You Can Now Officially Be Diagnosed With Burnout 5 Steps to Take If Youre At Risk

You Can Now Officially Be Diagnosed With Burnout 5 Steps to Take If Youre At Risk Romance novel magnate Danielle Steel, author of 179 books and mother to nine kids, may have dubbed burnout-syndrom-syndrom a International Classification of Diseases handbook, in a section specific to conditions related to employment or unemployment. Receiving a diagnosis of burnout, the handbook states, depends on whether a patient exhibits the following symptomsFeelings of energy depletion or exhaustionIncreasedmental distance from ones job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to ones jobReduced professional efficacyWe know that increasing numbers of workers are currently experiencing or feel susceptible to experiencing burnout, a fact the American Institute of Stress has been compiling data on for years. Not only are Americans today working harder and for longer hours on average than previous generations did, but research presented by the institute also shows that as many as 80% of workers feel stress on the job, with 40% of workers describing their jobs as very or extremely stressful. Furthermore, 26% of workers admit they are often or very often burned out by their workloads.Worried you might be warding off a bout of burnout yourself? Here are five steps you need to take, stat.1. Familiarize yourself with the stages of burnout.While the version presented by the World Health Organization is specific to on-the-job symptoms, burnout often carries spillover effects into ones personal life, too. To that end, psychologists HerbertFreudenberger and Gail North identified a 12-stage model of the most common layers of burnout symptoms that people encounter, as well as the order in which theyre typically experienced.Maybe the reason youre feeling so severely drained by your job is that the career path youve been on has stopped bringing you joy. Maybe you still enjoy the work itself, but the work environment is hostile, toxic, and driving you to burn out. Perhaps the work cult ure is fine but you have a hard time setting boundaries, leading coworkers to walk all over you or management to overly depend on you.Unlike illnesses like chronic fatigue and/or depression or anxiety disorders, burnout is ultimately a situational condition. Before you can rid yourself of this condition, its imperative to identify what specific situation is causing it and to avoid similar situations in the future. The below resources may be a good starting point.In the end, taking a few days off to unplug could actually help you get more work done and restore some of your sense of well-being. And if, when you return from your mental health break, things dont feel any more manageable that could be a sign its time to make a career change.If your job is putting you at risk of burning out, a decent boss should care to hear that information, and not just from a place of humanity (though you would hope that would be incentive enough). Turnover costs companies millions of dollars each ye ar. To mitigate the risk of losing and having to replace talent, it is literally the job of your manager and the companys HR personnel at large to ensure you do not burn out. If you have a decent relationship with your boss, tell them how you feel and be prepared to ask for what you need. If you have concerns over how your boss would take such information, set up a meeting with HR to confidentially address your concerns. You dont have to suffer in silence.