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Let’s talk about burnout because it is an issue that comes up a lot in my sessions. We tend to think of it as an issue that hits more often among health care practitioners, first responders, jobs where lives are on the line. But the truth is that burnout is very common
with all jobs. Most of us are working jobs where only a few tasks are asked of us, and we have to do them constantly. Whether it is cleaning, call centres, IT jobs, we are all required to do the same thing over and over for 40 hours or more a week.
40 hour work weeks were designed with a schedule of 8 hours of work, hours of sleep, and 8 hours of leisure and seemed to work very well for baby boomers. However, the nature of the job market has changed a lot since that generation. Now baby boomers are either retired
or in charge of companies and want to replicate that model that they think made them the “great generation”. However, baby boomers were able to afford raising a whole family, buy a house, and have savings on minimal salaries or even only one salary, which is impossible nowadays.
So many people now work 2 jobs to be able to afford basic needs. So many of us work knowing we may never own our own home. We work more than 40 hours per week, but then also work because we want to increase our skills, please our bosses, or be able to find a higher paying job.
Mental health is already the second cause of disability, but we are not doing anything systemically to change that. We don’t have policies in place to deal with it. Most of us can’t afford to take the time off required to deal with the consequences of burnout.
The truth is when people come to me with issues related to burnout, I feel so powerless. I could tell them to use their vacation days, or sick days, but many don’t have enough of those to even put a dent on that burnout. I could tell them to integrate self-care in their routine.
But when we are forced to do something as part of a treatment, it loses its efficiency. If you go to the movies with friends because you want to, you are going to have a lot of fun. If you go because someone told you to, it is going to feel forced and not as fun.
The only remedies that can change that would have to come from the system. Our reality is not that of the baby boomers, opportunities are not the same, and our system should reflect that. We feel left out by a system that wants to hang on to a past that is no longer possible.
