow remains. The distractions can cover the void for a time, but sometimes these distractions add to the feeling of hollowness because they present just one more thing to do.

In some cases, the diversions become addictions. What was once a drink after a particularly hard day becomes two — and a drink or two on the days that aren't so bad either. Instead of the coping skill that allows someone to function under stressful and unusual circumstances, it becomes the only way to survive life. It's as if these coping skills are all that's left holding up the shell of the human.

PROGRESSIONS

Burnout leads to many places. While some who are experiencing burnout land in a world of an addiction — or several addictions — many others find themselves in different predicaments. Instead of an addiction that has a central focus, they find themselves stuck in the quagmire of depression. While burnout isn't officially recognized in DSM-5 — the fifth edition of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — depression most certainly is (American Psychiatric Association 2013). Depression, in summary, is characterized by a sustained sad or depressed mood, an inability to feel joy, and, in some cases, activity retardation.

Also not recognized in DSM-5 is another disruptive state called "acedia." Acedia is a "lack of care." This may be a lack of caring for things that one once cared for or a general lack of drive. Acedia is a challenge. It was once recognized as an "evil thought" by monks as they struggled to articulate their malaise, but the condition fell out of popular awareness. When the monks' eight evil thoughts were eventually converted to the seven deadly sins, acedia was lumped in with sloth (Norris 2008). Today, the DSM-5 criteria for depression are so broad and inclusive that they sweep acedia up into the same general category.

Could it be that the continued rise of depression in our country isn't really depression as much as acedia, or that the cause of both may be an increased incidence of burnout raging through the country? Could it be that, despite the continued rise in general affluence, we find ourselves feeling more and more lost and alone? It could be that our affluence leads us to the belief that we don't need anyone else, and this prevents us from being connected in ways that help us resist falling into the trap of burnout.

LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

Rewind the clock a bit and position yourself in the lab of Martin Seligman. It's 1967, and there's a bunch of dogs in the lab receiving small shocks to test their responses. Some try to find a way to escape the shocks, and others don't even try. They lie down and whimper. Seligman and his colleagues described this as "learned helplessness," the feeling that nothing can change one's current state (Seligman and Maier 1976). The dogs who had given up trying to escape their shocks had learned, through previous experiences, that they couldn't escape the shocks, so they didn't even try.

Burnout convinces people that they're not able to change their circumstances, and therefore they shouldn't even try, or vice-versa. That is, people develop burnout because of their perception that they're unable to change their circumstances. Whether learned helplessness leads to burnout or burnout leads to learned helplessness, it's clear that they're correlated.

In the social human experience, most people who are burned out have lost their connections with other human beings. This is critical because, in our human experience, we know that those who care about us can sometimes lend a helping hand. That helping hand can be more than enough to change things — if it's the right person at the right time (Freudenberger and Richelson 1981). Knowing that others we're connected to have hidden capacities and resources that they may use to assist us keeps hope alive that things can really change for the better.

CONNECTEDNESS

We're wired to be connected. We're wired to be in relationships with other people. Jonathan Haidt describes our ability to...