Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation Book by Anne Helen Petersen
This is a book review of Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen reviewed by a Mental Health Therapist, Nicole Nina.
This book covered a topic that comes up weekly if not daily in my profession as a mental health therapist: burnout. Burnt out from work, burnt out from parenting and burnt out from living in a 24 hour news cycle.
This book is much different though than what I usually might read about the topic, especially as a clinician. Instead of giving the next tip about how to manage burnout, manage boundaries, or get a work life balance - it dove into the complex topic of why we are all burnout. This book excited my inner political science love - a career I left many years ago. And gave me a perspective that was much appreciated from a fellow millenial.
Yes, us millenial snowflakes have a backbone,.
How does this book help Anxiety?
I help people all day long manage their symptoms of worry. Within this work, I work in the confines of what can be changed at the situation at hand.
“Can we make better boundaries?”
“Can we explore other job options?”
“Can we work to identify what thoughts no longer serve you?”
And while all of this is great work, it does not solve the systemic problem of overwork we have in modern day society. This book talks about the real reasons so many of my clients are burnt out: our capitalistic culture demands it.
When we understand where our worry comes from, we can better manage it. Giving this book to some of my most stressed clients has allowed them to see a perspective we are taught not to have: it may not be all your fault.
Or as Peterson better puts it: “[Burnout] isn’t a personal problem. It’s a societal one—and it will not be cured by productivity apps, or a bullet journal, or face mask skin treatments, or overnight fucking oats.”
Inheriting the worst economy in modern history.
I think this sobering reality gets forgotten a lot. Millennials graduated into the 2008 recession being handed the worst economy in 80 years. The financial reality for most is being “hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, will never buy a home, and are terrified of what a medical catastrophe could bring.” Peterson highlights.
This fact alone set us back so far, that we had to adapt into a state of overwork. As Peterson puts it: “We’ve conditioned ourselves to ignore every signal from the body saying This is too much, and we call that conditioning “grit” or “hustle.”
Having a side job is just what we do to make ends meet. “Hustle culture” has taken over not just because it sounds cool - but we depend on it,
This means that inherently that most are already burnt out. You get done with your 9 to 5 to be greeted by your side gig of Uber, Lyft or Instacart.
Overstimulation
So while many of us work 60 to 80 hours a week, what do we do with our free time? We mindlessly stare at screens as means to cope with empty space we do not give ourselves. “Most of us would rather read a book than stare at our phones, but we’re so tired that mindless scrolling is all we have energy to do.” Peterson points out.
As a mental health professional, I try to fight the feeling of overstimulation with my clients. I often recommend my clients go for walks, schedule non-productive pockets and try to spend more time with loved ones. But as this book points out: “We were raised to believe that if we worked hard enough, we could win the system - of American capitalism and meritocracy - or at least live comfortably within it.” So many of us take this as a challenge than can be beat.
“I can work nonstop and still be fine.”
We know this is false, yet the narrative persists. And now, we are seeing the widespread effects of burnout, from a generation that was just trying to listen to their Gen X parents and Baby Boomer grandparents.
My overall opinion: don’t expect a happy ending - but do read it!
Reading this book was empowering to me on both a professional and personal level that burnout is not something one person is going to solve. If you are looking for concrete tips on how to handle burnout, this is not for you. But if you are looking for an explanation to your insatiable appetite for productivity that leads to periods of burnout, then I highly recommend it.
I will close with a passage that sums up what I feel my clients can glean from this book: It’s not all your fault!
“In writing that article, and this book, I haven’t cured anyone’s burnout, including my own. But one thing did become incredibly clear: This isn’t a personal problem. It’s a societal one—and it will not be cured by productivity apps, or a bullet journal, or face mask skin treatments, or overnight fucking oats. We gravitate toward those personal cures because they seem tenable, and promise that our lives can be recentered, and regrounded, with just a bit more discipline, a new app, a better email organization strategy, or a new approach to meal planning. But these are all merely Band-Aids on an open wound. They might temporarily stop the bleeding, but when they fall off, and we fail at our newfound discipline, we just feel worse.” ― Anne Helen Petersen
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below and let me know if you chose to give it a read!
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