People experiencing prolonged stress or burnout may notice:

• Feeling physically or mentally exhausted
• Difficulty recovering even after taking time away from work
• Dreading the beginning of the working day
• Feeling increasingly detached from work
• Becoming cynical or negative about one’s job
• Reduced motivation or engagement
• Feeling less effective despite continuing to work hard
• Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
• Becoming increasingly irritable or impatient
• Problems sleeping
• Difficulty switching off from work
• Frequently thinking about work outside working hours
• Feeling overwhelmed by responsibilities that were previously manageable
• Withdrawing from colleagues, friends, or family
• Neglecting activities that previously provided enjoyment or recovery
• Working increasingly long hours while feeling progressively less productive

Some people continue functioning at a high level despite experiencing considerable distress.

They may continue meeting deadlines, attending meetings, and fulfilling responsibilities while compensating by working longer hours, sacrificing sleep, or giving up activities outside work.

As a result, difficulties may remain unnoticed until they become significantly harder to manage.

Burnout should not automatically be understood as an individual’s failure to cope with stress effectively.

Workplace factors can play an important role.

These may include:

• Persistently excessive workload
• Long working hours
• Insufficient opportunities for recovery
• Low control over how work is performed
• Unclear or conflicting expectations
• Inadequate resources
• Difficult workplace relationships
• Lack of support
• Poor boundaries between work and personal life
• Mismatch between responsibilities and available time or resources
• Organisational uncertainty or repeated change
• Conflict between personal values and workplace demands

Individual factors can also influence how someone responds to these circumstances.

For example, a person may place extremely high expectations upon themselves, find it difficult to delegate, feel responsible for preventing mistakes, struggle to establish boundaries, or believe that resting means they are being unproductive.

Psychological therapy can help identify these patterns.

However, therapy should not be used to suggest that individuals simply need to become more resilient to unreasonable working conditions. Sometimes meaningful improvement also requires changes to workload, responsibilities, boundaries, workplace support, or the broader working environment.

Burnout does not necessarily occur because someone dislikes their work.

In fact, highly committed individuals can sometimes continue pushing themselves precisely because their work matters to them.

A person may respond to increasing demands by working harder, extending their hours, sacrificing recovery time, and setting aside activities outside work.

Initially, this can appear successful.

The person continues meeting expectations.

But as fatigue increases, the same work may require progressively more effort. Concentration becomes harder. Tasks take longer. The person may compensate by working even more, reducing recovery further.

Eventually, the strategies that previously helped the person perform can become part of what maintains the problem.

Psychological treatment can help identify this cycle and develop a more sustainable relationship between performance, responsibility, recovery, and personal wellbeing.

At People Psychological Solutions, our clinical psychologists work with adults experiencing chronic stress, occupational burnout, and difficulties coping with sustained demands.

Psychological therapy begins by understanding the particular circumstances contributing to the person’s difficulties.

Depending on the individual, therapy may involve:

• Identifying major sources of stress
• Understanding patterns that maintain chronic stress
• Developing more sustainable boundaries around work
• Addressing perfectionism or excessively demanding personal standards
• Learning to recognise signs of overload earlier
• Developing strategies for managing competing demands
• Improving problem-solving and prioritisation
• Examining beliefs about productivity, achievement, responsibility, and failure
• Developing more effective ways of responding to difficult emotions
• Rebuilding opportunities for rest, recreation, relationships, and meaningful activities
• Developing communication or assertiveness skills where appropriate
• Considering realistic changes within the working environment
• Planning a sustainable return to work following a period of absence where relevant
• Identifying warning signs and developing strategies to reduce recurrence

Depending on the person’s needs, psychologists may draw upon evidence-based approaches such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), behavioural strategies, stress-management interventions, and other appropriate psychological approaches.

Treatment is individualised according to the factors contributing to and maintaining the person’s difficulties.

Rest and recovery are important.

However, simply taking a holiday may not resolve burnout if the person returns to exactly the same conditions and patterns that contributed to the problem.

Similarly, relaxation, mindfulness, exercise, and other coping strategies can be helpful, but they should not automatically replace consideration of the actual sources of chronic stress.

For one person, meaningful change may involve developing stronger boundaries between work and personal life.

For another, it may involve addressing perfectionistic standards that make every task feel equally important.

Someone else may be working within circumstances where workload or organisational expectations themselves need to change.

Effective intervention therefore considers both how the individual responds to stress and the environment in which that stress occurs.

There can be considerable overlap between these experiences.

Burnout may involve exhaustion, reduced motivation, concentration difficulties, and disengagement from work. Depression can also involve reduced energy and motivation but typically extends beyond the occupational context and may include persistent low mood, loss of pleasure, hopelessness, worthlessness, or other depressive symptoms.

Similarly, chronic stress can contribute to excessive worry, tension, sleep difficulties, and other symptoms that overlap with anxiety.

A person may also experience more than one difficulty at the same time.

For this reason, it can be useful to understand whether someone is primarily experiencing:

• A response to sustained environmental demands
• Occupational burnout
• Depression
• An anxiety disorder
• An adjustment-related difficulty
• Another psychological or health concern
• A combination of these factors

Psychological assessment can help clarify what is happening and guide appropriate recommendations.

Not necessarily.

Seeking psychological support for burnout does not mean that your psychologist will tell you to resign.

For some people, meaningful improvements may be possible through changes to workload, boundaries, working patterns, communication, expectations, or coping strategies.

For others, their current environment may genuinely be contributing substantially to deteriorating wellbeing.

Therapy can provide a space to examine these circumstances more clearly, understand what is and is not within your control, and make decisions that are consistent with your priorities and wellbeing.

Ultimately, decisions about whether to remain in or leave a particular role belong to you.