Stress is a constant for a lot of overachieving high school students. Whether it’s academics, music, clubs, sports, or a little bit of everything- high school life can feel like a never ending cycle of deadlines and practices. Even if you aren’t in high school, the push to be your very best in all aspects of life can cause great strain on your ability to meet demands, and result in burnout.

By definition, burnout is the feeling of exhaustion that can manifest emotionally, physically and mentally- usually caused by prolonged stress. Burnout affects many working adults and that can cause burnout to be normalized and just a fact of life. Often times because we are in burnout and so many around us are too, it’s hard to recognize that we are in that state.

I certainly felt that way for about a half of my career as high school student- juggling clubs, grades, band, and volunteering - sometimes I would just randomly start crying because of how much stress I was under. It took me a while to figure out that I was suffering from burnout - and needed a way to get out of it.

So in this article we will be going over the social aspect of our lives to understand how that affects burnouts, because to be honest without all the drama - being a student is a lot easier. Plus, as overworked students - who really wants to talk about time management and how to study better?

Problems and Solutions

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There are many factors that can contribute to the feeling of being inadequate and needing to prove ourselves. Anything from low self esteem to parental expectations can cause us to push ourselves over the edge, leading to burnout. In this section, we will look at common stressors that result in stress and eventually burnout that are particularly common for students.

Problem: Peer Pressure

Being pressured by fellow students can be a good thing- it can push us to do our very best and to form good goals that we can utilize to achieve success. Along with that however, can be unrealistic expectations and negative competition.

For example, if you are like me, my performance on tests and quizzes impact my perception to my friends because I’m considered to be pretty smart. That need to keep up my reputation, really hurt me because when I didn’t do well on a test people were surprised and occasionally questioned just how smart I actually am. Aside from that, I would get imposter syndrome whenever I failed to meet what was expected of me.

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Imposter syndrome is the feeling that your own success is inadequate resulting in anxiety and self doubt. This can often lead to a cycle of over preparing, doing well, and then believing you got lucky. The cycle then repeats. This over preparing can result in burnout because you are spending so much energy trying to do well - whether it’s pulling an all-nighter for a test or going for an extra run.

Always having to be “the smart kid”, the “student athlete”, or any other positive label, can lead us to feel insecure when we do not reach our impossible expectations set by both us and our peers. Furthermore, these labels can cause others to ask for assistance, which while flattering, can cause us to over commit to other people resulting on us running on empty trying to help everyone except ourselves.

This has happened to me dozens of times where when trying to help people with their assignments, I ended up having to panic finish mine - leading to an unsatisfactory result. Essentially, the problem of saying no is a huge part of feeling burnout.

Solution: Speak Up and Set Boundaries

To be honest, it’s really hard to say no - especially to friends - but setting boundaries is essential to maintain a balanced life. So how do we say no?

Well, first off, don’t just say “No.” Say that you don’t have time or don’t feel comfortable, before explaining why. I’ve done this before when someone asked to see my answers for an assignment that had taken me a long time to complete. Instead of being harsh, I simply said, “ I am sorry, but I don’t feel comfortable doing that.” They said they understood and apologized for asking.

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There have been a few times where it’s been difficult like when my friend’s friend told me, “ I hope you have a terrible day!” after I declined helping her study for a class she was failing. Several people tried to guilt trip me afterwards - including my dad - but I remained firm. Even if it is uncomfortable, saying no is an important way of keeping yourself away from unnecessary stress.

Next- if you are being put into a conversation that makes you feel worried or anxious - ask to switch topics. You can be subtle about it too by saying things like: “Switching gears…” “Anyway…” “Moving on…”. Or you can literally ask to switch topics.

Finally, and most importantly, hang out with people you actually like and are a positive influence! If they're bullying you into things, putting you down, or making you feel bad, don’t hang out with them! It may be hard, believe me, but it’s the best way to keep yourself happy and successful!

Problem: Parental Expectations

Have you ever seen a test score and whispered, “My (insert guardian) is going to kill me!”

I have, at least a half dozen times per year I come to the conclusion that my funeral might be happening over the weekend, and I should start digging. This is a common phenomenon for many teens whose parents, in their attempts to give their children a successful future, push them to the breaking point.

Studies have shown that often times, parents have a preset ideal or fantasy of what their children should be like. Maybe their daughter is supposed to become an engineer and love playing soccer. Maybe their son should be good at violin and become valedictorian. When their child doesn’t match that fantasy, it can often cause the parents to feel dissatisfied which then negatively impacts their children.

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This is often common with siblings whose rivalries can be influenced by their parents. Parents often times will favor the child who more matches their fantasy and this can make the other sibling/siblings to feel emotions like jealousy or anger. This may result in one of the siblings pushing themselves too hard in order to reach the expectations that their parents have and lead to burnout.

Overall parents play a huge role in the feeling of burnout that their children have because of their expectations and personal interests.

Solution: Have a Conversation

Communication is key in a lot of situations and it is especially true for child/parent relationships. For parents, they are accustomed to being the ones to tell us what to do, encouraging or discouraging behaviors that they do not like. However sometimes when their input is unhelpful or unhealthy, there can be a certain level of frustration that their children may feel.

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Some parents may be unaware of their negative behavior and so need a little bit of a reminder that their children should have some independence. This is especially true for young adults who are starting to feel their oats so to speak and need less input from parents. While this may be scary to approach your parents, it is perfectly healthy and a good idea.

Even if they receive you negatively, it is important to have empathy. This is not to say that you should ignore how you feel, but you should see their side of things- after all most parents want their children to become successful young people and probably don’t want to cause harm. This not withstanding, if you feel too much pressure, it’s a good idea to talk to someone about how you feel.

This can be a school counselor or a therapist. Either way, you are having a good conversation that should be happening.

Problem: Social Media

Social media is commonly used by teenagers as a way to communicate with each other, compare themselves to their peers, judge others, and as a way to express themselves. While using social media such as Instagram or Snapchat can be a way to connect, it can sometimes exacerbate insecurities and reinforce burnout.

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On top of everything else we have to deal with as students, social media can feel like a burden not a release for our everyday lives. This may be because you feel responsible to look over all your friends Instagram accounts, keep up a Snap streak up, or send your best friend over a hundred reels a day. The need to be ‘locked in’ with what everyone else is doing can be exhausting mentally and also be a distraction from whatever work you have to do.

On top of this, social media is often used to compare ourselves with other people - especially your friends and sometimes the people you hate. This can result in another form of peer pressure - which may cause us to try and conform to certain standards while on top of us navigating our lives as stressed students.

Solution: Keep Track of Time

Okay, so maybe you love social media, maybe you hate it, however, it can be a huge time consuming activity, scrolling, liking, viewing, all of that takes a surprising amount of time. This is because of social media’s algorithms which feeds you whatever you happen to like or watch-even how long you look at a video is taken into account. Because of this, the platform can continuously feed you whatever content you enjoy, until you’ve spent several hours on it.

So in our already packed world of studying, socializing and complaining about teachers, how can we prevent ourselves from spending too much time on social media? Well, to begin with you can mange apps that you use - maybe you spend too much time looking at beautiful sunsets on Pinterest, just go to your settings and set daily time limits. This way you can prevent yourself from getting sucked into the app.

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Secondly you can set timers: like I’m only going to look at this for 10 minutes. This only works if you use an actual timer, if you try to just look at the clock your going to end up pushing it. You can easily set one on any device. Additionally, just so that you don’t feel left out, you can ask your friends to join you on your quest.

A huge part of social media is FOMO or the fear of missing out, whether it’s a fashion trend or some new sort of slang, social media feeds on our desire to keep up with the rest of society. So by taking a step back we can help ourselves by not using so much of our brain cells on being timely and knowing all the celebrity tea.

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Now you may be like: what all we talked about is like social stuff, what the heck? To which I say, that is the most important part of keeping balance. You can be the most organized, spreadsheet obsessed student in the world, but being able to keep a healthy social life can be messy, and lead to burnout. Furthermore, an article about actual school isn't very helpful, because if you're like me, you've already tried and tested various methods of keeping things in order.

Social interactions, even for the most extroverted of us is draining and can lead to the feeling of anxiety that is associated with burnout. Along with our social lives is our workload as students and together they make a lethal duo for our mental health. That is why by mastering one area, we can hopefully meditate the effects of burnout and make our lives easier and more peaceful.