Rethinking Stress and Avoiding Burnout

Every job has a certain amount of stress. It comes with the territory. We need some stress to stay stimulated and challenged. Too much stress can lead to an energy crisis that interferes with doing the job and enjoying life. One needs strategies to insulate oneself from job burnout.

Burnout Equation

Demand/Time = Work Stress

(Work Stress/Control)*(caring)*(duration) = Burnout

Demands: Pressures and expectations of the job, a combination of the tasks to be done and the manner in which they need to be performed

Work Stress: Tension that results when there is inadequate time to accomplish the demands

Control: Perception that one has to influence over the tasks, expectations and decision making forces at work. Gaining control over some aspects of work can make even the most taxing job more rewarding and interesting

Caring: Positive element keeping one involved and interested in the work. Caring must be balanced by detachment or the ability to pull back from a situation as needed. Too much caring might totally drain a person’s emotional energy

Duration: Length of time one is exposed to the energy imbalance        

In their journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Crum, A. J., Salovey, P., & Achor, set out to test whether people’s stress mindsets affect their responses to stress. Over the course of a week, the researchers randomly assigned employees at a financial institution to one of three groups. In the?stress-is-debilitating?group, 164 employees watched videos that portrayed stress as harmful, causing illness and mistakes at work. In the?stress-is-enhancing?group, 163 people watched videos that portrayed stress as useful, improving immunity, creativity, and work quality under pressure. In the?control?group, 61 people did not watch any videos. After a week, the researchers discovered that people who had watched the stress-is-enhancing videos believed that stress has more positive effects. In contrast, people who had watched the stress-is-debilitating videos believed that stress has more harmful effects. In addition, people with the stress-is-enhancing mindset had better mental health and work performance than did people with the stress-is-debilitating mindset.

In a second study, the researchers showed that people with a stress-is-enhancing mindset actually responded better to stress. During a public speaking task, people with these mindsets had more adaptive physiological responses than did people with the stress-is-debilitating mindset, as indicated by their levels of the stress hormone cortisol. People with the stress-is-enhancing mindset were also more open to feedback — a necessary step toward improving.

Many people assume that stress is harmful and that they should avoid it. But is that true? Or does how we think about stress — our stress mindset — affect how we react to it?

Research has focused on the issue of burnout for several decades in an attempt to address the growing mental health challenges arising in the workplace.?Burnout is regarded as a work-related chronic strain reaction to job stressors in which the individual suffers a persistent negative state of mind. Emotional exhaustion refers to feelings of being emotionally overextended, draining energy, and chronic fatigue. It reflects the core burnout dimension and the central quality of burnout which is most widely reported and systematically analyzed. Research in the past has consistently found that emotional exhaustion is related to mental and physical health

Problem and Solution

Skills to Avoid Burnout

• Building control, Communicating effectively and delegating are key skills to avoid burnout
• Theoretical and empirical evidence sees Detached Concern as a significant process whereby human service professionals blend compassion with emotional distance in client interaction to prevent burnout. Detached Concern is a two-dimensional strategy integrating?empathic concern?as an emotional response towards clients and?detachment?as an emotional regulator which prevents human service professionals from becoming too highly involved with their clients at work. Both components work together in a dual and dynamic process on different levels, in the context of the emotion generating and regulation process model

• Effectively handle demands by prioritizing tasks and managing time effectively. For effective time management, it's important to set agenda, set realistic timelines, list the 10 biggest time gobblers and find out ways to eliminate them, scheduling most energy works at the peak hours when the energy levels are at your best. It's equally important to set limits by being honest, using positive nonverbal language, avoiding defensiveness, being brief, giving explanations instead of excuses, minimizing friction, and increasing the chances of a positive outcome by using the rule of 2+1+1 (Or Sandwich feedback). Survival response earlier was fight or flee (Short calls for physical response) but today’s survival response is complex and numerous calls for a nonphysical response.

Sandwich Feedback:

Use two positive statements, followed by one negative statement, followed by another positive statement.

Eg: If asked to work late, one can reply

"I am very much interested in this project and working with you, but I cannot work after-hours. But I will do this first thing tomorrow morning"

Always prepare for the marathons of life – By identifying energy zappers and counter attacking them using energy refreshers, by?visualizing, by getting support, by using humor, by becoming playful, by breathing fully.