There are no two people who react to stress and job burnout just alike. Some common warning signs that you may be or are about to experience job burn out include:

" Resistance to going to work

" Anger and resentment

" Discouragement

" A sense of failure

" Guilt and blame

" Fatigue

" Clock-watching

" Not returning client phone calls

" Lack of concentration

" Increasingly "going by the book"

" Frequent colds or flu

" Postponing client contacts

" Stereotyping clients

" Cynicism

" Sleep disturbance

" Frequent gastrointestinal disturbances

Tips on how to prevent job burnout might include:

" Try to think of job burnout in terms of yourself rather than in general terms

" The most important thing you can do to help prevent job burnout is self awareness, specifically focusing on where and why you might be vulnerable to burnout. Understanding more about why and how certain situations are stressful to you will alleviate some of the stress of those situations and will provide clues about ways to combat job burnout in your professional life.

" Learn to recognize the ways in which you show stress.

" Learn what stresses you.

" Do not think in terms of good and bad clients, supervisors, co-workers, and work situations. Instead pay close attention to the things that stresses you and realize you are the only one you have complete control of to help you through stressful situations. You cannot control the squeaky voice of a co-worker that sends chills down your spine, but you can learn ways to control how that affects you and find ways to alleviate the tension associated with it.

" Intrapersonal stress involves your unique personality. Your personality may leave you vulnerable to stress and burnout in ways that the worker at the desk next to you is not. You need to know and understand what it is that makes you vulnerable to being upset by certain events. When you understand these two factors and the way they interact for you, you can take steps to prevent burnout from occurring or to stop it quickly when you see it starting to happen.

Plan on taking one day at a time, and do not worry too much about what tomorrow will bring. Plan to live each day of your life as fully as possible. If you see job burnout heading your way, try the tips above. If this does not work for you, consider changing work environments within the same field. Sometimes just a change in scenery and working with different people is all it takes to lift you out of a job burnout situation.

Source: Adapted from an article written by H. Frederick Sweitzer from the book: Human Services Contemporary Issues and Trends, edited by Howard S. Harris, David C. Maloney, Franklyn M. Rother, Third Edition