We are burned out because we are psychologically starving
In the past week or so, I’ve hit the wall. For a while there, I was doing pretty well: exercising, eating mostly fish and vegetables, sleeping eight hours, meditating, reading, and being productive. But lately, I’ve been exhausted, demotivated, craving starchy and fatty foods, and finding it very difficult to focus on anything for more than a few minutes. I know that I would feel better if I took a run or did some yoga, but instead I just scroll Instagram and Twitter and eat a plate of noodles for lunch.
The symptoms I’ve just described indicate a classic case of burnout. Monique Valcour writes in the Harvard Business Review that the three components of burnout are exhaustion, cynicism (psychological distancing from work), and inefficacy (feelings of incompetence), with exhaustion being the primary component. Burnout is best thought of as an organizational issue (as opposed to an individual one), but today, in March, 2021, burnout is clearly a global issue. I am certain that many, if not most, of you have experienced or are experiencing some type of burnout. And my message to you is: what you are feeling is totally understandable and nothing to feel ashamed of or beat yourself up about.
To put it mildly, this has been a challenging year. For some people it’s meant working from home in rooms not meant to be offices. For others it’s meant doing double time as an employee and as a parent or caregiver. For others it’s meant long spells of loneliness. For others it’s meant anxiety about finances and the future. And for others, it’s meant losing loved ones. And somehow, we’re supposed to carry on with our work, with our responsibilities, even as a once-in-a-century pandemic rages all around us. It is not surprising in the least that the chronic stress we are experiencing would lead us to experience burnout.
If you’re feeling burned out, mildly or acutely, it’s worth understanding why you’re feeling what you’re feeling. Maybe the answer is very obvious to you, but one framework that really helped me come to grips with my own emotional state is a psychological theory called self-determination theory (SDT).
SDT is a widely popular theory of human motivation that has several elements, but today I would like to focus on basic psychological needs. The three basic and universal psychological needs are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. (If you’re familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, think of SDT as the evidence-supported, updated version of that.) Autonomy is the feeling of freedom, of being able to write your own story; competence is the feeling of control or mastery, of being able to realize the story you want to write; and relatedness is the feeling of connection to and caring for others, or a sense of how your story fits into the broader scheme of people and things. According to SDT, in order to be psychologically healthy, we need to fulfill these three needs.
This past year has strongly challenged each of our three basic psychological needs:
- What sort of autonomy do we have in a pandemic? On one side, nature itself is reminding us that we are not as free as we may have thought we were. On the other, many people have bristled at the restrictions imposed by governments and employers, whether it’s being forced into lockdown or forced into an unsafe working (or other) environment. But what is clear is that we simply can’t do everything we once could — we are feeling a greater degree of external control over our lives than before.
- This is a brand new situation for every single one of us, and so our overall competence has taken a hit. Maybe you are a great salesperson or teacher or manager, but your talents might not translate as well over Zoom. Experts whom we once admired now look all too (incompetently) human. We just can’t do things as well as we once could.
- Perhaps most severely, our relatedness has been impaired — we have less human contact than ever before. We miss our families, our friends, and our colleagues. We miss seeing people’s faces. Some of us are lonely, and others are in need of a break from unhealthy relationships and social situations. Even the most introverted among us are still social animals, and our social bonds have been weakened and strained.
In short, our basic psychological needs are not being met as well as they might be in more “normal” times. Psychologically, we are starving. The first implication of this is that if you’re feeling burned out, it’s not your fault. It’s probably not the fault of any person or group of people, either. Living through a pandemic is going to be psychologically taxing, no matter what measures we take.
The second implication is that other people are also burned out, and they could use some empathy, too, no matter how much they might frustrate you. If you’re an employee, your manager might be burned out, and if you’re a manager, your employees might be burned out. Your children’s teacher, your nurse, the checkout clerk, the police officer, the painter, or even the politician is very likely burned out. Try to keep that in mind.
If you’re feeling burned out, here’s a great piece on some things you can do, and if you manage people, you might want to check out this entire package of articles. From the perspective of SDT, consider revisiting the stories or narratives you tell about yourself and others:
- accept that you might not be autonomous in the face of a virus, but autonomy can come from choosing to accept that;
- recognize all of the new competencies you’ve built this past year, from baking bread to acquiring vast knowledge of Netflix shows, and also recognize that you are, now and post-pandemic, a fallible human being, just like everyone else;
- and consider how many people, including yourself, could benefit from the relatedness of mutual help.
Don’t hesitate to ask for help if you could use some, and don’t hesitate to offer it to others. If we can learn these lessons, maybe we can emerge from this situation a little wiser.
