Burnout is a form of exhaustion caused by constantly feeling swamped. It's a result of excessive and prolonged emotional, physical, and mental stress. In many cases, burnout is related to one's job. Burnout happens when you're overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to keep up with life's incessant demands.
Physical Burnout Symptoms
Chronic stress may be felt physically in terms of having more aches and pains, low energy levels, and changes in appetite. 4 All of these physical signs suggest that you may be experiencing burnout.
With burnout, the fatigue doesn't go away even if you get all your sleep. The weariness is there every day, even on the weekend, as is the negative rumination and mental cut-de-sac. Fatigue doesn't cause an absence of positive emotions or hijack the mind with false beliefs and no-way-out, bleak thoughts.
How Long Does Burnout Last? It takes an average time of three months to a year to recover from burnout. How long your burnout lasts will depend on your level of emotional exhaustion and physical fatigue, as well as if you experience any relapses or periods of stagnant recovery.
In general, anxiety and burnout are different conditions that can affect people in different ways. While anxiety is characterized by excessive worry and fear, burnout is characterized by feelings of exhaustion and loss of motivation.
Burnout phase
At times, you may also feel numb and experience extreme self-doubt. Physical symptoms will become intense, leading to chronic headaches, stomach issues and gastrointestinal problems. Friends and family members may also notice behavioral changes.
If you're experiencing burnout, chances are something needs to change in order to get your mental and physical health back on track. Recovery doesn't happen on its own. You may need to make some lifestyle or job changes before you can find relief.
Stage 1: Excessive ambition
Burnout begins in a seemingly harmless way – with enthusiasm towards your work. While many Sensitive Strivers can relate to their ambition being a positive trait that supports their career growth, inner drive in excess can stifle you.
Burnout, where a person experiences too much stress over long periods, also has some similar signs and symptoms to a mental breakdown.
Being burned out means feeling empty and mentally exhausted, devoid of motivation, and beyond caring. People experiencing burnout often don't see any hope of positive change in their situations. If excessive stress feels like you're drowning in responsibilities, burnout is a sense of being all dried up.
Common causes of burnout include: lack of adequate social support; taking on more than one can handle at work, school, or interpersonally with family and friends; and poor self-care. Burnout is a serious matter.
While this may be true, burnout also significantly aligns with anxiety. Symptoms like inability to focus, changes in sleep, and lack of motivation can come from a depressed state. In contrast, these symptoms may also come from generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).
Schroeder says people typically experience a spike in stress or anxiety for a long period of time before burnout manifests. She explains burnout as the fallout from a stressed and overwhelmed system.
Differences. A 2016 research review suggests burnout isn't necessarily separate from chronic stress, but rather the far end of the stress continuum. In other words, when chronic stress leads you to experience more intense and severe symptoms and it impairs your ability to function, it's called burnout.
Habitual Burnout. The final stage of burnout is habitual burnout. This means that the symptoms of burnout are so embedded in your life that you are likely to experience a significant ongoing mental, physical or emotional problem, as opposed to occasionally experiencing stress or burnout.
Since burnout affects people differently, recovery time hinges on how a person experiences work-related exhaustion. Because of this variation, recovery time can take anywhere from a few weeks to several years.
Burnout is usually a slow and gradual process – one that tends to rob people of their passion, their motivation, and energy, leaving them instead with feelings of exhaustion, disillusionment, and frustration. But as overwhelming and infiltrating as burnout can feel, recovering is possible.