How can you tell when your energy level is slipping to dangerous levels? What signals emotional and physical exhaustion? Here are a few significant pointers.
Answer the questions below as you consider the last two or three weeks of your life. Give yourself a score for each:
2 if your answer is “often”
1 if it is “sometimes”
0 if “rarely.”
Then total your score and see below for an interpretation.
__ Are you spending an unusual amount of time by yourself, withdrawing from friends, family, and work acquaintances?
__ Are you becoming more negative, pessimistic, critical, or cynical about yourself and others?
__ Are you forgetting appointments, deadlines, or activities and not feeling concerned about it?
__ Are you more irritable, hostile, aggressive, angry, or frustrated than usual?
__ Are you sleeping either much more than usual or significantly less?
__ Do you suffer from gastrointestinal problems (indigestion, stomach discomfort, diarrhea, or colitis)?
__ Are you waking up feeling tired or fatigued?
__ Are you spending a lot of time thinking or worrying about your work, people, the future, or the past?
__ Do you have an overwhelming feeling of being overloaded, that too many demands are being imposed on you?
__ Do you find yourself focusing on relatively petty things or persevering with nonproductive or ineffective actions?
__ Do you feel that nothing you do is effective in coping with your life, or that you are helpless to control the outcome of anything?
__ Are you experiencing headaches, muscle tension, or stiffness in your shoulders and neck, or increased pain anywhere in the body?
__ Does your heart thump or race, or do you get irregular heartbeats when you lie down to rest?
__ Do you get dizzy or lightheaded (especially when you are under pressure)?
__ Have you become aware of increased anxiety, worry, fidgetiness, and restlessness?
____ Total
Scoring the results
The fifteen items of this test cover the most significant, subtle signs of overwork, such as repeatedly waking up tired in the morning. Other symptoms include withdrawal, negative thinking, forgetfulness, and irritability, as well as an assortment of hysterical problems, such as stomach discomfort, headaches, and lightheadedness.
Although this simple self-test will not yield conclusive results, you can tentatively interpret your score as follows:
0-5: You are living a relatively stress-free life and appear to be coping well with your pressures.
6-10: You are showing mild signs of distress from overwork. Ease up a little.
11-16: You are showing moderate signs of distress from overwork. Ease up a lot.
17-24: You are showing severe signs of distress from overwork and need to change your style drastically. Seek help from a professional if necessary.
25-30: You are living dangerously. You are experiencing distress in every major system and should consult a physician right away. Then get some good stress-management counseling.
– Archibald D. Hart
Fuller Theological Seminary
Pasadena, California
Leadership Spring 1987 p. 82
Copyright © 1987 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
