Burnout treatment of burnout prevention is getting more and more important. 1 in 20 employees namely is at home with a burnout. This is not good for either involved party, neither the employer nor the employee. For the employee it will require energy to treat their burnout and the employee will often also have to be at home for an extended period of time. For the employer this is not food because an employee is not available and burnout can cost ann employer a lot of money. Therefore it is useful for both parties to work with burnout prevention. How does this generally work? When you want to practice burnout prevention it is important to understand the mechanisms behind burnout, and also to know how you can recognize burnout. In this article, we will describe the symptoms of burnout, describe how to treat burnout and which options there are when it comes to burnout prevention.
Burnout prevention: symptoms of burnout
If you have a burnout, the most common consequences are the following: issues sleeping, issues with focus, memory problems, being somber or being snappy,... Because you experience stress, many people will suffer from issues sleeping. Because they start to worry, they find it difficult to fall asleep or they wake up a lot during the night. Stress will namely make it so that your sleep is a more shallow kind. This will lead to a tired feeling. Furthermore, people with burnout experience problems with paying attention. You will notice that, when someone at work has burnout or experiences a lot of stress,that this person no longer gets tasks done as quickly as they used to or that you experience other symptoms of focus not being the way it used to be. It is namely so that stress can make it so that you find it more difficult to focus, which makes it so that deadlines might not always be met. People with burnout also often suffer from memory issues. Examples are knowing what it is that they still have left to do, or which steps they had to go through in a certain project now again. It can, for example, be so that they come home and then suddenly forget that they should have gone to the store. Because someone with too much stress or burnout is constantly busy, these people will often be less polite in their replies, too. This often first occurs towards their partner, and only after that toward other people. The partner also tends to be the first person to notice that something is not right. But toward colleagues it can also be so that people start to become snappy. Especially when extra work is added which they did not expect. They then feel like their head is so full already, and that this extra work really is too much. You might also notice that people with burnout cry more often or are sad. Stress can have this influence, because people with burnout do not get the same amount of work done which they used to, which gives them the feeling that they cannot handle it all anymore for a while.
Burnout prevention: how is burnout treated?
There are many different ways in which one can treat a burnout or in which one can practice burnout prevention. But to know how the treatment of burnout, it is useful to know what type of people have larger chances of developing burnout than others. We generally see that perfectionists have much larger chances of developing burnout than other people. In burnout it all often is about how people deal with stress. Someone who is perfectionistic, believes that everything must be perfect, even in its details, which can sometimes make it so that work gets left behind or that not everything is done in time. If extra work is then added, someone with perfectionism will then also easily feel like too much is coming at them. People who are perfectionists also often take more time to finish tasks, and if they then get extra work, they often do not see how they can perfectly finish this in time. When you then compare these people to people who do not easily get stressed and, themselves, decide what they want to do and how they want to do it, there is a large difference to be seen. Many people with perfectionism also have the feeling that they need to finish something perfectly, which puts them under even more pressure. Furthermore, you will see that people who use their brain all day have higher chances of developing a burnout than people who use different muscles. What do we mean with this? Think with us: imagine that Frank works at his desk the entire day, then gets home and finishes up some things by the computer. After that, he relaxes by watching TV. Frank can see this as relaxation, yet you need just one muscle in your body in all these activities: your brain. Frank's brain therefore hardly get any rest, and this will make it so that Frank has increased chances of developing burnout. Now imagine tat we compare Frank to Mark. Mark works as an electrician, so he uses his body all day. When he comes home, he cooks and goes for a walk with a friend. Then he watches television for a while and goes to bed. While watching TV requires an effort from the brain in this case, too, Mark will have a much smaller chance of the development o a burnout because he uses different muscles throughout the day instead of only using his brain. If you use your brain too much, this can create an overload, which in turn can have stress and even burnout as its consequences. Why have we shortly described this? Because the treatment of burnout mainly consists of letting go of old habits and developing new habits, which make it so that chances of a burnout decrease. Your old habits namely caused you to get a burnout, and if you do not change these, a new burnout is often just around the corner. If you are a perfectionist, this does not mean that you need to get rid of all of your perfectionism, but rather that you learn in treatment when it is useful to be a perfectionist and when you instead need to learn to let go. Furthermore, except for the development of new habits, burnout treatment often consists of altering the coping method. This means that you change the way in which you deal with difficult situations, so that this will also make sure that burnout will be able to occur less often in the future. To realize the things above, many people need professional guidance. It namely is so that, once you have had a burnout, your brain has gotten some sort of scar, which makes it so that chances of another burnout occurring increase. Furthermore, the development of positive feelings goes differently for everyone. For example, it is not possible for everyone to play sports every day, while others get their strength from just that. That is why the development of positive feelings is something different for everyone. A treatment for burnout helps you to discover your positive habits and helps you to discover what is possible for you when it comes to working on your burnout.
Burnout prevention: possible treatment of burnout and burnout prevention
Except for the online self-help program 15 Minutes 4 Me, which guides people with burnout, stress, and depression, Paul Koeck, MD, also gives training for supervisors regarding burnout. Such training includes explanations regarding the mechanisms behind stress and burnout, communication advice in burnout, re-integration after burnout, and tips to deal with stress and burnout.
Burnout prevention: take the stress test!
If you want to know to what extent stress is present, you can take the free stress test here. This test will tell you right after you are done what your personal stress level is and what you can do to deal with your stress.
