YoIt’s easy to let stress steal all our attention. High stress often leaves us vulnerable to a dysregulated and unproductive state. This means we need reliable resources we can connect to to renew and maintain our mental, emotional, and physical energy, and to help us recover from work stressors that, if left unchecked, can leave us vulnerable to burnout.
As a burnout researcher, my work has focused on identifying the most reliable and effective resources that people can connect to to protect themselves from burnout. I’ve conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews with people who experience a lot of stress at work, but are not burned out. From my research, I found that those who have a deep, lasting connection to their purpose and a sense that they are engaged in meaningful work are significantly less vulnerable to burnout. However, while having a high level of commitment to your work can protect you from burnout, being too involved in meaningful work can come with some potential risks.
In fact, some of the people most at risk for burnout are those who truly love their jobs and routinely go the extra mile. This is certainly no guarantee of developing burnout, but it is very important to be aware of the hidden disadvantages of engaging in meaningful work and the ways in which it can potentially backfire.
Perhaps the most common way is that your work life simply becomes unsustainable. Whether it’s the relentless pace, the emotional or mental intensity, the long hours at work, or a terrifying combination of all three, becoming subsumed in your job without enough time to recharge can put you on the fast track to burnout.
Read more: Why we are more exhausted than ever
Researchers Have you observed a particular vulnerability to burnout in those in “helping” professions, such as healthcare workers, social workers, clergy, counselors, life coaches, and direct care providers. These professionals tend to be deeply purpose-driven and often prioritize the needs of others over their own. Many of them are also vulnerable to a related phenomenon known as empathic distress, a strong aversive response to the pain and suffering of others that arises when spending too much time caring for those who suffer. Empathic distress leads people to withdraw in an effort to protect themselves, resulting in avoidance, cynicism, and reduced motivation—some of the same signs of burnout. The same vulnerability to burnout exists in people who are deeply mission-driven and who prioritize their organization’s needs and goals above their own. Educators, activists, and nonprofit employees are great examples, as are startup founders, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and changemakers and disruptors of all kinds.
Take, for example, Jenn Richey Nicholas, who was working for a top-tier graphic design company on a very high-profile project that would be seen around the world. She had dreamed of being a graphic designer since she was in high school and she always loved the idea of being on a highly talented team where she Richey Nicholas and her colleagues shared a passion for design. The company’s reputation depended on this project and it had the potential to define the career of the entire team. Everyone was expected to work 120 hours a week or more; Many people resorted to sleeping under conference tables and only went home to shower. Richey Nicholas described how “people were dropping like flies from exhaustion” and after a colleague fainted several times, she had to be admitted to A&E. “I was terrified I would ruin myself in the industry if I took a break,” she told me. “Fear was the only thing that kept me there.”
After months of this grueling schedule in which Richey Nicholas pushed himself to his physical and mental limits, everything came to a head one day when he climbed to the roof of his office building, stood on the ledge, and thought about jumping. “I just wanted the pain to end,” Richey Nicholas said. Her vision became blurry while she was there and she doesn’t remember much else about the episode, except that someone took her back to the office. Incredibly, she managed to get back to work and finish the project. “Leaving was not an option,” she said. When she finally finished, she went home and slept for two weeks.
Shortly afterward he traveled to London to visit a friend who was also a graphic designer. Richey Nicholas was surprised to see that her friend and her team were working nine to five, and her friend was surprised to hear what she had just been through. “I gained a lot of perspective on the toxicity I had been involved in,” she said. “That experience made me lose my sense of self. “I felt like my body wasn’t even my own.”
But now she was awake and conscious, and she wasn’t coming back. “Since then,” Richey Nicholas told me, “I’ve built my work ethic and my persona to never do that again.” She left that firm and worked as a designer at other firms for a few years, while she dreamed of setting up her own business. Today she runs a successful graphic design firm committed to generating a positive social and environmental impact in the world, and where mental health and general well-being are priorities. “We rarely work more than 40 hours a week,” Richey Nicholas said. “We want to be a model for other studies. Our hope is that, one by one, companies like ours will gradually change the toxic culture of this industry.”
When you love your job and consider it a calling, or if you are exceptionally motivated and committed, your work will demand a lot from you. You may often find yourself overloaded because you are so passionate about your cause and care deeply about improving the lives of others, or because you are too committed to your organization’s mission or goals. But without sufficient periods to rest and recharge, the risk of burnout, depersonalization and, in the future, lack of effectiveness is high, as one feels increasingly overwhelmed and exhausted.
When work becomes the central focus of our lives (for whatever reason), or when our identity becomes overly wrapped up in what we do for a living, we run the risk of making too many personal sacrifices and losing sight of our own self-care. . , leaving us ripe for exhaustion.