Burnout and High Stress Professionals
High Stress Professionals need resources.
We know that work can offer meaning, purpose, structure, and opportunities for joy and fulfillment in the life of an individual. The levels to which these things occur depends on the resources available to working professionals.
Resources:
There are three places in which we can look for support and resources:
In the workplace: this may look like HR support, a company culture of rest, a company culture that values their employees and supports them through stressful situations, and conflict resolution that takes pressure off of employees.
In the home: In times of high stress, like divorce, moving, illness, conflict, etc, working professionals are at higher risk of maladaptive coping and burnout.
Intrapersonal: individuals with better coping mechanisms, with higher levels of self-esteem, with less anxiety, depression, and paranoia, tend to tolerate stress better than their peers.
Can you recognize where you are resourced?
Maladaptive Strategies for Stress:
When a working professional isn’t resourced, and is facing increasing job strain, their strategies of coping become what we call maladaptive, meaning that they turn to strategies that do more harm than good, like rigidity, paranoia, self-betrayal, desperation, and alienation.
When a professional is resourced, on the other hand, they are able to use adaptive strategies for stress recovery. There is a danger that high-performance work behaviors like meeting increasingly difficult deadlines and managing demanding clients can be highly rewarding and cause one to push past warning signals of stress.
Maladaptive behaviors may look like:
Procrastination: some individuals use procrastination as pressure to perform, or to avoid difficult situations.
Alienation: Withdrawing from work relationships due to stress.
Rigidity: Becoming less flexible and creative around workplace solutions.
Do you recognize any maladaptive behaviors in your life right now?
Job Stress:
Job Stress occurs when work activities offer little creative relief, are harmful to the body (long hours, dangerous work, repetitive movement), when hierarchies and bureaucracy become too much to manage, when arbitrary rules are enforced, when conflicts about roles occur, and when life events outside of one’s control take over. If stress is prolonged over time, we enter burnout.
Burnout:
Stress accumulates over time. Accumulated stress that is no longer manageable through adaptive strategies is called burnout. When our daily job demands start to exceed our resources, burnout is usually not far away. Burnout has been linked to depression, anxiety, and often manifests as exhaustion, ranging from mild to severe. Burnout also can cause increased physical issues like cardiovascular diseases.
How Do I Know If I’m in Burnout?
Are you mentally distancing yourself at/from work? Are you experiencing cognitive problems, or maladaptive coping mechanisms? Are you feeling moody or irritable, or experiencing anxiety or depression? Have you noticed your professional efficacy reduced? Are you tired all the time? Do you find it hard to concentrate on your work? Do you care less about a job that once brought you joy? Do you find it hard to contribute to your work in the same way as you were?
All of these are signs that you may be in burnout. Essentially, if you take high job demands, and combine it with low resources, you may find yourself experiencing burnout. Unfortunately, long term burnout is associated with long term sick leave. You can’t will yourself out of burnout. Your body needs rest and recovery.
What Do I Do to Prevent Burnout at Work?
While there are many reasons for burnout that are out of our control (poor working environment, increased demands, sudden life changes), good self-regulation will keep you out of workplace burnout. Unfortunately, good self-regulation techniques aren't something that most people learn from an early age. Most of us grow up with stressed parents and caretakers, and are lucky if we learn a few self-regulation techniques, much less the ones we need for a high stress workplace. Luckily, we have an entire profession (therapy) that can help us learn better self-regulation, reduce anxiety, and eradicate depression.
Do you need to make an appointment for therapy and receive support?
How Can Therapy Help with Self-Regulation?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) helps with self-regulation in the workplace by helping us examine our thoughts and patterns to see what is actually working and useful, vs what is contributing to maladaptive expressions like cynicism, depression, anxiety, and alienation. Then, CBT helps replace those maladaptive coping mechanisms with positive, helpful skills and practices that reduce stress and provide a buffer between workplace stress and your inner world.
The Best CBT Therapist for Burnout and High Stress
Erin has been providing CBT to the greater San Francisco community for over twenty years now. She specializes in using CBT to help high stress professionals either navigate away from burnout, or prevent burnout from happening by teaching adaptive, positive skills that change your inner landscape. She offers virtual and in-person therapy in Los Gatos, and across the state of California. Book with her today.