Can You Experience Burnout From A Chronic Illness?
Living with any type of chronic illness is challenging from every perspective. It can affect your work, social, romantic, and daily functioning. Dealing with a chronic illness often feels like a full-time job in itself. There may be frequent doctor appointments or trips to the pharmacy. You may struggle with just getting through everyday life and balancing your illness while trying to retain a sense of normalcy.
Burnout Explained
When we talk about feeling burned out, this is often from the lens of careers or jobs. To understand if someone can experience burnout from a chronic illness, let’s first go over what burnout actually is.
Feeling burned out is typically associated with work when someone becomes physically or emotionally exhausted. This could be due to long hours, demanding jobs, or high-stress environments. Or any combination of those three.
Feeling burned out isn’t a medical diagnosis like anxiety or depression; however, its effects are still very real. Someone who is experiencing burnout from school or work may notice any number of the following symptoms and signs:
Mental exhaustion
Physical exhaustion
Inability to concentrate
Lack of satisfaction with accomplishments
Change in sleep habits (insomnia or sleeping too much)
Unexplainable stomach pain or headaches
Feeling irritable and impatient toward other people
Difficulty getting started with work or feeling unmotivated frequently to go to school or work
An increase in being more negative or critical at school or work
Burnout is likely to happen to anyone at some point. Because in addition to school or work, you’re still a human juggling home life, deadlines, responsibilities, etc.
Chronic Illness And Its Relation To Burnout
When you battle a chronic illness, there is so much on your plate. Often, chronic illnesses cause extreme fatigue and pain beyond what most people regularly deal with. It can almost be compared to constantly having the flu or being sick. But unlike the flu, a chronic illness can not be caught. And many people who do have an illness that never goes away will try and hide this.
It’s a battle of balancing an illness that never goes away with the struggle that just comes with being human, in general. Juggling so much at one time is a lot for any person. Chronic illnesses can and do cause someone to feel burned out. It’s not concerning academics or employment, although certainly work can dramatically exacerbate it.
The aforementioned signs of burnout that are listed above apply to burnout in relation to chronic illness as well. So, what can you do to manage chronic illness burnout?
Tips For Managing Burnout
Life gets stressful for everyone, not just those dealing with a chronic illness. That’s why it is important for anyone to know how to help counteract burnout’s effects.
Make Time To Just Relax
You likely will have moments when you feel like you can get more done, and your energy levels don’t seem awful. In these times, we often push ourselves to get as much done as possible. And while those things are equally important, you also need to be sure that you are giving your body and mind breaks when you can. Pick up your favorite book or something new you want to read. Binge-watch a TV show. Go outside for a walk if you can. Do what you can to enjoy the little things in your life that often feel like the big things.
Seek Support
It’s equally important to know that there is hope to deal with your chronic illness. When dealing with a chronic illness, it’s sometimes hard not to feel alone. However, talking with a therapist can help remind you that there is hope and light, despite the pain you are going through. Contact me to get started on your journey with chronic illness counseling.
