Third meeting SYPRENE. Vira Heng talks to us today about burnout.

"Burn-out is a subject that has long been associated with the professional world, but which has seen variations appear in other worlds relating to personal life: daily burn-out, maternal burn-out, children's burn-out... and it is increasingly associated with this notion of mental workload. But what is burn-out? It is an overload of work and tasks such as the person affected by this scourge is no longer able to manage the situation. It is complex and manifests itself through a wide variety of symptoms (134 identified by Schaufeli and Enzmann) which do not allow us to paint a precise picture, but it is difficult to distinguish those which are at the origin of burn-out from those which are caused by it.

What do these ideal candidates for burnout have in common? The search for performance, over-adaptation, perfection, demand, loss of meaning... are characteristics that we find in them, as well as the underlying attempts at solutions of excessive control of the situation or avoidance of regulations with the entourage, which are also common denominators, and these ways of acting are as much transposable at work as at home.

Through the case of a woman who comes for consultation for a case of relational problems with those around her, and who evokes her professional burn-out which took place two years earlier, she highlights the tendency she has to return to this logic of accumulating tasks at work, but also at home.

She has not returned to work when she comes for consultation, and yet her mental load has become exponential and she is having trouble coping calmly with the situation. She is on the verge of a daily burn-out this time. This case will allow us to highlight the warning signs of a burn-out, as well as a way to prevent it or prevent a recurrence. Through the strategic systemic approach, we will try to understand the mechanisms and the attempted solutions that are put in place at home by considering the interactional loops that this client sets up in front of herself and that she puts in place. facing his surroundings. We will also observe what underlying emotions guide his behavior and then we will discuss the techniques used through reframing and specific prescriptions to bring leads leading to a beginning of resolution. We will be particularly interested in the prescription "Discovering your limits" and will see the effect that this prescription will have had in the change of perception and behavior of this client, favoring the affirmation of her limits, better communication with those around her and a better consideration of herself, since she tended to forget herself.

The reflection around this case also brings out a notion of global burn-out which no longer confines burn-out to simple professional burn-out, since it includes all the mental load that the person is brought to bear. and which includes both professional and personal elements.

Burnout is not inevitable, it is possible to avoid falling or falling back into the trap of burnout by helping people to change their way of perceiving the situation and leading them to adopt new behaviors , to re-educate themselves, so that they return to the center and find meaning, thanks to the strategic systemic approach."

Vira HENG