One of the sneaky things about burnout is that it is really difficult to know when it’s happening to you. This matters. There are 5 stages of burnout, which start with feeling great at work and ending with severe burnout. If you end up being in stage 4 or 5 of burnout, then you will need an average of 3.5 months off sick, and recovery will take 1-3 years. If you’re in stages 1-3 of burnout then you have an incredible opportunity to take action to prevent this! Knowing where you are in the 5 stages of burnout matters because if you’re early on you have a time-listed window to take action. Don’t worry if the penny drops and you have the realization that you have burnt out. At the end, you will find the first essential steps that you need to take to start your recovery.
It’s time to prioritize your mental health and start the first steps to overcoming emotional exhaustion, and mental exhaustion.
But, before we get started, let’s quickly recap the definition of burnout.
The definition of burnout
Burnout syndrome was first described in the 1970s by psychologist Herbert Freudenberger, who worked with stressed healthcare workers in a free HIV/AIDs clinic in New York. What they saw was different from other stress-related problems that had previously been defined. It was a very stressful experience to work in this type of clinic, at this particular point of history. But what was unique about what was happening to these workers was that their stress was causing them to become unwell for a long period. Worse, their recovery was more complex and difficult than expected.
Although burnout was first recognized back in the 1970s, the World Health Organization didn’t officially recognize it, or define it, until 2019.
They describe burnout as, ‘an occupational phenomenon that arises as a result of prolonged workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.’
They identify three parts to burnout:
- Depersonalization: The cynicism, apathy, or lack of caring that develops with burnout.
- Emotional exhaustion: The very real physical and emotional fatigue of caring for too much for too long.
- Reduced performance at work.
You must have all three of the above components and have been under intense stress at work for a prolonged period of time, to officially have burnout syndrome.
The definition does a pretty good job of explaining what burnout is, and why it’s more than simple stress.
The most common core feature of burnout that people identify with is emotional exhaustion. This typically starts in the early stages of burnout. But not everyone who experiences this will go on the develop full-blown burnout. Burnout is a gradual process that starts with feeling great at work, with high energy levels, and lots of enthusiasm, and ends with physical and emotional collapse.
There are 5 stages of burnout. Take a read of the stages and then take a moment to think- where do you fit right now?
The 5 Stages of Burnout
1. Honeymoon phase
This is the stage where you are full of enthusiasm for your work. The Honeymoon stage is particularly relevant to new job roles or undertaking new work tasks and initiatives, but it can occur at any point in your career. At this stage, there are absolutely no signs of burnout, instead, you are full of enthusiasm, commitment, and joy from your work. You are very productive and take on every new task and opportunity to perform your best. You feel creative, optimistic, full of energy, and you’ll be using positive coping strategies to manage your stress.
Sounds great, right?
However, whilst this stage can feel wonderful, you might take on more than you should to prove yourself. The risk in this stage is that if you don’t prevent overworking and adopt strategies to wind down and get rest regularly, you’ll end up working very long hours and have an increasingly long and complicated to-do list. You may well progress to the next stage before you know it.
2. Onset of stress
When you start noticing that some days are more stressful than others, you have progressed to the second stage. 3 key features make this stage unique:
Lack of time for personal needs.
Seeing your family and friends less.
Feeling your job is the most important thing in your life
This is the stage where your work-life balance starts to favor work rather than life.
In this stage, you might also start to notice the start of physical symptoms, such as chronic headaches, tummy pains, muscle pains, and mental fatigue. You might also notice some mental symptoms, such as difficulty focusing and concentrating. But, at this stage, the symptoms are fairly minimal and are not affecting your work life or personal life other than the changes described above.
3. Chronic stress
When your stress levels become frequent and constant you move to the next stage: chronic stress. This is the third stage of burnout.
In this stage, your problem-solving skills and performance start to decrease, and you start feeling you are out of control and powerless. Your productivity drops, and you might find yourself procrastinating as you feel overwhelmed. You might start to feel like you are not performing as well at your job, and with this comes guilt and a sense of failure.
Chronic stress takes a toll on your mental and physical health and further intensifies the symptoms described in stage 2. You may find yourself getting ill more frequently (this is because long-term stress reduces your immune system). Additionally, you may not seem to regulate your emotions that well anymore. Emotional problems really are the hallmark feature of this particular stage of burnout. Even small things may make you aggressive, resentful, or sad, and things that in earlier stages you could manage calmly now send you flying off the handle. However, despite having a very hard time emotionally due to chronic workplace stress, you are very likely to be denying the problems. This is also a key feature of burnout- those around the burnt-out person recognize the intense symptoms and realize that what you’re experiencing is a serious issue before they do.
In this stage, you’ll also distance yourself from colleagues and social life, embracing social isolation. In extreme cases to escape the feelings of burnout, some people may even start to self-medicate with alcohol or drugs.
4. Burnout
This stage is burnout itself, where you reach critical exhaustion levels that will make it hard to cope with work demands. Your performance at work will be very negatively affected.
The continuous sense of failure and powerlessness eventually leads to the feeling of despair and disillusionment. You don’t see a way out of the circumstances and become indifferent towards your work- this sense of apathy is the depersonalization component of burnout.
Apathy is the key emotion in this model of the stages of burnout.
Burnout is a very physical experience. You will experience constant and disproportionate fatigue, as well as other significant physical symptoms (please read this post for more details about the symptoms of burnout). You will also have huge self-doubt, and feel very pessimistic about your job and your life.
5. Habitual Burnout
Habitual burnout is the final stage of burnout and is normally when you experience physical collapse, due to physical exhaustion. This stage is when you are unable to recover from burnout, and what you are experiencing becomes habitual. Any attempt to bring yourself back to normal is more challenging than it has ever been, and rest isn’t restorative. Apart from affecting your career, it may reflect in many aspects of your life, including personal relationships. You will lose joy in your hobbies that you once loved, and you may not feel like doing anything. You may always feel sad and depressed. Chronic sadness really characterizes this stage. At this point, you are likely to need professional help to recover.
The need for intervention is what really matters in this particular stage, and you’ll need to get medical attention pronto.
You’ve worked out which stage of burnout you’re in. Here’s what you need to do next:
Stages 1-3: If you are not yet in burnout or habitual burnout, then you have an opportunity to put measures in place NOW to stop progressing to full-blown burnout syndrome. I will be sharing lots more about how to do this over the coming weeks on the blog.
Stages 4 and 5: If you are currently in burnout or habitual burnout, please stop, take time off work, and seek the help of your doctor or a therapist. If you have any thoughts of suicide or self-harm, please seek urgent help. Then, keep an eye on the blog, as I will also be sharing lots of information about how you can recover from burnout effectively.
If you’d like to watch a video about the 5 stages of burnout, you can find one on my YouTube channel. Click here to watch.
Feel free to ask any questions you have in the comments. Don’t forget to sign up for my regular newsletter The Phoenix- the link to sign up is at the end of this post!