Working With, Rather Than Just Trying to Conquer Burnout

The question: "What is burnout?" may seem obvious, since the term "burnout" has become part of everyday language, but it is still the topic of a great deal of empirical research.

Perhaps the best definition is that burnout is a prolonged response to chronic physical, emotional and interpersonal stressors at work. It is defined by three primary dimensions:
Exhaustion
Cynicism
Inefficacy

Burnout is more than just an individual experience of stress: it has to be seen in the larger organizational context of people's relationship with their work, and it has to be seen as a meaningful process that is trying to tell us something.

It is often the case that individuals miss all the signs in themselves. Some of the main symptoms are: Trouble sleeping; Worrying, particularly at night; Feeling unappreciated or "used" at work; Feeling less effective or competent than you used to; Easily becoming angry or irritated; A dread of going to work; A feeling of being overwhelmed; Recurrent stress-related physical symptoms like headaches, fatigue or back pain; Watching the clock and counting down toward the end of the work day; Rigidly applying rules without considering more creative solutions; Automatically expressing negative attitudes; Finding excuses to be absent from work. This is not the whole list, but just some of the most important symptoms. It is distressing that some people with burnout begin to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, as can happen with many life changing events, if people are not shown a way out of the maze.

There has been a lot of work on strategies to help individuals and organizations deal with this problem. Most have focused on ways to abolish the problem: to make it go away. Though that is a worthy objective, it is also important to understand the context, meaning and purpose of events in our lives, or otherwise we simply keep putting psychological bandaids on ever larger problems. So the best approach is to use work with physical, psychological and social difficulties to come up with solutions, but not to neglect the broader context of burnout: what does it mean for us personally and spiritualy?

This book is a superb example of how to approach that final piece. Pain, suffering and struggle are so often life's way of helping us to advance, to break out of the cocoons that restrain us. The trick is to know how to use these "negative" events to our advantage. Dina Glouberman's book is well written and full of wise and practical advice.

If you have any of the symptoms that I mentioned, then I would heartily recommend that you investigate what Dina has to say.

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Heartening and helpful

This book caught my eye in a bookstore in London last fall, and I found it very timely and helpful, so I'm delighted that it's now available in the U.S.

Most books on burnout are written from the perspective that burnout is a negative condition that results from our failure to handle life's demands effectively, so it's up to us to cure the personal problems that caused the burnout and restore our pre-burnout frame of mind. By contrast, Dr. Glouberman sees burnout as a wake-up call, an invitation to stop and re-evaluate what led to our burnout, and an opportunity to reinvent our lives.

In my experience, burnout often occurs because (as happened to the author herself) we're putting too much of our energy into activities that are peripheral or antithetical to what we do best -- e.g., the technical expert who's thrust into a management job, or the teacher who becomes an administrator. Rather than struggling frantically to recapture the enthusiasm that may not have been there in the first place, it's better to step back, evaluate what's right and wrong for us in the present situation, and consciously choose which path forward is best for us.

The author's exercises are helpful, but what I found most encouraging was her attitude. Most people with a strong work ethic find burnout shameful -- an admission that they "failed" to meet the demands of a presumably desirable situation. Dr. Glouberman's positive, optimistic approach to burnout is heartening: once you're able to get past the negative emotions associated with burnout, you're free to look at the situation with detachment, and to learn from it.

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Don't Settle for Burnout! There's more to life...

I attended one of Dr. Glouberman's seminars, and I found her book even more helpful--because I can practice the exercises and read the book for advice and inspiration as I need it. She has an insightful, poignant writing style with the wisdom of an expert who knows her audience and how to help them. Burnout is so commonplace that we accept it as normal, and Glouberman reminds us that life is about living with our whole hearts and finding our true selves.

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