Stress & Burnout: Extra Credit Opportunity

Stress & Burnout: Extra Credit Opportunity

I have worked as a children and youth minister in a Protestant church in the Middle East for over 7 years. I can say that it is a fulfilling and rewarding job but my only complaint was I always felt exhausted and tired at the end of the day. My main responsibility was to manage children and youth groups at the same time. To give you a clearer picture, my regular Sunday schedule was to lead music and teach lesson to the children’s Sunday school class, then I had to attend our youth group that was also going on at the same time. Many people noticed me running here and there during our Sunday service. On top of that, I had to get ready to run youth group for middle-schoolers in the afternoon and then high school youth group in the evening. During the week, I had to meet with volunteers and parents while having one on one discipleship with student leaders. I oversaw band practices on Wednesday evenings and Bible study on Thursday evenings. For seven years, I can only count with my fingers the times that I sat down and attended our main church service each year. It has been a seven years of struggle!

An article hypothesized that workload, time pressure, role conflict, and hours worked as the main factors of burnout (Innstrand, Langballe & Falkum, 2011). The authors also emphasized that individual factors, working environment, and the interaction of work and home are all important contributors to burnout. Working as a church worker can be mentally demanding. I am actually expected to be available to others to a greater extent and shoulder many responsibilities, including administration, preaching, teaching, and counselling. Although some studies indicate that burnout scores among church ministers are not very different from those among other ‘‘helping’’ or human services professions, various religious denominations and different countries have indicated high levels of burnout among clergy. That burnout is found to predict the choice of church ministry workers to leave the ministry (Innstrand, Langballe & Falkum, 2011).

I have found out from the class that stress is one of the issues facing early adulthood, in which I am in right now. Feldman defined stress as “the physical and emotional response to events that threaten or challenge us” (Feldman, 2014, p. 424). Stressors are not necessarily unpleasant events. Even the happiest and exciting events, such as organizing a kids Christmas program or a youth summer camp, can also produce stress. In a few years, I will be entering middle adulthood. The psychosocial crisis for this stage is generativity versus stagnation and one of the developmental tasks is managing a career. I have taken down few inputs from last week’s class which I can take with me if I decide to go back and work in the same field. Some are the implications to a human service professional that can be useful to avoid burnout which I have learned from group discussion last week:

-          Setting of priorities

-          Looking at the bigger picture

-          Learn to delegate responsibilities

-          Time management

-          Self-care

-          One must not take it personally

-          Do a regular self-assessment or evaluation

Feldman also suggested some coping mechanisms for stress as follows:

-          Seek control over the situation producing the stress

-          Redefine “threat” as “challenge”

-          Find social support

-          Use relaxation techniques

-          Maintain a healthy lifestyle (exercise, eat nutritiously, get enough sleep, etc.)

-          If all else fails, keep in mind that a life without any stress at all would be a dull one.

(Feldman, 2014, p. 429).

I was happy with my previous job and I can say that I have not reached the point of total burnout. Putting all the above coping mechanisms to practice, I am sure that I will be better.  If I were to go in the same situation again, I can say that I am more confident now to manage stress and burning out efficiently.

References

Feldman, R. S. (2014). Development across the life span (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Innstrand, S. T., Langballe, E. M., & Falkum, E. (2011). The longitudinal effects of individual vulnerability, organisational factors, and work-home interaction on burnout among male church ministers in Norway. Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 14(3), 241-257.