Burnout Test

Photo by Carl Cheng.

Are you burned out?

I have no idea how scientific this burnout test is, but the questions remind me a lot of the questionnaire I had to answer when I got diagnosed with depression and anxiety last year. So... it's at least a little bit legit.

During that time my counsellor talked to me about burnout - turns out it's a much bigger deal than needing to take a mental health day, or even week, to recover from some stress. Burnout completely disrupts your life. She discussed the PTSD-like symptoms for true burnout diagnoses where people jump every time the phone rings and need to take months off work and frequent counselling to get out of this place of fear and tension.

So let's all avoid it!

There are a lot of websites with advice on how to avoid burnout, but here's what my counsellor and I did:

We identified the obvious things in my life that were causing stress: boards, work situations, even certain people.

We thought of some ways to protect or mitigate those things. Sometimes that involved straight-up leaving, other times some of those healthy things called boundaries.

She painstakingly walked me through the process of setting priorities and putting up boundaries because I had no idea how to do it.

Then I had to start following through. Then and now, I try to be very intentional about where I say yes, so that I say a lot more nos. I schedule in down time that is non-negotiable (it can move to different days, but it can't be deleted). I prioritize the people and activities that feed my soul. I try really hard to accept the situations that I can't control without freaking out over them.

Super hard. Super important! I was able to go off my antidepressants last week because of all that effort.

Take the test, be real with yourself! Are you burning out?


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