How to tell burnout from ordinary stress, why it happens, and what helps you recover, from a counselling psychologist in Fitzrovia.
You're sleeping, but you wake up exhausted. Work that once held your interest now feels pointless, and you're more irritable with colleagues than you'd like to be. You tell yourself it's a busy patch, and that things will calm down once this project is done. Then the next one arrives.
If this sounds familiar, you may be dealing with burnout rather than ordinary stress. The two are easy to confuse, and the difference matters, because they call for different responses.
What is burnout?
Burnout is what can happen when work stress goes on for too long without enough relief or change. The World Health Organization describes it as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that hasn't been successfully managed, with three main features:
Exhaustion: feeling drained of energy, physically and mentally.
Distance from your work: feeling detached, cynical or negative about your job.
Reduced effectiveness: feeling that you're not achieving what you used to.
One thing worth knowing: the WHO classes burnout as an "occupational phenomenon", not a medical condition. That doesn't make it any less real. It does help explain why it can be hard to get taken seriously, and why many people spend months pushing through before they ask for help.
Burnout vs stress
Stress and burnout overlap, but they aren't the same thing.
Pattern
Stress is tied to particular pressures, and eases when they do whereas
Burnout is persistent and doesn't lift with a weekend or a holiday.
Feels like
Stress feels like too much: too many demands, too little time.
Burnout feels like too little: running on empty, with nothing left to give.
Emotions
Stress creates urgency, worry, tension.
Burnout creates flatness, detachment, hopelessness.
Outlook
Stress says "if I can just get on top of this, I'll feel better".
Burnout says "nothing is going to change, so why bother"?
Awareness
Stress is something you know, i.e. you usually know you're stressed.
Burnout is often unoticed, creeping up.
Stress is usually driven by the pressure of the moment, and burnout by pressure sustained over months or years. If you're stressed, you can still picture relief. With burnout, that sense of possibility often fades, which is part of why it's so easy to miss in yourself until it has already taken hold.
Signs of burnout to look out for
Burnout rarely arrives all at once. It tends to build quietly, and the early signs are easy to put down to a busy period. They usually show up in three ways.
In your body:
Feeling tired and drained most of the time, even after rest
Headaches, muscle tension or aches that keep coming back
Changes to sleep (struggling to switch off, or waking in the early hours) or to appetite
In how you feel:
Losing motivation for work you used to care about
A sense of helplessness, or of being stuck
Feeling like you're failing, or that nothing you do is good enough
A growing cynicism or negativity about work, and sometimes about everything
In what you do:
Putting things off, or finding simple tasks harder to start
Withdrawing from colleagues, friends or family
Taking more time off, or dreading going in
Leaning more on alcohol, food or other substances to get through the day
Having one or two of these from time to time is normal. What matters is whether they've become the pattern, and whether they're affecting your work, your relationships or your health.
Why it happens
It's tempting to look for a single cause, either "my job is the problem" or "I'm not coping well enough." In my experience, it's rarely just one. Burnout usually comes from the interaction between what's going on around you and the way you respond to it.
What's going on around you
Little control over how, when or what you work on
Demands that are unclear, or simply too high
Not enough recognition or reward for the effort you put in
A chaotic or high-pressure environment, with no time to recover
Work that is monotonous, or that doesn't match your values
How you tend to respond
Holding yourself to very high standards, so that nothing ever feels finished or good enough
Finding it hard to say no, or to ask for help
Believing you have to keep going, even when you're running on empty
Putting everyone else's needs ahead of your own
Feeling you can only trust a task to be done right if you do it yourself
None of these patterns is a flaw. Many of them are strengths, and often the reason people are trusted and promoted. They are also what can keep someone pushing on long past the point where they should have stopped. Over time, a demanding environment and a habit of pushing through reinforce each other.
This is why changing one thing often isn't enough. A lighter workload helps, but if the pattern underneath stays the same, the same pressure tends to find its way back. And working on how you respond, without any change to your circumstances, can only go so far. Recovery usually involves both.
Outside work, a lack of sleep, little time with people who matter to you, and taking on too much at home can all add to the load.
Am I burnt out?
Only a professional assessment can tell you for certain, and burnout isn't a formal diagnosis, so no online test will settle it. A few questions can help you take stock, though. Over the past few weeks or months:
Do you feel exhausted even after a weekend or a holiday?
Has work that used to interest you started to feel pointless, or begun to irritate you?
Do you feel less effective than you used to, even when you're working just as hard?
Have you pulled back from people or things you usually enjoy?
Do you find it hard to imagine things getting better?
When you think about asking for help or easing off, do you feel guilty or afraid of letting people down?
If you said yes to several, it's worth taking seriously. These questions aren't a diagnosis, but they can be a useful starting point for a conversation with your GP or a psychologist, who can assess what's going on properly.
How to recover from burnout
Recovery from burnout usually starts on two fronts: easing the pressure you're under, and understanding what stops you from looking after yourself.
Understanding what gets in the way
Most people who burn out know, in theory, what they should be doing. Rest more, say no, ask for help. The harder question is why they don't.
Often it comes down to the parts of you that show up and get in the way: the one that insists you keep going, the one that can't ease off, the one that's afraid of letting people down. These responses tend to grow out of long-standing habits, thoughts and fears, and they usually made sense when they first developed. They're also what keeps burnout coming back if they're left alone.
In therapy, we work on understanding these patterns, where they come from and what they're protecting you from. From there, we challenge them and change them, so that looking after yourself stops feeling like a risk.
Creating some breathing space
Understanding takes time, and it's hard to do while you're running on empty. That's why practical relief matters too.
Talk to your GP. A GP can check whether anything else is contributing to how you feel, such as low mood, anxiety, sleep problems or a physical health issue. If you need time off, they can also provide a fit note. A fit note can say you're not fit for work, or that you may be fit with changes, such as a phased return, altered hours or amended duties. That second option can be a useful way to reduce your workload without stopping altogether.
Time off work. Sometimes a break is what's needed to interrupt the cycle. It won't fix the underlying patterns, but it gives you room to think and recover.
A temporary reduction in workload. Even a short-term change, agreed with your manager, can ease the pressure enough for other changes to take hold.
If any of these feels difficult to ask for, that's worth paying attention to. It's often a sign of the same patterns we've been talking about.
When to seek support
Please don't wait for things to become unmanageable. It's worth talking to someone if:
the symptoms have lasted for more than a few weeks
they're affecting your sleep, health, relationships or work
you're relying more on alcohol or other substances to cope
you're feeling low or anxious most of the time
Your GP is a good first step. If you ever feel unable to keep yourself safe, or are having thoughts of ending your life, please contact Samaritans on 116 123 (free, any time), or call 999 or go to your nearest A&E.
Working with me
If this article sounds like you, you don't have to work it out on your own. I work with professionals experiencing burnout, workplace stress and related difficulties, in person in Fitzrovia and online.
An intro call is a chance to talk through what's been happening and see whether working together feels right, with no obligation. [Book an intro call] or read more about [how it works].
About the author
Andrea Dobson is a Counselling Psychologist, registered with the HCPC (PLY 35501), and a Chartered Member of the BPS. She works in private practice in Fitzrovia, London.
References and further reading
World Health Organization (2019). Burn-out an "occupational phenomenon": International Classification of Diseases
Maslach, C. & Leiter, M. P. (2016). Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry. World Psychiatry, 15(2), 103–111.
NHS Every Mind Matters. Work-related stress
