Exercise: Keeping track of symptoms

When you start with symptom reduction, it’s important to gain insight into your symptoms and keep track of them. Since stress is central to burnout, this will be the symptom you’ll be recording. If you find it difficult to concretely define stress, you can also choose to track a stress-related symptom, such as energy or concentration problems.

You can track your symptoms using the app’s Trackers feature. Go to Track and add a new tracker. Then choose what you want to track, for example, stress using the “Stressed” tracker.

Now that you’ve added the tracker, you can easily add a new entry and indicate its intensity. You can optionally add a diary entry if you want to write something about it. This way, both you and your therapist will have more information about your moments of stress.

Try to track your symptoms as often as possible and discuss with your therapist what is feasible.

After returning to work

As you gradually engage in returning to work, it’s important to continue monitoring stress related to specific events or tasks. Try to record your stress for each specific event or task. You can think of specific tasks like a meeting, administrative work, or an important phone call. For events, you can think of a heated discussion, a difficult colleague, or accidentally being late.

Source:

Keijsers, G. P. J., Van Minnen, A., Verbraak, M., Hoogduin, C. A. L. & Emmelkamp, P., (2017). Protocol treatments for adults with psychological symptoms.