Burnout is a modern American pandemic. Almost anybody who works an office job in this country has, at one time during his or her career, experienced apathy and lethargy while on the clock.
For most burnout sufferers, the condition results in nothing more dangerous than a feeling of career dissatisfaction and general unhappiness. But for cops, the dangers of burnout have very real and potentially fatal consequences. In the field, it can result in haphazard or lackadaisical approaches to the job. For example, once-dependable arbiters of the peace become short tempered and tactless. It can also make hard-charging, “go get ’em” cops timid and apathetic. Worse, burnout can be a metastasizing cancer that spreads through a patrol shift, station, or even department like a pandemic plague.
A Self-Inflicted Wound
Dr. James T. Reese, a former federal agent cum psychologist, characterizes burnout as a “self-inflicted attitudinal injury” that most often occurs when demands exceed resources. “Burnout is often the case of an over-commitment to your job, which ironically results in an under-commitment to it,” he says.
Burnout is likewise a byproduct of unreasonable expectations or demands on the parts of both the burnout candidates and the people they work with. People who identify strongly with their jobs are susceptible; moreso when they try to achieve or maintain unrealistic performance standards. They become so wholly invested in the job that whatever pleasures or distractions external activities may have once provided are largely gone.
“Your job is supposed to support your life, not vice versa,” notes Reese. “Unfortunately, we forget the holistic nature of the job.”
Dissatisfied at work, burned-out employees can find themselves indulging in self-destructive behavior such as gambling, alcoholism, and other diversions. These behaviors inevitably factor into another threat: burnout’s ability to perpetuate itself. Dissatisfied employees increasingly commit themselves to any given enterprise with the same calculated indifference, garnering criticism from unimpressed supervisors, getting pissed off themselves, and seeking solace elsewhere, which ensures that the cycle repeats itself.
Reese recognizes that officers are often underappreciated, but he doesn’t absolve officers for their own culpability. He says it is a personal decision as to whether an officer decides to be “better or bitter.”
“You can sit around and moan, ‘woe is me,’ or you can do something about it. This is the time that an officer should consciously talk himself up, especially if others are getting him down. There’s no sense in browbeating oneself and feeling like crap, particularly when it just stands to reward the bad behavior of others.” In other words: Don’t let the bastards get you down.
That cops who would be vigilant against surrendering their sidearms should abdicate control of their emotional responses to others is confounding to burnout experts. For not only do they empower others, but they leave themselves vulnerable to attacks that can be as debilitating as any physical assault.
And just as officers practice good survival skills in the field, Reese notes that they need to keep growing personally and professionally. But the impetus for doing a good job must be internal in nature, not the expectation of some external reward, which often isn’t forthcoming anyway.
When it comes to averting burnout, sometimes it’s not a matter of performing the job well because of someone, but doing it in spite of them.
“Cops are risk-takers, adrenaline junkies,” observes Reese. “They enjoy the rush of doing the job well. When you lose that, you’re not stimulating anyone, and you lose your own inspiration.”
Motivational Problem
Dr. Beverly Potter, author of “Overcoming Job Burnout: How to Renew Enthusiasm for Work,” has also worked with law enforcement officers. She notes that while burnout is often seen as a stress problem and has been sold as such, she views it more as a motivational problem.
“When they suffer what they see as a loss of control, their motivation is destroyed,” says Potter. “Studies have been done up and down the animal kingdom. And time after time, we find that if you deprive living beings of their control, they often die. When it comes right down to it, we are all control freaks. Unfortunately, cops have enough problems just doing the day-to-day job without having to worry about the likes of the ACLU or some other clowns looking over their shoulders, looking to get their defendants off, and getting the cops in trouble.”
The loss of control that cops feel in their lives is magnified by the fact that they have to grin and bear the nastiest criticism from the public. “Everyone loves to rag on cops, and it’s a one-sided dynamic: Cops are not allowed to lash back,” Potter says. “The tight reins imposed upon them by policy and procedure creates the perceived or actual loss of control, which leads to burnout.”
Potter points out that some of the most likely candidates for burnout include officers who work in bureaucracies that place greater demands upon them to do the job even as they simultaneously inhibit them from wanting to.
Another big factor is the pronounced lack of empathy from the citizens that officers ostensibly serve, which has always been a problem.
Changes in police culture have also contributed to officer burnout, especially among male cops. “There’s a cultural war on maleness and, when you combine that with a feminization of police culture, you’re creating a powder keg,” Potter explains. “Add this to the dozens of mindbending, mutually exclusive demands, then it is not too surprising that cops have high incidences of alcoholism, divorce, and other self-destructive behavior, all of which are reflective of an individual’s inability to deal with burnout.”