Reaction Paper On Burnout

Stressors are common among the helping professions, especially in the crisis setting (James & Gilliland, 2013). Many helping professionals in the crisis setting deal with erratic hours, extremely low pay, immediate deadlines, sporadic clients, and repeat callers. In addition to these many stressors, crisis workers are put into dangerous and traumatic situations. Thus, making terms like burnout, vicarious traumatization, and compassion fatigue common among these workers.
Burnout
Given the intimate nature of counseling, many helping professionals are highly prone to burnout (Gutierrez & Mullen, 2016; James & Gilliland, 2013; Leiter & Maslach, 2005). Burnout progressed from the concept of psychiatric patients who were burned out physically, psychologically, and spiritually to the point of fatigue and tiredness. The word burnout did not become a term until the 1970s. Essentially, it was termed by a man named Herbert Freudenberger to label his volunteer workers who started to appear and act worse than many of their own clients. However, there is no specific definition for the word burnout. As such, people will define the term burnout differently. One broad definition depicts burnout as a when an individual’s
Three different levels can define burnout (James & Gilliland, 2013). These levels are known as trait, state, and activity. The trait level encompasses every detail of the individual’s life. In specific terms, the individual become non-functional in every facet of life, which includes person, place, and time. During the state level, the burnout may appear more sporadically and often times situational. For example, the burnout may only appear when a crisis worker has a busy night. Lastly, burnout may appear more activity based. Burnout may be caused by an activity that is performed over and over again at a deep and passionate level. For example, an individual may experience burnout from leading a grief or substance abuse