Identifying and Managing Helping Professionals' Burnout

In this article, we discuss helping professionals' burnout, what causes it, and how to prevent it (or reverse course if it is already starting). The world is experiencing confusion and turmoil, including armed conflict and heightened geopolitical tension.

A reality of confusion and turmoil is often no different at a personal or professional level. This article looks at how we can avoid starting down the path to burnout, and includes suggestions for how to keep ourselves at the wellbeing end of the health spectrum.

Burnout is a syndrome characterized by three dimensions: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one's job, and reduced professional efficacy.

In 2020, a survey found that about four out of five white collar working people in Australia suffered burnout during the pandemic lockdowns. This is 6% above the global average, and makes Australia the country with the highest rate of burnout.

Some experts believe that helping professions are hit harder by burnout, but there is no reason to believe that mental health professionals have lower than average rates of burnout.

If you are a mental health professional and wonder if you are burning out, ask yourself if anyone close to you has asked you to cut down on your work, if you have become angry or resentful about your work, and if you feel like nothing you do makes a difference.

Herb Freudenberger coined the term "burnout" to describe a kind of emotional shut-down that many health professionals were coming to acknowledge.

Burnout occurs when a person is disengaged, their emotions are blunted, and they experience a sense of helplessness and hopelessness.

Lack of control over schedule, assignments, or workload can lead to burnout for mental health professionals working for organizations or in private practice.

If you are not clear about the job expectations, you may feel uncomfortable and travel toward burnout.

Dysfunctional workplace dynamics can arise from dealing with endless bureaucratic red tape, uncooperative client families, or unhelpful people or organizations with whom you must liaise or cross-refer.

If clients are "all the same" or very unwell, the work can seem monotonous or chaotic, leading to fatigue and burnout.

When work takes up all your time and energy, you can't spend enough time with family and friends to nurture important relationships, and burnout can come quickly.

There are lifestyle and personality causes of burnout, including working too much, not getting enough sleep, and having a high-achieving, Type A personality.?

Those closest to you can help you get off this miserable path. Reaching out to them is a compliment and shows that you trust them enough to share the very scary prospect of coming unglued.

If you are burning out, you want to avoid people whose mood or outlook is negative, so take advantage of small moments during breaks or at the water cooler to deepen relationships with compatible others.

WHO define burnout as an occupational phenomenon, so if you hate your work, re-evaluate it to see if there are parts that give you meaning and purpose, or if you can create a better life-work balance by working less or emphasizing much-enjoyed activities outside of work hours.

- Turn off tech for some period every day: a strategy that is now being dubbed "dopamine fasting". This is because employees have suddenly become available at all hours, through technology.

In addition to the boundary issue of responding to social media posts in between sessions, there are other problems with looking at screens later in the evening. You might want to engage in a creative project with the time saved by not being "beholden to connectivity".

- Go slower, relax and sleep. Experts have advised us to relax for decades, yet many people are reluctant to take time for structured relaxation activities.

If you believe that you need to go at full speed 24/7, what's going on with your self-esteem?

- Exercise is an important antidote to stress and burnout. If you can't set aside 30 minutes a day, take three 10-minute breaks and walk around the block.

It helps to choose activities that we naturally enjoy, whether it's swimming, dancing, rollerblading, martial arts or something else, and to be fully present with the sensations of your body moving as you do the exercise.?

- Go for a healthy diet. This final exit off the burnout motorway can be so easily "forgotten", but it is important to make sure we have healthy fats in the diet and avoid foods with many additives.

In conclusion, this article has explained how easy it is to start burning out without realizing it, and how to avoid it.

Burnout is rife in the helping professions, and there are some exit ramps you can take to get off the road to burnout.