JOB BURNOUT
Q: I used to love my job. Now I have a hard time getting myself even getting up and going in. I don’t know what is going on. Should I look for a new career?
A: It sounds like you may be experiencing job burnout. You already told me that you have to drag yourself to work. Do you find that you are critical and cynical at work? Are you irritable or impatient with your co-workers? Are you consistently productive or are you wondering why they keep you there? Are you using drugs or alcohol to get you through the day? Have your eating or sleeping patterns changed? Any physical complaints that you don’t have a cause for? These are all signs of job burnout.
There are many reasons for job burnout. You may no longer have your input valued there and feel a loss of control. Your job description may be unclear and you have responsibilities without the corresponding authority. Do you have to deal with difficult personalities such as an office bully, or a clique that tells you that you don’t have an appropriate personality for this office? If that is the case, you may also feel that your values no longer line up with the office values, you have a lack of social support there and your work is taking up too much of your actual time or too much of your mental energy. If you are not finding time out of work to enjoy yourself, you are at high risk of job burn out.
Job burnout can have many negative emotional and physical outcomes. I wont get into those here but be aware that the consequences to your health can be significant.
More important to our purpose here, job burnout does not have to signify the end of your career. First of all, with the support of a counsellor such as myself, you can identify the source of your burnout and manage the stressors that are contributing to it. A counsellor-therapist can also help you to evaluate your options when considering new careers, and help you to manage the office bullies so that you do not feel on constant high alert. You can also learn to find a better life-work balance and begin to enjoy yourself again. Exercise and sleep are the last two points that I will mention as an integral part of the job burnout repair package.
Remember, you work to live; not live to work, and If you are what you do, what are you when you don’t? When your work has become such a negative force in your life that you do not enjoy your home life, something is wrong and needs to be changed before you do burn out.
