To think people are feeling more exhausted and burnt out than a decade earlier

[Wheelsonbus]

From my own experience and observing the difference in behaviour from a decade ago, I feel people are feeling more and more exhausted and burnt out after COVID, the Ukraine war leading to rising inflation and CoL and just in general, people are feeling more tired and pessimistic. It's showing up on virtual forums like social media including MN as well as real life with people needing more time off sick.
I might be wrong but I am feeling much more exhausted and burnt out even though I have been in similar job but I am pregnant and have a toddler on top of everything else. COVID did take a toll on many people as well as public services getting worse is just adding to the frustration.

It's social media - never switching off
Lack of money/rising costs
Things being so much harder these days - more mentally challenging
Less support network/social ops

Also I was talking to my dad about dreading the school holidays yesterday- all the planning around work , entertaining and cost.

He laughed and said when you were young you just played out every day. Which is true, my mum was at home until I was about 8 then my elder sister baby sat me. And she hung round the house with her friends and I played out with mine.

No one stressed.

What have you been doing for the past quarter of a century then?

This is what happens when you convince women they can have it all

@MangoJojo what's the solution then? How are only women responsible for their burnout?

I think its mostly down to endless social media. And much more sedentary jobs staring at screens and (in many, not all cases) achieving little of value. Endless spreadsheets and meetings. Its all so soul destroying and pointless.

For those physically able, they'd be much happier being outside doing manual labour, getting physically tired.

Do you think being pregnant and looking after a toddler was easier say 20 years ago?
No I don’t think so.
Neither was it easier 30, or 40 years ago.
Different challenges yes, easier no.
Unfortunately women in your position have never had it easy.
People moan about how hard it was in lock down for children. Well imagine that with no screens, no access to children’s TV, no laptops, phones, computers, films on demand, FaceTime. None of that.
You need to remove yourself from social media if it’s getting to you.
The ‘past’ was not some utopia.
Different yes. Sometimes for the better sometimes for the worse.

Smart phones.

Its relentless. I wish they'd never been invented.

Yes it's shit and dystopian. Give me the fun simplicity of the 90s anyday! Technology isn't always a good thing.

yes.
I feel exhausted on a weekly basis.
2 small dc, I work ft but I am an hour commute at least. In office and not wfh. When at work I am literally head down all day, racing the clock.
I feel for other people worse off than us, our mortgage is small but the payments for that and everything else is sky high. So gotta keep going.
fantasised about taking a few days off sick as the dust in my house is unreal. Zero time to get to it. I wouldn’t do that of course.

Also I think that the lack of community or breakdown of it contributes to many people feeling really isolated, anxious, mentally stressed.

Where I live in Kent, no one engages socially with their neighbours apart from just a “ good morning ”. There must be 2-3 thousand people on my large estate around and no one knows each other. It’s cold, unfriendly, quite dystopian. And I apparently live in a friendly town according to the internet!

There is no connections to speak of if you want or need it; no community hall, no sense of support or care for each other.

Everyone is working or far too busy to care about a local community. That’s my experience where I live anyway. Most women work now, so can’t easily help each other with childcare, neighbourly help or emotional support.

Everyone in my area is trapped in their little boxes and no one talks to each other at all. I actually find it really odd and strange. You could die alone in your home and no one would know.

I think, compared to my childhood in 70’s /80’s women are cut off from each other. My mum worked part time as a nurse.

In our village, women looked out for other and there was always events and local things happening to support each other. So instead of our communities being mutually supportive to cope with life’s pressures, we are mostly coping alone.

Combine this with SM to be perfect and you have a cult of individualism where we are all competing. It reduces real life social connections and forces women to be “ doing everything”; work, home , childcare etc.

No one care about anyone else- it’s just survival of the fittest in our little boxes. I am moving away from Kent next year and I’m going to try to find a more friendly part of the UK. The south east is just so stressful to live in unless you own a rural mansion.

@Janebigwither absolutely agree, lack of social and community support adds to human's feeling isolated and lonely which in turn leads to feeling of helplessness. Wish we can go back to times where people had more support. SM has only made it worse by having two thousand superficial "friends" but no one real to talk to or get support from in real life.

@Summerinspringtime excellent points.
Also, a huge gripe on here is social media. Well, come off it or limit your use. Some people act as if it's compulsory.

You wouldn't ask someone with a serious and disabling physical health condition "what they'd been doing then" if they told you they'd been too ill to work would you? Absolutely vile post.

I think people have stopped being able to truly relax. Obsessed with our phones and what activities others are doing, scheduling every minute of our lives. Take babies - people used to to take them to mother and baby group once or twice a week, now people are booking paid activities 1-2 times a day and stating they "need" this. Children used to hang out at home in the holidays unless their parents were working, now we are neglecting them unless their are doing daily activities.

Small examples but we are exhausted because we try to fit too much in

More people stay up late looking at glowing screens and doing box set marathons.

That’s the issue.

ClaudineMallory,
Exactly, but in my experience, they do not. Coffee break, on with phone - presuming they turned it off in the first place. Evening phone on.
Being contactable 24/7 must be exhausting

We are more isolated and lonely. I was feeling really low the other day, tried to cheer myself up by reaching out to all my social contacts for a bit of chat (didn't mention that I was feeling bad). It wasn't radio silence but it did feel a bit like trying to get blood out of a stone. People in general aren't very available to each other.

A lot of the issues talked about on this thread and a lot of the threads are inside posters control. We've had it said that the innocence of childhood was longer. Not were I lived, there was alcoholism and DV, rape within marriage etc and it all impacted the kids. We were sexually harassed as soon as we developed, sexually verbally abused etc. Society was telling us that we should have children and was still disparaging about women having careers.
Having two+ children under 5 can be hard going, but the rest is solvable. Start planning your scaled back Christmas and tell everyone what you are and aren't doing.

I agree with PPs that in lots of ways now is the best time to be alive, and you have to make your own life the best it can be. The world ends when you die so just focus on yourself, what’s inside your 4 walls, your family and friends. May not be the popular thing to say but will lead to the happiest life. And it doesn’t mean be selfish, as a lot of happiness and fulfilment can come from helping, and that can snowball and turn into massive waves of positivity going out into the world.

Also some PP have said childhood is cut short these days due to technology, others saying childhood is prolonged as young adults are babied and basically kids aren’t set up chimneys anymore. A LOT of life is about how you look at it.

But yes, burnout seems to be rife and everyone is shattered. I know in my case it’s a mixture of too much phone, and autoimmune illness which is partially triggered by environmental factors.

Good points, @Ponoka7 .

Im burned out from work, shit government for 14 years and elderly relatives. Social media and WhatsApp groups? Er…no! I barely know where my phone is half the time. I’m in 1 WhatsApp group with my family and that’s it. It’s not like anyone hold you down and forces you to look at Instagram!
As for isolated people with no community- I agree there are far more people nowadays living really atomised lives, not engaged in their communities at all, BUT there will be stuff going on if you look so find it and get involved in something.
I do think the low level grind of being poorer and more isolated from too much wfh has made people weirder with their neighbours though. About 10 years ago my street used to do this Big Lunch thing once a year , everyone would drag their garden furniture into the street, there’d be bbq and a bouncy castle and all the neighbours would have a drink with the kids running wild until dark. I’m not sure people would be as into that now. ( I’ve moved now so I’m not sure).

That might be true of your estate, but it isn't something I recognise in my life.

I live in a big City, and we talk to each other here.

A lot of the issues talked about on this thread and a lot of the threads are inside posters control

I completely agree with this.

I talk to people. I get to know people. I join things. I spend time away from screens. I work, and have brought up a family. I volunteer. I do things I enjoy. I certainly don't feel "trapped in little boxes", and of course, by default, nor do all the hundreds of people I see across the week or month.
As @Ponoka7 said - these things are within the control of most people - but you do have to make the effort to join things in the first place, and engage with people - even those that have their little foibles (as I'm sure we all do).

I don't find going out 'exhausting' I find it adds to life. If I go for a few days when I'm in the house evening after evening, that is when I feel more tired.

I agree with you, @NewName24 . I think it's important to make the effort to speak to neighbours and colleagues, to make the effort to go out. I think if you engage with people and do different activities, it's very positive and good for mental health.

For me I find all the life admin so draining and time consuming. There seems to be so much more of it than in my parents era. In other ways our lives are much easier.
I avoid most social media or things that might negatively affect my mental health.
I recall my mother spending hours talking on the phone to friends and family every week. I just wouldn't have time for that. I can say what I need to say in a WhatsApp but then again, I'm probably losing out on the close connections she was able to form with people because of it.