Time for a Transition: How to Prevent or Recover from Burnout
Burnout, a state of physical and emotional exhaustion resulting from chronic workplace stress, can have a profound impact on one's overall well-being.
Recognizing the signs of burnout is crucial, but equally important is taking proactive steps towards recovery. In this blog, we'll explore what burn-out is, what leads to burn-out, how to prevent it and ideas that might help when you “hit the wall” and are now in the recovery process.
Let’s Get Started:
1. Understanding Burnout
To recover from burnout, self-awareness is the first step. Burnout occurs gradually like the frog swimming in the pot of hot water soon to reach boiling temperature, you often don’t see the need to act until it becomes urgent. Understanding the signs allows you to acknowledge the issue and begin taking the necessary steps towards recovery. This involves recognizing emotional and physical exhaustion, changes in behavior, and understanding how burnout affects your overall well-being. Perseverance, a reluctance to seek out social supports and lack of recovery from stressful incidents are some of the factors that can lead to burnout. Burnout encompasses three aspects: exhaustion, emptiness or cynicism, and reduced ability to manage daily life including job tasks.
Physical Burn-out Symptoms may include:
Gastrointestinal issues
High blood pressure
Poor immune function (getting sick more often)
Reoccurring headaches
Sleep issues
Mental Burn-out Symptoms may include:
Concentration issues
Depressed mood
Feelings of worthlessness
Loss of interest or pleasure
Suicidal ideation
Behavioral signs and symptoms may include:
Withdrawing from responsibilities
Isolating from others
Procrastinating, taking longer to get things done
Using food, drugs, or alcohol to cope
Taking frustrations out on others
Skipping work or coming in late and leaving early
Environments with a higher prevalence of burnout exhibit these characteristics:
unreasonable time pressures
lack of leadership communication and support
limited role clarity and lack of control
unmanageable workloads
unfair treatment
limited recognition, appreciation or reward
Preventing burnout is much better than having to recover. Ideally this is an individual and collective responsibility. Ways to prevent burnout are:
create and uphold individual boundaries
develop an environment where workload and capacity balance (if there is an imbalance, organizations can work towards narrowing the gap by collaborating with leadership and staff in prioritizing, innovating and making decisions together about how to navigate the imbalance)
improve skills to plan and anticipate work demands, delegate, say “no” and let go of perfectionist tendencies, focusing on value, not perfection
support autonomy and individuals working from their strengths which will increase accountability and creativity
build mental and physical breaks into the functioning of the day
instill mechanisms for respectful, honest and effective communication which helps generate value from resource use, increases transparency and collaboration in problem solving, this is part of psychological safety
increase engagement by creating a culture where individuals work together, are connected to a purpose beyond themselves and is based on emulating positive values like compassion and kindness
strong servant leadership promotes clarity, support and respect
place importance on self-care and embed strategies to support coping mechanisms, stress management and debriefing
Preventing burnout is more effective, empathetic and productive and less damaging and costly to the individual and to the organization than responding when burnout has occurred.
3. Recovering from Burn-out:
When you start to notice the symptoms, you need to take it seriously and treat it. Employees with short-term stress recover within a few months and may return to work fully or partially within six to twelve weeks while those who have burnout may take a year or longer to recover.
Let’s look at the aspects of a three phased approach:
Crisis:
recognition that burn-out has resulted from long periods of prolonged stress and there are no quick fixes
main focus is to reset the balance between stress and restoration which requires the attention be on the body and mind recovering and a significant reduction of responsibility: work, home, social
at this point one wants to make sense of what has happened and move on, but more recovery is needed in order to be able to do this in a comprehensive way
acceptance and understanding of lower energy levels during this time helps to focus on healing and creates an atmosphere of self-compassion
Recovery:
main focus is recovery of the stress system, being able to switch between arousal and rest
add back into the day limited stress, non-work activities for short duration followed by rest and relaxation and evaluate ability to cope with stress
duration and levels of activities are increased gradually as the person’s ability to recover increases
healthy life-style choices support recovery: nutrition, exercise, sleep, hydration, etc.
return to work programs need to have an understanding and sensitivity to the process of recovery
reestablish connecting to the body’s cues around fatigue and stress
the recovery phase can be many months in duration
Prevention:
the individual is almost fully recovered and now exploration of why burnout occurred can be explored fully
understanding the factors that can lead to burnout can be helpful in preventing it again
one may look at circumstances, coping strategies and helpful and unhelpful thought patterns to make adjustments in their life
going through this transition could lead to positive changes with self, interpersonal relationships and changes in life philosophy, for example one might choose to create better work boundaries and to focus more on their personal life than they did before
Other strategies to recover from burnout:
turn towards people for connection and support
re-evaluate priorities
give in ways that fill your cup
reframe the way you look at work
Burnout is a scary place to be. Work no longer creates pleasure and value and one experiences feelings of helplessness, fatigue and frustration. Ideally we want to understand and prevent burnout and if we cannot do that individually and collectively, then we need to treat the recovery process seriously. Be kind and supportive through the process and re-establish new norms so the likelihood of it happening again is minimized or the severity if it happens again is decreased.
