How to Spot, Fight, and Prevent Activist Burnout
It has taken me 5 months to write this article. To be more accurate, it has been five months since my first article with Unpublished went live. Since then, I have spent each month staring at empty documents and uncompleted timelines. No matter how much I have wanted to write, I have been unable to write anything due to a strong case of burnout. Burnout is defined as “physical or mental collapse caused by overwork or stress”. It can be caused by one specific stressor, such as a job, commitment, life event, or maybe a compilation of multiple stressors at once. It can manifest in various ways, causing behaviours such as inability to work, depression, frustration, apathy, and social reclusion.
For activists in our increasingly digital age, burnout can hit especially hard. News, information, and commentary on societal issues and political causes are posted online 24/7 in an often relentless stream. The desire to stay informed about the cause, whether it be a political candidate or climate change, prompts activists to follow along on this commentary on social media platforms and search for more research in their free time. When inundated with too much commentary about one issue or with a sudden viral cause that impacts other initiatives, activism in the social media sphere can quickly become overwhelming and unsustainable to handle as an individual person.
When burnout takes a hold of an activist, it can often feel as though the activist is failing their organization or cause. The quick transition from consuming endless amounts of media and generating vast social justice calls to suddenly being unable to handle even small parts of their normal activism can feel isolating. People become activists for a multitude of reasons, however, all activists can relate to a deep desire to fight for the cause they focus their activism on. When burnout is keeping these activists from their fight, it can feel as though they are giving up on the cause.
As I have slowly fought out of a case of burnout over the last few months, I’ve begun to learn a few tips and tricks on taking better care of myself as an activist. The following tips may seem obvious or stereotypical, but they have been the most vital to recovering from this burnout. (I certainly do not advertise this as being the only way to recover from activist burnout. If you are struggling with burnout, take your time and utilize any tactics that may assist you in your personal recovery.)
Change up your feed. This has been vital to me in shaking out this case of burnout. I utilize various social media platforms and follow a vast amount of political commentary, news sources, and activist organizations on each. With how often I am online, I would get overwhelmed with the commentary on Twitter, then switch to Instagram and find a new slate of issues to be overwhelmed with. From there, I would follow the same cycle through Facebook and TikTok, resulting in a constant loop of information from various apps and websites. While there is definitely a conversation to be had on the potential problems with how high Generation Z’s social media consumption is, it is the current reality of the lives of many youth activists. Without a space to separate yourself from your activisms and enjoy unrelated content for fun, burnout can appear much faster and in stronger doses.
Changing up your feed can happen in whatever way is most beneficial to you. For some, that may be deleting certain accounts from your following list, or maybe even getting rid of entire apps. For others, it could be the opposite, resulting in following more accounts for pleasure on top of the political and social commentary you already see.
I personally have tried a combination of both of these tactics, depending on the app. I have always used Twitter more than any other app to receive commentary on social and political issues from others, so I have kept that somewhat constant. To keep myself from having too much political content on all of my social media, however, I have made an effort to seek out more lighthearted and fun content on apps like Tiktok. My For You Page holds maybe one political video in every fifteen videos I see, as opposed to Twitter where I see at least half of my feed is activism based. This has given me the option to consume as much political media as I would like, but I also have the option to go to a different app where activism content is not as readily pushed into my feed.
Get offline. Growing up in the 21st century, the newest wave of youth activists has only ever grown up with the 24/7 news media cycle and access to the world-at-large through the internet. While I admittedly have far too high of a screen time and enjoy being online, I have greatly valued my time off the internet and focusing on finding joy in my local area. Even utilizing my first suggestion of changing up my feed, I have still found times where activism content online has become too overwhelming and too constant, which is why I find it important to list getting offline as a specific tip here. You do not need to go fully off the grid and delete your Twitter by any means, however, finding time throughout your week to relax on adventures in your hometown or spend time without the fierce pull of activism being your anchor in life is important to sustain high levels of activism long term.
Be gentle with yourself. This is equally important before you get burnt out, during burnout, and after recovering from a bout of burnout. Activism often becomes more than a full-time job mentally with the level of time devoted to causes and issues. This can make your care for the activism feel as though it is a weight placed upon your shoulders to fix. While logically every activist understands that they cannot suddenly solve the world’s problems alone, the weight of personal activism can quickly become crushing, and time away from the activism can feel as though you are harming others by not devoting your entire self to the cause. This level of activism is highly unsustainable and leads to rapid burnout. Your work as an activist is incredibly important, but it cannot consume every waking moment of your life. This can be hard to accept, however practising being gentle with yourself as you grow both within and outside of your activism is key to sustaining long-term engagement in the social and political sphere.
In summary, if you take nothing else from this article, remember that you are a person first and an activist second. While your work is incredibly important and of high value, you have to take care of yourself first. You cannot do any of your work as an activist if you are severely burnt out, so it is vital to ensure that you do not lose yourself in your quest for social change.