“I’m just stressed.” If you are reading this article, the odds are that you have said or thought that more than once in your life. The question to ask yourself is, “How often have I said that in the last week? The last month? The last year?” Have you felt that way since 2019 (before COVID)? While it’s possible to plow through short seasons of stress, when true burnout is reached the consequences are significant.

According to Psychology Today, “Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress. Though it’s most often caused by problems at work, it can also appear in other areas of life, such as parenting, caretaking, or romantic relationships.” Burnout affects more than just your job. It affects your relationships, your health, and your very soul.

The Signs Of Burnout
How can you tell if you are in a state of burnout instead of merely a season of stress? As mentioned above, emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion is a clear sign. This goes beyond being tired to being completely depleted. Physical exhaustion leads to frequent illness. This is where stress-related illnesses show up such as heart disease, high blood pressure, or a severely compromised immune system. Did you know that unchecked stress is even a potential trigger for some auto-immune diseases? The title of Bessel van de Kolk’s book says it best: The Body Keeps the Score.

There is also the issue of emotional exhaustion. This can show up as either out-of-control emotions or numbed emotions. Anything that is uncharacteristic of personal normal behaviors are signs of emotional exhaustion. This goes beyond irritability. It is having disproportionate responses to situations on a regular basis. You no longer get angry (or fill-in-the-blank emotion), you have become an angry (or fill-in-the-blank) person. It may also result in emotional numbness or depression.

Mental exhaustion often shows up as someone simply checking out. If you have ever said the words, “I just can’t anymore” you have likely reached a state of burnout. This results in generalized withdrawing. As Pastor Stephanie O’Brien explains on her Lead Stories podcast with Jo Saxton, “This is where you are so overwhelmed it’s easier to withdraw than to explain. And you withdraw not to rest, but for everything to just stop. You just don’t have the energy for people anymore.” Withdrawing could be physical separation but might also look like mental and emotional detachment.

In addition to emotional, mental and physical exhaustion, there are other signs of burnout that hint at spiritual exhaustion. These may include having a diminished sense of accomplishment. Sean Nemecek explains this in his book The Weary Leaders Guide to Burnout as, “Work that used to bring you joy and now drains your soul.” There is also a feeling that you’ve lost your calling, you’ve lost yourself. You feel as though you’re a fraud living as a shell of yourself. This leads to a sense of hopelessness or loss of optimism that things will never change.

Factors That Lead To Burnout
It’s one thing to recognize the signs of burnout, but if you don’t know how you got there, you will be destined to either remain in a state of burnout, or you will be there again when some other stressor comes. The benchmark Areas of Worklife Survey (AWS) show six factors (areas) that lead to burnout:

• Workload- too much on your plate including family, caregiving, serving, etc.
• Control- feeling out of control or lack of freedom (real or perceived).
• Reward- lack of meaningful reward. Not feeling valued or appreciated.
• Community- lack of people to validate, support, encourage, etc.
• Equity- lack of fairness in your environment (all your environments).
• Values- your values differ from the environment you are in (work, family, school, etc).

On the surface, these all seem like practical or tactical life issues that have little to do with spiritual issues. However, nothing is further from the truth. In fact, reversing burnout requires more than simple behavior modification. While behavior modification may eliminate stress and ease burnout for a season, it will not get at the root of the problem.  

What To Do About Burnout
The good news is that you can not only recover from burnout; you can become more resistant to burnout in the future. You may not be able to remove all the stress in your life, but with the help of the Holy Spirit, you can remain healthy and whole in the midst of stress. It requires hard work, and not the kind of work that got you burned out in the first place. It requires soul work. As Nemecek states, “The problem is not in our weakness but in our trying to have more strength than God has supplied. When we push beyond the threshold God has set, we burn out.” As the apostle John writes to the church in Ephesus, “You have forsaken the love you had at first (Rev. 2:4).” Could it be that you have prioritized the gifts or talents that are a part of who God created you to be over the Gift Giver? Have the people that God has entrusted to you taken precedence over the One who gave them to you in the first place? Ask yourself the same question the apostle Paul did in Galatians 1:10; “Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” Paul said this in the context of the Galatians not preaching the gospel accurately. The way you live your life and what you are willing to be a slave to is representative of the gospel that you preach (and others do notice).

Burnout does not happen overnight and reversing burnout will also take some time. To begin to reverse burnout, start by evaluating your habits. What have you given up in order to do more? Have you adopted a “sleep is for the weak” mentality over a rhythm of rest which is how God designed your body? Have you stopped spending time in prayer or in God’s word? If you are not intentional with talking to God or listening for God to speak to you, other voices will be louder. Always.

It is also important to evaluate your relationships. Have you withdrawn from the people who could speak life into your circumstances? Do you need to create boundaries around other relationships that have left you codependent or hollow? Has people-pleasing become your default?

Consider all the environments in which you function. Are you powerless within any of them? Is that powerlessness real or merely perceived? Is there meaning or purpose in the work you are doing that might offset the difficult circumstances? There can be purpose in provision, but financial windfalls are rarely rewarding long-term. Are your personal and Biblical values in conflict with your environment? This can happen at home, at school, at work, and even when serving.

The process of burnout is complex, and the contributing factors are multilayered. It makes sense then, that the process out of burnout requires multilayered examination, internally as well as externally. Know God wants His best for you and He will lead you gently from burnout to beloved.

Source: Nemecek, Sean. The Weary Leader’s Guide to Burnout. Zondervan, 2003.
Source: O’Brien, Stephanie and Saxton, Jo., “Burnout”, Lead Stories podcast, Season 13, Episodes 9-13. Leadstoriespodcast.com