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