Issue 17 of Read Before Burning examines why it’s so easy to miss the signs of burnout.
Welcome to Read Before Burning, the monthly newsletter by organisational psychologist and stress expert Dr Ben J. Searle. Come here for simple but informative coverage of burnout-related concepts, research findings, and actionable advice – all firmly grounded in science and guaranteed AI-free.
Who am I? After earning a PhD in psychology, I spent 20 years in academia studying stress and burnout until I went through burnout myself. I now consult on, conduct research into, and communicate about burnout, psychosocial hazards, and work design.
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WHY WE MISS THE SIGNS OF BURNOUT
“I didn’t realise I was burning out until nearly too late.”
It’s one the most common stories I hear from burnout survivors, and it aligns with my own experience: I didn’t realise I was burning out until it was nearly too late.
Speaking about burnout at the recent APS Industrial & Organisational Psychology Conference, I found I kept coming back to the question: Why do we miss the signs and symptoms of burnout?
As I’ve said before (see RBB Issue #06), it’s a huge problem. It doesn’t just mean we miss opportunities for early identification and treatment, it also delays our response to the underlying causes.
In this article, I list four reasons why it’s so easy to miss the signs of burnout.
1. PEOPLE DON’T WANT TO BELIEVE THEY ARE BURNING OUT
Information about burnout is widely available, but many people never look for it, and some actively avoid opportunities to learn more.
One explanation for this is optimistic bias, where people attend to information differently depending on the possible implications, and preferentially attend to and recall information consistent with more positive personal outcomes.
But a simpler explanation is stigma. Society’s stigma around illness, especially mental illness, leads to harmful assumptions about people with such conditions. If we believe that people who burn out are somehow weak, for example, or that burnout means a person will never accomplish anything again, this creates a strong motivation to believe that we are not at risk of burning out.
2. PEOPLE FIND OTHER EXPLANATIONS FOR THE SYMPTOMS
You might think that once someone learns about the core symptoms of burnout (described in RBB Issue #01), they shouldn’t have difficulty recognising them. Unfortunately, it’s often easy to attribute the symptoms to other causes.
For example:
- Exhausted? If you have carer responsibilities for children, or for older or disabled people, or if you have a chronic illness yourself, you may never stop to ask yourself, “Why am I so tired?” Even without these nonwork responsibilities, workload is a common factor in most burnout cases (although not always the critical factor). Many people have been working long hours for weeks, months, or maybe even years before they start to burn out. It would be weird if they weren’t always tired!
- Cynical about work? Burnout is the result of chronic stress, usually caused by poorly managed psychosocial hazards. In other words, people at most risk of burning out are those who work in consistently hazardous environments. Someone who is burning out may have perfectly good reasons to be critical of their work systems, to find their leaders untrustworthy, or to expect the proposed change to make things worse.
If people can identify external reasons for feeling the way they do, there is little call for them to consider their symptoms collectively as a sign of psychological injury.
3. SYMPTOMS DON’T ALWAYS LOOK THE SAME
If someone who was burning out had to read the accepted definition and reflect on their own symptoms, would they realise they had burnout? Possibly not.
This is a controversial view, but I think typical descriptions of burnout don’t match everyone’s experiences.
There are two reasons for this.
Your Symptom Presentation May Vary
Burnout symptom descriptions often boil down to three words: exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy. It’s a clear message that’s easy to communicate.
But after reflecting on my own experience and talking to other burnout survivors, I realised the symptoms are not always experienced in the same way.
- Exhaustion: Exhaustion is probably the most consistent of burnout experiences, and yet even here there is variation. Some say their sleep seemed to have no impact on their fatigue. Others say they found sleep refreshing, but they rarely got enough of it. Others said they didn’t notice fatigue until it hit, all at once, when they started working.
- Inefficacy: Many people who burn out lose confidence in their professional capabilities, but some do not. Instead, this symptom can manifest as growing overwhelm or difficulties coping with stress.
- Detachment: Even experts have varied in how they describe this symptom, for which cynicism has not always been the focal point. Initially, researchers conceptualised it as loss of compassion for others (students, patients, clients etc.). It has also been conceptualised as declining work engagement. People who burn out might describe any one of these, or a combination.
The more narrowly we describe these symptoms, the less recognisable burnout seems to those whose symptom presentation is a little different.
Symptoms May Change Over Time:
One reason why I was slow to recognise my own burnout was that my own experiences didn’t match the descriptions. In particular, I didn’t feel deep cynicism or have doubts about my capability until I was nearly at the end of my rope. Conversations with other burnout survivors revealed my experience was not unusual.
I designed the Experiences of Burnout 2025 study to find out whether and how symptoms change as burnout progresses. As I expected, results indicated burnout symptoms can change over time.
For example, people who are burning out tend to lose enthusiasm for preferred tasks long before they descend into cynicism. Read RBB Issue #06 to learn more.
If we only describe burnout in terms of severe symptoms, the condition may not be recognisable to people experiencing its early stages.
4. WE’RE STILL ARGUING ABOUT THE SYMPTOMS
The International Classification of Diseases provides a widely accepted definition of burnout that lists its three symptoms as exhaustion, cynicism, and inefficacy.
But not all the experts agree with this model.
Professor Wilmar Shaufeli has a long history of research into burnout. After collaborating with other leaders in this field, he began to question the conventional model of burnout symptoms. Shaufeli went on to develop a new scale, the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT), which measures exhaustion, detachment, cognitive difficulties (which I discuss in RBB Issue #15), and emotional dysregulation.
Shaufeli is not alone. Psychiatrists associated with the Black Dog Institute recently developed their own tool to measure burnout. The Sydney Burnout Measure assesses symptoms captured by the BAT, but also includes such symptoms as anxiety, depression, sleep disruption, and physical ailments.
This all means typical descriptions may omit information that could help people identify burnout.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
If this all seems fairly disheartening, the good news is we can do something about it.
Workplace mental health training
From the workplace mental health training programs I have delivered, two powerful elements stand out as powerfully relevant to this issue.
- Peer support: Few people are comfortable with the idea that they may be burning out, and many never seek help for their mental health issues. But many of us are willing to look out for our peers! Training can build awareness that workers can use to help one another, even when they might be reluctant to help themselves.
- Focus on change: Many people who attend workplace mental health training are nervous about whether they’ll remember and recognise the specific signs and symptoms we cover. But good training is less focused on specifics and more on the notion of change. People who are suffering tend to change over time in how they talk, act, and react. If people are on the lookout for behaviour changes in their peers, it is less critical to know which of the burnout symptom models is most “correct”.
Workplace conversations
Hearing from and talking to people with lived experience of burnout can help eliminate the false assumptions that harm ourselves and others. It can also encourage people to be more open to discussing wellbeing at work.
More openness about our mental wellbeing can help us become more aware of our feelings and attitudes. Also, the more we talk about burnout and mental illness, the less uncomfortable the conversations become, and the more confident we feel about doing something about them.
Conversations about wellbeing also make people more comfortable reporting psychosocial hazards. Commenting on unprofessional work behaviours can be difficult in a team climate where no-one ever discusses wellbeing. Once team members feel safe discussing how workplace experiences make them feel, it becomes a lot easier to talk about psychosocial hazards.
Communication guides
I’m piloting a simple guide for talking about burnout. It addresses many of the issues I’ve listed in this article. Subscribe to the newsletter to hear when it’s ready for release.
References
Bränström, R., & Brandberg, Y. (2010). Health Risk Perception, Optimistic Bias, and Personal Satisfaction. American Journal of Health Behavior, 34(2), 197–205.
Schaufeli, W. B., Desart, S., & De Witte, H. (2020). Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT): Development, validity, and reliability. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(24), 9495.
Tavella, G. & Parker, G. (2020). A qualitative re-examination of the key features of burnout. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 208 (6), 452-458.
News
Community of Practice
Are you interested in joining a Community of Practice? I’m hoping to bring together a group of professionals whose work is closely connected to burnout. Such a community might include psychologists, WHS professionals, occupational health researchers, and people with lived experience of recovery from burnout. Participation would mean a willingness both to learn from others and to share your own knowledge. Planning is still in early stages.
If you’re interested, please share your details with me here.
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Monthly Updates
- Burnout symptom status: Low!
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(c) 2026 Ben J. Searle