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Understanding the neuroscience behind burnout (2022)
- SaintSeiya 2y ago[flagged]
- mdnahas 2y agoHaving burned out hard, my explanation is hope. Hope is like a zero calorie meal. It will keep you going and focused, but eventually you’ll collapse. We can learn to push through hard times, but not forever. You need connection, exercise, good food, and nature. After burning out, I relaxed for a while. Then, I focused on things that were under my control and didn’t depend on others. Exercise, losing weight, etc.
- itsmemattchung 2y ago> Arnsten recounted walking in the woods in Vermont, when suddenly along the path, a bear appeared in front of her. Luckily, the bear was facing the other way. Rather than consciously reasoning that most mammals lack a ventral stream, and therefore would not be able to recognize a still object, she froze. In this moment of fear, her reflex of freezing was engaged. When the bear turned around, it did not notice her because of her lack of movement, and ended up wandering off. Such a great example of how the fear reflex is functional from a survival perspective. We often talk about how we can combat our fears (e.g. public speaking, dancing, etc) and this serves as a good reminder how this primitive response serves a purpose.
- guerrilla 2y ago> Such a great example of how the fear reflex is functional from a survival perspective. All of our emotions (when we're healthy) are tools. They're all programmable to some extent as well. If somethings not actually dangerous, repeated exposure to it will desensitize you to it, for example.
- bowsamic 2y ago> repeated exposure to it will desensitize you to it Not necessarily, as someone who has a difficult anxiety that I have to deal with very often, being exposed to the situation doesn't make me any less fearful of it.
- digging 2y agoI think it's similar to one thing I learned about dog training. If your dog starts freaking out and barking uncontrollably at another dog, because they're afraid, once you get them away there's a sense of relief. "Oh good, I got away. Whatever I did that time definitely worked." It takes an active approach to pierce through anxiety and fear. Repeatedly becoming terrified of something will more likely just make us feel bad, and helpless. Actively perceiving something frightening as tolerable is the kind of exposure that helps.
- guerrilla 2y agoIt will if you do it right. I had panic disorder. You probably need to gradually increase the stimulus and set your goals lower. If you're panicking in the situation then you've started at too intense of a level and need to work up to that over time. Don't give up. You can do it. Another key thing a lot of people don't know is that you need good sleep in between stimulus exposures. Also, you probably need a shitload more exposure than you think. Persistence is what will save you.
- bowsamic 2y agoNope, definitely won't work in my situation (since my fear is actually completely reasonable and well founded)
- guerrilla 2y agoThen why would you try to get rid of it. Fear is a tool that protects us from dangerous situations. If something is actually dangerous, then it would be rational to be afraid of it. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever to desensitize yourself to cobras unless you're literally a herpetologist or snake handler, for example.
- nradov 2y agoArnsten misinterpreted that incident and drew the wrong evolutionary lesson. Black bears (the species in Vermont) aren't particularly aggressive versus other large animals such as humans, and will usually wander off even if they do notice you. The usual advice is not to freeze but to make noise and slowly back away. https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/livingwith_wildlife/bears/encounters.html https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/livingwith_wildlife/bears/encoun... I'm disappointed that an error like that made it through the fact checking process. It makes me doubt the rest of the article.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago> “The final feature is a reduced sense of personal accomplishment,” Santos said. “You never feel like you’re doing things effectively and so you feel ineffective and like the work you do doesn’t matter. If you notice signs like this, it’s important that you pay attention early on and make some changes in order to feel better.” I wonder if this had to do with the fact that in modern society, we often have to go through great mental loops to convince ourselves that our jobs are meaningful. After all, they are very far away from doing things like obtaining food and shelter or even learning things we are curious about. At some point, I feel like the illusion cannot be held for long: it starts in school when the learning is onstensibly about curiosity but then the gradient between curiosity-driven learning and being a cog slowly eats away at the facade that we have constructed in our minds of actually doing something useful in society until burnout becomes inevitable. Seems rather obvious as society these days is mostly about furthering advanced technology for very little benefit to the average person except that it keeps the economy going only due to the fact that the economy itself is based on broken principles not compatible with our amazingly high human population density.
- amunozo 2y agoI find this specially true in "passion-drive" jobs like research. I am doing a PhD and this is so true in so many levels.
- vouaobrasil 2y agoI got a PhD myself. And I think it's definitely at least partially true: I was told flat-out that I should stick to big-business style research (i.e. research areas with large, complex and directed research plans) and forget following my own curiosity. Of course, once you get tenure in places where it exists or you make it, you can deviate from that. It's even worse in industry, where I worked after academia. I felt like I was using 5% of my brain to do things I was bored to death with. This isn't just me either: many of the people I've worked with feel the same, including virtually all my fellow PhD students. I feel like the only thing keeping it going is the novelty of working in new places, meeting new people, and getting new projects. It's almost as if we have a basal attraction to novelty because it's a survival instinct, but we have distilled life so that novelty is the only thing left, stripped of substance long ago when we traded thought for automation. Of course, it's even harder to see it because we have "propagandists" (i.e. then 1% of people who have carved out a protective bubble for themselves due to a combination of luck, ingenuity, and gaming the system) that say that amazing things are happening.
- hallqv 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- foobarkey 2y agoThey care too much about a job where they have no (minimal) equity and trying to reach staff+ carrot?
- bowsamic 2y agoI got burnout and I'm still recovering 3 years even with extensive therapy EDIT: It would not be an exaggeration to say that I have been (and still am) convinced I will never be able to work again, in any job, at all
- me_me_me 2y agoCould you give an account of how it started and how are you dealing with it?
- bowsamic 2y agoIt would take too long to explain all the details. Basically I started my postdoc after my PhD, and my boss was/still is completely absent and left me alone. For specific reasons pertaining to my psychological history as I uncovered in the therapy, this caused a very strong reaction in me of abandonment, and I found it impossible to continue to work. My boss refused to do anything to help me, he would not give me more help or attention. However, my contract is fixed at three years, I am not in my home country, I live in Germany with my wife who I brought here with me who has a "real job", and I get paid a lot. Therefore, I can just remain at home doing nothing (no one cares if I go in or not) and get paid, which also has not helped. Of course, now I am going to abandon academia, which is very painful, since it is my entire life so far, but I clearly cannot make it work even though I have tried extensively. I need to be in work where you actually are a part of a team, getting feedback, talking to people. As my contract comes to an end I will be forced to look for a job, but of course I'm completely terrified because of the burnout: I've never had a "real job", and when I tried to do some programming work for my stepdad, even though it went well, I felt terrible when doing it and I felt burnt out with that too. My strategy was of course to seek mental health services, since at the beginning of the burnout my mental health was much worse (suicidal ideation, depression, etc.) and I found my therapist. I won't go into detail about the therapy because it is a kind of psychotherapy that is common and supported by insurance in Europe but that is controversial in the US. Of course, the therapy has helped hugely. I no longer have thoughts of suicide and I don't have depression anymore. However I am still terrified of work and am almost completely convinced I will have all the same feelings of apathy, disappointment, and lack of motivation when I try. First step, I need to convince a company that I don't have these fears, and lie to them about my motivations, and hope they believe me. EDIT: I can no longer reply to any more comments since /u/dang set harsh limits on my account
- moi2388 2y ago“ Rather than consciously reasoning that most mammals lack a ventral stream, and therefore would not be able to recognize a still object” Imagining bears and deer just hitting trees left and right because they don’t move is absolutely hilarious.
- yetihehe 2y agoThey just differentiate: Moving - eat or fight Not moving - go around it
- throw310822 2y agoSo if a tree is shaken by the wind, they attack it? And if you stand still they avoid you as if you were a tree trunk?
- coffeebeqn 2y agoIf it starts jumping around like a deer I’m sure they would at least investigate. They do have other senses too. Bears have been evolved to do a few things well over millions of years
- yetihehe 2y agoApparently, according to this story, when you stand still, they ignore you. If you smell funny, they may investigate. If a tree moves, they will also investigate, maybe there is something to eat hiding inside. Bears typically live in forests, so there's not a lot of movement of trees on ground level. If a lot of trees move violently, they will go to their burrow to wait it out.
- koonsolo 2y agoHere's something to think about: A dog was chasing 2 kids to attack them, one fell to the ground and the other kept running. The dog kept chasing the running one and passing by the one that fell. He attacked and bit the kid that was running. Dogs for example, have an instinct to hunt on things that run. Plenty of my friends have been bitten while running. I always start walking when I see a dog, and never been bitten. Don't underestimate instincts in both humans and animals.
- derelicta 2y agoI recognize this a lot in my now ex-boyfriend. The loss of ability to focus, the emotional tornado, the depersonalization. I still don't know whether I was the main trigger for this, or if it was work.
- deskr 2y agoI don't know anything about your case, but in my friend's case I think work was the main trigger. But if the work was the main trigger, then he needed his home to be is sanctuary which is definitely wasn't.
- ericjmorey 2y agoIt's extremely unlikely to be you.
- cjbgkagh 2y agoMy usual burnout post; much of burnout is really chronic fatigue (ME/CFS) and much of chronic fatigue is from a genetic predisposition and a trigger. hEDS/HSD appears to be the most common genetic predisposition. This stuff occurs in smart people more than it should, usually with some sort of anxiety disorder or ADHD. Some of the best public info on this is from Dr Jessica Eccles who examines the relationship between cognition, emotions, and the autonomic nervous system. This stuff shows up in a lot of stats, eg a huge portion of people with long Covid have some sort of hypermobility. There are effective psychopharmacological treatments for dysautonomia which is usually the underlying mechanism.
- zero-sharp 2y ago>much of burnout is really chronic fatigue (ME/CFS) Sorry, I don't see how that could possibly be true. People with CFS have fatigue to the point where they can't get out of bed. The fatigue from burnout is usually driven by workplace conditions. Like sure, they both have some kind of environmental trigger. But CFS can almost become a disability, whereas burnout is much more narrow and temporary.
- cjbgkagh 2y agoThat is certainly what people think and why I feel I need to pipe up whenever these threads get started. While certainly some with ME/CFS are so bad that they cannot get out of bed the vast majority have good and bad days and you don't see them on their bad days and they look just like everyone else on their good days. One of the reasons it's considered an invisible disease. It's a spectrum and some people manage it better than others. Sometimes the burnout isn't so temporary - even this article talks about how repeated burnout becomes an problem with the person entering a state of depression which bares a lot of similarities to ME/CFS. Most people with ME/CFS will never be diagnosed and those people will often think they just have issues with burnout. That's what I though for over 20 years and I have a severe form of it. I though I was managing burnout and then graves disease. It never occurred to me that I would have something like ME/CFS until I stumbled on a random twitter comment that linked ME/CFS with hypermobility which I also have a severe form of. So here I am adding my comments to the internet. There are generally a whole bunch of rather weird and rather rare comorbidities that occur in people i.e. it is known by its associates. That's what a lot of Dr. Jessica Eccles work goes into.
- throwaway42668 2y agoI'm a VC-backed founder who's definitely burned out. I know for certain what caused it, and I know for certain when it became unrecoverable, and I know for certain that I charged ahead deeper into it anyway because I had little other choice at the time. There's also a very strong sort of sunk-cost/devil-you-know thing with burnout that sucks you down the rabbit hole. You simultaneously feel like you're too burned out to be able to do some entirely new thing, if you can even muster the energy to engage in the switching process (e.g. job hunting, etc.), and the familiarity of the thing that's burning you out brings its own kind of perverse comfort. However, now that I've been deeeeeep in it for a couple years (still doing the thing that's burning me the whole time and even now) I've developed an appreciation for what it probably really is... existential malaise. That's a really useful thing to experience. Because it can be used to redefine a superficial value system you've adopted, to get to this point of dread in the first place, toward things you do actually find personally fulfilling for their own sake. Sometimes in dramatic fashion.
- consp 2y ago> You simultaneously feel like you're too burned out to be able to do some entirely new thing, if you can even muster the energy to engage in the switching process (e.g. job hunting, etc.), and the familiarity of the thing that's burning you out brings its own kind of perverse comfort. This describes an average Monday. Though I would not describe it as comfort but as continuous eternal pain you try very hard to ignore.
- mixtureoftakes 2y ago
- this15testing 2y agoI feel like being forced to spend 40+ hours at any/every job has to create more work to justify that amount of time (an "agreement" that people died for when they were working in factories, not that its based on anything realistic or 'scientific'), and that's not very inspiring and takes SO MUCH ENERGY, at least for me. On top of that you then are faced with this constant increase in "tech" that is supposed to do so much amazing stuff / make everyone more efficient, so now you are forced to do even more work in those 40 hours or get squeezed by wealth inequality? The new AIM chatbots coming out now can do so much! wowee! now I can be in 4 meetings at once? Then on top of THAT you also have to wake up each morning facing global climate change where there is no real effort to change the course (you can say all you want about renewables, but as long as these graphs keep going up we're all going down https://www.climate.gov/ https://www.climate.gov/). People do get value and meaning from their work, whatever it is, it just feels like this mindset and social structure of the industrial age doesn't match up with any of the challenges we face nor does it feel like it fits with all the knowledge and technology that has been developed. What's the point if what we're doing on a day to day basis takes so much of our energy and then just gets us closer to human caused environmental destruction no matter what it is?
- nuancebydefault 2y agoI'm less pessimistic. I'm convinced that technology will at least considerably decrease the amount of trouble caused by climate change. There are a lot of options, and we will converge to a 'golden' combination of strategies to deal with the effects of climate change. Today we can make huge rockets that can land themselves vertically. What will tomorrow bring?
- iprignano 2y agoThis sounds like a fallacy. Just because technology is helping humanity achieve incredible things (for profit), it doesn't mean it will be employed to make advancements in climate change prevention strategies (until it's too late?). It hasn't been until now, anyways.
- 2y ago
- toddmorey 2y agoI parent a child with autism. The care needs are intense; the burnout is real. But I can't employ usual burnout mitigation techniques like taking time off or making career / lifestyle changes. The world relentlessly marches forward. However, I've learned human resilience is AMAZING. You'll be surprised at what you are capable of when life asks for it. Here are a few big insights that have really helped me: - You never have to feel like doing something to start doing it. This insight is so strangely freeing. It really got me out of my head and the loop that I was in berating myself about motivation. - The act of doing something is usually what creates motivation to continue. Tell yourself you'll spend 30 minutes on whatever it is. No matter what it is, I always know I can survive 30 minutes of it. However, 90% of the time, the timer goes off, but I don't feel like stopping. I've found my grove and I keep going. - Procrastination isn't poor time management; it's poor emotional management. Be gentle with yourself. Know that you can be scared, frustrated, or angry but don't have to let those emotions define you. CBT works really well here. Don't define emotions as "good" or "bad". Define them as "useful". If the emotion you feel isn't useful, acknowledge it, but realize it's fleeting and let it pass on. Some people like to visualize emotions as clouds drifting by. "And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy." (My grandmother, who survived the Great Depression on a farm, had the Desiderata posted on her wall. https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html)
- fatnoah 2y ago> The act of doing something is usually what creates motivation to continue. This is one of the techniques I use when feeling burnout or overwhelmed by an insurmountable task list. I set a goal to just get one thing done. Sometimes that snowballs into getting more things done and sometime it doesn't, but at least one important thing got done, which greatly helps my mental state.
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoMy parents had the Desiderata on the back of the toilet door. I've read it innumerable times, but it didn't really start meaning anything to me until well after I'd moved out and needed that kind of perspective. Also, I like all the points you've made and they ring true because I've experienced them more than a handful of times, but I still struggle to grasp their usefulness when I need it. It's funny how emotional states can be the exact opposite of what may be best at the time. Lastly, respect for parenting a child with special needs. Putting most of yourself on hold for an unknowable number of years is a rocky uphill trek. Keep a hold of yourself, but a tighter hold of them.
- digitalsushi 2y agowhen i watch media from 60 years ago i am overwhelmed by how much community there was inside workplaces. people communicated. they had community. ideas were communicative. so was effort. it almost feels like a violation in the modern sense to watch how in each other's business they were. and the backwash of social communication that comes with the transaction of work chat. well anyways that's starting to feel like, i would not mind that level of familiarity and interaction at my job and maybe in society out with strangers, people i am competing against for resources, like, milk at the grocery store. it's just me, and, my spouse, that i dump 100% of my social needs on, and i'm a lot, so i exhaust her quickly. i learned to keep bottled up most of my need to deflate after a day because that is basically holding someone hostage, to hear how my day went, as therapeutic as it is for me, it's an exchange of toxic assets that deserves compensation or greater distribution across a wider audience... like a workplace or a society tolerant of exchanging with strangers so in the vein of lugging all this work around that gives us burnout, i have a theory that we're bottling way more up and solving it solo, poorly, just accumulating baggages that a different world used to exchange freely as part of a social acumen. anyways i've put myself in a precarious situation of being vulnerable to a bevy of reality checking thread responses, which, i'd gladly take as good medicine to hear what i'm getting wrong; but i think i might have lobbed this point generally in a direction that is accurate, even if not precise: we dont have "our people" anymore and we're rotting together
- jajko 2y agoYou are just above average social, or maybe even a bit extroverted and as you mention you need to vent out but not have company to do so. Ie I am the opposite, no need to upload all the daily crap unto others, I deal with it on my own ie via long evening/forest walks, workouts and various sports, smoking weed sometimes (and mixing with long walks). Its tiring to be mostly on receiving end, either there is a lot of negative stuff being unloaded unto you, or people are hopeless in some basic situations and can't speak up or generally help themselves or similar, and there is very little I can actually help with. What is important for long term stable relationships is to have them balanced, give what you take in similar if not same ways, and not be a semi-constant source of negativity/complaints, everybody has their limit. The shit I've been told from some of my close folks, without ever asking or wanting to hear that... I would never bother them with such crap, its often borderline rude, and usually there is 0 I can do just listen or stop the whole circus.
- omayomay 2y agocan relate the post. but i wonder if what she/he defined is a "burnout" or just the result of the alienation? no matter which execuses we find, we know that our job is meaningles. KPI's OKR's Jira tickets.. does not mean jackshit to our self. I've jumped on programming/tech since i got my first computer, i loved how hacking/building something that works and learning new stuff along the way feels. But at the end of the day, this is just another white-collar job, some shits needs to be done, most of the time with coorporating with other people. If the article defines burnout correctly, i think it is inevitable due to the alienation[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
- sentimentscan 2y agoI wish there was a job for burnout people something like: 1. meaningful 2. high impact 3. high authonomy 4. safe (low pressure, stress, etc.) 5. creative And counterbalance it with lowpay to please market dynamic, something like a work for people with disabilities or requiring special assistance (which is done quite good in EU). I did try open source/own project, but the pay isn't guaranteed and I would like to pay the medical insurance/state pension and some basic (minimum wage) income to simply have peace of mind.
- badpun 2y agoThere are hardly any jobs like that in the world. It would also be hard to create them via some state intervention, because it's very hard to create "meaningful, high impact, high autonomy" via bureucratic process.
- sentimentscan 2y agoI don't mean state intervention as most programmers are quite privileged, but a company that creates something like skunk works for people for burned out people
- picometer 2y ago*If* such a thing could be done under typical corporate incentives/behavior, then I suspect the “high impact” part would need to be scrapped. Because when something is important to a corporation, it turns its eyes that thing (so to speak), which disrupts the other properties. Or, “high impact” could be spread over the long term. So, unknown-payoff R&D. It would need to be an “invest and ignore” strategy and require a lot of institutional trust.
- badpun 2y agoAs Steve Jobs put it, "we're in a business of making phones, not hiring people". It makes way more sense for a company to get rid of an employee when they admit to burn out, rather than try to help them.
- Brightonos40 2y ago[flagged]
- Joel_Mckay 2y agoAt some point, one realizes a project is in maintenance mode, and most of the issues should be handled by IT tech support. Better to find something more entertaining to do with your time... than get jettisoned with a product lifecycle. After a few years, everyone burns out eventually. =)
- parpfish 2y agoi think being allowed to pivot into maintenance mode occasionally would help with burnout. being able to sit back and do a job that's a bit more tedious and focused on routine would be a nice complement to always sprinting to make something new and solve things you've never dealt with before.
- Joel_Mckay 2y agoSome companies do allow lateral movement of roles, but most have tightly-coupled process focused teams. It it one reason why the churn rate is abnormally high for techs. People can only expect 110% for so long until a team starts dropping like flies.
- parpfish 2y agoideally you'd be able to doing that without a change of roles/titles and management would be able to rotate teams into different types of work periodically
- Joel_Mckay 2y agoProject switching is also very common in larger firms with several divisions. "A change is as good as a rest" as they say... Have a great day, and I'll see you at the hot-springs friend =)
- stuff4ben 2y agoIs it burnout or ADHD or depression? I feel like I have symptoms of all of them. Burned out at work because the project I'm on isn't selling and I don't care about it anymore but I have other busy work to do. Feels like ADHD because I can't stop myself from fidgeting on my phone looking at Reddit or FB or whatever. Feels like depression because I can't focus and I procrastinate like hell and don't feel like doing anything. Literally on the phone now trying to make an appointment with a behavioral health doc to see someone to get a diagnosis.
- Brightonos40 2y ago[flagged]
- Brightonos40 2y ago[flagged]
- giantg2 2y agoWell apparently I've been in the full 3-stage burnout for 5 or more years. Guess I'm screwed.