If You Feel 'Burnt Out' All The Time, You Likely Suffer From This Serious Disease
If you've been feeling like this lately, it might be time to get it checked out.
PeopleImages.com - Yuri A / Shutterstock Life is stressful. You can't go through life without stressing about one thing or another.
It feels like you wake up and go to a job that you know is going to stress you out, and then you have a stressful commute to look forward to, and then a home that is going to demand things from you tonight.
Even babies get stressed, but they're at least allowed to cry in public, and their problems can easily be fixed by food or sleep. But are you stressed to the point of "burning out"?
Psychology Today defines "burnout" as "a state of chronic stress that leads to: physical and emotional exhaustion, cynicism and detachment, [and] feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment." Do you know the causes of constant stress on the body?
It's not good.
If you're stressed to the point of exhaustion, it's a good idea to relax and take a breather.
If you don't, you'll have bigger things to worry about.
And that's what a new study has warned against, as researchers have examined the connection between burning out and depression. You can't be any good to the people in your life if you're not good to yourself first.
Surveying 1,386 public school teachers in their 40s, from 18 different states, researchers asked the participants questions about burnout and depression, ranking them from mild to severe.
Ten percent of women and seven percent of men had symptoms of burnout, and 10 percent of both men and women had symptoms of depression. It's harder than ever to be a teacher nowadays.
Alarmingly, they found that the participants who reported feelings of burning out also had depression.
If nothing in life gives you joy and you feel like you're just going through the motions, then that might be a serious sign to get your mental health checked out.
"Dysfunctional attitudes, ruminative responses, and pessimistic attributions were more characteristic of individuals with high frequencies of burnout (or depressive) symptoms than of their counterparts with low frequencies of burnout (or depressive) symptoms," said the study.
According to a report in The Guardian, the Office for National Statistics estimates that between eight to 12 percent of us experience depression symptoms, but some go undiagnosed.
So if you're feeling like you're depressed, it's best to take care of the symptoms now. Seek medical help, and even if the diagnosis doesn't end up being depression, you'll feel much better and more at ease. Therapy is always something you can consider too, especially if life feels too overwhelming.
Caithlin Pena is an editor and former contributor for YourTango. Her work has been featured on Thought Catalog, Huffington Post, Yahoo, Psych Central, and BRIDES.