By Erich Schoeman (Clinical Psychologist; Executive Coach)
Matters of the Soul (www.mattersofthesoul.org or www.sakevdsiel.org)
 
6 - 7 minute read
 
Burnout is something that is akin to this generation and close to my own heart.  Several years ago I started my clinical practice, full of vigour and at an alarming pace.  Slowly my emotional and physical resources were waning.  After a few years of self neglect I found myself at a low point.  It was a two year journey of recovery to get to my new normal, a place where I did things different from before.
During the process I learnt a number of valuable lessons, one of which was that I failed to notice the signs of approaching burnout.  In this article I attempt to assist you to recognise these in advance.   
We tend to be passionate about what we do, run hard and fast after goals, fulfill multiple roles and juggle many responsibilities, all the while trying to become the best we can be.  This is great, even noble, but unfortunately comes at a cost.  This cost should be offset by deposits into your life to enable you to run the race with endurance.  
 
Here are 10 signs that burnout is on your horizon coupled with 10 solutions:
 
1.Extreme fatigue 
This is the single most important sign that is indicative of running low on fuel.  It involves daily physical and mental fatigue.  A few days off work doesn’t do it.  Even moderate exercise can leave you exhausted.  You find that everyday tasks require more effort than usual.
 
Solution:  Take immediate action to rest.  Ideally it should be between 6 weeks and 3 months.  Get entirely away from your work context if possible.  If not, delegate and rest where you can.  Do not make sudden, permanent life-changing decisions like resigning during this time.
 
2. Lack of control  
When you are in a job that leaves you with limited ability to influence decisions in order to positively change your situation, it could increase the experience of frustration and powerlessness  - that could lead to burnout e.g. a lack of control over resources, schedules or projects.
Do you have adequate freedom to manage your time? 
 
Solution:  Address this asap with management and/or rethink your schedule.  Fit enough clean space into your weekly, monthly and yearly schedule to bring refreshment and balance.
 
3. Frustration and cynicism  
When we are in a difficult situation for a long time, we tend to feel greatly frustrated.  We build up resentment against our situation and the people involved.  This may lead to cynicism and could even end with depression.  
Do you experience these and other negative feelings more often than not when it comes to your job?
 
Solution:  Determine the origin of the frustration.  What is keeping you from where you want to be?  What can you do as a first step to address this now?  Try to forgive others and rather spend your emotional energy on proactive problem-solving than reactive resenting.
 
4. Loss of motivation 
Being motivated takes, and gives, mental energy.  When exhaustion and frustration are present for a long time and your emotional resources are low, motivating yourself to keep going becomes hard. 
You might find that you increasingly battle to give what the work requires and only want to get away or fight it out.  As your motivation goes, your interest and effort reduce and along with it the success you experience.
 
Solution:  Try to motivate yourself to do only the next thing.  You handle this one day at a time.  As you apply your strategy to deal with the problems, you will systematically make progress and gain the motivation lost.
 
5. Frequent illnesses 
When your body has been in the fast lane for long, you tend to run on adrenaline.  In time your immune system suffers and you start to battle illnesses more frequently. 
Coupled with a lack of sleep, our bodies tire from fighting off the invaders. 
 
Solution:  Get professional help from a dietician to assist you with a healthy and balanced diet and supplements that will boost your immune system.  Set realistic goals that will be achievable with enough time to implement the changes.
 
6. Strained relationships with other people 
Depending on your preferred style of conflict management, when burned out you either engage in conflict more often than usual (and with a reduced finesse I might add!) or you withdraw and avoid confrontation altogether.  I used to withdraw from conflict at work but then become irritable and oversensitive at home.
 
Solution:
Take time out before talking, think the situation over and discuss with someone else you trust.  Then decide to address the urgent and important matters.  As you do, you will feel relief and a momentum of energy released.
 
7. Dismissing your own needs 
When you work hard and long to chase goals at work you might start a process of dismissing your own needs.  We justify it by saying things like ‘this is the price I have to pay’.  Or ‘I have to set an example of hard work for the team’, ‘I am new here, I cannot take time off now’ etc.
This becomes a habit and systematically erodes either your own or your family’s needs.
 
Solution: 
Identify your main motivation to overwork yourself.  Try to check whether you are ‘sacrificing the permanent on the altar of the temporal’.  You should rearrange your priorities and set boundaries regarding time spent at work and home.  Try to make one significant change at a time e.g. no working on Saturdays.
 
8. Your workload is too much 
I ignored this simple fact:  if you carry too heavy a load for too long, the load will be too heavy to carry.  You might even drop a few parcels of the load or get injured. 
Our capability at work may not be the problem, but our capacity certainly is.  There is always a limit to how much we can do.  Yet, we do not have to do it all alone.  Other people can help us carry the load.  
 
Solution:
Start to share the load, even if it only a small portion at a time.  Although delegating is an obvious solution, we are sometimes limited by other people’s lack of ability.  Therefore, systematically train your team to manage the tasks. 
Hire capable, skilled people.  This will initially be costly of time and resources, but eventually benefit you.  Outsource tasks not within your field of expertise and avoid being a ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’.
If you are an individual employee, specialise and give management feedback on your workload.  Try to declutter and implement processes to save time and effort.
 
9. Concentration and attention slips 
Researcher Deligkaris (2014) showed that burnout is associated with a decline in three main cognitive functions: executive functions (planning, decision making, evaluating, initiating, inhibition etc.), attention and memory.  Therefore, when you show symptoms of burnout such as exhaustion, it is a natural consequence to struggle with these brain functions.
 
Solution:
Researchers are looking at ‘brain rehabilitation activities’ to improve your ability to function.  Prioritise these cognitive activities.  Look at resources such at Dr Caroline Leaf’s book “Switch on your brain - the key to peak happiness, thinking and health” .
 
Physical exercise, specifically aerobic exercise, is a proven intervention for stress.   Recent studies show that it promises to improve cognitive and brain functioning.  Enriching your diet will also improve your health and some cognitive functions.  Some medications to enhance concentration might also improve your cognitive functions (please consult a medical professional e.g. psychiatrist).   

10. Spiritual dryness 
Ministry burnout is known for the symptom of ‘spiritual dryness’.  It happens when pastors neglect their own spiritual lives and give more than they receive.  Ministry contexts tend to contribute to this isolation and roles of relentlessly supporting and helping others.  
 
Solution:
Setting boundaries with your congregation is critical.  You need time alone, in places where you receive spiritual nourishment without being in the role of the giver.  Join a men’s group from a church in an adjacent town, go to ministry retreats, take regular leave, make friends outside of your congregation and attend conferences and outings where you are ministered to.
 
Recovering from burnout is possible, I for one am an example of this.  It is not a shame to be at a place of exhaustion and needing to ask for help.  Rather, it takes courage and is wise.  You have a definite purpose to fulfill, now is the season to receive so that you can continue to give for years to come.
 
For I will [fully] satisfy the weary soul, and I will replenish every languishing and sorrowful person.”
Jeremiah 31:25 The Amplified Bible
 
Matters of the Soul is an Article 18A non-profit organisation registered in South Africa.
If you want to contribute financially to enable our work and receive a tax deductible
certificate, please email mickey@mattersofthesoul.org or go to Donate
 
 

By Erich Schoeman (Clinical Psychologist)
Matters of the Soul (www.mattersofthesoul.org or www.sakevdsiel.org)
 
4 - 5 minute read
 
We have all been addicted to something or someone in our lives.  It does not have to be hard core drugs, it could be something as everyday as coffee or smart phones.  Here are 10 interesting thoughts about addiction:
 
1. Ancient definitionThe term addiction originates from the Latin word “addictus”, ranging in meanings from “to consecrate, deliver up, sacrifice” to “enslavement” and “attachment”. 
Today the definition of addiction is a physiological addiction to a habit-forming substance that is harmful.  It involves compulsive behaviour, tolerance and withdrawal.  It affects all areas of your life, psychological, social, physical and spiritual.
The ancient definition describes a condition of slavery and bondage, quite true to the actual effect of addiction, that of selling yourself to slavery.
 
2. Strict boundaries  
Studies in the USA show that Christians have less likelihood of becoming addicted to substances due to strong instructions in the Bible against the abuse of alcohol.  Strict external boundaries may therefore help our internalisation of them and this may improve our ability to control ourselves. 
 
3. Solution 
Substance abuse or any other addiction such as work or pornography is an attempted solution for a problem.  However, your solution usually becomes a problem and then you're left with multiple problems.  Doesn’t really make sense to do it then, does it?
 
4. Addicted to feelings 
Addiction is certainly a means of escape and avoidance of reality, but more so, it is a search for pleasurable feelings.  Even smartphone addiction is a pleasurable distraction.  We end up becoming mood addicts. 
Negating the responsibility of seeking pleasure in God’s way by delighting in His love and person, enjoying natural pleasures such as love, exercise and play, we substitute the really important things for fleeting, temporary excitement.  Strangely illogical of us..
 
5. Dependent beings 
We were created by God to be dependent on Him, finding real and fulfilling satisfaction in His love and care.  Yet we tend to pull in the opposite direction, fleeing the safety of a relationship that offers all that we really need.  Our sinful nature sets us up for living as orphans that decide our own right and wrong.  Great praise to God for giving us His Son!  In Him we stay connected even though we drift to and fro.
 
6. Focus 
Struggling with scattered attention and concentration can create many difficulties in life.  I think that addicts tend to experience this with short- and long-term goal-setting.    Impulse control goes haywire because long-term goals are not clear and therefore short-term ones are misplaced.
The best long-term goal is an eternal one.  Knowing that you will give an account to God for the life He gave you is sobering and keeps you from getting distracted by destructive short-term pleasures.  Living your life to bring joy to Jesus for loving you can energise you to use your opportunities to optimally serve Him.  It will deter you from persistently keeping an addiction going. 
It becomes a more weighty priority than temporal pleasure.  However, it does not mean you will not fail, it just gives you great reason to get back up again and keep going. 
 
All of this reminds me of Moses:
 
24 It was by faith that Moses, when he grew up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25 He chose to share the oppression of God’s people instead of enjoying the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He thought it was better to suffer for the sake of Christ than to own the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to his great reward.
Hebrews 11:24 - 26:
 
7. Satisfaction 
Stimulants provide 10 times more dopamine than natural pleasurable activities would.  This sets you up for failure.  Fake ‘heaven’ steals something precious and invisible from you...the deep, long lasting satisfaction in life, yourself and others. 
Working hard at building a loving marriage, strong career, striving to influence the world for the greater good and the deep wholeness of trust in relationships are gone.  Future success, self image and security are all betted on the lottery of fleeting pleasure. 
A bird’s song, child’s laughter, self-controlled fun amongst friends, the quiet stillness of nature, exquisite music and lots more all lose their ability to compete with fake heaven.  You export yourself to lala land where the real world tribulations and triumphs are exchanged for more intense but hollow pleasure and excruciating, far-reaching pain and loss.  This is especially true of substance abuse.
 
8. Victim or Guilty? 
Taking on a stance of a victim with reduced responsibility for your actions leaves you thinking that you are helpless to change.  It casts your will and choice aside.  On the contrary, condemning yourself to darkness is equally as bad.  Both prevent you from changing.    
Yet, owning your sin is what God asks.  He wants you to acknowledge your fault, but then blesses you with forgiveness.  Neither false innocence nor self-blame solves the dilemma. 
 
9. The self 
Kurt Goldstein, a psychiatrist, coined the word self-actualization a hundred or so years ago.  Maslow made it famous.  The aim is to become fully you, a developed and holistic individual.  Many people now strive for this ideal.  The pursuit of happiness.
Ironically, addiction leads to an ever increasing focus on the self and the immediate gratification of your needs.  Self-actualization is actually thrown overboard and self-centeredness embraced.
You then grow backwards, regress into childhood. 
 
10. Pause 
Recent research by R.J. Rose indicates that once you start abusing drugs and alcohol you run a very high risk of stunting your emotional and psychological development, especially when starting as a teenager.  In other words, you push pause on your IQ and EQ and that has an unfortunate knock-on effect for years. 
The way out of slavery is always liberation.  But to be really free, you need to be delivered by and then belong to the real Master.  Once you understand your position in God through His Son Jesus, you will find reason enough to live and fight for your and other people’s freedom.  Why not take the next step towards Jesus? 
 
But now, as God’s loving servants, you live in joyous freedom from the power of sin.  So consider the benefits you now enjoy - you are brought deeper into the experience of true holiness that ends with eternal life!
Romans 6:22 The Passion Translation
 
Matters of the Soul is an Article 18A non-profit organisation registered in South Africa.
If you want to contribute financially to enable our work and receive a tax deductible
certificate, please email mickey@mattersofthesoul.org or go to Donate