It is not possible in life to evade stress completely and have a life without any stress. It is essential to accept that stress has a massive share in our lives. However, the key to a happy and successful life is to realize what kind of stresses are adequate and which ones are not. Stress can even be associated with the good things in life such as excitement that comes with a promotion, the haste of taking up a new project or a delight about a presentation that went right. At the same time, you will need to reconsider your job condition if the Job Burnout is tormenting you and typically in a negative manner.
Below are some signs that show the job stress with certain key points to understand it.
What are the Symptoms of Job Burnout?
The following mentioned are few tips that explain about the signs your job is too stressful.
1. Constant exhaustion:
If you every day wake up feeling spent, feel like you did not receive enough sleep, and always feel tired emotionally and physically, then these can be the symptoms of individual and professional burnout.
2. Detrimental lifestyle preferences:
Another symptom of burnout is not having much energy or desire to manage a healthy lifestyle. You may eat excessively or quiet less, consume unhealthy food items and avoid or stop exercising. Research has proposed that such people are more likely to consume or abuse alcohol to divert mind from feeling anxious or to break out of having depressive feelings.
3. Continuous thinking about work:
You usually think about work when you have free time, but if the thoughts come with feelings of anxiety or if the thoughts meddle with your daily activities then it is perhaps a symptom of burnout.
4. Health problems:
People who are suffering from burnout frequently undergo health issues usually related to depression or anxiety. These can be a backache, regular headaches, gastrointestinal issues or even low energy levels.
5. Insomnia:
If you face a regular lack of sleep and it accompanies thoughts of work then it is signaling burnout. There is certain evidence that establish insomnia may predict the inception of burnout. It implies that if you are straining hard for sleep then it is essential for you to strive towards getting good sleep immediately.
6. Loss of enjoyment:
Loss of enjoyment in routine activities can be another form of symptom of burnout. It can be in a way that the things or the job you enjoyed previously are now making you bored or dreadful. You lack satisfaction with your life and the activities that used to keep you fascinated no longer interests you.
7. An increase of irritation:
You feel out of control of the situations around you, you may take out the irritation on others around you. It is a symptom of burnout when crushed by your own troubles and minor irritations lead you to intense feelings of annoyance or anger.
8. Relentless cynicism:
Regular isolation, pessimism, or frustration at work is part of workplace cynicism. You may fail to trust your boss or coworkers or be suspicious of their motives.
9. Recurrently missing work:
It is established by researches that the individuals who suffer from burnouts are recurrently late or absent for work. You can recognize it when you start searching for excuses to skip work or lack the drive to turn up for work.
10. Weak performance at work:
You may find that you are performing inadequately and depending upon others to pick up some of the stack for you. Research suggests that a single person’s burnout may trigger weak performance of the entire workplace. This is because individuals suffering from burnout at work are not able to perform well at their tasks and the rest of the healthy employees spend their time in helping their burned-out coworkers.
What are the Common Sources of Stress in the Workplace?
The following mentioned are few stress tips on how to handle stress at work and few main causes of stress at work.
1. Overload:
Overload of work occurs when individuals feel extensive work pressure from the demands of the workload and the related time strains. This could be when there are unrealistic deadlines and expectations, set due to the super achievement by someone highly talented, unmanageable workloads, technological overloads and recruitment of less than required staff for work that is already timetabled.
2. Lack of control:
Another source of stress factor could be having a lack of control. Employees may feel pressurized due to lack of influence or consultation on work and the way everything is organized.
Stress in the workplace could occur when there is lack of control over certain portions of work, lack of involvement when decisions are made, staff’s ideas and suggestions are not considered or lack of time.
3. Relationships at work:
Most of the jobs demand frequent contacts with others at work. A person may feel stressed about work when there are poor work relationships such as when he faces lack of support, feels isolated, suffers bullying or harassment, lack of understanding, managers always looking for faults, working on others work who are slacking and not receiving the credits of successful projects that one worked on.
Aggressive management style and poor relationships with the coworkers can cause a lot of stress from work.
4. Security of job:
A person may feel a lot of stress at work due to lack of job security and employment change. Lack of permanence of job due to temporary or fixed term contracts or anxiety about skill redundancy can be sources of stress.
5. Work and life balance:
The demands of work can have adverse impacts on a person’s personal life. For instance, when an employee is expected to work additional hours at the office, it can be harmful to the relationships at home.
The inflexible schedules may demand the person to be unable to manage time for personal life. Excessive traveling, no social hours and work interfering with home hours can be very stressful.
6. Lack of proper resources and communication:
People need to have proper resources, training and equipments to perform work efficiently. They need to have adequate information. And stress can occur when there is no sufficient information provided as to what is happening in the company.
7. Pay and benefits:
For a person’s healthy lifestyle, financial rewards from work are necessary. It is the hint of the individuals worth and value in the organization.
It may not be the principal motivator but when an individual suffers from other negative aspects in a job, pays and benefits becomes a factor of stress.
8. Features of a job:
The fundamental characteristics of the job have a direct impact on an individual’s stress level. The type of tasks, the working environment and the level of contentment achieved at work are factors that relate to stress.
Other factors may include lack of pleasure while performing work, fear of physical violence, poor physical work surrounding, close work monitoring, dull and monotonous work or dealing with difficult clients.
How much Stress can Kill you?
1. Stress alters gene manifestation:
Stress produces chemicals in the body that activates or disables genes that has the capability to change everything from how fast you age to how well your immune system functions, how much fat you store to whether or not cancerous cell may develop in your body.
2. Life events sets points for stress:
Research establishes that even the early life events i.e. early childhood events can set your corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) at a high level or low. CRH has the capacity to turn on your adrenals and so your stress levels.
3. Stress can cause brain damage:
High-stress hormones level has the capability to damage critical fractions of a brain, like a hippocampus, which is a zone responsible for memory. Brain turns off adrenals in order to save itself, which is the reason behind people experiencing adrenal burnout after lasting chronic stress.
4. Harms immune system and intensifies inflammation:
Stress can modify the immune system to a great extent. It can slow down wound healing, increases your vulnerability to infections or diminish the protective effects of vaccines. Stress can even reactivate dormant infections which are why some people get cold sores.
5. Impairs energy powerhouse:
Chronic stress can impair the energy powerhouse of your body which is your mitochondria. It produces ATP, through which all of your cells and organs function respectively. You can recover from this damage if stress goes away.
6. Decreases the ability to metabolize and detoxify:
Research suggests that stress has a negative impact on the activity of plenty of genes which are responsible for enzymes that helps to break down fats. Stress can even amplify your toxin load by increasing your cravings for foods with high fats and sugar.
7. Stress damages your bones and muscles:
Evidence shows that higher levels of stress are connected to lower bone mineral density. Majority of the studies suggest that people who suffer chronic stress experience high level of physical pain.
8. Gut and stress: closely entwined:
Research shows how stress has an impact on your routine gut’s functioning. It will slow transit causing constipation and re-circulates hormones through liver. It intensifies the overgrowth of bad bacteria.
It even loosens the wall between the cells that outlines intestines, which creates leaky gut further causing, inflammation, and food sensitivities; even autoimmune diseases.
Conclusion:
Stress has the capability to mess with sex hormones. It even triggers high blood pressure and heart diseases. Thus stress as explained above is very dangerous for your health and life.
You need to make sure you are not ignoring the symptoms of stress eventually losing your drive for everything from work to personal life.