Managing Stress and Burnout: A Half-term Check In
Having long forgone the novelty of starting the new school year, it is more than normal to feel the weight of our assignments dragging us down as we try to claw our way through to the end of term. For many, it will be the stress of impending exams and coursework, on top of the seemingly bottomless pit of work we’ve been tasked to do already. Teachers and tutors are aware of this too; I’ve spent the start of every lesson asking students. ‘Has the stress hit you yet?’ (even if some of my A2 students are a little too chilled). For the GCSE and A-Level students preparing for mocks, and filling out UCAS applications, stress management is absolutely essential for maintaining your sanity! With this in mind, I thought I’d share some insights into managing stress, burnout, and - most importantly - establishing a healthy work-life balance.
What is burnout?
I’m certainly not the first to say that being at school and studying for exams can be extremely overwhelming, particularly leading up to exam season. During long, unyielding periods of hard work, students and their teachers experience long-term stress and exhaustion - which can often materialise into a state of burnout. Burnout is a state of physical and emotional exhaustion, and common signs include: feeling tired or drained most of the time; feeling detached or alone; feeling trapped or defeated; having a cynical or negative outlook; feelings of self-doubt; and procrastination.
As prevalent as these symptoms are, burnout is often stigmatised and misunderstood, and can thus pose a real danger to your mental health and wellbeing, if left unchecked. In 2019, burnout was redefined by the World Health Organisation: instead of being a stress syndrome, burnout is now (officially) referred to as a syndrome resulting from stress that has not been successfully managed. Psychologist Dr Juli Fraga speaks highly of this definition change, arguing that it is a positive step towards the removal of the stigma surrounding burnout.
Tips and strategies
Having established that burnout can be alleviated by finding effective ways to manage your stress, here are some core methods and tips to help you put this into practice:
Look after your body
This may be glaringly obvious, but in order to look after your mental wellbeing, you have got to care for your physical wellbeing - unfortunately for some, no amount of willpower can handle stress if your body isn’t healthy. Make sure to be eating a balanced diet, getting enough exercise and fresh air, and enough sleep, which should be about 8 hours a night. If you feel ill, don’t force yourself out, or to do more work: you would much rather take a couple of days off to rest, than drag yourself through a week of work just to feel worse than you did before. Listen to your body’s needs, and meet them - if you’re tired all the time, this is your body trying to tell you to slow down.
Leisure and relaxation
An incredibly important thing to do when you take a break, is to distance yourself from your work - both physically and mentally. A break doesn’t count as leisure time if you’re still in overdrive trying to think of the next thing on your list that you have to complete - I can attest to this personally. I remember taking scheduled breaks during long periods of work, and still not understanding why I was just as tired and stressed as I was before. Practising mental distancing is difficult, but once you find a stress-coping strategy that works for you, things will get easier. For me, this was learning to crochet, as I felt like I needed to be doing something with my hands - if it wasn’t typing away at a laptop, then I suppose it had to be crocheting a new sweater!
Gaining perspective
We have a tendency to focus on all the things we haven’t done, and as a result of this, completely ignoring the many things we have managed to do. Concentrating on your achievements, and resisting comparison (whether this is between you and other people, or between you and who you feel like you should be) is key. Your world won’t come crashing down if you miss one day of class - perhaps it might be a short-term disappointment, but in the long-term, it doesn’t hold nearly as much weight as your stress-fuelled mind might attribute to it. It is likely that you will have forgotten all about this week’s stress in a month’s time! Be proactive about your wellbeing - and know that the problem as it seems now is always smaller once you take some time to zoom out, and focus on yourself.
References:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/students/news/2019/mar/handling-stress-and-preventing-burnout
