Burnout: Definition, Symptoms, & Recovery Tips

By Nathalie Boutros, Ph.D.
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Have you ever felt burned out? Learn what burnout feels like, what causes it, and some ways you may be able to prevent and recover from burnout.
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In our modern world of 24-7 connection, busy work schedules, and financial pressures, burnout is thought to be increasingly common. In this article we’ll talk about what burnout is, how to determine if you have burnout and what to do. Read on to learn more.
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What Is Burnout? (A Definition)

Burnout is a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion that comes from stress exposure (Schaufeli & Greenglass, 2001). Generally, the stress that leads to burnout is consistent and ongoing for an extended period. A single stressful event usually isn't enough to cause burnout. When you are burned out you may feel constantly exhausted or anxious and on edge. You may feel irritable and angry. You may feel like you are living in a fog and unable to think clearly. You may be unable to relax or get to sleep.

Burnout Example

In the television show Parks and Recreation, the main character Leslie Knope is a dedicated and caring public servant who spends most of the series working tirelessly for the benefit of her small town. Although her efforts are rarely appreciated, she maintains a relentlessly upbeat and cheery disposition and continues to dedicate significant time and effort to the betterment of her town. In the scene below, Leslie has just learned that she is being recalled from her position on the city council, right before being presented with an award for public service.

Video: Example of Burnout | Parks and Recreation

Her response onstage is very much out of character. She has previously been shown as unrelentingly positive, caring, optimistic, enthusiastic, and energetic even in the face of overwork, pushback, and negativity from those around her. Her reaction in this scene may depict someone who has experienced ongoing, unrelenting stress and thus has become burned out. Burned-out people can show many of the symptoms that Leslie Knope exhibits in the above clip, namely anger, irritability, cynicism, and a feeling of incompetence. People like Leslie Knope, who serve and help others, may be particularly susceptible to burnout.

Burnout Syndrome

Burnout syndrome was first formally defined in the 1970s to describe a collection of symptoms often seen in people working as medical professionals, teachers, social workers, and others in helping professions (Freudenberger, 1974; Maslach & Jackson, 1981). There are three major categories of burnout symptoms.
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  • Emotional Exhaustion: If you feel emotionally drained or like you have nothing left to give, you may be emotionally exhausted. Feeling overwhelmed and fatigued all the time may also be a sign of emotional exhaustion. When Leslie Knope lamented about feeling unappreciated by her constituents, despite her unrelenting efforts to help them in countless ways, she was expressing feelings of emotional exhaustion.
  • Depersonalization/Cynicism: If you feel negative, cynical, or callous towards the people you’re tasked with helping or the work that you’re supposed to accomplish, you may be feeling cynical or depersonalizing others. You may feel that what you do doesn’t matter or make a difference. You may feel angry or annoyed with your patients, students, clients, or children. When Leslie Knope expressed uncharacteristic anger at her constituents for their dietary choices and called them insulting names, she was depersonalizing the townspeople that she had previously cared deeply about.
  • A sense of reduced personal accomplishment: If you feel incompetent or that you aren’t able to make a difference, accomplish anything, or be successful, you may be suffering from a sense of reduced personal accomplishment. When Leslie Knope described her workdays as consisting of “cleaning slime out of rivers and removing slugs from people’s front yards”, she was expressing a reduced sense of personal accomplishment, describing her work as meaningless, unimportant, unvalued, and undignified.

Although burnout syndrome was first defined as a condition affecting people working in the helping professions, people working in any number of professions may be susceptible to burnout (Samra, 2018). Moreover, burnout syndrome can result from exposure to stress experienced anywhere, not just in the workplace. Caregiving responsibilities, academic demands, social and cultural expectations, and even just the stress of everyday modern living can all lead to burnout.

Causes of Burnout

By definition, burnout is caused by persistent and ongoing stress exposure. When you encounter a stressful situation, your body rallies its resources to prepare you to confront and overcome the challenge. When your brain detects a potential threat, a cascade of neurochemicals and hormones are released throughout your body (Black & Garbutt, 2002; Tsigos & Chrousos, 2002). The hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline increase your heart rate, open up airways in your lungs, and increase both blood sugar and blood pressure. All of these effects get you ready to either confront or run away from a threat. 

If, after a few minutes, the threat is still present, another hormone called cortisol is released into your bloodstream. Cortisol stimulates your liver to produce glucose which then travels to your brain and increases your alertness, attention, and focus. Cortisol also prepares your body to withstand pain, injury, and fatigue and puts any bodily activities not necessary for immediate survival on hold. Processes like immune responses, digestion, reproduction, and cellular repair are halted, allowing all of your energy and resources to go towards dealing with the threat or the stressor.

This stress response system is amazing for responding to immediate threats to your health and wellbeing. I can personally attest to just how helpful this system can be. A few years ago I was walking through the woods with my two children, then aged 4 and 7. We stumbled across a wasps nest and inadvertently angered the wasps. I was able to pick up both of my children and run them, and myself, to safety, all the while ignoring the pain of being stung, the physical fatigue of sprinting while carrying more than 70 pounds, and my fear. My body’s stress response system allowed me to rally all of my resources to keep myself and my children safe. It also gave me mental clarity and single-minded concentration, which allowed me to focus exclusively on reaching safety.

Your body’s stress response system may have similarly helped you in a stressful situation, whether the stress was caused by physical danger, as was the case for me and the wasps, or by other less dangerous threats. Job interviews, first dates, tests, and public speaking responsibilities are just some of the short-term stressors that you may have met in your life and then subsequently overcome thanks to the increased focus, concentration, and energy provided by your body’s stress response systems.

The body’s stress response system becomes problematic when the stress isn’t short-term but is instead unrelenting and long-term. Normally, the body’s stress response system is equipped with a negative feedback loop. High levels of cortisol usually signal your body to stop the production and release of more hormones. Exposure to chronic stress can throw this negative feedback loop all out of whack, and your stress hormone levels may fail to get back to normal (McEwen, 1998). This imbalanced stress response system may lead to many of the symptoms of burnout including insomnia or other sleep disturbances, anxiety, irritability, an inability to relax, as well as many cognitive and physiological symptoms of burnout.

Signs & Symptoms of Burnout

Exposure to high levels of stress for prolonged periods may cause the brain and body to adapt to the physiological responses to stress. These adaptations can be seen as symptoms present at the physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral levels (Weber & Jaekel-Reinhard, 2000).
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  • Physical symptoms: Immune, cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine, and reproductive systems are all affected by consistently high levels of stress hormones. Physical symptoms of burnout can include headaches, intestinal problems, muscle tension, chest pain, fatigue, changes in sex drive, upset stomach, and vulnerability to disease.
  • Mental symptoms: Stress hormones can impact brain structures involved in memory, problem-solving, attention, and executive functioning. This may result in forgetfulness, trouble staying focused, impaired problem-solving, impaired self-control, and feelings of “brain fog”.
  • Emotional symptoms: A chronically elevated stress response system may cause you to feel emotionally unstable or to feel overwhelmed by your own emotions and emotional reactions. You may feel that all of your emotions are intense and exaggerated. What once may have been mild irritation may now be an overwhelming rage. You may feel easily frustrated and angry, irritable, anxious, panicky, sad, or may cry without knowing why.
  • Behavioral symptoms: The cognitive and emotional symptoms of chronic stress exposure may cause you to have more interpersonal conflict - you may be more difficult to get along with and may find yourself having more arguments, fights, and standoffs. You may also seek comfort or temporary relief from your negative emotions in alcohol, drugs, overeating, or other maladaptive behaviors. You may find yourself seeking safety and relief by withdrawing from social life, quitting sports or other hobbies, and withdrawing from friends and family.

Burnout Quiz

How burned out are you? The link below is to a burnout self-assessment tool.
Take the burnout self test here.

Note that this self-assessment is only a guideline. If you feel burned out but the quiz doesn’t confirm this, then you are still burned out - burnout is defined as feeling profoundly exhausted or disillusioned after an extended period of stress.​

Burnout in Work

The stress that leads to burnout can come from almost any source including caretaking responsibilities, housekeeping, financial worries, school, and social or cultural expectations. But workplace stress is often the cause of burnout. People may feel overburdened at work and may feel that they don’t have any agency or control over what happens to them.

Burnout may result from excessive stress in any field or line of work, from doctors and nurses, to air traffic controllers and food service workers. Certain workplace characteristics may encourage the development of burnout. These characteristics may be present in a range of professions and industries. Workplace characteristics that can affect the development of burnout include (Maslach and Leiter, 2005):
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  • Workload: Having too much work, or not enough resources to do your work can lead to burnout. Resources can include the materials or supplies required to do a job, as well as time to do the work, training to do the work, and support or help as needed.
  • Control: Feeling as if you are micromanaged, lack influence, or that you have accountability without having any power to affect change can all contribute to burnout.
  • Reward: Not being paid enough for your work, not being acknowledged for a job well-done, or not feeling personally satisfied with your work can all lead to burnout. 
  • Community: You may be more susceptible to burnout at work if you feel isolated or disrespected or if there is excessive conflict or infighting within your workplace. Combative, overly competitive, hostile workplaces are more likely to produce burned-out staff.
  • Fairness: Discrimination, favoritism, nepotism, and other forms of inequality all contribute to a workplace culture that may breed burnout.
  • Values: Feeling as if your work is meaningless or even harmful may make you more susceptible to burnout. If you feel that your work is important and that it contributes in some positive way to something that you care about, you may be able to withstand more stress before succumbing to burnout.

Burnout in College

Burnout in college students may present as exhaustion due to school demands, cynical and detached attitudes towards school, and feelings of inadequacy as a student (Salmela-Aro et al., 2009). Excessive academic demands, a lack of control, inadequate recognition for effort and achievement, a lack of interpersonal relationships and friendships, and excessively high demands from important people like teachers and parents may all increase the risk of student burnout. A positive school environment, including support from teachers and peers, may be somewhat protective against burnout (Salmela-Aro et al., 2008).

Burnout vs Depression

Many of the symptoms of burnout and depression overlap. Some symptoms seen in both burnout and depression include irritability, anxiety, guilt, anger, and feelings of helplessness (Schaufeli et al 2001). Many people suffering from burnout are also depressed. In fact, overstress and burnout can lead to depression. Other causes of depression may include psychobiology, grief, social isolation, and trauma.

Burnout vs Compassion Fatigue

Some burned-out people may also suffer from compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue is a deep and profound emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion that may strike nurses, social workers, therapists, and other professionals who work with people who have experienced trauma or injury (Figley, 1995). Repeatedly working with traumatized or injured people and helping them work through their trauma may itself be traumatic for the helping professional. Repeatedly confronting the most frightening and terrible parts of the world may cause a person to feel that the world is unsafe and that everyone is vulnerable and perpetually in danger. A constant feeling of vulnerability may cause a person’s stress response systems to be perpetually activated, thus leading to burnout.

How to Handle Burnout

Stress will probably always be a part of your life, whether it comes from school, work, family, housekeeping, or other sources. Learning healthy coping mechanisms for stress and how to prevent it from hijacking your physiological stress response system may be the best, most realistic way to prevent burnout. Giving your body’s stress response systems the opportunity to return to normal levels may prevent them from becoming dysregulated and overactive. You may also find some relief from stress through regularly taking part in calming activities that you enjoy (Shields et al., 2020).

Any activity that calms you may allow your physiological stress response systems to return to normal levels. This gives you a lot of flexibility to choose a calming activity that you enjoy. Some options for self-nurturing activities include:
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  • Spending time in nature: Laboratory studies have found that when people spent time in nature after watching a stressful movie clip, their physiological stress response systems showed faster and more complete recovery compared to people who spent time in an urban environment (Urlich, et al., 1991). You may even be able to get some stress-reducing benefits from experiencing nature in virtual reality (Huang et al., 2020). So, if you can’t get out into nature, consider getting some relief by watching immersive, high-definition videos of natural places. 
  • Physical activity: Exercise may have antidepressant (Rethorst et al., 2009) and antianxiety (Simonen et al., 2003) effects, and may counteract some of the damaging inflammatory effects of stress (Febbraio & Pedersen, 2002) as well as some of the damaging effects on the brain and on cognition (Cotman et al., 2007). Even light exercise has beneficial effects on stress reactivity (Hamer et al., 2012). A short walk around the block may help you recover from stress and may help your physiological stress response system return to normal levels after stress exposure (Rimmele, et al., 2009).
  • Meditation: Meditation involves trying to empty your mind of all conscious thought. Practicing meditation can relieve many of the symptoms of burnout including anxiety, depression, and pain (Goyal et al., 2014).
  • Yoga: Yoga practice can lower cortisol levels, reduce inflammation, and can increase feelings of psychological well-being (Riley & Park, 2015). Yoga practice may also teach you coping mechanisms, such as breathing and posture, that you can use outside of your practice to reduce feelings of stress (Heilbronn, 1992).
  • Tea: Many calming teas contain chemical compounds, called flavonoids, that can promote recovery of the physiological stress response system. (Perez-Vizcaino et al., 2002). Black teas, green teas, and many herbal teas may help you recover from stress (Mao et al., 2016; Ngan & Conduit 2011; Steptoe et al., 2007; Williams et al., 2020; Yoo et al., 2011).
  • Creating art or coloring: Making art can have stress-reducing, relaxing, mood-improving, and anxiety-reducing effects (Sandmire et al., 2012). Coloring provides a safe, easily accessible way for you to self-soothe with creative expression (Flett et al., 2017). When you color, you may find that your inner monologue goes quiet and that you can have a short break from the cognitive demands of your everyday life. You may also be able to access the beneficial effects of art through creative activities like building with Lego bricks, cooking, gardening, or singing.

Burnout Recovery Stages

Burnout is increasingly recognized by mental health professionals as a serious condition (van Dam, 2021). Recovery from the most severe cases of burnout may proceed through three phases, with an ideal fourth phase:
  • Phase 1: Recognition of the crisis: Recovery from burnout may require you to first recognize that you are living in an impaired state. You may start to notice that you are constantly fatigued and distressed. You may notice that you are living in a mental fog, unable to concentrate the way that you used to. You may notice that you are irritable and quick to anger. Once you recognize that you are at a breaking point, unable to function anymore, an ideal first response is to drop as many responsibilities as you possibly can and make recovery your top priority. It may be helpful to ask a trusted loved one or a therapist to communicate to others on your behalf about the steps you are taking to address your burnout.
  • Phase 2: Recovery of the stress system: Recovery from burnout involves bringing your physiological stress response systems back to normal functioning. This may mean eliminating stress from your life by taking some drastic steps like skipping social obligations, forgoing household chores, and even taking time off work if you can. Ideally, you will live in this no-stress stage until you start to feel relaxed again. You can then begin to reintroduce some activities, taking care to proceed slowly and to take long breaks between periods of activity. In this stage, you are training your body’s stress response systems to alternate from arousal to rest and back again. Persevering despite signs that you are feeling stressed may undo this process of recovery.
  • Phase 3: Prevention, learning from the past: Once you are able to fully relax after periods of activity, you may be ready to do some of the deeper work to figure out why you reached a stage of burnout. You may also want to identify some ways to prevent burnout from happening again in the future. In this stage, therapy may be helpful.
  • Phase 4: Posttraumatic growth: Recovery may be considered complete after phase three. However, you may be able to continue to grow, achieving a heightened state of strength and self-awareness. You may be able to use your burnout crisis as an opportunity to reflect on what is important in your life. You may choose to make big and important changes. You may be able to create a life that is more meaningful and more joyful.

Burnout Recovery

In the video below Emily and Amelia Nagoski, authors of the bestselling book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, discuss their approach to burnout recovery.

Video: The Cure for Burnout

Briefly, their approach centers on “completing the stress cycle”. According to their view, the stress cycle has three phases: the beginning where a threat is detected, the middle where you do something about the stress, and the end where you acknowledge that you have addressed and overcome the threat. In order to bring your physiological stress response systems back to normal levels, you may need to take some action to acknowledge that the threat is gone. They offer suggestions including visualization, physical activity, and celebration.
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At a deeper level, the Nagoski sisters also champion becoming more aware of your own feelings and reactions through self-reflection and introspection. You may be able to avoid burnout if you can determine when you are approaching a state of burnout and can identify what is causing your burnout. Lastly, they also champion creating a safe and loving bubble filled with people with whom you can feel safe and vulnerable around.

Examples of Burnout

Many notable and successful people have spoken about their experiences with burnout and about how they have used their burnout crises to gain new perspectives on life and on how to cope with stress.
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Writer and entrepreneur Arianna Huffington experienced burnout due to chronic overwork. She has spoken about being so exhausted and overstressed that she collapsed and broke her chin. Since then she has started more intentionally prioritizing rest, relaxation, and sleep.

Video: Beat Burnout—Get More Sleep | Arianna Huffington

Prince Harry has also spoken about experiencing burnout and has made changes in his life to become better able to cope with stress.

Video: Prince Harry Opens up About Experiencing Burnout After ‘Burning Candle at Both Ends’

Burnout Quotes

“As helpers, we often feel the need to see our impact in tangible, measurable ways. We allow negative language into our head about the “broken system;” we look through a lens of “it doesn’t matter, I can’t make a difference”. These ideas are surely contributing to our burnout.”

― Jenn Bruer, Helping Effortlessly: A Book of Inspiration and Healing 

“The reality is: there will always be more work. From our jobs and owning businesses, to being a manager of our families and our homes - there will always be more work. It never goes away. We never escape from the responsibilities that life presents us. But one of our main responsibilities should be ourselves, after all, there's only one of us anyway.”

― Vanessa Autrey, The Art of Balancing Burnout 

“I’m tired, inevitably. But it’s more than that. I’m hollowed out. I’m tetchy and irritable, constantly feeling like prey, believing that everything is urgent and that I can never do enough. And my house—my beloved home—has suffered a kind of entropy in which everything has slowly collapsed and broken and worn out, with detritus collecting on every surface and corner, and I have been helpless in the face of it.”

― Katherine May, Wintering: The power of rest and retreat in difficult times 

“No one is “complete” without other people—and we mean this literally. To be complete without social connection is to be nourished without food. It doesn’t happen. We get hungry. We get lonely. We must feed ourselves or die. We don’t mean you “need a man” or any kind of romantic partner. We mean you need connection in any or all of its varied forms. And it is also true that the lifelong development of autonomy is as innate to human nature as the drive to connect. We need both connection and autonomy. That’s not a contradiction. Humans are built to oscillate from connection to autonomy and back again.”

― Emily Nagoski, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle 

“This is the critical point of this book: if you are that zebra running for your life, or that lion sprinting for your meal, your body’s physiological response mechanisms are superbly adapted for dealing with such short-term physical emergencies. For the vast majority of beasts on this planet, stress is about a short-term crisis, after which it’s either over with or you’re over with. When we sit around and worry about stressful things, we turn on the same physiological responses—but they are potentially a disaster when provoked chronically. A large body of evidence suggests that stress-related disease emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies, but we turn it on for months on end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions.”

― Robert M. Sapolsky, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping 

“Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. It's a shield.”

― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

“When we begin to feel stressed, we create mental stories of worry and regret that compound our mental suffering. We get caught up in negative beliefs about ourselves, regrets about the past, or worries about the future, taking us out of the present moment”

― Melanie Greenberg, The Stress-Proof Brain: Master Your Emotional Response to Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroplasticity

Articles Related to Burnout

Want to learn more? Here are some related articles that might be helpful.​​

Books Related to Burnout

Here are some books that may help you learn even more.

Final Thoughts on Burnout

We can’t end this article on burnout without talking about how Leslie Knope emerges from her burnout. After losing her job on the city council, her first instinct is to jump right back into a stressful situation, planning to run for the city council once again. Her loving and supportive partner arranges a meeting with a political consultant who confirms Leslie’s intelligence and encourages her not to get back into a tireless job where she will likely be overworked and unappreciated. Her partner then takes her on a vacation to Paris where she can relax and unwind.
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Leslie Knope may be able to avoid future burnout because she has strong support from a loving partner, encouragement and advice from a mentor figure, the freedom to say no to demands on her time and energy, the safety to feel vulnerable enough to be imperfect, and can take a physical break from the source of her stress.

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