Burnout In People Who Are Not White, Well-Off Men.

A great deal of the literature on burnout is written about white, middle class men. The explosive anger, irritability, cynicism, becoming distant with partners, friends and children that the literature describes are all real and all much more likely to manifest in people where these behaviours are accepted.

Imagine a woman, whether in the boardroom or anywhere else, standing up so quickly she pushes the chair over and storming out of a meeting. Becoming explosively furious about little things. Shouting at people who work with her. Bingeing on alcohol or drugs. Spending all night on a video game. Punching a hole in her office wall.

Imagine a person of colour doing that.

Imagine what would be said about that woman, especially a black woman.

Compare it with what is said when white men do exactly these things.

Burnout is brutal whomever it happens to and it manifests and is treated differently depending on who expresses the accumulated angst of a particular workplace. A number of studies suggest that burnout impacts more women than men and that the pressure on black women means that they are "paid less and have to work twice as hard to be noticed or gain the same opportunities as peers."

Covid definitely has had a different impact on women than on men. It’s quite straightforward that on average mothers do more housework, childcare and caretaking in general than fathers, and covid added full time teaching to the mix.

Women are more likely to feel frustrated at work because on average we’re more likely to be in positions with less authority, earn less than the equivalent man and therefore have less power to create changes to faulty processes. Our ideas are less likely to even be heard, let alone acted on. This is compounded for black women where “higher effort/reward imbalance, greater job demand, and lower control over work were all associated with work stress.”

It’s quite clear that sex, ethnicity and income have definite impacts on wellbeing in any context, but how might it manifest in people who are not well paid white men?

I’d propose that the main difference is that anger is stifled. People who are used to having to shut their mouths to avoid punishment learn to swallow their anger and are much more likely to turn that exasperation, overwhelm, shock, awareness of inequity, impatience, and discomfort on themselves than people who are used to being listened to and taken seriously.

In general, women have learned to ‘tend and befriend’ in stressful situations while men are more likely to respond with ‘fight or flight’. It takes a lot longer and a lot more energy to build and cultivate relationships than it does to blow them off.

A vital difference is the exhaustion that different groups can bear: women expect to do most of the thinking and planning as well as most of the work around relationship building, housework and childcare while being employed. The energy it takes to simply not be a well-off white man - absorbing everyday insults, both unconscious and conscious, and the monstrous impact of knowing that if you're murdered it's no big deal, or that you can be more qualified than your boss and still not be taken seriously, of not having the financial ballast to take a taxi rather than the bus at the end of a crazy day, to have breaks or treats or to eat well, to not have food just appear - can’t be overstated.

Endurance becomes a muscle that is necessary to over-develop so please lets never speak of 'resilience' ever again. McKinsey addresses this head on, it’s easier for many people to look at these issues as a matter of productivity and reduced liability than of simple, appalling facts.

So while white, well-off men will also work harder in an attempt to do better, people who are not them are working very hard as a baseline. While the pain and frustration of a job that has lost meaning is awful for anyone who experiences it, people with less power have less opportunity to do anything about it and are often much less tolerated if they express that pain. While the environment around white, well-off men bolster them against the problems of a workplace and of the world in general, the environments around people who are not white, well-off men compound those peoples problems. 

It’s a cliché that in similar situations men get angry and women cry - god help the man who cries or the woman who gets angry - but when women and people of colour internalise all this it can manifest as depression, anxiety, brain fog, headaches, muscle pain, coughs and colds, binge eating or reduced appetite, digestive problems, things that take them to their GP who will give them meds to deal with symptoms. Whereas when white, well-off men burn out they are much more likely to quite rightly take time off work to recover.

No matter who experiences it, burnout is not weakness, it’s a symptom of inefficiencies that disproportionately impact engaged, intelligent people who do more than just follow orders. When it manifests dramatically in people who are allowed to be dramatic it's taken seriously: it’s so much easier to ignore its clear manifestation in people who have been taught to keep their heads down.

There are still a great many organisations where open sexism and racism are everyday realities, where people in power push the boundaries of illegal behaviours because they know no one will stop them. If this is your workplace, get out. Respectfully acknowledge the internalised voices of friends and family who told you to grit your teeth and take it, and then put them to one side: all you need to take is your self-respect, your entitlement to sick leave and the time to apply for new jobs in a market that has suddenly opened right up.

You absolutely do not have to fight this fight for anyone else. Why would you turn to face an enemy when you have so few resources? Recover first. Rediscover the strengths of community, mutual support, right relationships, being able to ask for and accept genuine support and re-member who you are. 

Therapy can be a useful adjunct to this process, many workplaces offer it as a benefit. Black and Brown clients who may not resonate with any therapist offered by an EAP might also want to take a look at Black, African and Asian Therapy  Network, Aashna Counselling and Psychotherapy, Nafsiyat, or the Muslim Counselling and Psychotherapy Network.