Manage stress, avoid burnout, and stay inspired

The symptoms of burnout are clustered in five categories.

Physical symptoms include

• Fatigue,
• Physical exhaustion,
• Disturbed sleep, and
• Somatic complaints.

Emotional symptoms include

• Irritability,
• Anxiety,
• Depression,
• Guilt, and
• A sense of helplessness.

Behavioral symptoms include

• Aggression,
• Callousness,
• Pessimism,
• Defensiveness,
• Cynicism, and
• Substance abuse.

Work-related symptoms include

• Quitting one’s job,
• Showing up late or not at all,
• Performing work poorly or avoiding it, and
• Engaging in risk-taking behavior.

Interpersonal symptoms include

• Limited communication,
• Social withdrawal,
• Lack of sense of humor,
• Poor client interactions, and
• Dehumanization.

Identify areas that are detrimental to self-care:

• Working for a toxic supervisor and minimal colleague support.
• Allowing little room for fun.
• Experiencing a fuzzy, unarticulated understanding of needs.
• Having no energy-giving up personal life.
• Feeling an inability to say no to unreasonable requests.
• Feeling a strong need to be needed.
• Lacking a professional development process that turns experience into more competence and less anxiety.
• Experiencing vicarious traumatization that takes an accumulated toll.
• Engaging in personal relationships that are predominantly one-way caring relationships with oneself as giver.
• Expecting constant perfectionism in work tasks.
• Experiencing continued unresolved, ambiguous professional losses.
• Defining professional success solely by client-, student-, or patient-positive change or appreciation.

Reflective exercise 1

• Take a few minutes and reflect on a time when you took some action during your work day to reduce stress, enhance your effectiveness, or improve your sense of well-being.

Reflective exercise 2

• Create your professional timeline on a sheet of paper.
• Draw a horizontal line across the width of the paper to symbolize your individual timeline and then think about the following questions:
  • What age were you when you decided to enter the occupational therapy profession? Mark that on the beginning of the timeline.
  • What were you like at that time, and what were your values?
  • Who or what influenced your decision to enter the occupational therapy profession?
• Think about the notable events that shaped your life, and mark those on your timeline to indicate how those items impact your professional life.
• Look at the right side of your timeline, representing where you are now in your life.
• Jot down some of the issues that you are passionate about.
• Describe who you are today, personally and professionally.
• Add your future professional goals.

Adapted from Costa, D. (2018, April 9). Better days at work: Identifying, preventing burnout in occupational therapy practice. OT Practice. https://www.aota.org/-/media/Corporate/Files/Secure/Publications/OTP/2018/OTP-Volume-23-Issue-6-Better-Days-at-Work.pdf