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In today's high-pressure world, burnout has become an invisible pandemic. It disrupts our productivity, causes unrelenting exhaustion, and ultimately stops us from living our best lives. David Thorpe has authored 'How Burnout Stops' to provide a practical guide out of the burnout experience.
This book explores the link between our personal habits, work culture, and societal expectations, providing invaluable insights into how we can change our circumstances and reshape our lives.
The first part of 'How Burnout Stops' answers fundamental questions such as 'What is stress?' and 'What is burnout'. This section explores the underlying causes, suggests coping mechanisms, and provides pre-emptive strategies against stress and burnout.
Subsequently, the second part uncovers nearly a hundred potential stressors. This analysis discusses the possible symptoms they may induce, alongside offering preventive and mitigating strategies for both organizations and individuals.
'How Burnout Stops' is more than a self-help book. It's a call to action, an invitation to pause, reflect, and create a more balanced, fulfilling life. Whether you are on the brink of burnout, already there, or wish to help those around you, this book is your guide. Take back control of your time, energy and resources. Your journey to wellness begins with understanding how burnout stops.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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How Burnout Stops:
A Practical Guide to Stress Management,Burnout Prevention and Burnout Recovery
By David Thorpe
First published 2023 by Coolout
South Australia, Australia
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced ortransmitted without prior written permission from the publisher.
Text Copyright © Coolout, 2023
ISBN-13: 978-0-6485209-6-2
No self-help book is a replacement for getting professionaland qualified personal advice when it comes to mental health.
If there are emotions, feelings, or thoughts that you are
unable to process on your own, seek the help of a qualifiedmental health professional.
Table of Contents
Introduction
My personal experiences of burnout
Who is this book for?
What’s in this book?
Will this book be helpful?
Here is the good news
Chapter 1: How can we define burnout
Paula’s work kept her up at night
What is burnout?
What burnout is not
Why should individuals address burnout?
Why should organisations address burnout?
What’s in the rest of this book?
Chapter 1 in 100ish words
Chapter 2: What causes burnout?
Jonathon’s group project
Perspectives of burnout causes
Organisational perspective: Which organisations are more likely to experience burnout?
Individual perspective: Which people are more likely to experience burnout?
What are the signs of burnout?
What are the symptoms of burnout?
Chapter 2 in 100ish words
Chapter 3: This is how you prevent burnout
Identify the risks
What organisational strategies help prevent burnout?
A burnout prevention checklist for organisations
What individual strategies help prevent burnout?
A burnout prevention checklist for individuals
Chapter 3 in 100ish words
Chapter 4: This is how you remedy burnout
What strategies help for short-term coping with burnout symptoms?
What strategies help with long-term fixing burnout?
Chapter 4 in 100ish words
Chapter 5: This is how you help others who are experiencing burnout
Why should organisations care about burnout?
How do you talk to people experiencing burnout?
How do you promote healthy organisational cultures?
How do you provide support for those in your organisation experiencing burnout?
Healthy culture burnout checklist
Chapter 5 in 100ish words
Chapter 6: These are the actions of a person who wants to stop burnout
What did we learn today about preventing burnout?
What did we learn today about recovering from burnout?
What would a burnout-preventing organisation look like?
Part 2: Example guide of burnout symptoms, preventions, and remedies
Introduction
Workload and pace
Physical and mental demand
Risk and compliance
Role and task structure
Support and resources
Communication and feedback
Workplace environment and culture
Recognition, reward and fair treatment
Acknowledgements
Further Resources
Introduction
Speaking from personal experience, I know burnout is not fun. It makes us feel mentally and physically exhausted, leaving us drained. Just thinking about our work can fill us with dread, and even anxiety, as we wonder about the next source of stress.
My personal experiences of burnout
I first remember experiencing burnout during the completion of my Master thesis. I was one year into the two-year allowed time. In comparison to the experiences of other students, I had supervisors who were not as supportive of me. Additionally, I had a strong, driving desire to write the best thesis in history. These primary factors resulted in symptoms during that time, including insomnia, poor decision-making, and an overall sense of mental exhaustion, which ultimately affected my academic performance at that point in my candidature. My burnout relief only came in the knowledge that there was a clear end in sight to the situation. Other supervisors and faculty assured me that my feelings were completely "normal" and commonly experienced by higher-degree candidates and that most just "got over it”. At the time, this all struck me as strange. I could not agree that these feelings and experiences should have been considered normal and dismissed. Still, I did not know of any solutions to help myself or other fellow students I knew were experiencing burnout around me.
My second experience of burnout occurred in a workplace where there was a misalignment of values between the employees and a manager, which resulted in nearly all the employees under that manager leaving the organisation within a few months. Interestingly, it wasn't exhaustion that I felt when faced with the stressors caused by this manager’s actions; rather, it was a feeling of ineffectiveness and cynicism toward my work. The other employees and I felt we could not do the excellent work that clients were expecting from us because of this manager’s guidance.
During these burnout experiences, the big question for me was determining who was to blame. Was it all my fault, driven by my personal pursuits of success and unwillingness or inability to deal with the barriers to that success? Or were there systematic issues within the organisations that produced barriers? Did I need to try and ignore the issues and improve my yoga poses, or let leadership know every issue every day in the hope that the stressors would disappear? Alternatively, was the only solution to leave the organisation and try again, hoping the same barriers wouldn’t reappear at the next organisation? Below those questions, I had a fundamental question; How do I make my burnout stop?
My journey started towards finding the answer.
Who is this book for?
This book is intended for anyone who suspects they may be experiencing burnout. It is also for anyone who suspects someone they know is experiencing burnout and wants to know how to help them. Furthermore, this book is for organisational leaders who want a useful resource to help them address and solve potentially burnout-causing and stress-inducing issues that arise for their stakeholders as they do their work. When referring to ‘work’ in this book, I’m talking about any context of work you are involved in, including careers, family responsibilities, caring duties, volunteering, and everything in between. Burnout can be experienced by anyone, regardless of what they do.
Throughout this book, there is the underlying thesis that, to stop burnout, we need to understand stress and burnout causes within both the environment (typically an organisation, hence the frequent use of the term ‘organisation’, but maybe the nature of the work, such as being a carer) and the individual. Strategies and tools will be proposed for overcoming these causes at both the organisation and individual levels. Some resources swing one way or the other. Some place the full blame of stress on the individual, offering solutions such as yoga and mindfulness without considering that the environmental stressors may be too strong and deeply rooted to be overcome by individual strategies alone. Other resources significantly focus on the organisation and suggest that a shift in the mission statement, values, or workplace culture will be enough to combat a burnt-out workforce, without considering that some individuals will remain susceptible to burnout regardless of the workplace culture due to their inner beliefs.
That is why, in the best of worlds, this book is intended for both the organisation and the individual to work through together. Yes, getting everyone on board is much easier said than done, but it is in this joint effort that burnout is least likely to persist, with individuals and organisations working together towards reducing and mitigating stressors.
What’s in this book?
As I’m sure you’re aware, the advice comes thick and fast when one begins a journey into understanding stress and burnout. Like many psychological disorders and experiences, burnout is a subject of extensive research and ongoing debate. Even the concept of burnout is subject to disagreements and multiple definitions, depending on the resources you explore. This book aims to be as practical as possible, only commenting on these debates when necessary.
Instead, this book offers practical advice and strategies based on the latest understandings of stress and burnout. It discusses what individuals and organisations can do to help stop the experience of burnout and prevent it from returning. While brevity was a deliberate aim in producing this book, further resources will be suggested for if any specific area piques your interest.
You will also encounter stories throughout this book. Some stories are fictional illustrations of strategies, while others are based on real-life experiences of individuals and organisations working through burnout. To protect the anonymity of individuals and organisations, names have been changed.
Will this book be helpful?
I would like to establish a few expectations from the outset of your engagement with this book:
There is no standardised, one-size-fits-all solution for burnout. Solutions to burnout should directly address the specific causes of stress and burnout. The severity and consequence of a stressor will vary between individuals, so we need to be mindful not to invalidate people’s experiences. What may be a mild annoyance to one person could cause panic attacks in another. Therefore, as you read through this book, learn the principles and determine which stressors are most relevant to your situation. Then, you also need to determine which strategies may be the most suitable steps towards recovery. This leads to the second point of setting expectations.
No self-help book is a replacement for getting professional and qualified personal advice when it comes to mental health. As will be discussed, burnout is often recognised as a comorbidity of other mental health issues, such as clinical depression and clinical anxiety. Addressing these conditions is outside the scope of this book. The focus of this book is limited to the discussion of stressors
not
caused by chronic mental health or physical health issues.
Here is the good news
There are real solutions to the problem of burnout, and you can begin making changes within the hour to help you better cope with stressors. Burnout does not have to be a permanent part of your life. It does not need to be an issue that stops you from doing what you love most.
As discussed earlier and further explored throughout the rest of the book, this is How Burnout Stops:
Reducing environmental stressors.
Reducing individuals’ susceptibility to stressors.
I hope this book provides helpful and practical solutions, validating those of you experiencing stress and burnout and guiding you down a clear path towards experiencing engagement, well-being, and fulfilment in your life.
David Thorpe
June 2023
Chapter 1: How can we define burnout
There are two primary concepts I want to discuss in this first chapter:
What burnout is.
What burnout is not.
This ensures we are on the same page when we later discuss strategies for stopping burnout. Of course, we need to know exactly what we aim to stop. Equally importantly, we must put boundaries around our burnout discussion due to common burnout comorbidities beyond this book’s scope. At the end of this chapter, we’ll also briefly touch on why we should aim towards stopping burnout in the first place, both from individual and organisational perspectives. But first, let’s meet Paula.
Paula’s work kept her up at night
Paula: wife to Oscar, mum of two adult children, and business manager for a small charitable organisation. That summed up her daily life. She didn’t have any ‘technical’ burnout vocabulary to describe how she felt, yet she constantly felt under pressure, a feeling she knew couldn’t be normal.
She attributed the pressure she felt at work to her own expectations of good performance. Every week, she needed to wrangle enough volunteers to have the required resources for the weekly events her charity put on for those in need. She would have trouble falling asleep the night before each event, worried that the volunteers would not turn up. She felt a lack of volunteers would not only make her look bad in front of the people she was trying to help but also be a reflection on her abilities to keep reliable volunteers on the rosters.
Early in her career with the organisation, she had felt a wave of disappointment each time a volunteer ceased to continue. She wondered if she could have done something different to keep them on. But then it kept happening, volunteers leaving without much warning, and she didn’t feel she could stop it. Her struggles felt insignificant to the ‘real’ struggles of the people her organisation was serving, and this feeling prevented her from addressing her own stress.
She had heard people around her, even on her staff, say things like, "I feel stressed out” and “I feel burned out,” but she didn’t really understand when or where these terms could be used or if someone could self-diagnose themselves with ‘burnout’. Over the years, she had heard people in her organisation complain about cumbersome tasks, demanding managers, or irritable clients—real “problems” with tangible “causes”—. Still, she couldn’t identify the tangible cause of her own feelings. She could see other people in similar roles with similar problems at other organisations who seemed, for lack of a better word, “happy” about their work. That’s what she wanted.
Did Paula have burnout?
What is burnout?
I wish I could just state, “Burnout is X,” and leave it at that, but unfortunately, it is not that simple. There is even disagreement over the spelling of the word: Burnout? Burn-out? Burn out? Definitions can significantly differ between sources, so we must create a clear context for this book’s discussion. Parker, Tavella and Eyers spend much of a whole book defining burnout, concluding that it can be best defined by its symptoms1.
We may define burnout as a response to an individual’s chronic stressors. For those of you who believe you might be experiencing burnout, I hope you find this validating: If you have a persistent negative reaction to a stressor in your life, you are likely experiencing burnout. Paula’s insomnia and anxieties were her responses to the stressor of depending on volunteers to fulfil her assigned task and the responsibility of hosting the weekly charity event. We can therefore propose that Paula was experiencing burnout.
Also, we should note that burnout can refer to responses to stressors in any life situation, not just occupations, as suggested by some definitions (e.g., International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11)). Many have experienced burnout due to unique stressors from caregiving, strenuous family relationships, or even volunteer roles. Although much of this book discusses burnout in the context of occupational roles and tasks, the stressors and strategies discussed can often be applied to non-occupational situations.
We’ve established burnout is a response to stressors. What are stressors? Again, we will sidestep the debatable and diverse definitions of ‘stress’ and suggest that a stressor is something signalling danger or requiring action2. This definition allows us to explore why stressor reactions might differ from person to person. When Paula experiences symptoms from the stressor of not having enough volunteers, she is likely feeling a threat of danger—danger to her role and reputation as a successful charity business manager. In contrast, Harold, a business manager at a rival charity, faces the same stressor but sleeps soundly at night. He is aware that he will need to start making a marketing plan to recruit more volunteers the next day, but he doesn’t perceive the stressor as any danger. Charities lose volunteers all the time.
Many other examples of stressors are discussed in part two of this book, but here are a few:
Short deadlines for tasks.
Managers who constantly change their minds.
Demanding clients or patients.
Unrealistic expectations of work performance from managers.
Threats of funding reductions or even getting fired.
Regular contact with traumatic situations or trauma-affected people.
What is stressful in any of these examples and causes burnout in one person might be nothing more than a call to action for another and then be forgotten after being added to a future to-do list. That is why it is important not to invalidate or criticise someone experiencing burnout. What might seem like a mere annoyance to you might feel literally life-threatening to someone else. These differences likely result from individual temperaments, beliefs, and unique life experiences.
Again, part two provides many examples of reactions individuals might have to stressors, but here are a few3:
Emotional or physical exhaustion.
Cynicism about the effectiveness of work.
Apathy about work results.
Lack of empathy or care about clients or fellow workers.
Inability to focus on tasks.
Inability to make decisions about tasks.
Impulsivity and irritability towards others.
Just as stressors can cause varying degrees of responses, the actual response can also differ. We need to be careful not to jump to conclusions just because of the presence or absence of a specific burnout symptom.
What burnout is not
Burnout is not a one-off reaction to a single instance of stress. We might suggest that Paula’s initial disappointment when volunteers stopped participating was not an experience of burnout but undoubtedly still a stressful situation. Yes, she may have lost sleep that night, reflecting on why the volunteer left and even anxious over the future of her events. But, the next day, she might have taken comfort and felt relief when she could see other reliable volunteers still committed to the events, and her insomnia and anxiety symptoms ceased. But when the next volunteer left…and the next one…and the next one…her insomnia and anxiety became a daily occurrence, seemingly without an end in sight. She felt it was exhausting. Every day she came home drained and unmotivated to continue her work. Her relationship with her husband suffered as her thoughts were constantly on work and the challenges she anticipated for the next day.
Burnout is not just another term for depression or anxiety. These psychological disorders might coexist with burnout, but addressing stressors and burnout symptoms in a person experiencing clinical depression will not necessarily make the depression subside, and the same goes for anxiety. Treating these disorders might reduce one’s susceptibility to burnout, but suggesting treatments for these disorders is beyond this book’s scope. Depression can be misidentified as burnout when only burnout has been tested for, and that is why it is very important to consider any family history or symptoms of depression if burnout recovery strategies seem ineffective. Symptoms of depression can include:
Unattributable causes or stressors causing a feeling of sadness.
Suicidal thoughts.
Inability to be cheered up or distracted.
Notable changes in appetite and weight.
Loss of ability to feel pleasure.
If any of these symptoms are present, individuals should seek the help of a qualified psychology professional for diagnosis and assistance.
It is also important to note that the causality of comorbidity has not been definitively established. For example, burnout might lead to clinical depression or anxiety4. This information is not meant to instil anxiety but to emphasise the importance of not assuming burnout symptoms will simply disappear without being addressed. Individuals should seek help as soon as any stressors or symptoms begin to feel more than what they can handle on their own.
Burnout is also not just another term for exhaustion. Stressors can create an exhausting environment full of pressures, demands, and calls to action, requiring more time and focus than one has to offer. But if relief from exhaustion comes when the given project or task finishes or after a period of rest, it is unlikely to be an experience of burnout. However, if you return to work after a period of rest, are filled with a sense of dread, and feel exhausted before the day’s end, you might be experiencing burnout. Exhaustion, whether mental, physical, or emotional, is the most mentioned symptom of burnout in definitions. If someone experiences exhaustion that does not cease, even after reasonable rest, this might be evidence to consider more focused burnout recovery interventions.
A final note on this topic: Ultimately, it is not the responsibility of a manager or friend to shut down someone if they have expressed that they feel they are experiencing burnout. Instead, this should be the start of a judgement-free conversation focusing on identifying stressors and planning prevention, mitigation, or recovery strategies.
Why should individuals address burnout?
From the individual’s perspective, the answer to why they would want to address burnout is straightforward: experiencing burnout hinders a person from reaching their full potential due to the stressors acting as barriers that prevent them from performing or achieving to the best of their ability.
An individual experiencing burnout is looking for positive well-being; they seek to experience satisfaction and fulfilment in their tasks, roles, responsibilities, and work/life balance. How those broad experiences manifest will differ from person to person. Individuals have varying values, goals, and expectations for what they want their lives to look like, as well as unique stressors that require personalised attention and solutions. Combatting burnout for the individual involves addressing issues that obstruct the individual from achieving a life that aligns with their values, goals, and expectations.
It can be very hard for someone to vulnerably open up about what they believe is causing burnout in their life. If Paula were to try and describe her stressors to Harold, it is natural she might start self-criticising: ‘This really isn’t such a bad situation. There's no reason I should be experiencing burnout. You have to deal with the same stuff. The people we help have to deal with much worse.’
Conversely, saying, "I know how you feel; I went through similar…,” to someone who has shared their burnout experiences can potentially be invalidating, given the unique and varying factors causing their stress. More importantly, be mindful not to criticise or invalidate the individual by saying things like, “Chin up. You’ve got a great job. Just take a deep breath and keep going. It won’t last forever!” Individuals don’t want to address burnout merely to swat away a nuisance. Their stressors can feel life-threatening.
We address burnout because it isn’t a necessary part of any individual’s experience. There is no evidence to suggest that experiencing burnout is an essential aspect of any work or life scenario. Burnout is also not a badge of honour.
Why should organisations address burnout?
This is one of the more complex burnout questions. Why should organisations invest resources, including time, money, and energy, into preventing burnout?
One can make an anecdotal argument for the economic benefits of reducing the prevalence of burnout in the organisation. I'm sure we all know someone who had to leave their job because "I was just completely burned out.” However, we cannot make a blanket statement that investing in burnout prevention will necessarily reduce turnover rates. This is because burnout is driven by multiple factors, some of which are beyond the control of the organisation and are dependent on the individuals’ temperament, beliefs, unique life experiences and other external factors, such as sociocultural changes that may contribute to burnout. There is, however, a risk of increased turnover when systematic stressors within an organisation are not acknowledged or remedied.
Another economic argument is that having a burned-out workforce can lead to lower-quality outputs and reduced organisational effectiveness. This is due to burnout symptoms such as stakeholders’ sense of ineffectiveness, problems with focusing, and impaired decision-making. Essentially, even when burnout does not result in an organisation losing personnel, the quality of those personnel resources may deteriorate.
If an economic argument for addressing burnout is not persuasive enough, please consider the argument in the preceding section Why should individuals address burnout—but let’s frame it in the context of an organisation: Organisations should address burnout because it does not have to be a condition that they inflict upon their stakeholders. There is no evidence to suggest that causing burnout is a necessity of your organisational systems.
