The burnout effect returns before the holidays

Job insecurity is one of the leading causes of anxiety in today’s society, largely exacerbated by the economic and health crisis that increases the demands of companies through increased workload and job instability and lack of control over it. All this can end up burning the worker, generating job burnout .

Work anxiety

The high demands of the environment and limited personal resources generate levels of stress that not everyone is able to cope resulting in a greater feeling of more uncontrollable anxiety. This emotional impact on the person resulting from work stress in many cases requires a treatment of anxiety by a specialist to control the adverse effects.

Some of these effects are:

• Physical effects : muscle tension, headache, tachycardia, shortness of breath, tremors or sweating.
• Emotional effects : irritability, impatience, lack of concentration, negativity or lack of interest and demotivation.
• Behavioral effects : lack of appetite; drug and drug abuse; sleep problems, acceleration, mental blockages or negative influences on our personal relationships.

Difference between anxiety and burnout

To learn to differentiate between anxiety and burnout we must first know what anxiety is since burnout could be considered a different degree to it.

Anxiety is a psychophysiological process by which our body warns us of situations that could be dangerous for us by anticipating the fact to put our body in a state of activation and prevention both cognitively, physiologically and motor to respond to a possible threat. . When this concern or fear for a future event is created above reality or with an unusual intensity it causes a loss of control of the situation that favors situations of constant avoidance and discomfort that create a vicious loop in the anxious person generating a bigger problem.

What is burnout?

When the reasons for our fears and insecurities are related to work stressors (or educational, sports, personal…) that last over time and become chronic within that environment causes in the person a higher level of anxiety called burnout or Burning syndrome that mainly affects the person suffering from it emotionally.

Burnout is a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and low personal fulfillment resulting from this accumulation of work stressors.

According to Maslach and Jackson (1982), burnout is configured in three dimensions by these factors:

• Emotional and physical exhaustion . There is an absence of energy, enthusiasm and a feeling of lack of personal resources to deal with situations. This generates high frustration and tension for the worker when he realizes that he is not able to expend energy in the right direction.
• Depersonalization and dehumanization . When this happens the burned person treats people in his work environment (customers, suppliers, colleagues, etc.) as if they were objects. They show a certain insensitivity to work, cynicism and a lack of emotional responsibility for others, which leads to constant criticism of the work environment.
• Low work performance. The worker begins to self-evaluate in a negative way. There is a feeling of unhappiness and dissatisfaction with their professional development so they begin to experience a feeling of low professional competence and job success that affects their ability to interact with people for this low motivation.

This emotional fatigue , which carries with it even physical discomfort such as headaches and sleep disturbances as well as difficulty concentrating and attending seems more relevant just before the holiday periods. The accumulation of stress and the anticipation of the holidays themselves generate even more overactivity on people with work burnout problems in times close to rest.

Anxiety and vacation

This is because the very perception of rest and its proximity causes greater tensions to reach that limit without breaking. It is as if the need for rest is aroused, but as it is not yet real and must continue with the work, the levels of depersonalization of the same increase since the only thing that anticipates the person is the rest outside his work environment. During these near-peak stress peaks, there is an increase in anxiety-related work losses.

References

Maslach , C. and Jackson SE (1982). B urnout in health professions: A social psychological analysis in SANDERS, G. and SULS, J. (Eds.). Social psychology of health and illness . Hillsdale , NJ: Erlbaum