The symptoms are varied and often insidiously set in, without us making the link between them and our professional situation.
The symptoms can be physical: tiredness even when sleeping well, or on the contrary sleep problems, muscular pains, headaches, backache, palpitations, shortness of breath are some of the warning signs that should not be neglected
The symptoms are also psychological: anxious ruminations, compulsive eating, memory problems, concentration problems, etc.
What you need to know is that we are not all equal when it comes to stress, to our way of coping with it, and that some people actually function quite well under pressure, which they experience as a challenge and with excitement. But beware, \“good stress\” that boosts performance can quickly turn into \“bad stress\” that prevents us from moving forward.
Stress also takes different forms depending on our personalities.
The anxious stressed: they brood on the same ideas without moving forward, they are tense, irritated, worried.
The hyperactive stressed: they are agitated to high hell, doing a thousand things at the same time without being efficient, which will make them angry.
The psychosomatic stressed: their stress manifests itself in fatigue, physical pain, and concerns about their health.
The overworked stressor: their stress weighs on them so much that they can no longer recharge their batteries and this can lead to an episode of depression due to exhaustion.
Indeed, from a certain threshold, the stress seems to diminish to give way to a great lassitude, an indifference (the \“devil-may-care\” attitude) and a net decrease in performance.
The person affected becomes totally demotivated: this is professional exhaustion or \“burn out\”. It is often spectacular because it affects people who were previously very/overly invested in their work, and who suddenly drop out and become disengaged.
3 essential signs to recognise a burn out: Psychological and physical fatigue leading to exhaustion/ avoidance of social contacts and withdrawal/ a very negative self-evaluation, the dominant feeling is that of guilt and isolation.