Society and culture conditioned us what success means and how many
30-somethings appeared to be successful. Social media painted the positive
highlights in the lives of our friends, public figures and even ourselves. It
is an onset of an underlying problem when our Social Media life appears to be
more exciting, instead of the reflection, of our actual life.
Christina Maslach conceptualised burn-out as emotional exhaustion,
dehumanization and diminished personal accomplishment. While this provide a
superficial explanation with in-depth psychological reasoning, the issues with
burn-out continued, if not worsen, in this decade as compared to the last
century.
If fatigue and lethargy are the early symptoms of burn-out,
insomnia and panic attacks may be the mid-term symptoms. Education trained us
to spot problems and find solutions. We know when we are reaching the tipping
point, but we also need to recognise that instead of just pressing on, taking a
step back can also help.
According to Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development,
the key focus in our 30s is love and care – intimacy versus isolation and
generativity versus stagnation. While it is possible to skip stages, the
incomplete earlier life stages can affect us at this time, when our lives are
going on full force with insufficient physical and emotional support.
More research are being done on children, adolescents and elderly,
as opposed to adults. As 30-somethings, we should be able to manage our lives
properly, and when we cannot, there is something wrong with us. Hence, for some
of us who have difficulties coping in some aspects, we get classified in ‘emerging
adulthood’ because we ‘failed to launch’.
When our decisions and actions are aligned to our core being, we
feel at peace. But in our daily lives, there are many choices and actions we
need to do that may not align to what we really want to do. And when it happens
over a period of time, it slowly eats into our mental and emotional well-being.
While ‘comparisonitis’ is a recent term and most of us are aware
of the pitfalls, sometimes the influence is subtle and from sources which are
not blindingly obvious. “Keeping up with the Joneses” is reflected everywhere,
from subliminal advertising messages, to in-your-face consumer products.
The availability of financial resources affects our quality of
life, which is very prevalent in the Singapore culture. People get into debts
in order to buy the items we think can improve our lives, without realising it
actually creates a downward spiral. After some time, then we realised that we
are trapped in the rat race of making more money to sustain this lifestyle.
For Singaporeans, it appears we have fulfilled the lower levels of
Maslow’s hierarchy for physiological and safety needs. Our environment may not
be able to fulfil our need for love and belonging, and esteem. And at the same
time, we were taught to pursue self-actualisation and self-transcendence.
As 30-something, we need to juggle a multifaceted life, with new challenges
daily from relationships, work and personal development. On top of that, most
of us had multiple roles to fulfil – spouse/partner, son/daughter,
mother/father, friend, relative, colleague, boss, employee, business associate,
neighbour, mentor, guardian, etc.
Robin Dunbar hypothesised that a human cognitive has a limit to
150 stable social relationships at any one time. While there are other
anthropologists who proposed the numbers between 231 and 290, having too many
superficial connections may be more exhausting than maintaining a few deeper
emotional connections.
Personality-related causes of burnout are harder to treat as it is
caused by psychological issues during our childhood development.
Psychotherapies like Lifespan Integration may help to ease the workaholic,
perfectionist, or narcissistic part in us. But it requires our humility and
vulnerability to let the therapy work since no one wants to be a defective
person.
Google the word ‘burnout’ and there are 112 million pages on this
topic, with 12 million pages on symptoms and 14 million pages to prevent it.
With so many strategies and advice, as well as offers for help, why are we still
plaque with this growing epidemic among the younger generations?
The most common solutions for occupational burnout are leaving the
current job, changing career and taking a sabbatical/break to recuperate. These
short term solutions are usually effective when burnout is caused by external
factors like the job, co-workers, clients, etc. It boils down to our individual
coping mechanism that we developed since childhood.
While we can detect that we are overwhelmed with burnout symptoms,
most of us may not realise the detrimental effects until it is too late – e.g.
breakdown of relationships or development of illnesses. It eats into our mind
bit-by-bit day-by-day, and it can go unnoticed for years as there is
no-one-size-fits-all eruption.
Perhaps the way to combat burnout is to learn from the Bhutanese,
think about death daily and accept all our emotions. In this way, our brain
will subconsciously refocus on positive thoughts. When we know death is coming,
the most important things in our life supersede all unimportant problems.
There are research on how meditation may be an effective treatment
for burnout and mental disorders with and without the aid of medication. Some
has doubts on this low cost and low intensive treatment, while others find it
too time-consuming without instantaneous results. For someone who is already
burnt-out, it can be difficult to quieten the mind as a start.
Psychological resilience research is ongoing and may be a link to
negating burn-out in young adults. The earlier generations been through tough
environment conditions made them more resilient than the younger generation.
While resiliency cannot be taught as a subject, it is like a muscle – the more
we use the resilient muscle, the stronger it becomes.
As there are no diagnostic tests to determine whether one is
experiencing burnout or a short burst of overwhelm, it may be easier to put it
as a clinical case of depression instead. Although it is not measurable from a
scientific standpoint currently, it does not make this mental problem any less significant.
Based on the generic fight, flight or freeze mode, some eat
comfort food, go for a shopping spree, take a holiday or spend time with loved
ones as methods to cope with life crisis. Even when we fully recover from the
first burn-out, we are not immune and likely will experience again throughout adulthood.
After living for 30-something years, there are parts of us that we
love, some parts need improvement, and other parts we rather not have. Burn-out
happens where we keep trying to improve (e.g. make more money) and hide our
ugly side from others (e.g. positive highlights on social media), we forget to
focus on the strengths and positive parts we love.
Like most wounds, time is necessary in the healing. Whether it is
time off from work, me-time away from others, or rest time to recuperate,
having this space to relax and reflect is essential to recover from burnout. In
our 30s, when we have commitments, family and responsibilities, time becomes a
luxury that not everyone can afford.
