Burnout: Hiding in Plain Sight
Millions of kids complain about how tired they are every day. Adults label it laziness, but it could be something else entirely. As I write this, I have about 10 minutes until my third practice of the day. I’m also staring at a checklist of eight assignments, all due tomorrow. I will probably stay up until 3am, getting all my work done, and then get up at 5am to work out. Thousands of kids do this every day- but at what costs?
With no single statistic fully capturing the effects of burnout or how far it has spread, it is clear that many people suffer from it. It could also be confused with depression, anxiety, and ADHD. They all share overlapping symptoms, but burnout can be short-term or long-term. Burnout could be a gateway to more severe mental conditions as well, like depression.
Some physical effects can include fatigue, a weakened immune system, heart issues, and increased blood pressure. These could all develop into more serious medical problems. The mental effects could include detachment, anger, irritability, anxiety, and loss of motivation. As it continues, it becomes a vicious cycle that gets harder and harder to break.
For the longest time, I didn’t believe stress could impact your wellbeing; actually, I still don’t. People blame stress for their own laziness, and it has never made sense to me. Yet, as I get older, I’ve begun to realize that stress impacts people in different ways. You could simply have a moment of hopelessness or live in a constant state of hesitation. Both could be due to stress, and both could terrify you.
Stress could be the cause of some of the scariest moments in your life. An anxiety attack could live in the back of your mind forever, and people could dismiss it as dramatic. The severity of stress seems to be constantly downplayed, making mental conditions like burnout and depression seem unimportant.
If you are the one experiencing it, though, it seems very real. You might think you are stuck like this forever, or that there is something wrong with you. There isn’t, though. You just need to have some solutions when it gets too much to bear.
For burnout, prioritizing your well-being can be a huge help. This could be by making sure you get enough sleep, eating enough healthy food, and balancing your time. All of these could help maintain your symptoms and your health. If you can do these early on, you could also prevent more dangerous health conditions from developing.
Burnout can be a serious condition. While people may downplay it, this can be very harmful to the victim. It can lead to more serious health concerns, ones that people would have to take seriously. This was a small sample of what burnout is, and there is so much more to learn about it. Especially as students, we need to be aware of concerns like this, because it could very well be happening to you.
