Overcoming chronic stress / burnout

As a follow-on to the recent work stress thread.

I have a friend who is clearly suffering from chronic stress / burnout, and has been for a number of years now.

He had 6 months of one-to-one counselling just after the pandemic but has been trying to deal with it recently by just ‘pushing on,’ which from what I understand about chronic stress is the worst thing you can do.

To make matters worse, he has been working for a really toxic company / boss for the past two years who sound like a total nightmare and has obviously magnified the problem.

He lives abroad with his wife, who doesn’t really understand what is going on, and has no local support network. He wants to move back to the UK to be closer to family / support but the wife is happy where she is and won’t entertain it.

He has been applying for other jobs (locally and remote / online) but nothing has come up. I can totally sympathise with him that it can’t be easy applying for jobs and putting your best face on during interviews when you are feeling the way he does.

Early 40s, known him for years but barely recognise him nowadays. Used to have an amazing sense of humour with a range of interesting hobbies (DJing, MTB, collecting films, philosophy, travel etc) so always good convo when hanging out. Now the guy just comes home and does nothing, refreshes Facebook / social media, sitting in the proverbially dark room.

Has anyone here been there, and how did you overcome long-term burnout? It sounds like he needs to quit work and take a few months off, but are there professional services / stress ‘detox’ clinics where he could get advice and help on how to do this?

I had an appraisal where I became award of what was going on with myself and how toxic it was.

The advice given to me was to work out where my line in the sand (boundary) was of what I was prepared to accept for myself.

I gave in my notice a few days later. As soon as I did I started to feel better.

However I was in a position as a GP that work was easy to find, so I didn’t have that to face. Having said that it has still significantly set my career back compared to where I would have been.

In the long run I’m stronger for it though.

One of the things for me was believing for a long time that I didn’t have to pay a price to change my situation. In the end I realised that actually, whatever the price was, I had to pay it.

It sounds like your friend is stuck in the denial phase.

Like Kramer (in healthcare too, although a physio) I realised that something significant had to change. Once I had accepted this, the actual decision to quit was relatively easy and I immediately felt better.

As regards stress/detox professional help, I honestly did not need it once I had taken action but whilst I was in that role I should have sought professional counselling.

The only answer is to either change the job or leave the job.

like others above I have had this.  Stress builds on you without you really realising.  Once you make the decision to leave thats when you really realise how badly it had been effecting you.  I felt 10 feet tall walking out

Your buddy needs to either go off sick or quit unless he thinks the boss will make accomodations.

Its often the go-to advise from those a tad ignorant of wider things to suggest leaving your job.

Leaving your job makes you unemployed at the extreme end which will exacerbate things – or even if lucky enough to find another job to move to, it may be with less salary, starting at the bottom again, and probably more importantly; retaining the sense of unfairness at having to leave a job youd previously loved before the changes forced upon you.

My advise is to take a length of time on the sick (if an option) to enable you to step back and look at things and get closer to your base-line. Often its impossible to see where your real well-being baseline is as stress builds up and the base-line creeps up too.

CBT is also a good option to be able to see things differently to reflect on whats important.

Best of luck to your friend.

 retaining the sense of unfairness at having to leave a job youd previously loved before the changes forced upon you.

From what I understand, the company and boss he currently works for has been a nightmare from day 1, but as he’s living in the European city with the highest unemployment rate in the whole of the EU, has little option to move on to something else so easily.

I think he needs a more supportive wife.

Does his wife work?

If not then answer is clear.

If not then answer is clear.

Patio?

I don’t think I can rival six months of councelling but it doesn’t sound like your friend’s problème is just his job. And I doubt a different job would change much. Like many people of your friend’s age, keeping all the balls up in the air – job, partner, kids, home, distant family, bills, activities, others’ expectations… requires energy and motivation.

So which of those balls really needs to be kept up right now? Kid(s), definitely. Job to keep the kid ball up. I don’t know how your friend would feel about seeing other balls lying on the ground beyond the personal activities one that is already there. Maybe if your friend picked that one up again it would make it easier to keep the others up.

has little option to move on to something else so easily.

No job is worth making yourself ill for.  Being andEU country I guess the sick leave entitlement is good.

I think Edukator has covered it pretty well.

I’ve been lucky when I’ve reached burnout that I’ve been able to be signed off work, to get myself some time and headspace and then gone back on a phased return and a welfare plan.

I’ve also got better at predicting and preparing for stressful events – got some upcoming additional stress with my ageing parents coming up, so I’m having to step back from my volunteering role to give my self the mental space and time I’m going to need.

Sounds like part of the OPs friends issue is the wife. Not gonna lie, if there were no (longer) kids to factor in, I’d be packing in the job and heading home, with or without her. A lot of guys I know who struggle at work are struggling because of other stuff going on at home.

Spain, TJ. I used to go in to work sick as a dog because I didn’t get paid if I didn’t. Each country has its own rules on sick pay. Then there’s dealing with the crap that’s accumulated when you get back if you take time off, in a sector working to deadlines.

I suspect in this friends case the options are quit or fired. And both would be bad for the rest of the friend’s life. So he feels trapped, but knows freeing himself might be worse.

I suspect in this friends case the options are quit or fired. And both would be bad for the rest of the friend’s life. So he feels trapped, but knows freeing himself might be worse.

I think he believes freeing himself would be worse. Having got trapped professionally before,  the short term pain and longer term career impact were not as bad as I feared, and way better than staying would have been.

I’ve some experience of this and IMO the above advice is in the majority correct, it should be broadened.

Chronic stress is caused by many aspects of life but potentially a change in the way the sufferer has manifested coping mechanisms, they themselves can be the problem and sometimes need to be addressed.   Although the issue here appears to be the employer, it’s perhaps not the only contributory factor.

I’d recommended some professional counselling to gain an outside view of the sufferers world, and listen carefully to educated  suggestions for change.   Whilst the job may be a major cause, other lifestyle issues could also contribute , and the counseller will review how the person is able to manage it and offer mental or physical solutions.

Above all, there may be some hard decisions to make e.g. money vs stress, hobby vs work, beers vs sleep, nutrition vs eating but if taken seriously the sufferer needs to adopt and practise the lifestyle and mechanism that will relieve the issue.

Metaphorically, changing the job may be one less plate to spin, but they’ll be others and it won’t improve the persons spinning ability either.

A lot of guys I know who struggle at work are struggling because of other stuff going on at home.

“At the bottom of every man’s problem lies a woman”

Some bitter old codger said this to me once, I probably laughed and thought it was a joke at 18. But if you take the sexism out of it, there is the reality of an unhappy relationship and the effect that has on your life

[thegeneralist – as far as I know the wife has a very stable job getting paid double what he does so I presume all bills are covered if he needs to take time off. The wife is very career-focussed though and also has a very stressful job as a project manager and I know they have had some marriage counselling recently (which from what he has said, the wife didn’t really want to engage in).]

Some great suggestions. I have shared this thread with my friend.

@thegeneralist – as far as I know the wife has a very stable job getting paid double what he does so I presume all bills are covered if he needs to take time off. The wife is very career-focussed though and also has a very stressful job as a project manager and I know they have had some marriage counselling recently (which from what he has said, the wife didn’t really want to engage in).

@MoreCashThanDash – from how he describes things he works for a Mickey Mouse one-man-band type of company that doesn’t even have a HR department. If he takes time off / gets signed off there is literally nobody to cover the work. Time off then phased return sounds like what he needs but I’m not sure how it would work with a small business like that.

@Kryton57 – sage advice. I gather that the main stressor (70-80%) is the company / boss he works for, but this is very much supplemented by the absolutely normal daily pressures of being an immigrant (I don’t like the word ‘expat’) in another country with very different social norms and cultures. So these daily stresses, which would otherwise be manageable, become bigger problems because of the work situation. 

@MoreCashThanDash – from how he describes things he works for a Mickey Mouse one-man-band type of company that doesn’t even have a HR department. If he takes time off / gets signed off there is literally nobody to cover the work. Time off then phased return sounds like what he needs but I’m not sure how it would work with a small business like that.

Then Mickey should be a damn sight more careful caring for his critical employee! And your pal shouldn’t prioritise his boss’s problems over his own mental health.

OP rings a few bells for me and this line in particular stood out: ” He wants to move back to the UK to be closer to family / support but the wife is happy where she is and won’t entertain it.”

I think he is suffering from homesickness and feels trapped due to Work and Family commitments. Having Kids will compound this. In my experience, there is no solution that makes everyone happy.

If he stays, family life will be stable but he will be miserable. If he moves back to the UK, family life will significantly suffer but he will begin to feel better within himself. Being an immigrant is hard and its not for everyone. Its OK to admit that but you then have to deal with the consequences and minimise hurt to all involved.

Then there’s dealing with the crap that’s accumulated when you get back if you take time off, in a sector working to deadlines.

and

he works for a Mickey Mouse one-man-band type of company that doesn’t even have a HR department. If he takes time off / gets signed off there is literally nobody to cover the work.

This sounds like a “them” problem to me. If there are deadlines to be met and insufficient staff to meet them, any company who cared sufficiently about meeting deadlines would be recruiting. If not then they ipso facto don’t really care so why should you?

Being an immigrant gets very easy with time – it becomes normal. After 37 years the UK feels odd and France comfortable.

Junior, born in France,  has always regarded the UK as a foreign place. I asked him if he’d ever consider living there – no way. But he’s quite at home in Berlin so long as he can Winter in France.

All that to say that the stress of being an immigrant adult has to be balanced with making a child an immigrant who will then have to integrate – for better or worse because no two kids are the same: as with adults some rise to the challenge of a move whilst others feel lost. If a change is to be made anecdotal evidence around me says the the younger the kids the better. Older ones we know have struggled and ended up with their arse between two chairs.