#burnout treatment
so you relate to like every ADHD/ADD mood/feel post on your dash!
but when you look up ADHD/ADD diagnosis guidelines, you see things like:
- ‘symptoms must have started in early childhood/by the age of 3/7/12’
- ‘symptoms must be disruptive in at least 2 out of 3 life arenas throughout life’
which …isn’t the case for you.
if you suffer from ADHD/ADD-esque concentration & follow-through issues as a late teen/adult, but you’re pretty sure that you weren’t having those symptoms early on/growing up: you might be dealing with burnout.
An increasingly-common affliction in the American working class, burnout is related to the brain being overworked &/or frequently or constantly flooded with stress hormones.
things that can trigger/lead to burnout:
- having a stressful/high-stakes life/job
- working long, tedious hours doing something that does not stimulate or relax the brain (such as rote homework)
- being bombarded by new information (i.e. social media)
- constant anxiety about money/health/basic life necessities
- lacking the means for/neglecting necessary self-care (getting enough sleep & eating properly)
- having to constantly choose between too many options without meaningful ways of narrowing the choices down (i.e. shopping online)
- all of the above w/a minimal or nonexistent support network
in other words: burnout is induced by living the average life of like 90%* of American adults under the age of 40!!!!
(*not a real statistic. I’m just saying a lot of us millennials/gen z ppl are burning out.)
burnout can look a LOT like adult ADHD/ADD because it seriously fucks with executive function. some symptoms ADHD/ADD & burnout have in common:
- struggling to concentrate
- feeling paralyzed when asked to make decisions
- procrastinating on ‘simple’ or ‘nonessential’ tasks
- difficulty prioritizing work/errands/tasks
burnout also takes on depression-like symptoms such as:
- feeling tired, exhausted, &/or irritated all the time
- feeling like nothing matters/everything is ‘the same’
- isolating oneself from others
- changing appetite
the thing about burnout is: even if it looks like ADHD/ADD (or depression) to you, the treatment for burnout is nothing like the treatment for ADHD/ADD (or depression). it mostly involves getting rest & reducing stress (as if most of us have this option, but that’s a post for a different blog!) this is why it’s important to get the correct diagnosis - so the treatment can be the right one.
of course, that being said:
- people with ADHD/ADD can also get burnout. in fact, ADHD/ADD can exacerbate burnout symptoms: it’s already hard enough to make decisions when the brain is healthy, much less when it’s so stressed you can barely think!
tl;dr:
because capitalism is a cruel mistress, a lot of people are just struggling to executive function b/c we’re burnt out by stressful, non-stop lives with no work-life separation and too many too-same buying options every time we try to buy something as simple as dish soap.
if you’re pretty sure you don’t have ADHD/ADD (or cousin developmental disorders such as ASD) but severely struggle with concentration/executive function, or you feel like you have ADHD but lack the developmental history to back it up: you might have burnout.
and your problems are still valid & still deserve treatment & management!
