Burnout
The personal experience
Burnout is alienation, emotional exhaustion, and disillusionment caused by keeping unsustainable commitments. Burnout drains energy, endangers mental health, inhibits career progression, and can destabilize livelihood. Many people don’t seek help for burnout until daily life feels like a crisis. During an episode of burnout, enduring daily routines can feel unbearable and finding an escape can feel urgent, but it’s often not an option to walk away.
The role of the workplace
It’s well established that work environments and dynamics between coworkers play a massive role in the mental health of workers and team/org performance. Workers at all levels of an organization are vulnerable to burnout. A burned out team is poor-performing and unpleasant to be on. High turnover due to burnout is bad for morale and team cohesion, leads to significant knowledge-loss, and is financially costly. The burned out team is a liability to the entire organization.
Burnout among teams can make a “bad attitude” seem contagious, but in reality the cause is much more likely to be systemic. Good leaders recognize this and take steps to correct patterns that hurt their team members and organizational performance.
In short, prioritizing burnout prevention isn’t only the humane thing to do for the people at your org, it’s also an excellent investment if your goal is a stable and high-performing team.
How can Brian help?
Burnout can feel inescapable, but it’s not. Life can be easier. Your workplace stress can be more manageable.
If we understand why we are burning out, then we can figure out how to break the pattern and move forward.
Brian helps teams and individuals recognize the risk factors and social systems that lead to burnout. He empowers people with the knowledge and skills to identify, mitigate, and prevent burnout in their lives and on their teams.
Workplaces saddled with low morale and high turnover can become thriving teams that operate with the psychological safety and social safeguards to support everyone doing their best work together.
Individuals healing from burnout gain the tools and freedom to build resilient and values-congruent lives that are fulfilling and sustainable.
Individual therapy to address burnout
Brian’s work as a therapist empowers individuals to prevent, manage, or heal from the effects of burnout. Whether someone has been struggling in a workplace that isn’t psychologically safe, is worn out by juggling work and caregiving, or is carrying the weight of adverse past work experiences, there is a path to living better. Developing new methods of coping, effective stress management, and reassessing of boundaries and values are just a few of the ways that Brian can support individuals in their journey through — and out of — burnout. For clients experiencing burnout, Brian is a steady and unflappable partner on the path to a better day-to-day life.
Burnout prevention and mitigation at the organizational level
Brian’s extensive experience supporting individuals recovering from burnout has given him insight into it’s systemic causes and motivation to partner with leaders to prevent burnout among their teams. He’s identified the clear patterns and actionable steps to create meaningful and sustainable change that protect organizations and their members from burnout.
Brian offers trainings for leaders and their teams to mitigate patterns that lead to burnout, increase psychological safety in the workplace, and build teams that are more resilient, productive, and empowered.
The answer to burnout isn’t for workers to tough it out, and it isn’t for leaders to abandon high performance standards. Establishing and protecting a culture of psychological safety allows teams to collaborate more effectively in pursuit of ambitious goals.
Brian’s workshops give teams a roadmap to guide them on their journey to fostering psychological safety — an environment that supports employee wellness, higher team performance, career longevity, and team stability.
Work with Brian
Contact Brian to discuss burnout prevention at your organization.