How are you?
With immediately tangible symptoms, people tend to center physical health and while taking care of the body is very important, it is equally pressing to take care of your mental health, that is, your psychological and emotional well-being. With the pandemic permanently altering how all of us live our lives, disrupting our routines and enforcing isolation (physical and mental), the need to address declining mental health becomes more urgent. According to research conducted by KFF, the average share of adults reporting symptoms of anxiety and depression have gone up by 30% from 2019 to 2021.
In the professional sphere, this has perpetuated due to the stress caused by the sudden shift Covid 19 brought about, with businesses shutting down, employees losing jobs and founders losing income as they all navigated virtual platforms of communication and what it really meant to work from home.
Understanding the need to address this, daftarkhwan hosted Sara Shahmeer, M.A in Counselling and Psychology from WSU, and Shahzor Hashim, MSc in Clinical Psychology from Murray University to discuss burnouts, their prevention and care. Sara and Shahzor are practicing therapists at Zaaviyah, a client-centered mental health service conducting workshops and providing online and in-person therapy in Pakistan.
According to these professionals, burnout is when stress elevates past being motivating to a point of being overwhelming, debilitating a person and harming their functionality and even their perception of events and people. Burnout can manifest in the form of emotional and physical exhaustion as well as the presence of stress even when there’s no work. This often occurs because of expectations that cannot be met or you don’t have the resources to meet, a lack of communication or the normalization of unhealthy work lifestyles such as working overtime.
When it comes to dealing with burnout, “It’s important to take a step back,” according to Sara. Rather than running headlong into more work, a burnt-out individual should reflect on the triggers of their stress and how to reduce them, using methods such as writing to help vent out anxiety. Additionally, one needs to maintain a work-life balance. Don’t bring work home, if you’re working from home have different spaces for work and relaxation and fixed times for them and give time to other things that are important to you like your personal relationships. She also recommends activities that add to the general well-being of a person such as eating well, sleeping and exercising.
“Passion and motivation also have a limit. Don’t let your passion become your burden,” Shahzor advises founders. Everyone needs time to recuperate and energize. It’s important to communicate and set boundaries for both employees and employers. Employers should work towards creating an environment where everyone feels comfortable asking for help, create a culture of feedback and encourage empathy in their team.
To effectively deal with burnout, therapy is not only an option but recommended. In Pakistan, therapy continues to be stigmatized as either exclusively for the clinically insane or ineffective. In order to further the conversation about mental health, we need to normalize therapy and prioritize our mental health along with our physical health.
To explore more ways to tackle burnout check out the full insights session here. If you need help, visit Zaaviyah’s website to book an appointment with a trained professional.
