Hi and

every week I'm your host Dr. Ellen Hendrickson

and every week I'll help you meet life's challenges with evidence-based research, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.

So we've all had days where we feel like a salmon swimming upstream. We exert maximum effort only to be swept back by

forces beyond our control. And to make matters worse, we all know what happens to the salmon

at the end of that journey. But what if your entire job

starts to feel like an ill-fated upriver struggle? What started as your dream job

somehow morphed into a nightmare. This week by request from listener Liz L

from Boston will cover the three signs of burnout and next week we'll cover

how not to end up dead in the water.

Burnout has been around as long as there have been professions,

but no one actually named it until psychologist Herbert Freudenberger

coined the term and wrote the classic 1980 book

Burn Out the High Cost of High Achievement. At first, Freudenberger theorized only

those in helping professions.

Nurses, teachers, social workers, and yes, psychologists

were prone to burn out.

But over the last 30 years, jobs have intensified,

demands from clients, patients, or customers,

not to mention the Corner Office, have increased,

often without sufficient personnel, resources,

or space to meet them. In addition, organizations and employees are increasingly

...