Emotional Burnout
What is burnout?
Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands. As the stress continues, you begin to lose the interest and motivation that led you to take on a certain role in the first place.
Burnout syndrome is a serious problem that nowadays reaches professionals who maintain constant contact with people associated with excessive relationships with these individuals. Doing these loses the meaning of your relationship with the profession. The incidence is high among education and health professionals, given the characteristics of these professions requiring contact with others.
The acceleration of the rhythm of life, the professional workload and the crisis situations taking place in the world (war, epidemic, disasters) have their impact on a person’s mental health.
Psychological distress of multiple individuals is intensifying due to the continuing spread of the novel coronavirus, war , and economic downturn.
Accordingly, there is an emerging need for updates to policies concerning COVID-19 to prevent adverse mental health outcomes such as emotional exhaustion and traumatic distress associated with this disease.
If we talk about the recent crisis situations in the Republic of Armenia, which revolved around the Covid-19 and war situations, we must emphasize that the rate of mental health damage in the public sphere is high.
Healthcare workers (HCWs) in particular have been affected. Medical personnel including physicians, nurses, and public health officers as well as those engaged in epidemiological investigation, contact tracing, management of data for individuals who have confirmed COVID-19, and those who implement professional interventions during the war and in post-war situations
Crisis situations have had an impact on the mental health of people working in other professional fields as well. As a result, according to our observations and psychological work, we have emphasized that we have a high background of emotional burnout.
What causes emotional exhaustion?
There are external and internal factors that can lead to burnout. For example, working conditions are external – they can be changed relatively quickly. Internal factors are attitudes, behavior patterns, character traits and beliefs that a person is guided by in his decisions. External conditions can affect when a person already has internal prerequisites for burnout.
Experiencing some daily stress and anxiety is normal, but over time, chronic stress can take a toll on the body. Emotional exhaustion is caused by a long period of constant life stress, whether from personal stress at home or stress related to work.
What triggers emotional exhaustion differs from person to person. What might be stressful for one person can be completely manageable for another person.
Some more common triggers of emotional exhaustion include:
- high-pressure jobs, such as nurses, doctors, police officers, and teachers
- intense schooling, such as medical school
- working long hours or working at a job you hate
- having a baby
- raising children
- financial stress or poverty
- homelessness
- being a caregiver for a loved one
- prolonged divorce proceedings
- death of a family member or friend
- living with a chronic illness or injury
There are also external and internal factors of emotional burnout
- environment overload, busy work schedule
- lack of satisfactory pay
- deadlines, distractions: it is impossible to immerse yourself in the work, all the time something pulls out of the process
- unloved work
- work conflicts, unhealthy atmosphere, pressure or isolation in the team
- the stress of big cities and the cult of success create a strong pressure on the modern person,
Internal factors:
• Hyper-responsibility: “must do the right thing, on time, ideally”
• Pressure of authority: prestigious place of work, responsibility to the referrer
• Beliefs: “I have to work hard”, “we will rest in retirement”, “if I work little, I will not have money, I will die of hunger and poverty”
• The feeling that work is a supervalue, it always comes first
• Duties: “I have to be successful \ look like I have \ prove something to someone”
• Fear of letting down
Stages of emotional burnout
Herbert Freudenberger and colleague Gale North identified 11 stages of burnout
- an obsession with demonstrating your value in front of successful employees;
- inability to disconnect and get distracted from work;
- neglect of needs: erratic sleep, malnutrition, lack of communication;
- denial of problems, anxiety, feeling threatened and panic;
- distortion of values, obsession with work;
- intolerance towards colleagues, cynicism towards work, aggression;
- reduced activity and social interactions, the need to get rid of stress, often with the help of alcohol, drugs;
- obvious changes in behavior that bother friends and family;
- depersonalization: a person ceases to see value in himself and others, does not perceive his needs;
- feeling of inner emptiness; there may be attempts to fill it with overeating, sex, alcohol or drugs;
- depression and burnout syndrome: a feeling of loss and insecurity, exhaustion, a sense of the gloom of the future; may include complete mental and physical collapse; medical attention may be required at this stage.