I learned this week that "occupational burnout" [1] often results in the brain developing a trauma response to the idea of returning to the same job/tasks, which is why people will sometimes entirely switch careers. It absolutely is the brain trying to protect itself.
Not all forms of burnout results in trauma responses, but they all require extended recovery. Burnout is preventable, but once it has been reached, the damage has been done and rest is required. No joke: 3-6 months is the usual recovery time.
Paths to occupational burnout:
- No mental rest from work. "Taking it home with you." Often skipping breaks to keep focused.
- Jobs that require high amounts of mental processing for long periods (customer service, development, troubleshooting, multitasking, urgent-response).
"Brown out" is the stage when you're still capable of functioning in spurts, but your brain/body is sending warning signs (that we have been taught to ignore).
3 to 6 months is interesting, it almost exactly lines up with my experience of leaving work for a bit. at around three months, i mostly stopped feeling like shit and angry about some of the things that happened. i felt like i was a baseline. at around 6 months i started to feel actually good.
also at 6 months im trying to get back to work and the interview process and job market sucks so im feeling miserable again haha
If you ever wanna chat I'm in the same boat. Just keep your head above water and try to think positively. Playing with ChatGPT and the dirty cheap OpenAI APIs has helped me a lot =)
Oh, I just meant, I'm also looking for jobs, the market sucks, interviews go fine and then I hear nothing back. I'm just doing my own thing and I empathize is all I meant!
Oh and in terms of ChatGPT, I just meant it's something fun that I use for other interesting projects due to how flexible the composability is (LangChain, etc)... not so much directly as a therapist-bot if that's what you were asking.
What are the warning signs? The paths you described kind of describe things I do. Sometimes they are necessary and I am taking steps to prevent them. At the same time I worry I already shut down the warning signs.
Sometimes I wonder whether "burnout" or "occupational burnout" describes something I have experienced in college. It was not a spectacular or intense thing, just losing interest in my subject completely and avoiding getting started with exercises, even though I was decently good at my subject and loved the hours and hours I spent studying.
The usual, some combination of sleeping difficulties or sleeping too much, constantly being annoyed by nothing in particular, brain fog, forgetting things, procrastination, difficulty reaching a flow state, general disinterest in certain or most things, acute anxiety/stress response to thinking about things that should be done, increased "self-medication" with alcohol or other drugs, comfort eating, or alternatively forgetting to eat, loss of appetite.
This is me since... at least high school. Probably earlier, but my memories are spotty. Almost all the things you mention present, often acutely, in relation to anything that is "to be done" - be it work or personal. Anything can trigger it, the moment it stops being something I do on a whim, and becomes something that I plan or is expected of me. No underlying medical condition to attribute it to. What to do then?
Yes. Treated for depression in my early 20s, but it only reduced those issues a tiny bit. Diagnosed with ADHD in my 30s (thanks to many comments like yours over the years on HN, which eventually made me talk with a doctor again); treatment was much more effective for the symptoms in question, but they never completely went away, and occasionally come back to bite with vengeance. I currently consider the effect of that treatment to be somewhere between "close, but no cigar", "you're holding it wrong" and "lulled into false sense of security".
One thing I observe being unstated for many mental health conditions is that the duration is often life.
Or that without fundamentally changing the set and setting of one's life, one can expect, on average, approximately the same metrics now as tomorrow, and so on and so forth.
Therapy and medication help, for some people, some of the time.
> Sometimes I wonder whether "burnout" or "occupational burnout" describes something I have experienced in college. It was not a spectacular or intense thing, just losing interest in my subject completely and avoiding getting started with exercises, even though I was decently good at my subject and loved the hours and hours I spent studying.
I think this is my experience right now. I love CS and almost all my classes were great, but now it's like I can't study, I can't will myself to work on a class' project, etc. I have an exam that I have been avoiding for months and it's blocking my other classes that require this exam to take their exams
The fact that you use the past tense means you got past it? If so, I'd appreciate any advice
I felt the same with Electronic Engineering in my final year - because I had realised that what I was learning was so academically focused that it was almost useless in the real world. I forced myself to finish that last year, but I think that effort destroyed my love for electronic design work (fortunately, I fell into a software job instead, in part because I got my degree).
Perhaps if you can get out in the real world then you will find real problems and those will likely motivate you (if you are anything like me, anyway). The most motivated students I recall were already working, and they picked and chose relevant academic focus that could help them with their design work (i.e. they could get some value from the academic system). Even though work is often depressing in itself (varies on a huge number of factors).
Edit: perhaps relevant: I was depressed due to a relationship. She ended the relationship with me, and the next day I was long-term happy. Turns out situational depression is a thing, and that it is entirely different from clinical depression (which doesn’t fix itself in a day - exception fast bipolar?). If you feel unhappy, sometimes you have the ability to fix the situation that is making you unhappy!
I've never conceptualized of burnout as trauma, but this makes a lot of sense. The best definition I've read of trauma is, "an event or series of events that overwhelm a persons' ability to cope." Almost like tearing a muscle by trying to lift something that's just too heavy to bear.
But if burnout is trauma, is taking a break from work really enough to resolve the trauma? I ask because that seems insufficient in the case of other traumas, e.g. undergoing physical or emotional abuse, surviving violent accidents, etc.
> But if burnout is trauma, is taking a break from work really enough to resolve the trauma?
Apparently it isn't, much like in case of physical trauma. GP mentioned people switching careers.
I know a person who got burned out when their boss tried to make them do 2D and later 3D design for the company, on top of their normal assignments, because he didn't want to hire a new graphics designer after the last one quit. Said person gained basic proficiency in some CAD software, Photoshop, Corel, and then burned out on 3DS Max, to the point of having strong physical reactions at the very though of it, even many years later. It's a psychological wound that can't heal, and it closed off 3D graphics as a line of work for that person. Trauma is one of the words we used when talking about it over the years.
Not all forms of burnout results in trauma responses, but they all require extended recovery. Burnout is preventable, but once it has been reached, the damage has been done and rest is required. No joke: 3-6 months is the usual recovery time.
Paths to occupational burnout: - No mental rest from work. "Taking it home with you." Often skipping breaks to keep focused. - Jobs that require high amounts of mental processing for long periods (customer service, development, troubleshooting, multitasking, urgent-response).
"Brown out" is the stage when you're still capable of functioning in spurts, but your brain/body is sending warning signs (that we have been taught to ignore).
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_burnout?wprov=sft...