Why does it seem like you spend most of your time in bed, lying down and not doing much lately? Are you someone who easily gets tired and doesn’t feel like doing anything? Do you label this kind of behavior as mere laziness and nothing more? There’s actually a lot of overlap between laziness and burnout that can make it difficult to differentiate between the two. Burnout is a negative state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion, caused by excessive stress and an inability to cope with it.
As of 2010, a survey reported that approximately 75% of adults in the United States have experienced symptoms of burnout, with over 40% of cases being more severe. Now, more than ever, it’s imperative to educate and better understand the nature of burnout. With that said, here are six telltale signs that what you’re experiencing right now isn’t actually laziness, but burnout.
You feel disconnected from everything.
Are you going through the motions of every day as if on autopilot? Is there a persistent feeling of being detached from your own self? If you’re suffering from burnout, one of the things you might be experiencing, but don’t quite realize or understand, is depersonalization. People experiencing depersonalization, most commonly those struggling with trauma, report feeling a strange sort of emotional numbness or emptiness as if they were watching life from outside of themselves. They don’t feel like themselves anymore. They don’t feel engaged by anything and constantly struggle with an overwhelming sense of helplessness and an inability to take back control of their lives.
You used to be motivated.
Sharing is caring!
Laziness is a character trait, and character traits tend to remain stable over time. A lazy person doesn’t ever feel like exerting effort or applying themselves to things. But if you used to be self-motivated and high-achieving, often excelling in certain areas, and have only recently become exhausted, apathetic, and unmotivated, then it’s more likely that you’re suffering from burnout and not laziness like most people would think.
You used to be passionate.
A clear difference between someone who’s burnt out and someone who’s lazy is that the former used to have things they were passionate about but may now struggle to find interest or enjoyment in anymore. Whether it’s a talent, a sport, or just your academic or professional performance in general, burnout can make it hard for you to do the things you once loved or felt passionate about. You might even come to hate or resent these things because of how much you overworked yourself and pushed yourself to the brink.
You’ve become moody and irritable.
Do you suddenly find yourself snappy and easily irritated? Do you often feel emotionally out of control nowadays and don’t know why? Moodiness and irritability are common but often overlooked signs of burnout. If you start having trouble controlling your emotions, especially when it never used to be a problem for you, this might be the reason why. Lazy people, on the other hand, are a stark contrast to this because they’re often very relaxed, laid-back, placid, and unaffected by things.
You’ve neglected your self-care.
Sharing is caring!
One of the most distressing warning signs that someone may be emotionally and physically burnt out is if you start neglecting your self-care and socially withdraw from others. There are concerning changes in your eating and/or sleeping patterns. You stop making an effort to groom yourself or look good, and you tend to spend most of your time by yourself doing nothing because you’re so easily exhausted by even the simplest of tasks. The difference between being burnt out and laziness is stark: you weren’t always this way.
These changes happened gradually.
Finally, but perhaps most importantly, something you should know about burnout is that it develops in stages. All the points mentioned before—losing interest and motivation, especially in things we used to love, feeling detached from yourself and disconnected from everything around you, socially withdrawing and neglecting your self-care—won’t just happen overnight. Studies show that there are actually five major stages of burnout, each with increasing degrees of severity: the honeymoon phase, the onset of stress, chronic stress, burnout, and habitual burnout. Many people begin to experience symptoms as early as the second phase, when there is still a moderate amount of stress, but optimism, interest, motivation, and performance may already start declining. By the time you reach the fifth and final stage, burnout has already become so embedded in your life that the persistent mental and physical fatigue becomes more intense and harder to treat, making you more vulnerable to developing depression and anxiety. Spotting the signs of burnout early makes it easier to get help and recover from it. That’s why it’s so important to raise awareness about burnout instead of simply dismissing it as laziness like most people tend to do.
Sharing is caring!
