Burnout is a silent killer in our Western society. More and more companies tell me that 5% of their employees are at home with the diagnosis burnout. So what types of burnout are there?
Burnout types: which ones are there?
The Never-no burnout
The never-no burnout-er. This burnout patient cannot say no when they are asked something. They cross their own limits and slowly get exhausted or literally end up in a burnout. With the self-help program 15Minutes4Me.com, we teach such people to work on setting their limits. First, we teach them to re-discover their own limits, because they often lost those limits years ago. Then, we teach them the communication technique needed to respectfully reinforce these limits.
The Always-yes Burnout
The always-yes burnout-er: A person with this type of burnout wants to make everybody happy, in a way similar to that which was taught to former generations, and thus says "yes" to everything, until they realize that they can no longer fulfill their promises. From here, it often goes from bad to worse. We teach them to look more selectively at which priorities will bring them closer to their goal.
The Perfectionist Burnout
The perfectionist burnout-er has always learned that you must do everything right, down to the smallest details. They often did not learn that this only goes for specific situations. In some situations, it can be valuable but there are many situations in life where perfectionism hinders us from happily living and working. We literally burn out because we bite off more than we can chew and continuously see how we could have done an even better job.
The exhausted burnout
After someone of any of the 3 previous types has been stuck too long without setting limits, the system breaks, meaning they end up in a deeper, exhausted type of burnout. This person often needs an even longer period of rest before they can start working again, and even this has to be done in small steps.
Therapy and treatment of burnout
The fastest way to heal from burnout is by taking a break, after discussing this with your doctor, and following the self-help program '15Minutes4Me.com'. This program only takes fifteen minutes per day. During these fifteen minutes, you learn how to look at your behaviors, thoughts and habits from a different perspective, helping you reach new insights in how to change your life so you can get better results with less effort.
Free Burnout test
If you want to look whether you are in the risk zone or not, you can do our free online burnout test below. First share this article with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or Linked-In, and then do the free burnout test.
Paul Koeck, MD
