Burnouts (featured on Student Minds)

Alright, so argue with me or not, but personally, I believe that this is going to be one of the posts with the most important content that you should definitely check it out! So why am I saying this? Alright, so I know this too well: high school can be so tiring and traumatizing for a lot of people, where you have so many things to do yet not enough time to finish them all. Not only limited to academics, these things come from things like extracurricular activities, sports, to things like hanging out with your friends and during house chores. And with such an overwhelming amount of things surrounding you at every time in the day, it is certain that sometimes, you may experience something called burnouts. When burnouts occur, you basically feel exhausted, and you don’t have the strength to do anything. Signs of burnouts include a loss of sleep, appetite, as well as unproductivity. And sadly, although this is something that we surely don’t want to occur, we can’t just have the ability to control things coming to us, right? Because of this, it is very important for us to address this issue, where we will find appropriate ways in order to deal with this issue, so that by practicing these tips, you may be able to reduce the chance of getting burnouts as much as possible.

So before we come to the actual “tips” part, we are going to talk about the terms adaptive coping mechanisms and maladaptive coping mechanisms, which are actually two things that I frequently talk about in my psychology club. What we are trying to get to here are adaptive coping mechanisms, which are ways that you effectively deal with issues, and what we are NOT trying to get to here are maladaptive coping mechanisms, which are coping mechanisms that are unhealthy for us. When burnouts occur, chances are we may fall into the trap of practicing maladaptive coping mechanisms, which include things like using substances (to make us relieve) and binge-eating. And for some clarification, sure, if we feel very tired, eating can be a good decision where we can feel more energized, but when constant stress causes us to eat an unhealthy amount of food, then that’s going to be a big issue. Today, we are going to talk about adaptive coping mechanisms to burnouts and stress overalls.

The first tip that I want to mention here is something that I have actually talked about in previous posts, which is the idea of journaling. I know that many people may become bored when even just thinking of doing it, but honestly, please try to do it. By journaling your emotions, it will really help with sorting your feelings by letting yourself have the ability of figuring out the problems that are going on with yourself. By doing this, you can organize your brain and find out the main causes of your burning out, hence you will be able to find a solution to that. I know that this is not going to be a very easy thing to do, especially when you are having to deal with multiple problems at the same time. But the important thing here is to adapt to this issue, and to find a way to alleviate the stress when it comes.

Additionally, please take frequent rests. Rests don’t have to be an hour of napping or something, but just things like leaving where you are sitting and walking around. For the majority of the time, burnouts come from the fact that you are doing so many things continuously that you don’t leave yourself time to rest, which makes you have no time to take care of your mental health. And of course, this is very unhealthy! Practice giving yourself some rest now and then - for example, you can implement the Pomodoro technique when you are studying! There are two main things with this technique: first, for every 25 minutes of studying, let yourself rest for 5 minutes; and second, for every 3 to 4 of these 30-minute intervals, give yourself a rest for around 15 minutes. Doesn’t seem so difficult to do, does it?

The last tip that I want to share here (there are tons of other tips also, but because of the length of this post I want to make this the last tip) is that please tell someone about your issues if you figure it out that it can make you feel better. I have a strong belief that you shouldn’t keep your feelings bottled up in your mind all the time, and by letting it out it will make you much more relieved. Ideally, you can talk to your school counselor if you are comfortable, but you also have your friends that you can trust in sharing your problems without needing to fear being judged! At the end of the day, your mental health is the most important thing, so please nurture that! Good luck!