If you are burned out in your job, in a relationship, or on living, there are warning signs and symptoms everyone should know.
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If you don’t know the symptoms of burnout, you may mistake them for something else. This can lead to a delay in addressing the underlying issues and needlessly prolong your suffering.
People who are burned out rarely recognize it as such. They may incorrectly ascribe their feelings to being ambivalent, anxious, stressed, depressed, sad or irritable.
Although, burnout can lead to all of these mood changes, they are not the underlying cause. They are just symptoms.
Those around someone who is burned out may be left to wonder if the change in their behavior is due to stress, depression, drug use, relationship problems, money problems, or personality/character defects. Again, burnout is not usually suspected as the cause.
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It’s not the employee who burns themselves out. It is usually the work environment which burns out the employee. This is the case 90% of the time. You can take a dedicated, on fire, energetic, passionate and purpose driven person and place them in the wrong, or toxic, work environment and you will burn them out more times than not.
How can you tell if you are burned out or burning out? The symptoms of job related burnout can include:
- Feeling more and more time pressured at work.
- A sense of dread associated with going to work.
- A sense of relief that the weekend has finally arrived.
- A lack of recognition or not feeling rewarded for good work.
- Feeling that job demands are unclear or unreasonable.
- Either work is no longer challenging or it has become overwhelmingly challenging.
- Work seems chaotic or too high pressured.
- A sense there is no time you can take off from work without consequences.
- Feeling that you have to be too many things for far too many people.
- Feeling as though you have no help.
- Feeling as though you no longer make a difference.
- Difficulty or inability to concentrate.
- You lack close and supportive relationships in both your work and personal life.
- Less patience. Less empathy. Less enthusiasm.
- More irritable. More intolerant. More exhausted. More cynical.
- Feeling disengaged, unmotivated, uninterested or uninteresting.
- Feeling as though life is no longer worth living.
- A feeling you should be doing something else.
- A feeling you do not fit in your profession or current relationship, or they do not fit you.
- Feeling as though you have nothing left to give.
- Continuously questioning yourself, “Is this all there is to life? Is there nothing more?”
Of course, there are other symptoms of burnout but these are the ones most often identified in people suffering from job related burnout.
If you feel you or your organization may be suffering from the effects of job related burnout there is much which can be done to mitigate, alleviate, or eliminate these symptoms simply by identifying and addressing the underlying causes. I will be discussing more about how in future posts.
Do you identify with any of these symptoms of burnout? Do you know any one who may be burning out or burned out?
Previously Published on ClarkGaither.com
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Photo: Getty Images