Which Professionals are Prone to Burnout

The answer to the question of which professionals are prone to burnout may not be what you think. Burnout is a lot more than just stress; it is the result of feeling an extreme amount of stress over a long period of time.

Police officers are at risk for burnout.

Burnout Does Not Happen Overnight

You don't wake up one morning suddenly feeling burn out. The process leading to a person experiencing burnout starts when they feel overwhelmed by the demands made on them. If you aren't able to get out from under the stress, you start to feel less motivated to try to perform at work.

Your energy levels continue to decrease and you start to feel hopeless and powerless to make changes that will help you to deal with the situation. You may start to see the world through a veil of cynicism. This new attitude will likely have an effect on your relationships with your spouse, family, friends, and coworkers. Your continued employment may be at risk if you don't get some help.

Burnout and Depression

Over time, the symptoms of burnout may develop into a depression. You may lose your appetite or find that you want to eat all the time. Sleeping may be difficult for you: Either you have trouble sleeping or you only sleep for a short time and then you have trouble getting back to sleep at night. Some depressed individuals want to sleep all the time, though.

These changes may take place so gradually that you don't realize what is happening to you. If the people in your life have noticed changes in your personality, and you find that instead of feeling stressed out that you are having trouble feeling anything at all then you may be suffering from burnout.

Which Professionals are Prone to Burnout: Risky Jobs

If your job has one or more of the following elements, you are more prone to burnout than other workers:

• Working in a government department or organization
• Emotional contact with customers or patients
• Many demands on the workers' knowledge or educational qualifications

Burnout Affects Young, Well-Educated Workers

If you were to look at a snapshot of the type of person most likely to experience burnout in the workplace, he or she would be:

• Under the age of 40 (people between 24-34 are especially at risk)
• University educated
• Ambitious
• Diligent
• Have difficulty setting boundaries at work (saying "no" is a problem for them)
• Hard working

On the face of it, these are the types of workers that an employer would want to have in their organization. They are young people who are willing to work hard and who take pride in their work. They want to do their work well and reap the professional rewards of their efforts.

Professions at Risk

The professionals most likely to burn out are as follows:

• Workers in the transportation, business services, and communications industries
• Teachers
• Social workers
• Law enforcement officers

The reason why people working in so-called "helping professions" are more likely to burn out is that their professional relationships tend to be one-sided, as opposed to reciprocal. If you work in one of these types of jobs, you can cut your risk of getting burnt out by developing nurturing relationships with people in your life other than the ones you are seeing in your professional capacity.

Women and Burnout

Since women today tend to have multiple roles in society, they are more at risk for burnout than men. They are trying to juggle being a spouse or a partner, a parent, and an employee. As a result, they have a tendency to take on too much, either because they find it difficult to delegate responsibilities or because they are unable to get help with some of their duties.

Now that you know the answer to the question of which professionals are prone to burnout, was it what you expected?

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