Burnout Busters

My husband says he is getting burned out at work, and I am feeling burned out at home. What causes burnout?

And what's the cure?

The symptoms of burnout vary: anger, overreacting to frustrating or annoying situations, imploding by withdrawing or brooding. Headaches, signs of depression and other physical maladies may occur in burnout. Daily tasks lose their joy and become overwhelming, boring and sometimes even unbearable.

Burnout is generally attributed to stress and how it is mismanaged. We all know hardworking people with stressful jobs who are not stressed out. Burnout is not simply due to stress. We experience burnout when our work is less meaningful, when we lose autonomy over our decisions, when the problems we address seem hardly worth the trouble or nearly impossible to resolve. We may feel unappreciated or isolated.

There is a great painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Caravaggio, “The Calling of St. Matthew.” Matthew is on the left, hunched over and carefully counting his coins; he is surrounded by, but uninterested in, his fellow tax collectors. He is adding, arranging, re-arranging, checking and double-checking. He is managing the accounts.

Sometimes our lives are like Matthew's: Preoccupied with our pressing duties, we go through the motions of managing work and family. We are concentrating so much on the details, on keeping everything running smoothly, on managing the stress and hassles of work and family, that joy seems to have left our lives. We can't seem to get our heads above the water.

When your husband talks about his job, does he seem to focus only on his frustration, problems, inconsiderate bosses and customers, and lack of getting anywhere? When you talk about your family, do you find yourself complaining about the kids, the housework, the overwhelming burden of never-ending chores and demands on your time?

Most psychologists say that, to avoid burnout, you have to live with purposeful happiness. We need to bring a sense of humor and joy to a life full of purpose bigger than ourselves.

How can our lives be meaningful without insincerely inflating things? How can we be happy when, as Pope John Paul II puts it, the real world is incapable of making us happy? By approaching life apostolically as a call from God and in an encounter with God.

Back to Caravaggio. Like Matthew, we can so fixate on keeping score and “putting out fires” that we miss what really matters: responding to the personal call from Christ. Caravaggio's Christ is like the Christ of Matthew's Gospel: deadly serious that we should stop wasting our time and our lives. Matthew is not only called away from his clinking, clanging ways, he is personally called to follow Christ as one of the Twelve.

Christ is the true source of joy in our lives. If we remain focused on him—through daily prayer and frequent reception of the sacraments—we will not find ourselves being so easily engulfed by the frustrations of being in the world.

Art Bennett is director of Alpha Omega Clinic and Consultation Service in Vienna, Virginia.