What is Burnout Really? A Guide to Understanding the Definitions of Burnout

Have you ever felt like you're running on empty, despite trying to keep everything together? You're not alone, and what you're feeling might be more than just stress.

Looking back, I feel I have never not been stressed. Except for maybe when I studied abroad in Costa Rica for a semester…? 

I think I have always carried this certain level of internal stress due to my depression & ADHD, big and little T traumas, people-pleasing, social anxiety, and learned thought patterns.

Then, when I started a new job and it piled on extra stress for three years – eventually I broke. I realized that I had burnout after doing a deep dive into scientific research.

There is a lot of overlap between burnout and chronic fatigue. And you can read a lot online about adrenal fatigue... My hope is that the information in this post and others provides clarity around what burnout really is and at what point you are officially “burnt out” or how to know if you’re on the way there.

This post covers the official definition accepted by health organizations and then the scientific definition used by researchers who are actually studying burnout. I also share my own experience with burnout.

The Official Definition of Burnout

The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases 11th revision (ICD-11) was released in 2022 – and included a WHO-accepted definition of burnout:

“Burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions: 1) feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; 2) increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and 3) a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment. Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.”

You’ll notice that to the WHO, burnout only “counts” if you got it at work where you are paid by an employer. 

But what if you’re doing work that society has not yet recognized as “actual work”? For example, as a stay-at-home parent or as a caregiver for a sick family member? Or what if the conditions of your personal life create burnout for you?

In the United States, practitioners use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders fifth edition (DSM-5) which does not yet include a definition of burnout.

The WHO definition scratches the surface, but when I was trying to figure out what was happening to me, endlessly Googling “symptoms of burnout” wasn’t cutting it. So I turned to published scientific research for answers.

The Scientific Definition of Burnout

What I realized is that researchers in the U.S. had been studying burnout for awhile, particularly how it affects healthcare workers. Then I discovered a trove of papers by several researchers in Europe – and particularly Denmark, where burnout is a recognized condition and they can get care for it through their healthcare.

These researchers have worked to parse apart the effects of short-term stress and burnout.

If you are dealing with short-term stress, you can identify a clear source of that stress and you’ve been struggling with that stress for less than three months. Sources of short-term stress that people report are often things like social conflicts or increased workload.

If you're struggling with burnout, you’ve ignored your stress symptoms for multiple years or consider a stressful life to be normal for you. You might even be unaware of the level of stress you are experiencing in your life until you reach a tipping point. That tipping point is like the straw that broke the camel’s back – something small that causes you to break down and become aware of your burnt-out state. Examples of the straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back include getting the flu and having a really hard time recovering or not being able to relax during a vacation.

I want to mention that even if you haven’t reached your breaking point, there is still something that made you come here to read this post. And even if you haven’t “officially” had that breaking point – it is still highly important to solve your stress now. So that you don’t have to “officially break”.  You deserve to live a happy and healthy life, and struggling with this kind of stress will prevent you from doing that.

The researchers point out that people who get burnt out are unlikely to seek support before they hit their breaking point. You may believe that you need to persist and not complain. You probably also expect a high level of performance from yourself. (This is called a “perseverance coping style”.)

Research shows that if you are a person struggling with fatigue, you will alter your productivity or put low-priority tasks on the back burner. But if you are a person struggling with burnout, you will continue to push yourself to perform at a high level until it breaks you. 

If you’re a short-term stress person, who sought support within the first three months of your stressful experience, you display a healthier coping mechanism by being aware of the problem and acting on it early. 

It seems like a key factor for people with burnout is being unaware of your feelings or emotions and unaware of the effects of stress you’re experiencing. This combined with pushing yourself to perform at a high level at all times – eventually leads you into the process of burning out. 

For me, the mental imagery of burning out is like logs in a campfire at the end of the night. The logs have become fully charred on the outside and only support smaller and smaller flames until you’re left with burning embers. 

Now if you think about trying to re-light those charred logs hoping to get a big, roaring fire going again – you can start to understand what’s happened to your internal energy reserves once you’ve started to go down the path of burnout. It’s really, really hard to get that fire relit once it’s burned out. 

This is why it’s so important for you to recognise burnout as it’s happening, so that you can remedy the situation before things get too far out of hand. While burnout can have lasting effects, recognizing it early and taking steps to recover can reignite your inner fire.

The research shows that individuals with burnout experience a wide variety of impacts to their mind, body, and spirit. And some of those things appear to not be fully reversible.

One example that really struck home for me was when I read research showing that people with burnout had impaired cognition (i.e. memory, problem-solving ability, etc.). Those same people improved a lot in the first three months of focusing on their recovery – but four years down the line, their cognition still had not improved to match the cognition of the “un-burnt out” control group. The researchers shared that it was possible those people would never fully recover that lost cognition.

I had definitely noticed reduced cognitive function in myself: 

• I wouldn’t remember things that my partner had told me. And would ask him again only to learn that he’d already told me that. (This included big things like when he hit a major savings goal and told me about it all excited. Later on, I literally did not remember.)

• I was dropping the ball at work. I would forget to accomplish tasks and I would forget important things my boss told me. And then have to ask again. And experience extreme embarrassment about it.

• My reading comprehension was dropping noticeably. It’s silly but reading comprehension was always something I’ve prided myself on after all those standardized tests in school. But with burnout, I was mixing up words or reading the wrong word altogether and not understanding.

These things were really upsetting for me, and then to learn that they might never get better was gut-wrenching. That alone is one of the biggest things that pushed me toward leaving my job and throwing myself wholeheartedly into getting better.

I hope this overview of burnout helped to start to clear any confusion about burnout vs. short-term stress vs. fatigue. Burnout is real. You are not crazy, and you are not weak. This is a very real thing that deserves to be addressed so that you can live the amazing life you were meant to live.

Life is too short to spend it feeling exhausted and trapped. Take a moment right now to think about your own life. Are you feeling more than just 'tired'? If so, don't wait until it’s too late – let's start addressing it together. 

In the next post, I cover the five distinct phases of burnout that researchers have identified – plus the symptoms of each stage.

Your Next Step

Figuring out how to overcome burnout on your own can feel impossible. I know, I’ve been there. And I definitely wasted a bunch of time confused and unsure of what to do and too exhausted to take action. I wish that I had had someone there to help guide me on the path — and that’s why I started my coaching business. Take the first step today and sign up for your free 30-minute coaching call. Together, we can embark on a journey to create the life you’ve always dreamed of.