Burnout syndrome: how to know if you have this problem
- Kate Morgan
- BBC Work Life
The pandemic has pushed many of us to the limit - we are exhausted and overwhelmed, which does not mean that it is burnout
On several occasions, I told myself - and my friends and colleagues - that I was having a burnout.
Making a living as a freelancer can often mean working long hours and trying to balance several different plates spinning at the same time.
A few times a year, I run into a creative barrier: I run out of good ideas and my body only asks for a nap.
I've called it burnout for a long time. But I was wrong.
Now, more people than ever can be feeling this way. At this stage of the pandemic, after more than a year of trying to overcome its challenges, the general feeling is that we have all reached the limit.
But there is a scientific definition of burnout and standards for measuring it.
And based on this criterion, many people who believe they have burnout - including me - are actually not.
This does not mean that we are not moving towards that, and understanding how to really measure burnout can help individuals and organizations to change course before it is too late.
What is (and is not) burnout
In 1981, Christina Maslach, professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, USA, developed the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), to define and measure the condition.
"The challenge is that people use the term to mean different things," says Maslach.
"It's an appealing term, so people apply it to all kinds of things. But are we all speaking the same language?"
MBI tries to clarify the issue by assessing burnout based on three criteria: exhaustion or total lack of energy, feeling of cynicism or negativity about a job and reduced effectiveness or success at work.
Respondents get scores in all three areas, ranging from the most positive to the most negative. A burnout profile requires a negative score in all three areas.
"There is a tendency to think that if you score negatively on a measure, you have burnout," says Maslach, but this is an incorrect use of MBI.
The biggest misconception about burnout is to think it’s the same as exhaustion, adds Michael Leiter, an organizational psychologist based in Nova Scotia, Canada, and co-author with Maslach of The Truth About Burnout , in literal translation).
"People use burnout as a synonym for tiredness and do not understand that there is a huge difference between these two states," he warns.
He gives the example of obstetricians, who tend to work in chaotic hours.
"They are delivering at any time of the night and they are totally exhausted, but they are bringing a new life into the world and making people's lives better, and they care about that job. They are overworked and exhausted, but it is not burnout."
There are several other cases that meet one of the MBI criteria.
"The second largest group, after people who are just exhausted, are those who are not fully engaged," says Leiter.
"They go to work, but it's not exciting, they just pay the bills. There is another group that is just cynical. They don't care about the clientele or the job."
There are also those who may have low effectiveness, with careers paralyzed for one reason or another.
But fewer people can say that all three conditions apply. I can not.
Although I have definitely felt exhaustion and even a certain lack of interest, I still love what I do and have not become cynical about my work.
It takes all three - exhaustion, cynicism and inefficiency - to have what is scientifically defined as burnout. Most of us are not there.
"It is not an epidemic; it is over-diagnosed," says Leiter.
But that does not mean that there is no problem or that conversations about burnout are not increasing for a reason.
"The qualities of burnout are on the rise," admits Leiter.
"Without a doubt, more people are going in that direction."
Burnout is not black on white
Burnout is a spectrum, and most of us are on it.
Earlier this year, when the job search site Indeed did a survey of 1,500 American workers of all ages and sectors, more than half reported that they were suffering from burnout.
And more than two-thirds said the pandemic worsened burnout.
This survey did not use MBI, and it is likely that most participants used the colloquial definition of burnout, not the scientific one.
But while burnout - the type defined by three negative scores on the MBI - is a profile that Maslach says normally applies to 10% to 15% of people, that doesn't mean that everyone else is on the other end of the spectrum.
In fact, Maslach and Leiter's most recent research identifies three intermediate profiles: overloaded, ineffective and disengaged.
Many people equate fatigue with burnout, but experts say that burnout is a totally different state from exhaustion only
The evidence suggests that more than half of the professionals fall into one of these profiles, with a strong negative score for exhaustion, effectiveness or cynicism.
They are not yet burnout - but they are on the way.
For people in many professions, says Leiter, things only got worse as a result of the pandemic, with efficiency problems becoming especially oppressive.
"Teachers have been struggling to continue teaching and are not feeling fulfilled," he says.
"They just know that they are not being the teachers they were before, and that is disheartening. The same goes for doctors. It improved, but in the beginning there were no protocols for dealing with covid-19, and everything they were doing was wrong."
These questions changed the statistics on burnout.
A study conducted between March and June 2020 conducted a series of tests, including an MBI-like burnout questionnaire, with more than 3,500 health professionals in the United Kingdom, Poland and Singapore.
Just under 67% were assessed with burnout.
Although, historically, the burnout profile of workers in all professions has been slightly above 10%, Maslach says that this percentage "has clearly increased" due to the pandemic.
Now, she believes it is closer to 20%.
And that is a big problem, because true burnout cannot be solved with a vacation or a wellness retreat.
"When people really reach the extreme, the vast majority cannot go back to the same employer or the same type of work", explains Leiter.
"They need to change careers. Burnout is very profound - even the feeling of entering that building, or that type of building, can be a trigger. It often leads to a career change."
Why measurement matters
Avoiding true burnout on a large scale is vital, especially since it can mean a flight of skilled labor. This is where MBI, and similar tests, become invaluable tools.
Finding out that I wasn't, in fact, suffering a real burnout was helpful.
I was able to assess how I was really feeling (overwhelmed) and started to think about what was causing it and what changes I could make.
This is the goal of a burnout test. It is not about diagnosing or ruling out the condition. In fact, says Maslach, "it is by no means a diagnostic tool".
"People used it badly that way, but it is a research measure."
Although it is applied to individuals, what the MBI is really designed to measure is its environment.
"If there are negative scores, it does not mean that the problem is the individual. It is what they are responding to," says Maslach.
"You are not trying to find out who it is happening to, you are trying to find out why it is happening. You do not use it alone, you use it with other data to tell why the scoring pattern is like that. These scores should be used as warning signs. "
An organization that faces scores on the negative end of the spectrum must act quickly, adds Maslach, and that does not mean offering yoga classes or mindfulness seminars .
"Work is getting harder, longer and more difficult to do. People are working longer hours because they are afraid of not getting a promotion or losing their job. Doing more with less is at the heart of corporate culture, not it's how people do their best work ", he explains.
"There is a gigantic self-care industry out there, all focused on how to deal with this stress; but to prevent, reduce or eliminate burnout, it is not about fixing people. It is about fixing work."
In fact, according to Maslach, it is not a matter of measuring how many workers are or are almost burnout.
The point is to identify work environments with unmanageable workloads and use that information to give employees more control, better tools and insight to find out how to do their job better - without having a burnout.
"There's that old saying, 'If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,'" says Maslach.
"The main point of our argument is: why don't you change the heating? How about renovating the kitchen?"
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