When you ask someone how they are, they no longer say good or bad or average. “I'm exhausted” is usually the automatic response. When you ask why, no one knows how to give you a concrete answer. Is it the workload? The wars that devastate several countries at the same time? The post-pandemic society? Inflation? What if it were all of this at the same time?
Extreme exhaustion causes us to feel unable to cope with the most routine and mundane tasks in our lives. Returning that jacket that doesn't fit you, making an appointment for your annual tests, answering the emails that accumulate in your inbox… it's not about laziness, because while you can't handle all those small errands you continue to lead the life of an adult. self-sufficient (you go to work, take the children to school and file your income tax return). It's just that you feel like there's no room left in your brain for anything else after all those important things. Sometimes there is not even space to do the things you liked, like taking a walk with your partner or going to the movies. You simply don't feel able to do it or, as Anne B. Petersen wrote in her BuzzFeed article, How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation: “Why can't I do these worldly things? Because I'm exhausted. Why am I exhausted? Because I have internalized the idea that I should be working all the time.”
In a recent article published in Time titled: “Why are we more exhausted than ever?”, psychologist Emily Ballesteros points out that if after the pandemic the United States experienced the so-called Great Resignation (a phenomenon due to which 47 million people voluntarily resigned from their jobs), now we live in what would be known as the era of great exhaustion. The causes of this exhaustion, according to the author, are an unsustainable lifestyle (“We have not built a society that prioritizes human needs but a society that prioritizes business needs”); stresses beyond our control such as climate disaster and wars (“We can endure difficulties with much higher morale when we maintain hope that things will get better. When everywhere there is news that makes us feel that they are not getting better, We are starting to fall apart”), and financial insecurity (“We have been a work-focused society for generations, yet it is increasingly difficult to convince people to lead a busy, work-focused life if that is not supported.” translates into the quality of life I used to have.
“It is a sum of things that lead us to this moment of mental health crisis but that, in reality, primarily has to do with a crisis in living conditions that only exacerbates the diminishing position of the subject in the world. , also with that imperative of performance behind it that makes us always feel that we are insufficient, that we are producing insufficient, we are not increasing our intellectual capital sufficiently, we are not interacting enough with friends or partners. There is always the thought that we need to try harder,” explains the thinker Eudald Espluga, author of the book Don't be yourself (Paidós, 2021), asked about the phenomenon of global exhaustion. The philosopher points out that, although fatigue is not a generational issue, it is true that millennials and Zetas, incorporated into work after the 2008 crisis and the worsening of living standards, have been the ones who have had a adult life marked by precariousness and permanent insecurity.
The term burnout (burnout syndrome) was first recognized as a psychological diagnosis in 1974 by psychologist Herbert Freudenberger and referred to “cases of physical or mental collapse caused by overwork or stress.” The latest report from the Gallup consulting firm on employment, published in 2023, provided historical data. 44% of workers felt stressed, a record number that had not occurred at any other time in history. A year earlier, in January 2022, the American Psychological Association published that the stressors of the pandemic have become “persistent and undefined.” They had detected an increase in cognitive and emotional exhaustion and physical fatigue. “For many, the pandemic has been like constantly struggling to get your head above water, only to be hit again by another wave,” writes Philosophy doctor Valentina Stoycheva in a Psychology Today article titled The Great Burnout: Lasting Pandemic Effects.
“You feel exhausted when you've exhausted all your internal resources but can't free yourself from the nervous compulsion to keep going anyway,” Josh Cohen writes in the article Is there more to burnout than working too hard?, published in The Economist. The graphic image would be that we are all like a kind of dead battery that, instead of recharging when plugged into the socket, simply starts to smoke. Or a walking blackened match. Exhausted from being exhausted living in an economy of collective exhaustion.
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