What is Burnout Stress Syndrome (BOSS) and what can you do about it?
Debbie van Tonder, Programme Manager of our Dean Clinics, explores what BOSS is, which healthy coping strategies can decrease burnout and stress, and, ultimately, how to become the boss of BOSS.
Keep scrolling to read more or watch a talk from Debbie in the video below.
What is BOSS?
The World Health Organisation (WHO) recognises BOSS as an “occupational phenomenon” that has an impact on our health, mood, productivity and mindset.
Burnout means a state of mental, physical and emotional exhaustion. Enduring and chronic (or lasting and constant) stress and burnout contribute to BOSS.
Factors which can play a part in developing BOSS may include:
- Caring for others
- Difficult relationships
- Financial stress and the increased cost of living
- Loneliness
- Parenting
- Physical health challenges
- Poor sleep
- Working arrangements.
BOSS can be a real risk when chronic stress builds up and makes it harder for a person to function.
What are the symptoms of BOSS?
BOSS is a syndrome, which means it has a collection of symptoms. There are quite a few symptoms of or features which are part of BOSS, and a person has to be going through a combination of them in order to identify that they are experiencing BOSS.
The most common symptom of BOSS is feeling exhausted, tired and drained most of the time, with no energy and without feeling refreshed by sleep or rest.
Cognitive dysfunction is another feature of BOSS. This means having poor concentration and memory, a lack of focus, attention difficulties, and, often, a sense of brain fog.
Negative emotions can be a sign of BOSS. This can include being irritable or easily annoyed; feeling self-doubt or overwhelm; being cynical, or doubtful; having low levels of tolerance; and starting or getting involved in arguments.
Social withdrawal is a symptom of BOSS too. Keeping to yourself, avoiding other people, or not looking forward to seeing family and friends can be signs of burnout.
In terms of work performance, there can be signs of BOSS here as well. Being less productive, reducing performance, losing a sense of drive or pleasure from work, and procrastinating, or putting off, tasks might suggest that a person has developed or is developing BOSS.
Who can get BOSS?
Anyone can be affected by BOSS; it is not a sign of good or bad mental health, but something everyone should be aware of and look after ourselves to prevent it.
BOSS is most strongly linked with workplaces and employment, and can be something that many employees in different kinds of organisations can experience. However, although the WHO identifies BOSS as a “work-related mental state”, it is not actually isolated, or limited, to workplaces only: it has to be seen in a wider context than employment only.
Burnout and, in turn, BOSS are not limited to specific people or specific groups. They can present in any everyday structured and goal-oriented activities that can create pressure and stressful situations in trying to meet general and competing demands in life. For example, volunteers play a very important role in our society, but volunteers can get burned out or develop ‘carer fatigue' in taking on lots of activities or feeling a sense of burden from the problems they are helping to solve. Students can feel burnout from heavy workloads in their courses, the pressure of exams, difficulties with accommodation or long commutes to college, and other challenges. Athletes too can develop burnout from extreme training regimes, competitions and so on.
How can we understand stress and burnout?
Understanding when you are stressed and burned out is one of the steps to recognising if you are experiencing BOSS and being able to do something about it. There are some different ways you can think about stress and burnout in your own life, which can help you to know what you may need to do to prevent developing BOSS.
Consider your capacity
It is important that you look at where you are at in terms of your capacity: do you need to be at 100% all the time, or can you pull back slightly to leave some fuel in the tank?
The Yerkes-Dodson model shows the link between stress and the performance of tasks. As humans, if we feel bored or that there is not enough demand on our interests and intellectual capacity, this can bring us into a “drone zone”. The dronze zone can often be as stressful as having too many demands or being extremely busy. Instead, most of us tend to reach our peak performance with an intermediate, or middling, level of interest or stress, which brings us into a creative calm zone. The ideal would probably be to work or perform at around 80% to 85% of our capacity. However, many people go beyond this. There can be a sense that we perform better if we do more or we overwork to some extent, but, in fact, doing this brings us into a zone of fatigue and exhaustion, which can lead to panic, stress and burnout.
In terms of your capacity, if you start to get into the fatigue zone, you need to be aware of your own red flags. For example, if you leave work exhausted every day with no energy for anything else, your red flag should be raised.
Look at your stress vulnerability
The stress vulnerability bucket is another way to look at stress. All of us are born with a “stress bucket”. We all also have our own healthy and unhealthy coping skills. It’s these unhealthy coping skills which fill our buckets. Everyone’s bucket is different – they can be different sizes and hold different amounts of stress, but, really, it doesn’t matter how our big our individual buckets are. The fuller the bucket, the more stressed we are, and this is something we each have to manage.
By using your healthy coping skills, you can drain these unhealthy copers from your stress bucket, and open space so that you don’t become overwhelmed. If an extra stressor that you didn’t plan for then comes into your life, you still have capacity to deal with it and to stay more solutions-focused, rather than getting stressed or panicked.
These kinds of healthy coping skills can include:
- Following a healthy diet
- Having a good sleep routine
- Exercising
- Socialising
- Building and using good support systems.
Develop stress resilience
Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences. It involves mental, emotional and behavioural flexibility, and adjusting to internal and external demands.
Resilience isn’t always easy: it’s not to say that you won’t ever experience stress or distress, but is more to do with the ways you deal with it. It’s about maintaining your mental health despite being exposed to mental and physical adversities or challenges.
There are a few characteristics, or features, of stress resilience, which include:
- Optimism | Looking at positive coping skills and what gives us hope; having a good social network; and expecting good outcomes
- Prosocial behaviour | Actively looking for support; building relationships; volunteering; and supporting others
- Active coping | Using humour; being solutions-focused; and changing behaviours
- Cognitive reappraisal | Being aware of runaway thoughts and restructuring negative thinking.
Tame runaway thinking
Thoughts can become like wild horses that run away from us before we know it. Recognising these kinds of unhelpful thinking styles is important. They can include rumination, or thinking the same thought over and over again; catastrophising, or focusing on the worst-case scenario; and worrying.
Often, just having the awareness of these thinking styles can help you to interrupt the thoughts and bring them back to a place where they can be dealt with. Refocusing or redirecting the thoughts can be useful, such as coming up with a solution to them or reminding yourself that the situation you are thinking of you may never occur.
How can you overcome BOSS?
There are a number of steps you can take to identify and deal with BOSS in your own life. The tips below are especially relevant to experiencing BOSS and burnout in the workplace.
Become aware of BOSS
Identify the symptoms of BOSS you are experiencing and explore what is causing them. Once you know this, you can do something about it.
Prioritise self-care
Prioritising your self-care is crucial. This means minding your sleep, diet and exercise; making sure to take annual leave from work; and looking for support. In the workplace, for example, this might mean checking if there’s an Employee Assistance Programme or staff wellbeing supports you can avail of. When it comes to annual leave, it can be important to try take a week or two off at a time, rather than only ever taking days here and there, so that you can get a proper break and rest.
Look at your thoughts
Doing a cognitive reappraisal, or looking at your thought processes, can be really helpful. This can help you to recognise if you need to challenge negative mindsets or assumptions, or if you need to shift your perceptions. For example, if you are having negative thoughts, maybe you could check in with yourself as to whether the thoughts are really true and factual, or ask what’s on the other side of them – what’s the positive to their negative? Taking that moment to shift perceptions can have surprising results.
Reduce your stressors
Reducing your job stressors is key. Make sure to take breaks from work. Often, many of us feel too busy or worry that we’ll look like we’re not doing our jobs if we take breaks, but it’s really important to get away from what you’re doing regularly so that you can refresh yourself. Give yourself permission to take that break.
Know your limits. If there’s a certain time of day you tend to feel you are flagging, do something for yourself at that time – like taking a short walk or grabbing a cup of coffee – to bring yourself back. Manage your calendar in a way that suits your needs as well; for instance, if you find it more difficult to think straight towards the end of the day, avoid scheduling meetings or calls for those times so that you can do something else that doesn’t drain you further.
Have boundaries around work hours. This is especially important if you work from home. If you work onsite, you usually have to commute in and out of work; that gives you certain times you have to start and finish by to make your transport, and the time you spend in the car, train, bus or bike can be a useful breathing space between work and home life. If you work remotely, you almost need to bring that commute into your day – go for a short walk before work or do something completely different when you finish up to clear work from your head. It’s not about being inflexible and only ever working certain hours, but more about avoiding behaviour patterns of overworking or being too anxious to let go of work.
Increase stress resilience
Use the characteristics of stress resilience – such as optimism and prosocial behaviour – to help you address how you are feeling and ease the symptoms of BOSS.
Follow your moral compass as well: this will help you to keep in line with your work ethic and make sure you look after yourself too.
Seek out meaningful connections
Talking to people and linking in with colleagues is really important, both when you’re working onsite and remotely. Having this kind of support system helps you to continue feeling like you’re part of a team and have a sense of connection with others. This can be more challenging if you are working from home, but there are ways around it. For example, you could make a point of contacting four or five people every week for a chat so that you don’t feel isolated or lonely, or take part in the different social or staff wellbeing activities your organisation may offer.
Enjoy some “soul food”
Find something that makes you feel better and do it for yourself: this could be meditating, keeping a journal, going to the gym, reading a book, listening to music. It doesn’t really matter what it is; it’s more about making sure that it’s there as part of your day so that you’re nurturing and cherishing yourself a little bit more.
