Burnout starts with thoughts like “I’m not paid enough to do this”

Published 17.12.2023 | By Йосиф

Martin Kolev, psychotherapist: burnout starts with thoughts like “I’m not paid enough to do this”

Martin Kolev is a clinical psychologist, neuroscientist and psychotherapist. Professor at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski.” She is part of the team of the Institute for mental health and development – a non-governmental organization that offers diagnosis, therapy and support to children and adults with mental health problems.

Professional burnout is a condition that has been talked about since the 70s of the last century, but according to statistics in the last decade there has been a boom in sufferers. What is the reason for the surge in cases?

Historically, occupational burnout syndrome has been associated with occupations where there is high emotional overload. His identification began with the Vietnam War, when returning veterans needed intensive care after suffering mental and physical trauma. It is not that people have not “burned out” before, but then in the United States observations are made on medical and social personnel, who, taking care of the injured, begin to exhibit psychological, behavioral, even bodily symptoms.
The reason is that intensive care is a resource. And the human brain is like a “Ferrari” – it spends a lot. The more a person “steps on” it, the more he spends. And like any car, if there is no fuel, not only will it not move, but there is a risk that the engine will start to suffer.

Today, we know from statistics that burnout extends not only to medical and care professionals, but to almost all professions – police officers, doctors, teachers, psychologists, special educators, social workers and many others.

However, there is a second factor that is rarely talked about: who exactly is the person exercising the profession. Nowadays, a lot of people work something they don’t like, mostly to make money, and that gets sick at some point. For many, working for foreign companies that have opened offices in Bulgaria in recent years is tempting. They say to themselves, ” I don’t want to work this, but I will go, they will qualify me, maybe I don’t need an education.”This leads to obligation – someone has taken care of you and now you have to return the gesture with your labor.

How much he will “serve” the employer depends on the person – how he treats authority, how he sees his duties, how he can or cannot set boundaries. But Everything has come together in one knot – the environment, the context, the specific person, his profession, who he is working for, in what direction. On this knot are laid new and new links, and very rarely people try to untie them. This leads to a situation in which only with bodily symptoms, such as persistent headaches, for example, a person assumes that something may be happening.

There is also an important aspect of our cultural-historical belonging: in Bulgaria, if a person does not work strictly, something is wrong with him – he is lazy, he is a sissy.

This understanding affects men more, but as a result of emancipation, women begin to feel the same levels of burnout.

And how do you explain burnout in people who love their job and don’t feel pressured by the circumstances you describe?

Liking the job is a relative insurance factor – if I like what I’m doing, I’m less likely to burn. However, there is also a hidden aspect here – the possibility that I’m starting to overdo what I like. I go to work and say to myself, “how good, I work the most exciting thing in the world, I have found my place.”And I sit up until midnight because I’m really good at it and it works out for me. The next day and the next, again. Then I start eating half my Saturday, and then all that dedication and pleasure with the right choice of professional engagement can turn from a blessing to a curse without anyone noticing.

There is also a social factor: teams quickly smell the people who work with pleasure, and often others start to give the engaged colleague a little more responsibility and a little more, and a little more this accumulates and one does not have the technical time to process the load. It is directly related to leisure – during a walk, exercise or hobby, the brain is unconsciously given the opportunity to process the accumulated units of information and processes in the working days and put them in their places.

More and more often it happens that people who like their work, have advanced in their career and can even secure longer free time, do not know what to do with it. They begin to experience suffocating anxiety and, unable to figure out what to do in their free time, start working again.

What are the first symptoms with which the body and psyche signal that something is wrong and should be taken into account?

– One of the first things is dissatisfaction with the effort put in and the reward received.

Many people in state institutions have fallen into “angry” employees. You go to get a new ID card, you mess up something in the form, and when you ask for a new one, you encounter a very irritated reaction, which you take as if you’re being scolded. In fact, it is very possible that the person opposite is in bernaut, because he is charged with many duties every day, for example. The fact is, I never know the other guy’s story.

Quite an unusual look at this well-known situation…

– It’s important to understand that the employee seems angry, but it may not be to us. Of course, we have the right to react, but then they would probably say to us, “do you know what happened to me this morning, how much nonsense I faced?”Compassion in this situation is helpful. Within limits, of course.

With a heavy load and little recovery time, a person may hear in their head automated thoughts such as” this is what I’m doing it for now “or even more often:” no one pays me enough to do these things.”
The initial stages of burnout extend to this dissatisfaction, increased irritability, including at home, dissatisfaction with salary and received privileges. Body symptoms come in a slightly deeper version and are a signal from the body to stop doing something or at least change it.

Unfortunately, much of modern medicine focuses on symptomatic instead of causal treatment. What happens if we tie all the components into a story? A man goes to work and works hard because he likes it or because he is forced to. It gets overloaded, it gets to burnout. At one point, the cultural layer calls, saying, ” Don’t embarrass yourself! Pull yourself together!”The paradox is that it actually needs to relax, not tighten. But the man pulls himself together, and if he works, he works. There is emotional discomfort, dissatisfaction. He came home and said, ” I have a headache.”And the most common answer is not “from what?”do you want an aspirin?””. This “whitewashes” the symptom until the next day, when the person restarts the same cycle, deepening it.

How long can a person function relatively normally, without paying attention to the symptoms and taking measures?

– There are people who spend years, even their entire professional life in burnout without realizing it.

It is good, of course, to keep this process as short as possible. That’s why many companies, mostly larger ones, have long had human resource specialists or psychologists watching for signs that people can’t always identify on their own. There, the more common scenario is not to react yourself, but to have a person in charge of human resources come and ask what’s going on, why your productivity is fluctuating and you look tired. Then seek a solution.

And if a person does not work in such a company and salvation is in his own hands, how can he identify the problem?

– If a person has a resource for self-observation, he would identify that 5-6 days he comes home invariably nervous and tired, although at work he is calm, sleeps too much or too little and eats strangely. But it should be emphasized that emotional burnout affects the thought process, t.well. the instrument with which we can self-monitor that we are in bernaut is affected by the presence of bernaut, and we may find ourselves in a tied situation.

In a good scenario, a person notices what is happening to his emotional processes, realizes that thoughts like “Ugh, I don’t have enough money to do this” are not common for him, feels that something with his body is not quite right. In professional jargon – to turn the beacon of your consciousness inward. If this beacon has the energy to shine well, it will do. But people who find themselves with disease states, not appreciating what happens to them in the initial stages of burnout, are not few.

Recently, more and more popular are the stories of people who after severe burnout completely change their lives – the profession, the rhythm of work, the place of residence. Is that the solution?

Changing life habits works for some people. But there is one very important fact that should not be forgotten – wherever you go, you are messing with yourself. If you have an internal conflict, you will take it to Mars and reactivate it if conditions are created for it.

Separately in evolution, the psyche has developed cunning defensive processes. Like overcompensation, when a person balances some dissatisfaction by focusing heavily on something that is under his control. You can move to Spain because it’s up to you. It seems that you are taking the reins of your life again, but there you have to find a job, a partner, a circle of friends and the probability of finding yourself in a similar situation to the previous one is not small. It may be that you have not regained control, but simply changed the state.

I would encourage people planning a big change to think about where the desire for it comes from.

If they do not succeed on their own, let’s discuss it with a specialist or with a close person, because in conversation we become aware of things that we otherwise do not realize. Impulsive decisions are sympathetic, even romantic, but the question is whether in the end one will not come to: “Oh, What Have I done?”

The flip side of what you’re talking about is the inability to change your work and life environment for financial or personal reasons. Which leads to even more burnout. Is there a way out of this trap?

For some people, this is life. But a change of some kind, even a small one, can always be brought in, and very often it is some solution. Sometimes a 2-3-5% change in overall functioning can lead to good processes and a domino effect subsequently.

If you imagine a train running on the same tracks for years, at some point they will wear out, the sleepers will break, and there is a risk of derailment. Pulling a lever to move the hands and the train to turn left – such a small change – can trigger a domino effect that will be beneficial.

But let’s not forget that people don’t like change and change slowly and hard. We are usually afraid that the effect will not be in a bad direction, to abandon the familiar pattern, but sometimes it is good to think about whether there is no option after the initial adversity to come something better.
Anna Hristova

https://www.dnevnik.bg/intervju/2023/12/15/4565404_martin_kolev_psihoterapevt_burnautut_idva_s_misli_kato/