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Let's Talk About Job Burnout!

As the holidays approach, as the year ends and as the new year gets ready to begin … can you believe it is already about to be 2023, I CANNOT believe it myself but here we are, job burnout can become increasingly visible.



So what can it look like?

  1. Dreading work – struggling to get up in the morning, lacking motivation to go, willing yourself to be there and do your job to the best of your ability

  2. Quick to frustration – things that did not trigger you before you find are triggers now

  3. Exhaustion – just generally worn out, lack of energy throughout the day, no matter what the workload looks like

  4. Lack of concentration – struggling to focus on the day, the tasks at hand, the meetings you are participating in

  5. Trouble sleeping – things on your mind at night which leads to lack of sleep and restlessness

  6. Avoidance & Isolation – avoiding work obligations and responsibilities, avoiding interacting, and engaging with coworkers, even in “scheduled fun” such as office parties or teamwork events outside of the setting

  7. Drowning – this is that feeling that every task or assignment is overwhelming, every obligation and responsibility is overwhelming because your head is already feeling as if it is underwater

  8. Depression – this is the combination of all the other feelings to the point where you can find yourself shutting down

According to Maslach and Leiter (2016) there are three ways that burnout becomes visible:

  1. Exhaustion – worn out, lack of energy throughout the day

  2. Cynicism – negativity towards the job, those you work with and for, the clients you engage with

  3. Inefficacy – struggling to maintain the productivity you maintained before or to care about maintaining that productivity, lack of motivation




So how can you address job burnout?

  1. Take a break – take a break during the workload, take your lunch, you get a 30 minute and 2, 15 minutes take them, don’t ignore them or work through them

  2. Take deep breaths – before you enter work, once you’re off work, when you get ready to head home, before a meeting, breath in through your nose, hold it for 2, then breath out your mouth

  3. Reframe your thinking – what are your thoughts? Are they negative, reframe them, and make them positive

  4. Talk with a professional – professionals are here to help and can help you get the tools to address what you are dealing with

  5. Set aside time to vent – talk with friends, vent to them about those frustrations or even other coworkers that you trust that may be dealing with the same thing because sometimes it helps to get those things off your shoulders

  6. Ask for what you need – do you need to use your time off that you have, do you need assistance on a project, do you need to not assist others with a project? What is it that you need?

  7. Rest – rest not only your body but your mind, take a reset, go to your car during your break and call a friend or loved one or listen to music, but rest your mind when you get breaks and when you are not in the work setting, when you’re off your off – set that boundary!

  8. Evaluate your options – is it time for a career change? We want to evaluate everything else first, but we always must put our mental health, physical health, and emotional health first and so consider if it is time for a career change, a location change, a department change? And again professionals can help you sort through those feelings and determine if that is the case and what that looks like!


So, have you experienced job burnout? Are you experiencing it now? What helped you get to the other side of it? Who helped you get to the other side of it? Comment below!


References

Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 15(2), 103–111. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20311






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