10 Signs of High-Functioning Burnout But Tired
Typical week of working, staying on task, organized, and meeting all the deadlines, whether it is parenting, caregiving, or career-focused, it never ends. How can your ability to function still be top-notch with your mental health and physical energy declining? There may be hidden burnout symptoms lurking; it is starting to feel uncomfortable daily, and you are still showing up to work. A highly successful employee is burned out, tired, but keeps progressing. High-functioning burnout is real.
While burnout is not a medical condition, the World Health Organization (WHO) defines burnout as:
A syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Three dimensions characterize it:
- feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
- increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job
- reduced professional efficacy.
There are some high-functioning burnout warning signs to watch for if you are not feeling yourself lately.
10 Signs of High-Functioning Burnout
Burnout is emotional exhaustion, physical fatigue, and cognitive weariness caused by uncontrolled long-term stressors, such as career, family, illness, and other environmental concerns.
Work phenomenon, or something else in your life that is consuming you and leaving you completely drained, is how high-functioning burnout feels.
Be mindful of the level of burnout you are experiencing and whether you need support or can make changes on your own.
Look for the unveiling of these ten signs that you may be experiencing high-functioning burnout:
- Irritability
- Sleep impairment (difficulty falling or staying asleep)
- Remain tired when rest does not provide relief
- Difficulty with concentration, focus
- Negative attitude, critical attitude towards work
- Chronic workplace stress that is unsuccessfully managed
- Professional inefficacy (doubts about one’s own effectiveness)
- Progressively declining engagement levels
- Initially subtle and gradually progresses
- Declining mental, physical, and emotional well-being energy
Why High Achievers Experience High Functioning Burnout
If the symptoms you are experiencing cause distress, depression, or anxiety, please seek professional help for an evaluation. Depression and burnout are different; however, prolonged exposure to high-functioning burnout may develop into manifestations of depression or anxiety.
It is important to have your healthcare provider complete an assessment and review blood work to identify underlying medical causes, such as thyroid disease, low vitamin D levels, cardiac disease, and metabolic disorders.
Some of these medical conditions may mimic burnout or mental health irregularities and may improve with medical evaluation, guidance, and treatment, especially if you have not seen your health care provider recently.
Personality Traits and High-Functioning Burnout
If you are ambitious, committed, motivated, and uneasy with time management, you probably are a high-achieving middle-aged man or woman experiencing high functional burnout. Some individuals with personal traits such as hostility, self-consciousness, or emotional vulnerability are also commonly exposed and live with burnout. Burnout progresses through stages and worsens over time.
Amid a huge uproar in my work environment with a shift to return to the office in my mid-50s, I broke down and realized I was burning out fast. Therefore, I recognized it was time to make myself a priority. Trust me, it’s no picnic getting up from your desk and going into the bathroom crying, trying to hold it all together, being around others pretending it’s fine. I accepted that things needed to change and made some much-needed adjustments for my own well-being. I was experiencing high-functioning burnout.
Insufficient coping responses to the chronic stressor, whatever that entails: work, home, or as a caregiver, depletes quality emotional and physical energy. The fatigue does not improve, no matter how much rest you get. Using up all of your mental energy is draining and begins to affect your physical body.
Stages of Burnout
It feels like you are running on an empty tank at the start of the day, wondering where the energy will come from to get through the next hour, yet you force through. There are four severity stages to burnout in high-functioning professionals. The severity stages include: mild, moderate, severe, and extreme.
In the mild stage, you experience nonspecific, generalized symptoms such as headache and low back pain, and you become less functional. Do you feel the aches and pains, and do you become slower to perform?
During the moderate stage, the symptoms increase to include insomnia and cognitive function decline, lack of motivation with irritability, feelings of exhaustion, and a negative view toward self-esteem. Sound familiar? Right here in the moderate stage was my landing ground, and it served as a wake-up call.
The severe stage is when depersonalization occurs, using alcohol or drugs to help with coping due to searching for some temporary relief.
Extreme is the most severe of all stages and accompanies intense isolation with aggressiveness that may lead to suicidal thoughts and chronic depression.
Categories of High-Functioning Burnout
Typically, burnout falls into one of two categories:
- Work demands that take a toll on mental health
- Coping strategies and personality
It’s important to understand how to develop coping strategies that gently step back and help you evaluate what can be changed to get yourself into a manageable state.
Gentle First Steps to Recovery
What is the first step toward recovery? Evaluate yourself to see where you land. How burned out are you currently? Do you need support to develop a plan of care? Are there strategies you can put in place to gently embrace your road to recovery? A small list to get you started, let’s review some first steps to help you achieve your goal and boost emotional and physical balance.
- Mindfulness
- Acceptance of your present mind
- Limit social media
- Deep Breathing
- Exercise
- Self Compassion
- Healthy Diet
- Setting Boundaries
- Telling others what you need
- Journaling
- Vagus nerve stimulation
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy
Mindfulness is a wonderful practice you can use anywhere at any time. Start by taking a few moments to be aware of your present state without judgment, and observe your thoughts and feelings. Do you feel exhaustion yet keep going, despite the sensations your mind and body are signaling?
Be conscious of your current state and accept it. You will find this is the hardest part! Don’t fret, it does get easier, but it takes small pockets of time, a few moments carved out of your day to utilize the skill. Anyone can find 10 minutes in a day.
Social Media Limit
Most of us scroll through social media for hours throughout the day. Make the time for what is important, and you will succeed.
My journey to recovery began with 10 minutes of yoga daily, walking, and limiting my time on social media. I attempt to limit my social media to less than 30 minutes during the day and read more intently at bedtime to wind down.
Free!
A free practice you can begin tonight is deep breathing. Deep breathing is a wonderful bedtime ritual to help you relax and wind down. It is portable and can be done anytime or anywhere; that’s the beauty of deep breathing. Take a deep breath in through your nose for the count of four, exhale for the count of six. Repeat for 10 times or until you start to feel more relaxed.
Tip: Try out different breathing exercises such as box breathing, 4-7-8, or lion’s breath.
Begin deep breathing at bedtime; this is a great way to end the day and let it all go while building a valuable habit. Add some gentle stretching to signal to your mind and body that it’s time to get ready for a good night’s sleep.
Exercise is a powerful tool; don’t neglect these impressive gains for mental and physical health. It’s so easy to overlook this one or not make time for it. Try to aim for 150 minutes of exercise per week, as recommended by health professionals. Of course, if you are limited in physical abilities, some exercise is better than no exercise. To put it another way, any movement counts; do what is comfortable for you.
Tip: Start with 10 minutes after dinner. Take a brisk walk and add more walking breaks throughout the day as tolerated. You don’t have to do 30 minutes all at once for it to be effective. Moving counts in any amount.
Any Exercise Counts
At the height of my personal high-functioning burnout, I started walking on my lunch break for at least 20 minutes, deep breathing as I walked. It was amazing. I have to admit, I did cry some days too, but I was able to express stress release with this double duty. I continue to walk on my lunch daily (including weekends) and added an evening walk with my pups and husband to “dump our day together”.
Self-compassion is providing yourself with the same love and understanding you devote to others. Most importantly, deter that inner negative critic speaking in your head. Instead of saying, “I’m never going to get this new program at work”, look at it as a learning opportunity to grow over time. No one comes right out of the gate as a professional when presented with a new skill.
Grace For Your Space
It takes time to learn anything new. Erase the old negative tape recorder in your head and replace it with some fresh, positive scripts. Speak to yourself as if you are sharing advice with your best friend.
It takes time to learn; have patience and be kind to yourself as you navigate this learning curve. Don’t compare yourself to anyone. This is your journey. There is no one like you, and that is on purpose. The world would be a boring place if everyone had the same talents. Embrace you!
Nourish From The Inside Out
Even though everyone knows to eat a healthy diet with high-quality proteins, fresh fruits, and veggies, do we actually practice this at least 80% of the time? I’m all for eating that piece of birthday cake, but occasionally, not celebrating after every meal. It catches up to you quickly; you really are what you eat.
Find foods that make you feel good inside, such as a hearty soup like Pho, a Vietnamese soup chock full of noodles, a protein of your choice, fresh bean sprouts, basil, jalapeno, and scallions, with a slice of lime. Pho is my absolute favorite soup when I have a cold or am not feeling well. It is such a nourishing soup. You can feel the healing begin from the inside with each spoonful. Overall, there are many different types of nourishing foods, find the ones that you enjoy.
Boundaries for Your Health
Another important strategy is setting boundaries. Knowing when to say no (and it’s ok to say no) and recognizing the need to manage your energy with the time you have available. Don’t agree to commitments, then check your schedule and realize you really don’t have the time to devote 100% to them. Managing your personal time is just as important as helping others. Say no, and mean it.
Tell people what you need and be honest. If you had plans to spend the day with your family in the park, say that—no need to explain further or feel guilty. Family time is special for relaxing, enjoying human connection, and love. The balance in life is what helps smooth out the rough spots. Besides, if you made a previous commitment to yourself, you should honor it as you would for any other commitment.
Write It Out
Journaling is a surprising way to get those worrisome thoughts down on paper and out of your mind. It allows your brain to chill. Using a nice journal notebook makes it more fun, but nothing fancy is needed; a plain notebook will do just fine. Just write, do a brain dump, and review it later or rip it up. It’s only for you to process and relieve your brain.
Vagus nerve stimulation will help disengage the sympathetic nervous system (fight-or-flight) and reset the vagus nerve to recognize anxiety and stress rather than danger. The issue is that the body does not distinguish between daily stressors and danger.
Stimulating the vagus nerve will help improve nerve tone and counteract anxiety-related signals. More on this topic in a future post with a deeper dive into stimulating the vagus nerve and improving mental health and stress response.
Psychotherapy may use cognitive-behavioral therapy, an evidence-based approach that fosters self-awareness and helps you learn coping strategies to promote focused thinking and task adjustment. It’s like the therapist holding up a mirror for you to look at yourself to examine your thought patterns, so you can learn how to adapt or change.
This type of therapy would be beneficial if you are open to spending several weeks with a therapist to learn about yourself and to open the healing process through talk therapy. The level of severity would be considered for cognitive-behavioral therapy options.
That’s a Wrap!
As a recap, the 10 signs of high-functioning burnout are:
- Mindfulness
- Deep breathing
- Exercise
- Self-compassion
- Healthy diet with quality nourishment
- Setting boundaries
- Telling others what you need
- Journaling
- Vagus nerve stimulation
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy
Burnout may be a work-related phenomenon characterized by emotional and physical exhaustion. Set yourself in motion with these gentle first steps to recovery. Create a few moments with these techniques, and add more over time to develop a routine.
Practice self-compassion and make time for your mental health and well-being. You are worth it. Start your gentle reset today.
This is for educational purposes only. If you are in a crisis or have any thoughts to hurt yourself or anyone else, please call the crisis hotline 988, 911, or go to the closest emergency room for evaluation. This does not replace professional help.
Resources:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03000605221106428
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8834764
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9478693
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-to-recover-from-burnout