That a professional mission puts you a little under pressure can happen. But too much anxiety can induce a professional exhaustion. It’s burnout. A situation which, if not taken into account, can impact you permanently.
What do we call burn-out?
Used in all sauces as soon as a fatigue is in question, the concept of burnout is not always well understood.
Sarah Boss, a psychotherapist, interviewed by Science Focuslast December 7 gives a simple definition: “Burn-out designates the fact of feeling so stressed over a long period that chronic syndromes appear”. In work, professional exhaustion can occur due to an overload of work, but also, conversely, boring work.
“It is the excess or the insufficiency of stimuli which leads to the appearance of symptoms”. Burn out also appears when people undergo too much pressure, get no reward at work and feel overlooked: stress at work can cause heavy consequences.
But unlike anxiety, or nervousness, burnout is also long and in the fact of not being able to recover. “” “Stress is a positive thing, it helps us to feel motivated or concentrated when we need it. But it would then be natural for this stressful period to end ” evokes such. What characterizes burn out, would therefore be the fact of not being able to recover after a period of stress.
To discover too:
- Brown-out: when work no longer makes sense
- The boron-out: when professional boredom depresses
What are the signs of burnout?
For Johanna Rozenblum, clinical psychologist and member of our Committee of Experts True Medical, Burn Out is “A suffering which is generalized at work May which contaminates the other spheres of life, the emotional, friendly, private sphere, and which no longer allows to have a satisfactory quality of life”.
It thus brings together the signs in 4 categories which can put you on the track:
- A anxiety which torches and leaves the working environment, with sleep disorders and a sleep which is no longer really restorative;
- Of the concentration problems,, memorization which go with a loss of efficiency which often induces a loss of self -confidence;
- A apprehension to go to workwhich can range from anxiety, to physical somatic symptoms such as vomiting, blocked back, tachycardia, panic attacks …
- Of the depressive symptomsof sadness, a loss of meaning, with however an obsession to think of work day and night and which no longer allows you to flourish to feel good.
How to face?
When signs of exhaustion are there, it is important not to ignore them.
On the contrary, the best way to reduce them would be to think about how you can solve the deeply rooted problems that are the cause, how to work otherwise without exhausting. This could thus involve a therapist, to understand personality traits or past experiences, such as perfectionism or the fear of not doing enough, which can play on your performance. Other physical measures, such as finding a way to improve your sleep, put exercise in your daily life, can help recover better.
When you observe signs of professional exhaustion, it is important to ask for help from the medical profession. Talking about it is already a first step towards better being.
To read also:
- Family burnout: What is it?
- Emotional burnout: definition, causes and symptoms
- Burn-out: How to get out of it?
- Overwork: recognize symptoms to better treat them