Characteristics

Burnout starts very slowly, which also gives the opportunity to get to recognize the more subtle symptoms. What are these ´subtle´ symptoms?
Below you can find some clustered per area:

Stress

  • Getting home tired in the evening
  • More than before thinking about work when at home
  • Insufficiently recuperated in the morning
  • Difficulties to arrange things in detail well
  • Restlessness and puzzling things over and over
  • Lying awake at night thinking about work
  • Easily irritated
  • Having the sensation to be lived.


Workload

  • Feeling that they expect too much of you
  • Too many tasks you cannot finish
  • Feeling the need to call in sick to be able to recover and relax
  • Having the sensation that you need to deliver more than you are capable off.


Pressure at work

  • Feeling that you are alone with your responsibilities
  • Work is getting emotionally loaded
  • You worry about your job and/or your income
  • Having the sensation that you cannot live up to the expectation of your manager or your clients
  • Not being able to delegate or set your boundaries


Cooperation

  • You experience too little support by your manager and/or colleagues
  • You take offence at the way things go at work
  • You notice the competition and jealousy between colleagues
  • You experience lack of appreciation and being seen at work
  • You do not feel involved with decisions concerning your job
  • You receive negative feedback and have difficulties handling it.


Work-life balance

  • You feel pressure in your private life because of your work
  • More and more often you take work home to finish it
  • You work also in the weekends and at nights
  • You barely have time for hobbies or social life
  • You are not looking forward to go back to work and worry about it a lot at home
  • Private problems effect your work
  • You feel like you are failing as well at work as at home.


Personal perception

  • You feel insecure
  • You experience anxiety
  • You have a low self esteem
  • You have the sensation that you do not control the situation anymore, although you would like to
  • You experience hardly pleasure and flow in your work
  • You feel that your attempts to change the situation are meaningless

 

A short stress test

  1. Do you have troubles sleeping? (Difficulties getting asleep, waking up too early, having nightmares, etc.)
  2. Do you have diffuse physical pains/feelings? (Muscle tension, neck tension, stomach or headaches, other pains, nauseous, problems with the blood circulation, etc.)
  3. Is your level of concentration lower than normal?
  4. Are you emotionally less stable as before? (Apathetic, raised, down, etc.)
  5. Do you have difficulties thinking or remembering things, or are you being less perceptive? (Obliviousness, heavy on the hand, etc.)
  6. Do you experience difficulties to relax?
  7. Do your thoughts keep spinning around and are you having troubles stopping them?

If you have answered yes to three or more questions, I advise you to have a closer look to your situation. You can always contact me for the quick scan stress or an even more extensive stress test.