12 degrees of professional overheating

Simply saying, "I'm sick" or "I'm tired" does not give much information. What are you sick of - a mild cold or a severe virus? Or something worse? And how tired? From what? Tired as "I did not stop at work today" or as "the parent of a baby who last slept in October".

The same is the situation with "I suffer from professional burnout". It varies from "I can not wait to get away from the office at last" to the much heavier "I need at least 6 months to do absolutely nothing and not to phone anyone."

Without a strict definition, overheating is seen as a professional phenomenon that affects all aspects of the person - physiological, emotional, behavioral, including suicidal mood, stroke, heart attack, colitis, ulcer, gastritis, obesity, migraine, asthma, sterility. The main aspect of this syndrome is the increased sense of intellectual, emotional and physiological exhaustion.

Nobody is protected from professional overheating, but most often it is seen among professions such as policemen, teachers, journalists, doctors, scientists, and others. According to a survey of the National Association of General Practitioners, 70% of doctors in Bulgaria suffer from this syndrome.

But as we said it is not the same for everyone. The German psychologist Herbert Freundberger manages to identify the 12 stages to professional overheating.

1. Thirst for self-proclaiming. It is demonstrating an obsession with the work itself. One is thirsty to show what his professional abilities are and how much he can achieve. Takes all sorts of tasks, aims at their rapid execution.

2. Healthy work. It is impossible to exclude from work mode and to rest qualitatively. Even in out-of-hours time, emails are scanned, day work is being prepared, you're preparing for tomorrow, without having the power to break away from the workflow.

3. Neglecting personal needs. You do not sleep, you do not eat enough and varied food, you do not communicate very much with people who are not connected in any way with your work, and when that happens you talk to them about what to do.

4. Displacement of conflicts. Issues are rejected. There are feelings of threats, panic, and nervous attacks. You make the anger of your relatives. The feeling of depression is intensifying.

5. Revaluation of Values. Your own system of values ​​is distorted. Friends and family stay in the background for one day when you have time. Hobbies start to make you senseless. The main focus in your life is on the job. All this leads to ever deeper socialization.

6. Denial of the problem. Killing cynicism and aggression. You consider your colleagues to be stupid, lazy, petty and undisciplined. You enter into unnecessary conflicts. You have the feeling that time is not enough for you and constantly presses you, but you refuse to admit that you have taken up too much work. And anyone who contradicts you is in danger of scandal.

7. Retirement. You communicate with fewer people. You do not pay attention to your loved ones, and they, in turn, are tired of your attitude towards them and have stopped looking for you in particular. On an emotional basis, everything starts to gradually lose meaning and often goes to alcohol or drugs to overcome stress.

8. Changes in behavior. The deepening feeling that you are not coping with your life leads to changes in behavior. The feeling of belonging is lost, which is replaced by more cynicism. At this stage, most of your relatives are worried more than serious about your behavior.

9. Depersonalization. We no longer perceive ourselves or others as valuable. We stop assessing our own needs as important. There are thoughts of suicide. According to Freundberger, we go through the ninth phase of burnout, we can no longer get out of ourselves.

10. Feeling of an inner void. Total lack of spirituality, often filled with alcohol, sex, drugs, thirst for adrenaline, and activities to make you feel alive.

11. Depression. A sense of insecurity, a sense of being lost, alone and exhausted, and the future is dark and dark. Thoughts of suicide are growing stronger.

12. The final phase of professional burnout. Total physical and mental collapse. After this step, you need at least a few years to recover mentally.

As you can see, the symptoms of burnout vary from mild but alarming behavioral changes that we are likely to face every day to work to a mental breakdown. Yet it is important, when we feel something like this, to ask if we need to rest and rethink.

The best ways to fight overheating are precisely this - more rest and spending enough time off work. Do we feel that it becomes difficult for us not to think about what is waiting for us in the office, so we have to think about rest? Otherwise, we run the risk of falling into a grim spiral that does nothing well.

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Photo: Getty Images

Thank you for reading it - SuggeElson