And why this problem is more serious than it seems.
The article is worth reading if you regularly feel tired, irritated, get sick more often, and work seems meaningless and uninteresting – all this can be signs of emotional burnout. If right now you are not experiencing this, then the article based on chemist advice will help you not to miss the first signs of emotional burnout in yourself or loved ones in the future.
What Is Burnout Syndrome
The concept of emotional burnout was first introduced in 1974 by the American psychiatrist Herbert Freudenberger. He noticed that specialists in helping professions – doctors, psychologists, teachers – eventually develop and increase emotional exhaustion. That is, the emotional reaction to events, even important ones, decreases, people become more indifferent to others and what previously involved them.
Today, burnout syndrome is defined solely through connection with work, although a number of researchers do not agree with this approach. For example, you can find articles about parental burnout, which is similar to professional burnout in terms of the mechanism of occurrence and manifestations. In this article, we will only talk about professional burnout.
How Emotional Burnout Manifests Itself
According to WHO, there are three signs of burnout syndrome.
Feeling of motivational or physical exhaustion. Physical exhaustion is a constant decline in strength, and motivational exhaustion is when you have physical strength, but there is no motivation to do work tasks. Motivational exhaustion is more about creative tasks, new projects, unpleasant duties, that is, everything where the motivation should be stronger than for performing a routine.
Even if a person understands the benefits of tasks that, for example, will bring a promotion, it is difficult for him to perform them with full dedication.
Increasing mental distancing from professional duties, a feeling of negativism or cynicism towards professional duties. This manifests itself in indifference to work or resistance to it: a person may be late more often, spend more time at lunch, refuse new tasks, stretch the execution of standard tasks or postpone them, replacing them with unnecessary things.
A general decline in performance, when it is difficult for a person to perform the amount of work that was easy before.
There are other symptoms that accompany burnout. If you combine them, you can get about a hundred different manifestations. At the same time, in my practice, burnout is almost always not the main request, it often accompanies some acute problems, such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and even family crises. This means that by detecting burnout in time, you can prevent the development of other serious problems.
- physical symptoms. This is not only a constant feeling of fatigue, but also other problems. For example, decreased immunity and frequent illnesses, diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, frequent back pain, headaches, sleep problems: from sleep disturbance to constant drowsiness.
- The most striking sign of burnout is the dulling of feelings and emotions to both positive and negative events. For example, on the birthday of a loved one, and in the event of the loss of a large amount, there will be no strong feelings, and it may even seem to others that the person is detached and as if not present. There may be a feeling of indifference, boredom, depression.
Interest in contact with other people often disappears, an irrational feeling of fear arises at work and in groups of people, anxiety. It happens that minor events annoy, something that did not bother you before: for example, the barking of a neighbor’s dog becomes very unpleasant, although the dog has been living there for several years. - behavioral symptoms. The work schedule can become chaotic, there are difficulties in making responsible decisions, the desire to shift responsibility to others or get away from it by any means. The burnout person begins to choose routine tasks instead of creative or emotionally involving ones, and also feels indifference to the results of work – his own and the team.
There are constant processing on weekdays and work on weekends – this is a consequence of the rejection of emotions. If a person regularly spends more time at work than before, this is what in everyday language is called “went to work from worries”. - In addition, dependencies may appear or intensify – arise for the first time or return after a long break. Or the doses simply increase: a person drinks, smokes, plays computer games more often or more. There may be a sudden urge to extreme sports, as a person seeks to feel at least some emotions. In a state of burnout, he does not understand why the sensations have become dull, but is looking for new ways to get joy, including through increased risk.
Work With Your Emotions
Find hobbies and passions to help you recover. To reduce anxiety and thoughts about work, find hobbies and hobbies that make you happy. If there are no such hobbies now, remember what made you happy in childhood, what you liked to do, and try to return to it.
If, for example, you liked drawing and it’s scary to start it right away, then try to do it in small steps. To do this, do not immediately buy a canvas, paints or drawing courses, start with paintings by numbers: paint specially selected areas – like in children’s coloring books, only at a different scale and colors.