Bev Aisbett - The Book of Burnout: What It Is, Why It Happens, Who Gets It, and How to Stop It Before It Stops You!

BEV AISBETT, a trained counsellor, is the author and illustrator of 17 highly regarded self-help books for sufferers of anxiety and depression, most notably the national bestsellers Living with It: A Survivors Guide to Panic Attacks and Taming the Black Dog: A Guide to Overcoming Depression. These titles are distributed to health professionals nationwide and have been sold in English in the UK, US and Canada. In total, her books have been published in eight languages, selling more than half a million copies worldwide.

Bev developed a unique recovery program, The Art of Anxiety workshop, designed to educate people about anxiety and provide them with the tools with which to build their own recovery, just as Bev herself has done. Launched in 1998, this program has guided thousands of people in the art of effectively managing anxiety and related conditions.

She is also a recognised artist, and her soulful paintings have been regularly exhibited in Victoria and Tasmania.

For more information and anxiety resources:

bevaisbettartofanxiety.com

Living IT Up

Letting IT Go

Get Real

Taming the Black Dog

The Little Book of IT

Fixing IT

Recovery: A Journey to Healing

The Book of IT

Get Over IT

I Love Me

All of IT: A Memoir

Living with IT

30 Days 30 Ways to Overcome Anxiety

30 Days 30 Ways to Overcome Depression

Worry-Proofing Your Anxious Child

Cruising Through Calamity

The Book of Burnout

To all my fellow Type As may you find peace and have a good nights sleep.

Special thanks to Angelo Madrid for his fabulous work finalising my doodles!

I have a CONFESSION to make for the first time in the past thirty years of writing my books, I asked for an extension to complete this book, ironically, because of BURNOUT!

I have often joked that my books are written from LIVED EXPERIENCE , but this was taking the PERSONAL research a little too far!

I had taken on too much at one time and, as is my tendency, OVERESTIMATED my ability to get everything done in the time I had available.

This is a classic set-up for BURNOUT , where we think we can do the IMPOSSIBLE at the cost of our wellbeing, health and quality of life.

The important message from this personal example is that I knew early enough when to call it quits but, sadly, many people dont. This book is created with those people in mind.

Although the term is often casually TOSSED ABOUT , burnout is NO JOKE it can impact every area of your life and leave you depleted in almost every sense.

And BURNOUT is COMPLEX as I discovered when researching this book. In fact, the more I delved into BURNOUT , the more TENTACLES it grew!

So, from LOW-LEVEL burnout to the FULL-BLOWN version and what to do about it welcome to THE BOOK OF BURNOUT !

Does your AVERAGE day look like THIS ?

Youre too WIRED to sleep and too TIRED to function, but you repeat this day AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN !

If this goes ON , you could soon be in BURNOUT !

And youre RIGHT !

DEFINING burnout is not as straightforward as it may seem at first and is NOT LIMITED to a particular WALK OF LIFE OR LIFESTYLE .

But is that BURNOUT or FRUSTRATION ?

Could it be DEPRESSION ?

or FATIGUE ?

or even BOREDOM ?

And how do you know when you HAVE reached your LIMIT ?

Is it when youre EXHAUSTED but CARRY ON ?

Or when youve reached the point where you simply CANT carry on?

Ask a group of people and youll find each person has a different take on what BURNOUT means:

Interestingly, prior to 1974, there wasnt a recognised NAME for burnout, even though the condition has surely existed throughout history.

Psychologist Herbert Freudenberger and Professor of Psychology Christina Maslach first independently researched and made known the concept of BURNOUT .

Freudenberger is credited with coining the term while working long hours at a substance abuse clinic. At the time, burnout was used as SLANG to describe the effects of extreme drug use, but was soon adopted by the clinic staff to describe the TOLL visited upon them by the punishing DEMANDS of their work.

Previously, BURNOUT was not recognised as a condition on its own, but was incorporated into the broader categories of stress syndromes or nervous breakdowns. According to the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), burnout is not regarded as a MEDICAL condition and only marginally as a MENTAL ailment.

It is only recently (2019) that W.H.O. acknowledged burnout at ALL , categorising it as a syndrome conceptualised as resulting from chronic WORKPLACE stress that has not been successfully managed in the organisations diagnostic manual, International Classification of Diseases.

This definition was guided by Christina Maslachs Inventory of Burnout, which covers three main areas:

• EXHAUSTION measures feelings of being overextended and exhausted by your work.
• CYNICISM measures an indifference or distant attitude towards your work.
• PROFESSIONAL EFFICACY measures your satisfaction with past and present accomplishments, and it explicitly assesses your expectations of continued effectiveness at work.