It can be challenging to define burnout. Not considered to be a medical condition, the definition of burnout, as stated by the APA Dictionary of Psychology, is “physical, emotional or mental exhaustion, accompanied by decreased motivation, lowered performance and negative attitudes towards oneself and others.”

What is burnout?

Typically, burnout is brought on by drawn out or chronic stress, resulting in mental, physical or emotional fatigue. You know that it is happening when you experience emotional exhaustion, feel overwhelmed and are not able to handle ongoing responsibilities. Consider all of those responsibilities that you have in your personal and professional life. Although issues at work are the primary cause, it can also affect other facets of life including parenting, caring for others, and intimate relationships.

Burnout is a type of fatigue brought on by a constant feeling of being overwhelmed. It can occur when you are emotionally depleted, overburdened, and unable to keep up with life’s daily demands. Burnout has a detrimental impact on all aspects of life, affecting your home, job, and social life. It can drain your energy, leaving you feeling like you have nothing left to give.

Is it burnout or stress?

Stress is a normal reaction to regular or unusual stresses. It can occasionally last for a prolonged period and develop into a chronic condition. Burnout could result from this, although not necessarily. Being under constant stress doesn’t necessarily indicate that a person is being burned out.

People who lead stressful lives may experience enormous strain to the point of feeling drained, burned out, and not able to cope. Mental, physical and emotional difficulties might also be caused by stress at work. Possible contributing factors include feeling constantly overworked, continually dealing with deadlines, or having disputes with coworkers. A strong commitment to the job to the point of disregarding their own needs can also be to blame.

Many people use the words “stress” and “burnout” interchangeably. Although they can be similar, there are some significant differences. For example, stress related to a specific incident is something we all experience occasionally in life.

In contrast, burnout is a reaction to prolonged, extreme stress and results in a person feeling emotionally and physically exhausted, disillusioned, disengaged, and less effective. Burnout can lead to mental health problems including severe depression if it is not treated.

Burnout is the result of unmanaged and accumulated stress over time. Consider burnout to be the bigger, meaner big brother of stress. Generally, burnout needs stress to be present, but stress can exist without being burned out.

How is burnout different from depression?

Depression has some of the same symptoms of burnout, including fatigue, being despondent, and poor performance. Depression frequently manifests as a low sense of self-worth, feeling hopeless, and having suicidal thoughts. These are not considered to be the normal signs of burnout. Depression does not always accompany burnout. However, burnout may make someone more susceptible to developing depression.

Are you at risk for burnout?

Let’s take a reality check. Some predictors of burnout are if you:

• Feel as though you never have a good day
• Share an opinion that what you are doing is not worth the effort
• Suffer consistently by being too tired to do anything
• Consider the tasks you have to complete at work are mind-numbingly boring or overwhelming
• Think that nothing you do is worthwhile
• Sense that no one appreciates all the work that you do
• Are experiencing a loss of motivation

Burnout symptoms

It’s no secret that getting out of bed in the morning is not the easiest task of the day. Most of us experience days when we struggle to get out of bed. Although your pillow may be filled with down and your comforter is warm and cuddly, the effort could be due to being overwhelmed or unappreciated, whether at home or at work.

Burnout develops gradually. Like obesity, vision problems or back aches, it can take time to develop as it slowly sneaks up on you. At first, the symptoms and signs are minimal, but they get worse over time.

Consider the early signs as warnings indicating something is wrong and has to be remedied. You can avoid a serious breakdown if you pay attention and properly manage your stress. Ignoring the signs can lead to burn out.

Emotional symptoms

• Feeling of failure and insecurity
• Feeling defeated, stuck, and helpless
• Feeling alone and detached from everything
• No motivation
• A more pessimistic and cynical view
• Diminished sense of accomplishment and life satisfaction

Your emotional wellbeing can be impacted contributing to an increased likelihood for depression, anger, irritability and anxiety.

Physical symptoms

• Most of the time feeling worn out and exhausted
• Sick often, weakened immunity
• Pain in muscles, recurring headaches
• Change in eating habit
• Change in sleeping habits that bring about fatigue

 Physical wellness is impacted by burnout due to the excessive stress in your body. Your physical wellbeing can be impacted contributing to an increased likelihood for heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, respiratory issues, and likelihood for death before age 45.

Cognitive symptoms

• Difficulty paying attention when someone speaks
• Difficulty concentrating on a task
• Impaired short-term memory
• Impaired judgement

Your cognitive wellbeing can be impacted contributing to an increased likelihood for making mistakes at work and poor motor coordination.

Behavioral symptoms

• Withdrawing from personal and professional obligations
• Excluding significant others from your life
• Putting things off or taking longer to do them
• Using coping mechanisms like alcohol, drugs, or food
• Taking frustration and anger out on others
• Not going to work or working shorter hours

Your behavioral or social wellbeing can be impacted contributing to an increased likelihood for alcohol or substance abuse, isolation from friends and family, irresponsibility with finances, anger towards family members and inability to fulfill responsibilities. Professionally, you may experience a loss of job satisfaction, an inability to do your job well, or withdraw from colleagues.

How to Recover from Burnout

We have another article on this site that covers ways to recover from burnout when you are exhibiting some of the symptoms mentioned above. Briefly, they include:

• Addressing your mental health
• Taking breaks throughout the day, especially when you are at work
• Exercise on a regular basis
• Find things to do that you enjoy

It is possible to recover from burnout, even though you may feel completely overwhelmed. It takes some effort and planning to create healthy habits, a good daily routine, and maintain boundaries so that you can be successful both at work and in your personal life.

Regardless of your field or your level of expertise, you will most probably meet someone in the workplace who is grieving or traumatized. You may know someone who has experienced vicarious trauma, traumatic events, or who is experiencing professional grief. For that matter, you may have been impacted by grief or trauma while doing your job.

If you are a leader, you may be seeking resources and strategies for organizational resilience to increase productivity and retention in your workplace. You realize that during the pandemic, volunteers and staff are experiencing burnout, compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, and professional grief. As you learn about being trauma informed, it is essential that for organizational resilience to take place, you are also vicarious trauma informed and grief informed.

Build Organizational Resilience by Being Trauma Informed, Vicarious Trauma Informed, and Grief Informed

Trauma Informed Organization

The first pillar of organizational health and resilience is trauma informed care, a framework that supports an understanding of the impact of trauma on the survivor and how to provide support while avoiding re-traumatization. To mitigate the impact of trauma, strategies that are well supported and found to be effective can include:

• Service provider training in psychological trauma, signs, and symptoms, and safety
• Trauma specific practices: screening, assessment, and therapeutic interventions
•  Staff training on the stress response, strengthening personal resilience, and cultural and gender sensitivity

A trauma-informed approach requires an understanding that those who are exposed to trauma material and traumatic experiences can experience vicarious trauma.

Vicarious Trauma Informed Organization

The second pillar of organizational resilience is vicarious trauma informed care, a framework that supports an understanding of the impact of being exposed to trauma material.  Vicarious trauma-informed care is an approach to the delivery of mental health care to professionals or volunteers to manage trauma exposure. Direct or indirect exposure to traumatic material, vicarious traumatic stress, and perceived lack of organizational support affect staff’s well-being (Ham, et. al., 2021). Moreover, vicarious traumatization has a long lasting impact on the employee or volunteer’s world view due.

Therefore, leaders need to create an organizational culture of understanding of the impact of vicarious trauma, provide peer support networks to employees, and demonstrate ways to show employees that they are valued. This can be accomplished by respectful communication with a focus on the importance of staff health, strengthening employee protective factors, wellness, and wellbeing.

A vicarious trauma-informed organization recognizes mindfulness interventions (generic wellness) that include training on self-care, healthy diet, meditation, yoga, and body movement. Recommendations can be made about recreational programs, those activities that can be done after work, indoors or outdoors, alone or with others (e.g., music, art, sports). Suggestions can include alternative medicine (integrative/complimentary) therapy: acupuncture, homeopathy, naturopathy, and traditional Chinese medicine (e.g., acupuncture).

Four Vicarious trauma informed interventions that show promising findings are:

1. Trauma-specific supervision: Supervisors review signs, symptoms, and risks for STS and VT, assists in emotional re-regulation related to indirect trauma exposure, identifies cognitive distortions and changes in world view, builds resilience, and monitors progress.
2. Vicarious trauma policies: Write supportive policies into employee handbooks that enhance high performance work practices and a shared vision to create a better working environment for those who are vicariously traumatized
3. Helpful resources for vicarious trauma organizations: Reduce treatment barriers, human resources,  EAPs, mental health professionals, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and online support.
4. Psychoeducation: General wellness psychoeducation can include professional stress management seminars and work-life balance initiatives. Occupational skill development psychoeducation can include professional skills trainings on violence, trauma, abuse, neglect, and grief.

Grief Informed Organization

The third pillar of organizational resilience is grief informed care, a framework that supports an understanding of the art of coping with grief. Palette of Grief® is defined as emotional, physical, cognitive, behavioral, and spiritual reactions due to a traumatic loss. Through the art of understanding of ambiguous loss, disenfranchised grief, Prolonged Grief Disorder, and mourning, we learn ways to manage loss. Strategies to mitigate the impact of personal or professional grief, and that are well supported and found to be effective include understanding:

• Palette of Grief® symptoms
• Prolonged Grief Disorder
• Disenfranchised grief after a suicide, homicide, drug misuse death, COVID
• Ambiguous Loss
• Complicated grief in the workplace
• Strategies recommended by contemporary mourning theories

If trauma is a major global health problem, so is vicarious trauma and grief. Therefore, it is important to invest in vicarious trauma informed and grief informed training and research, and to develop an effective strategy of personal or professional grief management. With adequate training to manage vicarious trauma and grief in the workplace, organizations can promote and create sustainable wellness at work.