The Value of Therapy for Recovering from Workplace Burnout
Job burnout is incredibly common in the US. A 2023 survey by the American Psychological Association found that 57% of workers experience stress that leads to burnout symptoms. Burnout is not a personal failing; rather, it’s a phenomenon caused by chronic workplace stressors that carries tangible health consequences. In this post, we’ll discuss what burnout is, how to identify the signs, and how therapy for job burnout can promote recovery and growth.
Understanding Job Burnout
Job burnout is typically defined by three main components: exhaustion, cynicism, and personal inefficacy. Exhaustion describes physical and emotional exhaustion that makes it difficult to function at work, such as feelings of depletion. Cynicism refers to a detached and negative attitude toward others at work, including clients. Lastly, professional inefficacy is a reduced sense of effectiveness at work, as well as declining self-esteem.
While many people can benefit from therapy for workplace burnout, burnout is not considered a mental illness. Instead, it results from prolonged exposure to interpersonal stressors at work.
Burnout can affect people far beyond the workplace. Burnout has notable impacts on physical and mental health, including predicting cardiovascular problems, pain-related disability, and insomnia. Moreover, it can reduce job performance and cause employees to leave jobs, resulting in high organizational turnover.
Although workplace burnout shares features with depression, it is often seen as a separate experience. However, it is associated with depression. Burnout is also tied to anxiety. High job demands increase anxiety, which makes a person more susceptible to burnout, creating a difficult cycle to break.
Burnout Signs and Risk Factors
Burnout often stems from a mismatch between someone’s needs and what their work environment provides. There are several job characteristics that are risk factors for burnout. These include having an imbalance in the workload, a lack of autonomy at work, a lack of positive feedback, a lack of community, an absence of fairness, and a conflict between someone’s personal values and their organizational goals.
High-stress professions are often associated with burnout. Some professions with the highest rates of burnout include program or project management, health care services, community and social services, quality assurance, and education. In some of these fields, such as health care, burnout can carry a stigma that makes it harder for professionals to access the support they need.
Burnout isn’t limited to traditional work settings. Job burnout can also occur among individuals caring for a friend or family member facing medical conditions; in these cases, it is called caregiver burnout. University students at schools such as Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) also may face burnout, especially when balancing work with academic studies. This form of burnout is called academic burnout. In addition, people facing ongoing relational problems or multiple stressors over an extended period of time may also be at risk of burnout.
The Maslach Burnout Inventory is a common assessment used to judge people’s risk of burnout. Beyond the items in this questionnaire, other symptoms of burnout include fatigue, apathy, mood changes, changes in eating and sleeping habits, headaches, and other physical symptoms.
How Therapy Helps
Many people with burnout ignore their stress symptoms—or are so used to them that they do not notice their high stress levels. However, ignoring workplace stress can cause it to worsen over time. It’s important to seek support for burnout, such as working with a therapist who specializes in burnout.
While the causes of workplace burnout are often environmental, therapy for burnout can be invaluable for navigating the recovery process. For example, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for burnout has proven effective for reducing symptoms of burnout among health care professionals.
Some people may be able to function with burnout, while others may experience more trouble at work because of their symptoms. Therapists can help with both of these situations, providing immediate support as well as helping people make long-term changes to prevent future burnout, which has a high chance of recurring if nothing is done.
Here are a few of the ways a trained psychotherapist may help with burnout:
Stabilization: People who are struggling to function with burnout can benefit from therapy to help them feel an increased sense of stability in their life, such as by improving their diet, increasing their daily movement, and strengthening their social support networks, with therapy such as CBT for burnout.
Control: Therapy may help people achieve a greater sense of control over the situation and set boundaries that can reduce burnout. For instance, it can help people identify values and motivations that might conflict with workplace demands, or help people navigate decisions surrounding career changes.
Self-compassion: Therapists can help people learn to have greater self-compassion and prioritize their own needs. For instance, CBT can help people identify patterns of thinking such as perfectionism that feed into burnout.
Mental health support: Therapy can help people reduce their stress levels to give them the space to recover from burnout. Therapists can also treat non-work-related mental health challenges such as depression, anxiety, or substance abuse that may coexist with or feed into burnout.
Growth: Though burnout is often difficult to navigate, some people who recover from it report positive changes in their lives, such as a greater awareness of what they hope to prioritize in life. Therapists can help promote this growth.
Conclusion
Job burnout, characterized by exhaustion, cynicism at work, and low self-efficacy, is common. It occurs in a variety of fields, from health care to education, and among caregivers and students. Though it can have health consequences, seeking out a therapist specializing in burnout can help people recover from burnout and achieve personal growth.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Is burnout the same thing as depression?
While burnout and depression have some overlap, they are often considered distinct. Burnout is specifically tied to work-related stressors, whereas depression is a clinical mental health condition. However, untreated burnout can increase the risk of developing mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety.
2. Can I get burnout if I’m not currently employed?
Yes. Caregiver burnout occurs when individuals face prolonged stress while caring for a loved one. Additionally, students can experience academic burnout, and individuals facing chronic relational conflict or multiple life stressors can also experience burnout.
3. How does a therapist for burnout help?
A therapist can help people achieve stabilization in cases of severe burnout, allow them to recover from burnout, and help them make long-term changes to avoid future recurrence of burnout. These changes include re-evaluating workplace autonomy as well as internal factors like perfectionism that can contribute to burnout.