How is burnout different from depression or anxiety?
Feeling hopelessness and irritation; having troubles sleeping; feeling detached and with no energy or desire to do anything... My question is: Are these symptoms of burnout or depression? To tell you the truth, it can be both. Nowadays, with the fast-paced world we live in, burnout has become a normalised state of mind - a prolonged stress, which if left untreated, can lead us to ask the question "Am I actually depressed?". There is a lot of misconception between burnout and depression since some of their symptoms overlap (you can read the articles on burnout symptoms here), as well as anxiety, and people have a hard time telling them apart. So, today's post will focus on the difference between burnout, depression, and anxiety.
We have already discussed in detail what burnout is, its symptoms, and the small steps to help recover from it. However, it may not be easy to distinguish burnout from depression since both have emotional and physical symptoms and cause a major disruption in your life. The best way to differentiate them is by looking at the causes, which may hint at what you are experiencing.
Burnout is caused by specific issues that lead to prolonged stress, usually associated with work. When experiencing burnout, usually you're able to identify these (work) related issues as the primary reasons why you're feeling down, disconnected, and tired. Once you remove these stressors, it may improve your mental health and overall state.
Unlike burnout, however, depression isn't typically associated with a specific reason or event - it can be completely context-free. Even if you can identify the reason that triggered the state of depression, it is most likely that professional help is needed rather than just simply removing the triggers from one's life. Another huge difference is that burnout is not a medical condition rather an ‘occupational phenomenon’- a syndrome of emotional, physical, and mental state of exhaustion. Depression, on the other hand, is registered as an official medical condition with clear symptoms, diagnostic criteria, and treatment. Symptoms of depression include: feeling unhappy and down most of the time; not getting pleasure from things that used to make you happy; feeling too much or too little; feeling fatigued; feeling guilty or being hard on yourself.
The symptoms may sound familiar to burnout, but bear in mind that depression is a diagnosable mental health condition. Untreated burnout may lead to depression symptoms but the two are not the same and do not have interchangeable definitions. Burnout is also linked with other mental conditions, such as anxiety.
I believe that we have all experienced some kind of anxiety at least once in our lives. We are anxious before an important meeting with the boss, before a big presentation, or before the final exam. This is a normal psychological human reaction that acts as a protective factor against a difficult environment or somehow "threatening" situations. However, anxiety is recognized as a mental health condition that can impact one's daily life. Generalised Anxiety Disorder or GAD, PTSD, social anxiety disorder, and panic disorder are just some of the chronic forms of prolonged anxiety.
Symptoms of anxiety include: always feeling nervous, tense, and unable to relax; as if the world is either slowing down or spinning up; feeling depersonalise - the disconnection with yourself, overlapping with a symptom of burnout. While anxiety is about reacting to pressure, and burnout is about being drained by it, research found that high workload, constant effort, and excessive dedication tend to increase anxiety levels. Likewise, feeling emotionally drained, negative toward work, and ineffective in one’s role is linked to higher anxiety — the more exhausted, cynical, and unproductive someone feels, the more anxious they become. Meaning that people experiencing burnout have a higher level of anxiety.
Our mental health should be a top priority and we should act with care and gentle understanding in a world full of demands. If you feel any of the above-mentioned conditions, we can have a 1:1 session or sign up for a workshop.
Let’s ensure our wellbeing is a top priority ending 2025 and entering into 2026.
