Perspectives on Handling Burnout

HANDLING BURNOUT: ADLERIAN, RATIONAL-EMOTIVE, AND

McKnight and Glass (1995) define burnout as a stress response. Specifically, burnout is said to be an increasingly intense pattern of psychological, physiological, and behavioral dysfunction in response to a continuous flow of stressors or chronic stress.

In terms of work and career, Riggo and Porter (1999) report that burnout is commonly found among employees and professionals who have a high degree of personal investment in work and high performance expectations. The authors further report that burnout occurs in stages and in the initial stages, people often have a variety of physiological and behavioral symptoms and lose interest and confidence in their work. It is stated that in these stages the following physiological symptoms may occur: shortness of breath; loss of appetite or weight; headache; fatigue and exhaustion.

In addition, Riggio and Porter (1999) state that behavioral symptoms can include: Lack of interest in fellow employees; risk-taking behaviors; and mood swings. In the later stages, people with burnout may abuse alcohol and other drugs, smoke excessively, drink more and more caffeinated beverages; become more rigid in their thinking; lose faith in the abilities of co-workers, management, the organization, and themselves; and become generally less productive.

Also, burnout is said to have three dimensions as well as stages. These dimensions are a growing sense of

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fective to consider how to reduce the likelihood of emotional exhaustion, or to prevent the tendency to depersonalize rather than to use a more general approach. The Adlerian Approach According to Peterson and Nisenholz (1994), in dealing with psychoemotional problems related to stress, human relations psychologists and counselors that adopt an Adlerian perspective attempt to tap the inherent organismic tendency toward growth and transcendence. In other words, the Adlerian approach searches for interventions that help people to reconnect with their ability to transcend difficulties, problems, tensions and conflicts by using them for growth. Thus, the basic Adlerian approach to burnout on the organizational level, would be to design or re-design the job for growth opportunities. Of course, if necessary, counseling would also be offered which would aim at helping the employee to transcend the situation and grow in a personal way from meeting job stressors. With respect to situational factors, Rand, Mahoney and Mahoney (1990), there are several steps that human relation managers can take to prevent or reduce burnout to make sure that jobs allow more opportunities for personal growth. These strategies include: (1) Encouraging w

Category: Psychology - P