Burnout is a state of emotional and physical exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It can occur when you feel overwhelmed and unable to meet constant demands. As the stress continues, you begin to lose interest or motivation in what you?re doing. Burnout reduces your productivity and saps your energy, leaving you feeling increasingly hopeless, powerless, cynical, and resentful. The unhappiness burnout causes can eventually threaten not only your job but also your relationships, and your health. Being burned out means feeling empty, devoid of motivation, and beyond caring. People experiencing burnout often don?t see any hope of positive change in their situations. While you?re usually aware of being under a lot of stress, you don?t always notice burnout when it happens. Its symptoms ? hopelessness, cynicism, sadness, irritability, detachment from others ? can take months to surface. Because burnout doesn?t happen overnight ? and it?s difficult to fight once you?re in the middle of it ? it?s important to recognize the early signs of burnout, which tend to be more mental than physical.

If you?re burning out and the burnout expresses itself as irritability, you might find yourself always snapping at people or making snide remarks about them. If it manifests itself as depression, you might want to sleep all the time or always be "too tired" to socialize. You might turn to escapist behaviours such as sex, drinking, drugs, partying, or shopping binges to escape from your negative feelings. Your relationships at work and in your personal life may begin to fall apart.

Most of us have days when we?re bored to death with what we do at work; when dragging ourselves into work requires the determination of Hercules; when caring about work seems like a waste of energy; when nothing we do appears to make a difference in a workplace where everybody seems to be an enemy. We all have bad days at work. But when every day is a bad day, you?re flirting with burnout.

Most burnout has to do with the workplace but teachers are more at risk because their work puts them in contact with the dark or tragic side of human experience, because they sometimes feel they are underpaid, unappreciated, criticized for matters beyond their control.

Because burnout is related to stress, many methods effective in dealing with stress can help prevent burnout. First, it?s important to look after your physical health by eating right, getting enough sleep and exercise.

The most effective way to head off job burnout is to see what you can do to improve your situation, or at least your state of mind. You can ask for a transfer to another school or department. You can look for a new job related to what you do but in a different context. You can also make a career move even if this means getting some extra training. In any case, consider finding counseling that would help you examine your situation and envisage a better future.

MCL (Source Internet)