Burnout, also known as “burned-out worker syndrome,” was described in 1974 by Herbert Freudenberger as the feeling of failure and exhausted existence resulting from an overload of demands on workers’ energy, personal resources, or spiritual strength.
What is work stress?
For their part, Cristina Maslach and Susan Jackson defined it some years later as a behavioral manifestation of work stress, understanding it as a three-dimensional syndrome characterized by:
- Emotional exhaustion: defined by physical, psychological fatigue or a combination of both. It corresponds to the feeling of not being able to give more of oneself to others.
- Depersonalization: understood as the development of negative, distant, and cold feelings, attitudes, and responses towards other people, often accompanied by increased irritability and loss of motivation.
- The feeling of low personal accomplishment: characterized by disillusionment and failure to find meaning in professional activity, leading to work avoidance, absenteeism, tardiness, and even job abandonment.
Chronic work stress and emotional disorder
Thus, we are facing an emotional disorder derived from an inadequate defense response to chronic work stress, produced in turn by a discrepancy between job expectations and the reality of working life, in an environment of excessive tension, or with overtly conflictive work relationships.
Phases of chronic work stress
Similarly, it is a process that gradually establishes itself in the person, starting with a phase of enthusiasm, followed by a stagnation phase in which cognitive dissonance begins. In turn, this stagnation phase is followed by a stage of frustration and anxiety, which eventually gives way to the phase of apathy and frustration, thus reaching the last phase, which gives the syndrome its name: burnout.
Although the factors influencing the development of chronic work stress syndrome vary, the most common ones would be:
- Overload of responsibility, excessive demand for energy or emotional commitment to work.
- Conflict, ambiguity, and role overload at work.
- Lack of leadership, autonomy, feedback, and social support.
- Idealistic individuals with dedicated, altruistic professionals and utopian ideas.
- Type A personalities, characterized by traits such as external locus of control, perfectionism, high empathy, or competitiveness, among others.
Therapeutic intervention for chronic work stress
As a consequence of all this, the worker suffers from cognitive deterioration based mainly on frustration and professional disillusionment, which ultimately leads to affective and attitudinal deterioration. It is at this moment that a therapeutic intervention is required to help the person reduce both their symptoms and their effects. This therapeutic intervention will consist of:
- Personal evaluation of the case to understand the organizational and personal variables affecting it, while determining the current state of symptomatology and the phase it is in.
- Establish objectives to reduce symptomatology and recover emotional, cognitive, social, and behavioral functions.
- Determine the action plan to be followed based on the proposed objectives.
- Carry out activities that allow for the generation of new habits.
- Monitor the case to observe its evolution and the achievement of objectives.
Likewise, to intervene in a case of burnout, psychologist María Ángeles Pérez Chamizo suggests resorting to the following tools, which have been shown to have positive effects in burnout intervention:
Physical exercise for work stress
It is known that sport is one of the activities with the greatest positive impact on people’s health; therefore, it is an ideal activity for the treatment of burnout as it contributes to:
- Increase neurogenesis in the hippocampal dentate gyrus
- Improve glutaminergic synapse in the hippocampus
- Reduce oxidative stress related to neurodegeneration
- Increase neurogenesis
- Intensify BDNF in the hippocampus
- Produce more serotonin
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
With this type of psychotherapy focused on the link between thought and behavior, it has also been observed to produce modulations in the functioning of limbic and cortical regions (hippocampus, dorsal ventral and medial frontal cortex, and dorsal cingulate), thus showing that the effects produced by stress can be compensated.
When applying Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, the main focus will be on rational ideas, schemas, behaviors, and automatisms that mediate between stimuli and emotions.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Among third-generation therapies, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy has shown benefits in psychological flexibility, thus helping to create new ways of behaving, different from those previously held and which had led to this stress situation.
Meditation for stress
Most of the studies being developed to prevent and intervene in burnout cases involve the use of meditation.
The advantages of resorting to this practice are that it not only reduces amygdala activity, thereby deactivating habitual perceptual circuits derived from discomfort experiences established in the person; but it also activates new circuits that allow for a different interpretation of the same reality (greater response control, fewer catecholamines and corticosteroids, stronger immune system).
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the most used technique, especially at the beginning, as it consists of focusing attention on an object for a theoretically unlimited period. In this way, awareness of the present reality is kept alive, maintaining focus on the immediate experience.