Burnout Process - Stages
| I asked for power, I got difficulties that made me strong. |
| I asked for wisdom, I got problems to solve. |
| I asked for wealth, I got brains and muscles to work with. |
| I asked for courage, I got dangers that I could overcome. |
| I asked for love, I got people in trouble that I could help. |
I asked for favors, I got chances.
| I never got what I wanted, I received everything I needed. |
| (source unknown) |
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In general, every person goes through the various stages of the burnout process in his or her own way. Some people do not go any further than Stage 2 or 3 and then manage to escape from the situation by adapting their duties, their behaviour, or their way of relaxing. In general, recovering from Burnout takes some time. Let us look at the various Stages of the Burnout process.
- Stage 1
Having a hard time getting your work out of your mind in your spare time. In this Stage, the employee is often unaware of the relationship between the demands made on him and his abilities to meet these demands. All the time he is trying to get the right balance between these two.
- Stage 2
The employee becomes more and more aware of how hard it is for him to meet all the demands made on him. It becomes harder for him to relax, to stop worrying, and to stop feeling gloomy. This Stage is characterized by tiredness, feeling tense, physical ailments, a flight in sex, drugs and rock music, and not feeling fine and clear-minded.
- Stage 3
Changes in behaviour caused by resistance against the situation of feeling unhappy about one's work situation. The employee becomes more aggressive, more cynical, more bitter, more rigid, more perfectionist, more aloof, and more irritated.
- Stage 4
The employee breaks down, reports that he is sick, is overwrought, and lets himself be fired or looks for another job.
- Stage 5
One wants to force a recovery, but often without any result. Guilt, feelings of shame, and inferiority complex occur, sometimes accompanied by feelings of depression.
- Stage 6
Making up the balance. In this stage, people make choices as regards to work and career.
- Stage 7
Recovery. Through relaxation, rest, and coming back to oneself, the energy reserves are gradually built up again. We often see that changes in mentality and changes in behaviour occur.
- Stage 8
The person actively builds up a new future and a new career. He goes back to work. He now has a different view of Burnout. Often the employee has learned something from his experience and the Burn out was the eye opener that he needed. In this stage, there may be moments of regression, but the employee's confidence grows and so does his view that if he will ever get into a temporary set back, he will easily be able to get out of it again.
The first three Stages are typical symptoms that the fight-flight reaction is triggered by one's body in order to fight the threatening situation. As we can read in our article How do our body and our mind react to stress?, this reaction has far-reaching consequences for the state of our stress reserves. Demanding too much from one's body and one's mind costs a lot of energy, it harms important physical processes and it affects parts of our body for a long time. It also has an important influence on our emotional well-being. In Stages 4 to 6, we are at the height of our crisis and in the middle of our hardest time. From Stage 7, we begin to recover and people often make a new comeback into society.
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