Avoiding Burnout.

Our last post - 'Am I At Risk of Burnout', brought up a few questions for some readers that might be useful for others to ponder.

What is the single major cause of burnout - according to the Harvard Business Review, the biggest contributor of burnout is feelings of chronic overloading. For me, I would remove the word feelings and simply say, chronic overloading. There are limitless examples of people carrying the workload of others due to low staff numbers or through job creep. Job creep occurs when we are asked (told) to take on tasks outside the scope of the job description we were appointed under.

The three key dimensions of burnout is overwhelming exhaustion stemming (mainly) from a mentally demanding role. This is followed by feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, then a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment. If you are operating outside of the scope of your agreed role, it's time to talk with your supervisor or boss.

Something to keep at the back of mind, additional money doesn't equate to a reduced risk of burnout, it is the redistribution of workload that is more important. Receiving additional remuneration is great, yet if the high workload remains so does the risk.

Can I remain working while recovering from burnout - yes, is the simple answer. Then comes the depends, something needs changing if you are to recover. An intervention strategy of changing our workload or pattern and relaxation habits is a great start. Simple changes do make a big difference - 30-minutes of exercise at the end of the day to reduce cortisol levels, regular breaks across the day, a power nap of no more than 30 minutes, drinking less caffeine, or introducing a form of breathing/mediation/relaxation technique is a fantastic start.

Personally, I alternate the type of work I am doing to activate a different part of the brain. Work on a blog post, then write a couple of emails, then connect with a client or two, then.... When I'm feeling overwhelmed, it's time to stop and take the dog for a walk or have a cuppa. Labouring through tasks until they are fully completed often ends with being stuck in the mud. Mixing it up brings variety, excitement, replenishment, and satisfaction.

I love my job but not my boss, is that a factor to consider in burnout - yes, a toxic relationship with your boss often leads to anxiety, stress, and fatigue. These are key factors associated with burnout. There are plenty of resources available online to help with managing a poor relationship with a supervisor, speaking with human resources is a good start. If you enjoy your job and want to remain then the relationship with your boss must change.

Can I get burnout if I hate my job? - while hating your job may be a contributing factor, it is highly unlikely that simply hating your job would lead to burnout. As referenced earlier, burnout is caused from an overload of work, burnt out! It is therefore important to distinguish between the two, hating your job and burnout. In her blog for the website HIRED, Lauren Hoffman suggests four questions to ask yourself to distinguish between the two:

  1. Are your symptoms physical - if the answer is yes, it is more likely you have burnout. Symptoms of burnout include headaches, backaches, panic attacks, or stomach problems.

  2. Does your work monopolise too much time - working 60+ hours a week is way too much, although you can get burnout when working part-time, it is more about the demand placed on you when at work. If the demand of the part-time role necessitates that you to work additional hours outside of your contracted hours, then it may be burnout.

  3. Can you see yourself being happy in another job - Hoffman suggests writing a list of alternative jobs that you could do. If the list comes easily to mind and/or you feel better after writing the list, it might be time to leave your current role.

  4. Does a mini-break help - when you take a week away from work do you feel yourself start to recover? If so, it is more likely to be burnout, or the start of burnout. If not, you probably just hate your job.

If you have a job you hate, you can leave or you can find alternate ways of doing your work to bring variety. Hating your job is a stressor that we can all do without.

What is the number one strategy for recovering from burnout - rest, without a doubt. Taking a week off completely free of all connection with work to allow our brain to rest, process what is going on, and recover. A brain needs time to sit as still as possible, just like any other injury would.

Rest also means reducing or keeping away altogether from social media. I cannot count the number of people who have found reducing their social media use the most beneficial thing to do for reducing stress. Research shows that smart technology is addictive due to the release of dopamine (it's how we learn) and too much dopamine is linked to being more competitive, aggressive, and having poor impulse control.

Thanks to those who sent these wonderful questions through, I hope they are helpful for others.

Let's talk!

Am I At Risk Of Burnout?

Sometimes it feels like we are working too hard and might wonder - am I at risk of burnout?

Burnout is work-related and described as a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of self-identity. Burnout is not, however, a medical diagnosis. Burnout can be caused by a heavy workload, working long hours without a break, a lack of work-life balance, or feelings that you have little to no control over your work.

Are there other causes? Yes. Disliking your job is a big one, being asked to do things that go against your personal values is another, or continually being stretched outside of your comfort zone a third. Many things can underpin burnout - in my case it was the accumulation of stressful events that I wasn't dealing with adequately.

Burnout is more prevalent in what is termed the helping professions where emotional exhaustion is common. Nurses, doctors, social workers, teachers, first responders, and similar professions. Burnout is more psychological than it is physiological, with the symptoms manifesting as both. Working too hard in a physical industry is more likely to cause a chronic injury, although it may lead then to a psychological illness.  

Common characteristics of burnout include: frequent illness; disengagement; frustration; feelings of helplessness & hopelessness; the loss of motivation. At its worst, burnout can cause suicidal tendencies. Burnout is not a 'thing inside of our heads', it is real and serious.

Burnout is becoming a major contributing factor to depression. Burnout was the major cause of my own depression and suicidal ideations.

Although there are many similarities between burnout and depression, there are differences. According to many academic readings, the key difference between burnout and depression is that burnout relates to a specific circumstance whereas depression is more generalised.

Where burnout can cause us to feel negatively towards a specific situation, i.e. our work, depression can make us feel negative about lots of different things all at once.

Living with burnout can cause us to lose confidence in only some of our abilities whereas depression can cause a loss of confidence in our ability to do anything at all. Burnout can make us think that we have failed at a something specific. Depression may cause us to feel as though we have failed as a person or failed at life.

If removing the source of the stress, such as changing your work patterns or getting a new job, makes you feel better then chances are you have burnout despite some of the symptoms of burnout and depression overlapping.

As is the case with most psychological challenges that we face, prevention is the key. I work harder now than ever before, probably twice as hard as when in the police where my burnout occurred. The key difference now, I manage my breaks and sleep much better. Surrounding myself with good people who will tell me when I need to take a break is a real key factor. My family!

There is a saying, "If you love what you do you will never work another day in your life." Bollocks. I love what I do and I work hard at it. The difference: enjoyment, connection, excitement, helping others, travel, and most importantly, variety. If you dislike your job and work long hours, you are at high risk of burnout because rest is not instant. Additionally, if you dislike your job, you are receiving the negative hormone cortisol as part of our stress response.

Cortisol is bad, very bad in fact. Cortisol keeps us in a continual heightened state so that we will not be able to relax or sleep quickly. Exercise helps to reduce cortisol so 30-minutes of cardio at the end of the workday is helpful. When we talk with others we produce oxytocin which helps to dissolve cortisol, so that helps. The best way to manage burnout is through prevention.

Prevention starts with the basics - good food, stable home, exercise, connecting with others, and a good night's sleep. If sleep is challenging for you, here is a sleep tips document that might be helpful. The best form of prevention though is to remove the cause altogether.

This may include scheduling regular breaks, setting strict boundaries such as hours of work, negotiating workloads, or ultimately finding work that you enjoy. Something must change, doing nothing adds to the burnout dilemma. Take action now if you believe you may have burnout.

Burnout often needs some form of external intervention otherwise it's just ourselves talking to ourselves about ourself. Having someone close to you to tell you that you need to slow down or take a break is a wonderful resource to have. Even if it is just a cat sitting on a keyboard glaring at you to take a break!

Let's talk!

 

It's Not Necessarily Our Fault!

An Aunty recently sent a photo of me as a baby. My first thought was of my parents who had the same photo on our lounge wall which I was always uncomfortable with, more so as a teenager when my friends came to our home.

Looking at the photo a second time today, I now see only innocence and pondered - I wonder what you might be thinking when this photo was taken if you only knew what the future held for you? Innocence is what we are all born with. Innocence of what the future holds for us. Needing to be loved, wanting to be valued, hoping to be our best self, wishing that…. 'Life' then happens, and the innocence is gone.

I have never truly looked back on my life until very recently for fear of remembering the bad times, the failures, the disappointments, the regrets. There are many, but seldom do they come to mind these days. Why? Because we all must realise that life happens and much of it, I now realise that we had little or no control over. We certainly had little control over what life 'threw' at us, the bad things that happen to us. If we did have control, it tended to be reflecting only on why we made the choices we did either prior to or following the bad event.

The innocence of a child. No choice whatsoever from the very beginning as to how life will unfold. Being born was not our choice, the family we were born into another that was not ours to choose, nor was there choice in how we were raised, what school we went to, nor the food we consumed. Most choices were made for us, our future life almost preordained rather than from our own influence.

Genetics, the first 1000 days, our environment. Many factors influence what occurred to us as we grew and made us into who we have become. Choice only comes to us as we grow older and then those choices remain influenced from what happened in our early childhood. It’s not necessarily our fault how life unfolds for us when bad things happen. Not unless we made a rational decision unfettered from our past influences, and who can do that with any certainty.

Our work at WARN allows us to speak with many people, a majority of whom have ongoing regrets. Regrets are often self-destructive. They were designed as simple reminders of things past to enable us to avoid them in the future. 'Don’t go down by the river because you were nearly eaten by a crocodile last time you did so'. We then ruinate that we should have known better despite our forebears being able go down by the river safely! Regrets are merely designed to keep us safe, to avoid future risk. So often they don't!

A practical exercise you may find helpful if you think that you have made poor choices in your life which led to bad events occurring is to look back on your life and examine the choices that you made when bad things happened. What influenced you to make the choices that you made in each one? Was it freewill, what you had learned, misfortune, or perhaps it was something intuitive? Was it truly your fault that the choice you made was without any influence whatsoever?

I suspect seldom was it a choice that we made rationally at the time that led to a bad outcome. I'll wager that there was a lot of emotion involved when the decision was made, and the stronger the emotion the more regret we will be left with.

We continuously look to the future in these fast-paced times, intermittently we are in the present when required to focus, seldom do we look back and often only to regrets. Look back to good times, look back to make amends if you can, and always look back to regrets to see what influenced our choice at that time.

If we want to find answers as to why 'life' happened, we must always look back. We should examine the reason or reasons behind our decision which will help us to see that the choice we made may not have been ours alone. We were influenced by other factors, emotions being the biggest one.

It’s not necessarily our fault. Life happens. Often for no valid reason, it just happens. Mostly, it’s out of our total control. There are just so many influencing factors that we could not see clearly enough to fully consider. Not an excuse, simply a reason.

It’s not necessarily our fault.

Let's talk!

Reducing The Impact Of A Negative Event.

During our Level 3 workshops with frontline staff, I ask at the commencement "Do we learn from our past?" Some say yes, some say no, others just shrug. Like most things, it depends. Many of us have had things happen to us, have been in a situation we would rather forget, or may have done something we regret.

When negative things happen to us, we have an emotional reaction that produces cortisol. Cortisol affects almost every organ in our body, its purpose is to regulate our stress responses. It keeps us on high alert until the 'danger' has passed.

This evolutionary process places a marker on our memory. The greater the danger, the higher the emotion, the greater our stress response, the stronger the marker. The markers become a reference point in our memory to remind us of the danger that we faced to keep us safe from harm in the future.

Memories are formed because of the emotional reaction we have at the time of the event - the stronger the emotion, the stronger the memory. Chances are, after we faced a negative event, if we never spoke with anyone about what occurred our memory of the event will remain strong.

Additionally, we will not learn as much as we hoped when cortisol is released because we are in a heightened state. We learn more of how to deal with negative events when we are less 'stressed' from the positive hormone, dopamine. Sure, we will learn not to climb a ladder that was unsecured if we have fallen from it previously, but we may now be reluctant to ever climb a ladder again.

You may have read a previous post where we discussed the way to halt catastrophising, (ourselves talking to ourself about ourself by automatically searching our memory of markers), is to talk, write, and read. These three things ensure that we get our problems out of our head, we express how we feel (emotions must come out), and we compare experiences. This helps to reduce the negative impact on our memory, it disarms them.

The first step in reducing the impact of a negative event is to control our breathing when the incident occurs and immediately afterwards. Fully breathing out slows our heart rate which reduces the stress response.

Having a debrief after an incident is highly recommended to further reduce the negative impact. There are three forms of debrief - a hot debrief which is completed immediately after the incident, a formal debrief is held when we are in a less emotional state, and a psychological debrief is to assist in processing what has occurred.

All forms of debrief involve talking. When we talk, we further reduce the strength of the marker on our memory through the release of the positive hormone, oxytocin. Oxytocin is often termed the love hormone, yet it is more than that, it is about the human bonding process. Oxytocin is released when we talk with someone in a deep and meaningful conversation. Oxytocin helps to dissolve cortisol.

Following the talk, we should then write about the event. In a work setting this would equate to completing a safety report, for a personal event this involves journaling. As we write we go back into our memory, open it up, examine it, explain it, and continue to reduce the impact. As we write we learn about what occurred and will feel excited because of dopamine, our reward hormone.

Reading information about how to avoid incidents related to what occurred to us or reading about the experiences of others who have been in a similar situation, provides additional information and context to process or thoughts in a rational manner. It helps give our thoughts a rational perspective.

This is the part where we learn from events - going back and examining them in a controlled manner - to change our perception.

Another positive hormone we can use to negate the impact of an event is endorphins which are produced when we exercise. Endorphins numb pain. Additionally, as we exercise, we will burn off cortisol.

If you experience a negative event - talk about it, write about it, read about it, then exercise. If it is a past event, nothing changes, do the same things in this order. Emotions have to come out, they must come out, and they will come out, eventually. Manage them sooner rather than later.

Let's talk!

Thank You To Our Young

Our world is changing and so are we. The younger you are the more empathic you are which means you are more aware of others' emotions. You are not highly sensitive, you are hypersensitive - more aware, more inciteful, more caring - than previous generations.

Thank you to our young who are showing us the new way, the right way. Our young are more open to new ideas, are more understanding of differences, are more mindful of our future. Our young realise that we have to change along with our new world and not try to control it, to work with it.

Our young do not have to change to be like us, they do not have to do as we say, nor do they have to 'harden up'. It is us who need to change. Those who believe we have the experience and the ideas because we have lived longer need to change, who need to listen, who need to 'open up' rather than harden up.

We are now living in their world.

Imagine a world where the experienced amongst us come together with the ideas of our young, what a world that would be. We do not have to imagine it as it is happening in places right now.

Having worked with local and central government for over 30 years I am seeing the coming together of the experienced with the young. Real change is being made.

Presenting this week in Wanaka to an audience of senior executives from the 45 South branch of Taituarā, I witnessed it for myself. A group of local government professionals of all ages listening, sharing, and caring. Thank you for being so open, so welcoming, so enthusiastic to new ideas.

Those who criticise your work do not know the complexities in which you work. The information you have to decipher, the data you have to process, the many groups you have to satisfy. Yet, you do it so well and you do it with 'people' in mind. For you are also empathic.

Thank you to our young for being empathic, for being more aware, for being more caring. Please keep being so and do not let others try to change you, we need you in our new world.

Please continue to hold us to account, to tell us when we are wrong, to tell us how we can do better. Do listen to what we have to say. Although we might not say it in a way that you would say it, we have lived experiences that you have not and have a lot to offer.

Thank you to our local government for being so open, so aware, and so caring. While you may not satisfy everyone, just like our young are doing, you have a bigger picture in mind. Others.

Our new world is upon us and it is an exciting time for we are at a junction in history. We can choose to do the same thing and head into the unknown, or we can change and head into our new world of certainty. A world that is full of new surprises, of new ideas, of new ways to manage our new world. Together.

Before being critical of others, stop and think. Open your mind which opens your eyes which allows you to see the way forward.

Or learn more in our online courses:
Unconscious and Confirmation Bias

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