How to Deal with COVID Burnout as a Beauty Pro
Feeling exhausted and uninspired by the ongoing pandemic? You’re not alone. COVID burnout is real, and beauty professionals are feeling it too. Combat this fatigue by focusing on your mental health, setting boundaries, practicing self-care, taking real breaks, and sharing COVID-related responsibilities. Prioritize activities that help you recharge, like seeing a therapist, maintaining connections with loved ones, and ensuring you get enough rest.
What is COVID Burnout?
You’re probably pretty familiar with the term burnout, right? And especially familiar with it in relation to your own career, surely.
The term COVID burnout can mean a few different things, so, for clarity’s sake, we’re going to break down a basic definition to solidify exactly what it is that we’re referring to.
Pandemic fatigue, at its most basic definition, can be described as a very real feeling of exhaustion as a result of COVID-19’s impact on our lives.
In other words, it’s the impact we’re all feeling as a result of quarantining, getting sick, losing our jobs, being flooded with anxiety, constantly adjusting our workplaces, sanitizing, scraping to get by, abiding by all the regulations, and beyond.
Really, it just means that we’re all downright exhausted by the pandemic and it’s starting to get to us—especially in our workplace.
How Beauty Pros Can Navigate Pandemic Fatigue
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for healing and remedying pandemic fatigue, even though we wish we had an easy answer.
The truth is, every beauty pro out there is different, which means every beauty pro is going to find a solution in something unique.
The key to this?
Focusing on what you know about yourself, giving yourself the opportunity to rest, taking breaks, and investing in what matters to you.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do is carve out time to take care of yourself, acknowledge what’s happening in your head, and seek out the help you might need to get through it.
Manage Your Mental Health
Often, we spend a lot of time worrying about our physical health.
And while this should be a priority, it often leads to us avoiding an immensely important piece of your overall health and wellness—your mental health.
Your mental health is always important, but if you’re feeling the effects of COVID burnout, it’s especially crucial that you switch the focus from the ongoing day-to-day tasks you’ve got to complete to this must-acknowledge piece of yourself.
Not sure how to do this?
Good news—we’ve got an entire article about How to Focus On Your Mental Health During COVID-19.
Need a few pointers to get started? Try things like:
- Set boundaries for work (and life) and be firm about them
- Meet with a therapist or counselor
- Develop a health routine
- Maintain connections with your loved ones
- Acknowledge and process your emotions in healthy ways
- Be gentle with yourself
Focus on YOU
Self-care might seem trendy and fun, but it’s actually an essential piece of your overall wellness.
And yes, self-care can sometimes mean bubble baths, face masks, and getting a manicure—but it also means doing the hard stuff you need to do to take care of YOU.
Exercise, healthy diet, visits with your therapist, safe social interaction, getting enough sleep—all of these things are crucial parts of self-care and should be a priority for you, especially if you’re struggling with pandemic fatigue.
Self-care is not selfish, beauty pro.
Take a (Real) Break
Sure, taking a quick five in the bathroom is helpful in the short term, but if you’re dealing with the impactful effects of pandemic fatigue, you might need a little more of a rest than that.
It can be tempting to stay in the salon or shop as often as possible to pile on hours, stay busy, and make more money.
But honestly, right now, it’s likely you need a few days off, a mental break, and a little relaxation.
Don’t be afraid to take vacation, take a weekend, or call in for a mental health day if you need it. There’s no shame in stepping away to work through your own internal turmoil.
Divide Up the COVID Responsibilities
Listen, the ongoing, ever-changing regulations can get to anyone.
If you’re stuck with all the cleaning, sanitization, and regulation enforcing responsibilities for the whole salon or shop, it’s time to divide up those duties and give yourself some balance.
Create a rotating schedule for sanitization, automate emails about changing COVID policies, and create firm rules that your customer must abide by to be served in your establishment.
Do you work on your own without employees or colleagues to split the work?
It might be time to hire some temporary contract workers or support staff to help with a few things here and there.
Sharing the workload isn’t just a luxury, it can be a necessary step for those going through unprecedented circumstances.
Need more resources and help during this time? We’ve got lots of blogs that deal with pandemic-related topics:
- How to Prepare to Go Back to the Salon
- Navigating COVID Surges in Your Salon
- Elite Beauty Society COVID-19 Resource Center
- Getting Back Into the Salon
We hope this advice was helpful for you.
If you’re dealing with pandemic fatigue and find it hard to manage your mood or get inspired by work right now, know that you’re not alone and what you’re going through is normal.
We’re here to help in any way possible—and for now, that means uploading as much helpful content as we possibly can.
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