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Burnout affects many people. IPPEN.MEDIA talks to psychologist Timo Schiele and former sufferer Sebastian Kneißl about the illness.
Frankfurt – Faster and faster, further and further. Until at some point nothing works anymore and body and mind go on strike. “I didn’t get out of bed for three days. I lay there and asked myself: ‘This can’t be true, what’s going on?'” Sebastian Kneißl remembers in an interview with IPPEN.MEDIA. Then it was official. A doctor made the diagnosis in 2014. Burnout.
“You have an emptiness inside you”: Sebastian Kneißl on his burnout experience
Kneißl – now an expert at DAZN – completed an apprenticeship at a furniture company in 2009 after his active time as a professional footballer, and quickly rose to become department head. Stress was inevitable. The path to burnout, which he suffered in 2014, was a gradual process, he looks back on. “You notice that something is wrong and you have an emptiness inside you. But it’s the classic: you don’t want to deal with it.”
The 41-year-old compares being “burnt out” to a piece of wood. “For me, ‘burn’ means fire, something is burning. I always put my piece of wood on someone else’s fire for a certain period of time. I achieved their goals – I was the employee who did everything for the boss. I neglected my own fire. And so it slowly burned out.”
Many employees in Germany are in the same situation as Kneißl was back then. Every second person feels burned out. The big difficulty: for a long time there was no uniform definition of burnout.
WHO defines burnout for the first time
“Up until now, the experts were so divided that they could not agree on a definition,” explains Timo Schiele, chief psychologist at the Psychosomatic Clinic Kloster Dießen, in an interview with IPPEN.MEDIA.
In the latest version of the Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) the World Health Organization (WHO) defined the term for the first time. According to this, burnout is caused by “chronic stress at work” that has not been successfully managed. Three aspects are central to this:
- Feelings of lack of energy/exhaustion.
- Mental distance from work, feelings of negativism or cynicism towards one’s own work.
- Reduced professional efficiency.
Psychologist explains burnout “hamster wheel”
“Many feel very exhausted, powerless, listless,” Schiele describes. “Things that once gave them joy suddenly no longer do. Those affected often have the impression that, despite their commitment and efforts, they can no longer manage things. They feel helpless, as if they were running on a hamster wheel – or as if they had already fallen out of it.”
At the limit of your resilience – these are some possible burnout symptoms
- Depressed mood
- Increased fatigue
- Brooding and circling thoughts
- Sleep and appetite disorders (Source: Klinik Kloster Dießen)
Stress parameters: The point at which everything becomes too much
But when are employees so stressed or overworked that they are in danger of suffering from burnout? “To put it simply, stress becomes harmful when one’s own resources are no longer sufficient to cope with the stress,” says Schiele. “At that point, most people experience functional or even illness-causing stress,” he continues. How much stress someone can tolerate is always individual, emphasizes the psychologist.
Piece of wood metaphor for burnout – “I have neglected my own fire”
The way out of burnout “only works with external help,” is Kneißl’s opinion. There are many clinics in Germany that specialize in the condition – including the clinic in Dießen am Ammersee, where psychologist Schiele works.
“I didn’t have to go to a clinic,” remembers Kneißl. He had talk therapy with a psychiatrist. That’s how he managed the turnaround – and got his own fire burning again. Today he passes on his experiences in lectures and workshops. He also brings a small piece of wood as a metaphor for burnout. (mbr)
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