For the vast majority of my life I have derived such pure joy from hearing, learning and playing music. My mom recounts stories to anyone who will listen of me singing into a wooden spoon when I was 3, and how I sat up and took breathless notice when I heard the cello by itself for the first time, and how when she put toddler-me in a music enrichment class with an instrument petting zoo I instantly went for the violin.
I have traveled the world, met incredible people, and found passion and drive through studying the violin for 18 years of my life.
I couldn’t understand why in the midst of attaining my degree in music performance that I felt so drained. So tired and like a gray rain cloud was over my head all the time. During the first half of my degree, I felt inspired and encouraged, but as I completed my senior year of college, my symptoms came to a head.
After trying to practice, I would walk away feeling as though I’d accomplished very little if not nothing at all. Despite the gentle, encouraging efforts of my teacher, lessons were painful reminders of how far I still had to go and how comparatively little I had done that week. The pain in my shoulder constantly nagged at me to get stronger and told me that I was weak. Instead of being an invitation to explore, projects like recitals or new pieces felt absolutely overwhelming.
I felt like a failure, especially in comparison to my brilliant peers who seemed to create so effortlessly.
Day-to-day, I felt more and more resentful of my violin. I’d given it so much of my time, energy, resources and heart and it wasn’t fulfilling anymore. In fact, it drained me to play even for a few minutes. Creating anything was out of the question – the voices in my head would criticize my attempts so harshly that I would often leave the practice room in tears. Anything I attempted, whether a phrasing option or an idea for a recital, either was not good enough or wasn’t an interesting enough idea to be worth sharing in the first place. I felt that both my technique and my artistic ideas left much to be desired, which sapped my motivation.
The last semester of my music degree rolled around and I had nothing left to give in regards to my art. My ideas and playing didn’t feel good enough to be shared, and I wondered if my performances really made a difference in people’s lives. I felt exhausted, alone and spent. I wondered if there was something wrong with me.
Turns out, when you have a perfectionistic streak that’s been untreated for many years and you couple that with mediocre mental health, neglecting to develop the other areas of your life and a couple of injuries along the way, you get this fun thing called BURNOUT.
I suffered these symptoms on and off throughout college (they began at the end of my senior year of high school) with an intense, final relapse at the end of my senior year of undergrad. I finally started opening up to my family, friends and eventually teachers and peers about how I was feeling. I explained that I felt broken and like something was wrong with me to feel the way that I did. I wondered aloud if these feelings would ever go away, and how terrified I was that I would stay stuck in this rut forever.
Do you know what many of them said?
“Oh, Vivian, that’s something called burnout. Most musicians deal with that, especially highly motivated people like professionals and students. It’s completely understandable you feel like this, and I’m honestly surprised that you didn’t start feeling this way sooner. Take a break, and you’ll feel better.”
Wait, what?!
My teachers and mentors shed a lot of light on this subject and their insight really surprised me. My violin teacher shared that she’d been burned out many times throughout her life. Another mentor said that he and also most of his colleagues (many of whom are (or were) professional musicians in top orchestras throughout the country) went through something similar. Turns out, I was anything but alone, but most people are afraid to talk about this experience openly because it’s so personal.
Though burnout can happen to anyone, people who are highly motivated, achievement-oriented, passionate and perfectionistic have the highest likelihood of developing it.
[cue my nervous laughter as I have all of these traits]
In addition to my personality traits heightening my risk of burnout, I also had the following extrinsic risks:
– Having suffered poor mental health for a variety of reasons in the years leading up to my worst relapse
– Being a music major during the pandemic
– Processing the threat of several global and local crises in a relatively short span of time (<2 years)
– Having very high demands on my academic and artistic performance
– Having very high demands on my time and energy
When the people in my life helped me see these risk factors, I wondered why I hadn’t burned out sooner, too! 😂 What I was going through was understandable and almost inevitable, given my personality traits and how I was coping with my life experiences.
Thus far, I’ve talked about what experiencing burnout felt like for me. Let’s talk about what burnout can feel like for others.
Maslach and Leiter published an article in World Psychology that defines burnout as “a psychological syndrome emerging as a prolonged response to chronic interpersonal stressors on [a] job”. They mentioned that the experience has 3 dimensions: “exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job [or activity], and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment”. More specific symptoms include:
– Loss of energy, depletion, fatigue
– Debilitation
– Negative attitudes towards others
– Irritability
– Loss of a sense of idealism of the work or craft
– Social withdrawal
– Reduced productivity and capability
– Low morale
– Inability to cope[1].
Ada Clinic adds more somatic and psychological symptoms to the list:
– Anxiety
– Headaches
– Poor quality or lack of sleep
– Fatigue
– Muscle tension
– Increased susceptibility to sickness
– Negative attitudes towards one’s coworkers/job
– Low commitment
– Loss of purpose
– Lack of creativity
– Emotional numbness
– Frustration[2].
There is a lot of overlap between burnout and the more chronic mental health issues like anxiety, depression or seasonal depression, so it can be tough to know whether what you’re experiencing is burnout. It’s also difficult to reflect on your symptoms when you’re actively going through them. I only gained clarity about my experience by sharing it with the people close to me and my therapist at the time. If you’re unsure, I’d recommend these burnout assessment quizzes to give yourself some clarity:
Burnout isn’t a medical diagnosis, but it’s always a good thing to talk to a mental health professional or a trusted mentor if you’re experiencing these symptoms. Also, talking to your friends and family can help you get a true sense of the particular risks of burnout in your life. When we’re focusing on the feeling that we’re not doing enough, it can be really tough to be seeing how much we’re actually doing and in how many directions we really are being pulled.
The biggest comfort to me during my relapse was realizing that burnout is something that you can overcome. In my next blog, I’ll talk about what I’m doing (and not doing) to feel better and sharing some research I’ve done on burnout recovery.
If you’ve been burned out, please do share your experience if you are comfortable doing so! If there’s someone in your life struggling with it, send them this article if you think it would be helpful. It is powerful to know you are not alone.
Until next time, take good care.
~ Vivian
[1] Maslach, Christina, and Michael P Leiter. “Understanding the Burnout Experience: Recent Research and Its Implications for Psychiatry.” World Psychiatry : Official Journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), John Wiley and Sons Inc., June 2016, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4911781/.
[2] “Signs of Burnout.” Ada, https://ada.com/signs-of-burnout/.