For 30 years he hated work. First decision after diagnosis? “I’m quitting a job”

When the definition of “occupational burnout” was created, it was written that the problem may concern specific occupational groups. Those with high emotional cost, such as nurses, social workers, psychologists. These are professions that require empathy, in which a person collides with huge dramas.

Yes, it was said that such an emotionally charged contact with another person exhausts and burns out professionally.

How did it happen that today, burnout also applies to workers in other professions, where these emotional costs are at first glance not so high? Managers are burned out, people in high positions hate their work.

Our reality has changed. Forty years ago, service occupations were burdened with burnout. In others, people worked from 8 am to 4 pm. They left work and it was impossible to catch them later – send an e-mail, call a cell phone, text them on the communicator.

Today, burnout affects corporate employees, entrepreneurs with their own businesses that generate tremendous tension. The specificity of our operation has changed: the pace and momentum have increased, the situation has been boosted by the development of technology.

The leap in development has changed our work environment. Forty years ago, a gentleman working in a state-owned enterprise may have suffered from burnout as well, but workers today are exposed to many more risk factors. We used to be protected by the aforementioned inaccessibility and unavailable after leaving work. Today, few people turn off the phone, put the computer down, log out of the network and do not receive messages from their bosses or colleagues. Mainly because we cannot draw boundaries. It seems to us that the world will collapse without us, that lack of availability threatens the full-time job.

I understand that we can get tired of goals, budgets, deadlines. But what about people who say bluntly: I hate my job?

Hate is a very strong feeling. Stuck in it is burdensome for us, especially when it concerns everyday activity, work in which we are after eight or more hours. People don’t think about it at all. They talk about these strong feelings, but immediately add that “they have to work”. And it happens that our assessment of reality, our thinking about it, makes us hate work.

What do you mean by that?

We hate for specific reasons, not for the whole. We can hate the boss because she criticizes us in public, diminishes our achievements, is uncultured and offends us. We may hate commuting – because it takes a long time, we are physically tormented by traffic jams in which we are stuck for two hours. I can hate what I do because I don’t see the point in my actions, my proposals are not implemented, I make reports at night that no one reads afterwards. So it would be appropriate to think about what exactly we hate and decide what to do next.

Recently, a patient came to see me for a consultation. He said he got a test result a few days ago and found out he had cancer. He asked me if I knew what he had decided right away.

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That he quit his job?

Yes, he said, “I’m not going back to work anymore.” He went to work for 30 years and claimed he hated her. Another patient said she vomited every day before going to work. If the body reacts like this, the situation is really very serious. It is impossible to live like this.

On the other hand, the thesis that you should do what you love is being promoted quite strongly. Because when you love work, it ceases to be work, and becomes a passion – something that is done with pleasure.

When it comes to passion at work, the Gaussian curve would show us that there are only a handful of people for whom work is a passion. For all the rest, it is an activity that serves to earn the money needed to live. There are industries where it is difficult to find passion, for example working in a fish factory. Fish filleting is an activity. But every job can give us pleasure, because thanks to the money we earn, we live with dignity, we have nice co-workers, we leave the house.

One of my previous employers dismissed me on the day of giving birth and I had maternity leave to find a new job. I found – in a company publishing periodicals commissioned by a commercial client. The work was stressful, I made the assumption that I would spend a year in it and during this time I would find something else calmly. During this year, I went to my company with a sense of gratitude for being employed and earning money, but with a strong determination to change my job, which I managed to achieve within the set time.

A very mature approach. There is nothing wrong with adjusting the work we do to the moment we are in life. If we have a small child, we need to work close to home, with flexible hours – maybe for a year we can do something different, less satisfying, but not frustrating with commuting, a tear between a sick child and the boss’s expectations.

How can you recognize burnout? So as not to confuse it with boredom, fatigue, lack of motivation?

Burnout is a condition characterized by exhaustion – both emotionally and physically. In extreme cases, it may end in hospitalization or even suicide. It is chronic fatigue that cannot be regenerated. Sleep, rest, vacation – they do not help to recharge the batteries.

Is there one dominant factor that can lead to burnout?

There are two groups of such factors: one comes from ourselves and the other from the work environment. I can be so emotionally structured that I get overwhelmed with my job, overwhelm me, and get worried and nervous when things go wrong at work. Employees who are burned out most often are medal-winning – those who comply with the 200 percent of the norm do not protest when they are given responsibilities. They have an inner imperative of primacy. It is worth considering why they want to be “for a medal”. What and to whom they want to prove what need they satisfy. If they want to prove their worth this way, it is a sick need. Values ​​are not proven by working 20 hours a day.

The second area with factors contributing to burnout is the work environment: the boss, colleagues, and even the place. If six people are crammed into a small windowless room with a blinking fluorescent lamp and too high a temperature of the air, then physically and mentally after eight hours they will all be barely alive. But let’s also remember that the same work environment can have a completely different effect on different people – some will experience burnout, others will not be affected.

What should we do when the first factors that make work depress for some reason appear?

When I see that “I’m riding on fumes”, I should rest. A year without holidays? Work on weekends and after hours? These are clear signs that your body is being overexploited and that you need to rest. Resting does not mean sleeping, but doing something that gives me joy: meeting friends, going to the cinema, going for the weekend. It is worth regaining the private life that we lost to the professional benefit.

From interviews with people who have the opportunity to work with young people aged 25 minus, it appears that these employees know how to set clear boundaries. At 4 p.m. they leave because they have their own business. Or they quit their job after one day because they don’t like it.

This is a very interesting shift in thinking. The older generation lived in admiration for skyscrapers, corporations, achieving goals, rewarding for sitting at work. A friend of mine is a resident at the hospital and she told me that her friend, also a resident, at one point started to leave work at 3:30 PM punctually. Why? Because she had a sick dog for which she had to give medicine. The dog recovered, but she still didn’t stay after hours. She found that when she set the limits, neither the world collapsed, nor anyone reproached her. Some employers rely on the dedication and sense of duty of their employees. If they did not agree to it, the rules would have to change, a different system would have to be worked out.

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Burnout, hate for work are states in which some persist for very specific reasons – sometimes because they have an astronomical salary, they get a huge bonus every year.

Power and money block change effectively. If we’re very unhappy at work, it’s worth making a profit and loss list. Perhaps the astronomical salary is not worth the cost we pay emotionally. Do we have to work to live in a 240-meter apartment and change the car every year, or maybe a lower salary and 90 meters are enough for us, and we will gain inner peace. We have to answer this question ourselves.

Maybe a healthy distance to work will protect us from burnout? Let me give you an example: a great specialist in his field, man in his sixties, found himself in a large corporation where there are “power meetings” and “challange briefings”. There are motivational posters on the walls, everyone is totally turned on. It laughs him, because he associates it with the communist times. He does his job at the highest level, but does not get carried away by a wave of enthusiasm.

It depends on the position. I would rather not suggest to the person managing the team to show distance. A private employee has more room to show off.

Each company has its own dynamics, it may be an increase, you need to work harder for a goal, but it cannot be a state of daily pressure. I understand this distance as setting limits. Once my boss asks me to stay and finish my presentation for an important meeting, which depends on a huge contract that will give me a job for the next five years, that’s acceptable. But agreeing to stay after work every day is no longer the case.

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Due to burnout, the doctor may send an employee on a sick leave for several months. Is this not a delayed sentence? Because at the end of it there is a return to the same job.

During this time, we should work with ourselves, clean up our heads. The key is to think about attitudes. Because even if I return to another job, but with the same approach: that I have to quickly, a lot, that I have to prove myself, prove myself – it will indeed be like delaying my sentence. Such an approach is effective in reevaluating, for example, disease and its recovery.

What else can help you change your approach?

The ability to distinguish between what we have control and what we cannot control. We have no influence on who is our boss, where the company’s headquarters are. However, it is worth trying to negotiate the issues that bother us, to oppose us. For example, report that the seat is uncomfortable. Also, a mobbing supervisor, if proven to him many cases of crossing the borders, may be dismissed.

We should refuse to work after hours, not to agree to conditions that do not suit us. There is no certainty that it will change something, but at least we will not have the feeling that we are passively stuck in the situation.

But there may be consequences if you refuse to do so.

It may or may not. Do you know what blocks people from changing?

Professionally? Probably a huge fear of losing your job.

Exactly! We are accompanied by the illusory feeling that we have a job. And that’s not a certainty at all. We can be released at any time. It’s hard to change our situation without changing our minds.

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Iwona Nawara. Clinical psychologist, psycho-oncologist. Therapist and trainer of Simonton Therapy and Rational Behavior Therapy. The originator and director of the UNICORN Psycho-oncology Center. Member of the Board of the Polish Psycho-oncology Society. PhD student at the Institute of Psychology of the Jagiellonian University.

Ola Długołęcka – an editor who can find inspiration for a topic in a blackened eye. He carefully watches people and listens to their conversations. Walking calm and organized. A longtime admirer of Robert Redford.