Too Stressed

[superstressed]

I really really need some help here. This is my first nursing job just out of school. I am a RN, BSN and I'm working on a medical psych floor. I've only been working there for 8months but I am completely burnt out. I am loosing everything that pushed me into nursing in the first place. I am getting jaded and frustrated, at work and at home. It's absolutely killing me. I need a much much less stressful job. However, if I leave now it's only 8 months of experience and I don't even know where to go now. I'm totally lost and I've reached my breaking point....I just don't know what to do. Please help me out. Any suggestion is helpful.

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

I am sorry you're having such a rough time. Have you talked to your supervisor about how you feel?

Do you have any insight as to exactly what is causing your stress? Is it lack of knowledge? Too many tasks? Critical feedback from peers? Interpersonal conflict? Patient expectations? . . . Without doing some self-reflection and trying to figure out what is triggering your anxiety, its just a big overwhelming cloud of free-floating and unmanageable anxiety.

If you can gain some insight as to what is affecting you, you will be able to take some specific actions to manage or decrease that trigger. f you don't take the time to do this, your big old bag of stress will just move along with you to any other job that you take. Changing the scenery won't make it go away.