Living and working in the modern world comes with constant emotional and psychological overload. Russia, being part of the global community, has naturally been influenced by the changing employment market trends – the booming development of technology exacerbates the burden on modern employees, and widespread penetration of digital solutions and artificial intelligence replacing human resources lead to a higher job loss risk. All this becomes overwhelming for a modern specialist, who is also left to deal with and adapt to the new requirements on their own. This can cause a variety of psycho-emotional problems.
Russians rarely seek professional psychological assistance. The findings of various 2022 surveys available online suggest that about half of Russians have experienced burnout, loss of motivation or emotional exhaustion due to a busy schedule and excessive workload.
Stages of professional burnout syndrome
Burnout syndrome can be recognized by several characteristic symptoms. At the psychophysiological level, it involves severe and constant fatigue, energy depletion, exhaustion, lack of interest, insomnia, headaches or frequent drowsiness, and weight jumping around.
At the behavioral level, the most common symptoms are excessive impulsivity, aggression, nervous breakdowns, apathy, and anxiety for no reason. The person can become irritable, feel detached from others, develop bad habits, start overeating, develop eating disorders. They can be often late for work and fail to fulfill their duties, etc.
At the thoughts level, one begins thinking that the work they do is meaningless; they feel demotivated, develop negative attitudes, and experience feelings of injustice or guilt.
Burnout has a direct impact on the person’s productivity at work. An employee under excessive stress shows irritability, anger or aggression, indifference to their performance results, patients or clients, and has frequent health complaints. They take more time off for health reasons, take frequent smoke breaks, use alcohol or other substances.
Burnout syndrome does not develop overnight; it evolves through several distinct stages:
- Declining professional efficacy: feelings of incompetence, dissatisfaction with one’s performance, failure and general depression.
- Detachment (depersonalization) involves a perfunctory attitude to one’s duties, a loss of interest in the personality of their patient or client, who clearly burdens the employee with their problems and even their presence.
- The emotional exhaustion stage manifests itself by mounting fatigue. The person feels numb; other symptoms include increasing mental distance from their work, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to their job. In most severe cases, their distorted perception of themselves, of others and their environment leads to lack of empathy. If the worker suppresses their feelings, fails to express or even recognize their emotions, the next stage will involve physical health problems.
Perfectionists’ ailment
Perfectionists, who apply very strict standards to themselves and strive to be best, perfect and never make mistakes, have a much higher risk of being trapped in emotional burnout than those who have a more constructive and flexible mindset.
Working until exhaustion, forgoing leisure and health eventually pushes perfectionists into self-criticism and labeling themselves incompetent. These thoughts aggravate stress and anxiety, followed by frustration and dismay, procrastination, tension and irritability that affect the quality of work. When it comes to behavior, one can expect lower focus, dissatisfaction with one’s abilities and, as a result, emotional exhaustion.
Reasonable optimalism should be an alternative to destructive perfectionism.
How to prevent burnout
Preventing emotional exhaustion should focus on controlling symptoms and reducing the impact of stress (self-diagnosis, work and life balance, learning to switch to other activities, getting professional help). The most common and reliable ways to prevent burnout include relaxation, mindfulness, and cognitive and behavioral therapy.
How to be more constructive and self-caring:
- Learn how to set priorities and triage tasks.
- Know your personal biorhythms and consider them when dealing with tasks during the day. For example, do labor-intensive tasks in the morning and leave simplest jobs for the evening – or vice versa.
- See challenges as temporary and use the principle of I can change what is in my power.
- Take breaks to do breathing or physical exercises.
- Praise yourself for achievements and success. Celebrate achieved goals, however small.
By Elena Smolyanskaya, clinical psychologist and Niarmedic, member of the Association of Cognitive and Behavioral Psychotherapy