BURNOUT: SYNDROME OF BURNING ONESELF OUT AT WORK (SBW)

Many researchers have been focus in clinical manifestations of stress or negative stress and found a strong correlation between psychosomatic pathology and the quality life in different areas like social, family, academic and work in people who experience stress. When people are stressed, it is because there is an overexertion of their organisms to get a good psychological and behavioral performance. Stressors have 5 characteristics: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Its a threat or demand It must to be able to limit of the elasticity of the body If you dont fight with it, it could worn you out you in a period of the time. You have to know that this damage maybe not be dangerous It could be a huge demand or not.

There for, your cognitive, emotional and behavioral processes are very important in how you confront these situations. When I talk about confront what I mean is the way that you use your cognitive and behavioral process to control this situations. This confront has 2 parts: 1. Your capacity to manipulate the context ( when you fight directly with the problem) 2. Your capacity to control your emotional response. SOME DEFINITIONS The experience of stress is an individual experience; it will be different situations or context; for example work may cause a high level of stress in a person and may not do the same in someone else with the same job. Lack of balance between the demands and your capacity to deal with them produces a chronic job interpersonal and emotional stress when you are expose to events that cause stress in a continued period of time. Chronic job stress is the principal cause of Burnout and it is considered a syndrome because it is a group of recurrent symptoms and signs that indicates pathology. Burnout is a form of psychosocial harassment and its different to mobbing; because this is the psychological harassment between two workers: stalker and harasser. You cannot refer to burnout only when you have a heavy workload, or when you are too tired; the reason for this is that you can also experience burnout when the workload is not as heavy due to the stretch correlation with the lack of emotional and cognitive motivation. Burnout is a work related syndrome; it appears when your perception indicates that there is a difference between your effort and the results.

Its characteristics are: Emotional exhaustion lack of energy keeping or maintaining Distance with people who work with you or with your customers Feelings of Incompetence Poor professional self Rejection to work And psychological symptoms like irritability, anxiety, sadness, low self esteem.

Maslach and Jackson in 1981 said that Burnout is a chronic stress syndrome in professionals who work a large amount of time and in intense activity with people, customers or patients who depended of them. The answers of this chronicle stress are: Emotional exhaustion Depersonalization Feelings of Poor efficacy

Psychologist can evaluate this syndrome but, they should not waist time trying to find all the symptoms a person has; it is more important to find out if the person has the characteristics needed to confront and deal with these situations. In different researches, doctors found common symptoms of burnout: In a Somatic level: chronic fatigue, frequently headache, backache, neck and muscular pain, insomnia, shortness of breath, gastrointestinal disorders, hypertension, etc. In a behavioral level: suspicious and paranoid behavior, inflexibility, stiffness, incapacity to relax, superficial relationship, cynicism, incapacity to focus at work, aggressive behavior towards customers, consumption of psychoactive drugs, tranquilizers, etc. In an emotional level: Emotional exhaustion, hostility, irritability, hatred, difficulty to control or express emotions, boredom, anxiety, depressive feeling, etc. To cognitive level: low self esteem, low feelings of efficacy, etc. Today the intervention is interdisciplinary (doctor or psychiatrist, clinic psychologist, social workers and companies. Their suggestions are: To Found different organizational strategies Use Group strategies with the workers Individual psychotherapy.

At the individual psychotherapy the specialists tries to teach how to find abilities and different attitudes to help fight with these stressful situations in areas like job, relationships, family and society. It is very important to find the objectives of your life, your job, work for more self-control, identify the emotions, to know how and when to say NO, to learn to take the control of your time, to take vacations. It is important to have preventive strategies like flexibility and variety in the tasks we give workers at workplaces, also helps to have group tasks and give feedback periodically.