Mental burnout is similar to physical burnout except it affects the mind. It occurs from over usage or exhaustive repetition of tasks. These tasks can either be too monotonous or extremely challenging, either one can lead to fatigue.
If you go to the gym and workout one set of muscles until exhaustion, then do it again the next day, and again the next day; not only will you be physically unable to continue but you’ll also be in a lot of pain — it’s just not possible or healthy to continue in that routine.
Physical exhaustion is usually curable by consuming a good diet and getting plenty of rest which allows your muscles and your body to recover. Metal exhaustion works along the same lines but is not always easy to cure.
How do you cure the mind from chronic mental fatigue when it is overused?
Many people in creative jobs burnout, breakdown, and eventually most end up quitting. They just have nothing left to give and can’t do it anymore. Writers get writers block, stay at home moms become depressed and sleep all day, and teachers want to beat their kids — some actually do and get fired.
There are many ways for people to be mentally challenged to the point of exhaustion and it normally happens over a period of time, not all at once. The students wear your patience thin, your kids stress you out, or the story you are writing is a flaming piece of shit that you can’t believe you wrote in the first place.
When you hit this state of mind you begin to question your sanity. You begin to think about how you got to where you are in your life. You begin to analyze your past choices to figure out where you went wrong. You may even secretly hope you end up in jail because you need a vacation from life.
What if no matter how much rest, food, or sleep you got; it never came back? What if it came back slowly and you depleted it everyday, so that as time went on you could work with your mind maybe 20 hours this week, 10 the next, and it continued to decrease until you were a useless piece of shit walking around like a zombie unable to focus or think?
Is this possible?
Does this condition sound familiar to you yet? Or are you one of the few people that has never made it to the point of mental exhaustion?
There’s only one way to cure mental exhaustion — stop doing what you’re doing, maybe for a few days, maybe forever. But you have to stop it cold turkey. When the mind is mentally exhausted it requires a change, sometimes dramatic, sometimes just a little bit.
Ever take a vacation and come back to your life, your job, and feel refreshed? For the next few days or weeks you accomplish a lot of stuff and get a lot of shit done. But after awhile you’re back to hating Monday’s and hoping for Fridays so you can sit and do absolutely nothing on the couch and hope Monday never comes?
You may even secretly hope that your building catches on fire or your boss terminates you so you can go on unemployment and do nothing for awhile.
The vacation may have replenished you some, but the work drained you back out. You are working too much or working at the wrong job — you and your work do not agree with each other.
When you burn out, the change you may need to make, may not just be a vacation for 1 or 2 weeks, but rather, a life change. A change in employment, a geographical change, a change in relationship, or some other change — you have to do something differently, sometimes completely different from what you were doing.
It is possible, and happens to people regularly, that no matter how much change and no matter how much time off you take, the minute you walk back into what exhausted you, you will become exhausted within a few minutes again and return to a useless state.
You see, you can’t always walk something off. You can’t ignore it and return back to it expecting that you’re going to be recharged. For the rest of your life, you can no longer do what you were doing. Maybe at some point down the road you will find a different way to do what you were doing, if it was something you enjoyed that you want to have in your life, but for the most part, it’s best to leave it be.
Change is the essence of life, if you’re not changing, you aren’t growing. If you aren’t growing, you’re not living.
So if you find yourself in a state of mind, that no matter how much sleep you get, rest you get, or how much time you take off, that after all of this, you still cannot focus or accomplish what you were doing, then you, my friend, are mentally exhausted.
Chronic fatigue is no laughing matter, it can and will lead to premature death. If you don’t die an early death or develop some mental disorder, you will be the most useless and boring person to ever live on this planet. Either way you slice the pie, it’s not going to taste good when you eat it — and no amount of cool whip can cover up the taste of asshole.
Change. Change your life, change your job, change your relationship status, change your house, change your city, or start small and change your underwear — but change nonetheless.
Ignorance is not bliss, whoever said that is probably long dead by now. That vacation you took and those hours you slept in are great and all, but they are short lived.
If it’s your job causing it, eventually you’re going to feel like you’re walking down death row every Monday, and that’s not a good place to be in your life. If it’s your relationship causing it, you’re going to dread coming home. If it’s the cold weather, the house, the misbehaved kids — do something, do anything.
The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.
Things are not going to change, for better or worse, until you do.
Thank you for this.