Employees need to be just aware of ‘boreout’ as ‘burnout’ when taking care of their own mental wellbeing.
This is according to Julie Denning, managing director of Working To Wellbeing and chairwoman of the Vocational Rehabilitation Association, (pictured) who was speaking to delegates gathered for not-for-profit health insurer’s WPA’s latest webinar yesterday.
Denning explained when a body is stressed, its ‘fight or flight’ process kicks in to protect it – a process which takes up a lot of energy and can lead to burnout.
But Denning added there are a number of tools employees can use if they are feeling overly stressed and ‘fight or flight’ kicks in.
The first is to tune into their breathing with Denning recommending slow breathing through the nose, ensuring the out breath is longer than the in breath – with around five to six breaths a minute. According to Denning, the process helps get messages to the brain that all is calm and enables cognitive processing to resume control from the emotional brain after a period of stress.
The second tool, Denning recommends, is for employees to tune into their emotions to pick out all of the emotions they are experiencing, both good and bad, and understand them to problem solve and deal with things differently. By truly understanding the emotions you are experiencing, Denning says, you can then communicate this to other people and get help from them but this also means you can notice this in other people and they will then also be able to explore their emotional expression.
Denning added employees can also tune into their own thoughts and whether they are focused on fears about the future or regrets about the past and self doubt.
And the final tool for employees, Denning revealed, is around being aware of how you are functioning to deliver optimal performance.
“You might notice your emotional state just pouring out of you where you think, ‘Woah, what’s going on?’ or it could be that body response that we notice when we’re really under stress – really fatigued and exhausted and just don’t know where to start. You might notice you avoid burnout but it’s a complete depletion,” Denning said.
“We want to replenish and rejuvenate and then we go back out and deal with situations again.
“Equally watch out for being bored. Bored witless is also not good for us but we tend to talk about burnout more than boreout. So notice your functioning.”
