• Modified: Feb 25, 2025 • Read in: 13 mins
— By Dr. Sandip Roy.“A burnout is like a giant boulder on your shoulder that you build by gathering thousands of small pebbles, which eventually collapses you.”
Burnouts don’t always happen at offices. They can sneak up on you even when you’re checking your email from a holiday destination. It can happen to at-home spouses and mothers who do housework.
Burnout is defined as a state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion as a result of prolonged work-related stress.
The usual triggers are long working hours, heavy workloads, a lack of control over one’s work, and poor social support at the workplace. Burnout victims typically produce low-quality work and may explode in anger as a result of their stress.
They don’t grow overnight, so you may not realize you are having a burnout.
- The best way to help yourself is to recognize the symptoms early.
- The worst way to handle it is to tell yourself that everything will be fine soon.
Stages of Burnout
Burnout is typically described as having 3 main stages. Some recent models have expanded it to provide a 12-stage model.
3-Stage Burnout Model
Herbert Freudenberger, who first coined the term “burnout” in the 1970s, defined the three stages of burnout as:
- Emotional Exhaustion: Feeling emotionally drained, fatigued, and unable to cope with the demands of the job.
- Depersonalization-Derealization: A detached, cynical, or negative attitude towards one’s work and colleagues. A sense of disconnection from one’s work and the people around them.
- Sense of Futility: Feeling a lack of competence and a clipped sense of personal achievement in one’s work. A sense of meaninglessness and futility in one’s efforts.
12 Stage Burnout Model
- Compulsion to Prove Oneself: An intense drive to prove one’s worth through work, often leading to overcommitment.
- Working Harder: Increased effort to meet rising demands, accompanied by a neglect of personal needs.
- Neglecting Needs: Gradual abandonment of hobbies, social life, and self-care activities.
- Displacement of Conflicts: Blaming of other people and external factors for personal problems and mistakes.
- Revision of Values: A shift in values, where work becomes the sole priority over personal life.
- Denial of Emerging Problems: Denial or minimization of signs of physical and emotional exhaustion.
- Social Withdrawal: Increasing social isolation and detachment from work and personal relationships.
- Behavioral Changes: Noticeable changes in behavior, such as irritability, cynicism, or absenteeism.
- Depersonalization: A sense of detachment from oneself and one’s work, leading to a lack of empathy.
- Inner Emptiness: A profound sense of meaninglessness and lack of fulfillment in one’s work and life.
- Symptoms of Depression: Feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, and a loss of joy and motivation.
- Burnout Collapse: A complete physical, emotional, and mental collapse, that requires long recovery time.
How To Overcome Burnout At Work Without Quitting
Quitting a stressful job is not the first or the only way to beat burnout. There are less drastic options to help yourself overcome burnout.
Two simple (not easy) ways to prevent a burnout:
- starting a daily hour-long exercise-meditation routine, and
- stopping to take work with you on weekends and on vacations.
Here are five practical ways to overcome a burnout without needing to quit your job:
1. Develop New Workplace Relationships
I am not insinuating you spark up office romances. I mean you try to make some new friends outside your immediate colleague circle.
If your workplace has only a few employees, try making acquaintances with some nice people nearby.
You might strike up conversations with people you come across often but don’t interact with. Do you commute together and have seen them on your train or bus? Do you sit next to them while eating your lunch?
Friendly interactions often involve positive emotions and make you feel heard, which can make work less stressful.
Workplace socializing also help you decompress, so you don’t carry all your stress home.
This study on job burnout found co-worker support can reduce emotional exhaustion and sense of alienation.
So, try striking up a conversation with a coworker today. Alternatively, plan a get-together at some safe place away from your workplace.
2. Only Do What You Agreed To Do
The pressure to perform well at work and finish extra tasks before deadlines is often what sparks a burnout.
There are colleagues who burden you with their work. There are toxic bosses who love to pile their staff with a shipload of work every morning, and even on weekends.
Believe it or not, you can offload most of it, Actively refuse excess workload, or ask them to delegate it to someone else, cutting away what is not your job responsibility.
Are you doing beyond “your work?” Most of us work outside our job description responsibilities, which we agreed to get paid for. For which, you don’t have a promotion to show.
Keep a copy of your job description and compare it to a checklist of the tasks and responsibilities allotted to you each day. Do it for a few days, even noting how much time you spend on each given task.
Explain your situation to your boss or even their boss, emphasizing that you are overworked. Highlight the fact that your workload exceeds what was expected of you when you applied for the position.
Ask them to relieve you of your additional responsibilities, letting them know it is affecting your mental health.
Do only what you signed up for; you owe it to yourself. Learn to say “No” without being rude.
3. Use A Breathing Technique to Relax
Deep, slow breathing can downregulate our stress response and keep excessive stress from forcing you into burnout.
Two helpful breathing techniques:
i) “Straw breathing” for panic attacks
Anxiety makes us take faster and shallower breaths (called huffing or panting). This releases an excess amount of carbon dioxide from the bloodstream into the exhaled air.
And this causes the hemoglobin in our blood to retain oxygen rather than release it to the body. All this triggers a panic response.
Dr. Lorrie Fisher suggests the following breathing method to help with a panic attack: Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose, then exhale silently through a plastic or metal straw held in your mouth. Do this for 7 rounds in a row.
“You’ll feel a significant calming in your body — but also in your mind. You have just released oxygen from hemoglobin, and your brainstem has the message.” — Dr. Lorrie Fisher, Ph.D.
ii) “Box breathing” for mental calmness
Try the box breathing or square breathing technique. It works better when your stress isn’t too high, and you’re able to breathe with a relaxed belly.
- Inhale for four counts.
- Hold breath for four counts.
- Exhale to a count of four.
- Hold for four counts after exhale.
What the whole process does is stimulate your vagus nerve and activate your parasympathetic (or “rest and digest”) nervous system.
Teachers in Germany leave their jobs 10 years before the legal retirement age of 65, mainly because of stress-related illnesses, like depression, stress, exhaustion, and burnout. This study found breathing therapy helped on German teachers withstand their professional demands.
Learn How To Stimulate Your Vagus Nerve And Calm Down.
4. Go Off The Grid For Sometime
In the modern age, work is everywhere, thanks to our smartphones and laptops. Try going off the grid, or on a digital detox sometimes.
- One simple rule: Never take calls while eating or driving or exercising.
- One simple trick: Use a separate phone for work.
Put your work phone away when you’re enjoying your leisure time, days off, or weekends.
When on a vacation, leave your work gadgets behind. Leave your laptops and tablets at home, and only carry your personal phone.
You don’t have to reply to emails unless you are under strict command to do so.
Even then, you should consider having a sit down with your manager and explaining the stress your “work away from work” is causing you.
Going “off the grid” when you’re not at work helps establish your spare time as actual leisure time, not just a time to work away from the office.
“Make sure you’re not always at work when you are away from your work.”
We all need holidays; they can save us from burnout. Remember to choose a kind companion for your trip — one you like, respect, and trust. And they feel the same for you.
5. Introduce A Change Of Scenery
Once burnout happens, it requires obligatory time away from work. So, why not do it in spurts and forget about work while taking weekend mini-vacations?
Changes keep your mind in an active mode of learning. Give your mind a change of scenery instead of a stale work environment that is burning you out.
This could be as small as rearranging the items on your desk, and even asking to move to a different office, or taking a vacation in an area you’ve never been to.
If you feel bored to go to your regular place of exercise, like the neighborhood park or the gym, try something new, such as Zumba or tai-chi. Join a laughter yoga class — it releases stress and helps you bond better with others.
Engage in creative activities like sculpture, pottery, painting, theater, and storytelling. Creative pursuits allow us to celebrate and process our big emotions.
You may also try hugging someone for 20 seconds.
Research shows a twenty-second hug can lower your blood pressure and heart rate while also improving your mood, which is reflected in the post-hug surge in oxytocin, our social-bonding hormone (Grewen, Anderson, et al., 2003).
A Work And Well-Being Survey conducted by the American Psychological Association found that most people reported positive effects of taking a vacation.
68% of 1,500 workers surveyed said their mood was better when they returned to work from a holiday. 66% said they had more energy. 57% reported more motivation and less stress.
By the way, the study also revealed that for 40% of workers, positive effects fade within days, and for 24%, they disappear immediately upon returning to work.
Do whatever works for you. Give your brain the delightful surprise of novelty it requires to transition from a burnout state to a productive state. This way, you can stay in the zone when you need to be, and chill out when you don’t.
★ Reach out to a burnout specialist or medical professional if you feel you are unable to manage your burnout properly.
7 FAQs On Burnout At Work
1. What are the after-effects of burnout?
Burnouts can lead to depression, anxiety, brain fog, and increase the risk of heart diseases, stroke, diabetes, and other chronic health conditions that may require expensive medical care.
• Initial stages: Physical fatigue, sleepiness, irritation, loss of focus.
• Later stages: Low productivity, poor work quality, emotional outbursts.
Burnout, if left untreated for too long, can cause accidents at work (which can be life-threatening in heavy machinery environments) and while driving.
2. What is the final stage of workplace burnout?
In the final stage of burnout, the sufferer feels completely disconnected from their work, colleagues, relationships, and environment (depersonalization-derealization).
They may also start to feel worthless, stop feeling joy in all activities, and see their lives as meaningless and purposeless. In extreme cases, they may have thoughts of self-harm.
3. How many types of burnout are there?
There are four main types of burnout:
i. Overload burnout: caused by excessive workload, long hours, and a high-pressure environment.
ii. Under-challenged burnout: occurs when an employee is bored, unchallenged, and not stimulated by their work.
iii. Neglect burnout: caused by a lack of support, resources, and recognition from managers/organization.
iv. Misalignment burnout: occurs when an employee’s values, goals, or ethics are at odds with their organization or job.
4. Is burnout a mental illness?
No, burnout is not formally diagnosed as a mental illness. It is classified as an “occupational phenomenon” by the World Health Organization (WHO), not a medical condition.
It is a state of mental fatigue and emotional exhaustion, with physical symptoms like tiredness, chest pain, and poor sleep. Burnout treatment focuses on addressing the work-related factors causing stress and exhaustion, such as workload, work-life balance, and organizational support.
5. How long does burnout last?
Research suggests the typical duration of burnout ranges from 6 months to 2 years, with treatment and intervention helping to shorten the recovery time.
This study found the “average duration of burnout was 11.5 months, with a range of 6 to 36 months. Employees who received treatment for burnout recovered in an average of 5.5 months, compared to 11 months for those who did not receive treatment.”
This study found the “median duration of burnout was 14 months, with 25% of participants recovering within 6 months and 75% recovering within 2 years.”
While this review concluded that burnout is “can last for years if left untreated. However, with proper intervention, recovery from burnout is possible within 1 to 5 years.”
6. Is an employee required to tell their boss they’re in a burnout?
No, an employee is generally not legally required to disclose to their boss that they are experiencing burnout.
However, you may alert your bosses that your health is hurting because of constant stress at work. Here’s what I may suggest:
• Alert your boss that your extra workload or work-hours is making you go into a burnout.
• Talk in a calm and professional tone without getting overly emotional. The goal is to have a constructive dialogue.
• Typically, this should result in your boss offloading additional work outside your job responsibilities, reducing the excessive pressure.
• If the situation does not improve after raising the issue, you may need to consider quitting, and informing them.
7. Can you get fired for burnout?
No, an employee generally cannot be legally fired solely for experiencing burnout.
Burnout is essentially an occupation-related condition. Employers have a duty to provide a safe and healthy work environment. Terminating an employee in burnout without addressing the workplace factors that contributed to burnout could expose the employer to liability.
In many jurisdictions, burnout may be considered a disability if it substantially limits major life activities. Firing someone due to a disability can be considered unlawful discrimination.
If burnout is affecting an employee’s job performance, the employer should first provide fair solutions before termination. Firing someone for poor performance related to burnout could be wrongful dismissal.
Final Words
Burnout is common at workplaces where bosses are toxic and there isn’t enough psychological safety.
Most people in such offices live from deadline to deadline, without any time to look over and check if burnout has entered their lives.
Finally, bosses and colleagues, please note that an employee declaring burnout is not a “made-up excuse for a day off.” It’s your duty to ask if they feel overloaded with work, and how you can help.
√ Also Read: 6 Alarming Signs of Mental Fatigue (That You Might Be Ignoring)
√ Please share it with someone if you found this helpful.