They feel similar—but they’re not the same. Many people confuse the three because in many cases, they overlap. This article will help you know the difference and guide you to where to find help that suits you and your needs.

When I noticed the first time symptoms of burnout, I was sure it was “just stress”. I told myself that, because although I was trained in knowing the difference, this knowing was exactly why I had such a hard time accepting that I was burned out.

As professionals, we are expected to know better and never, but never, get into the same problems our clients come to us with. This stigma around burnout as a care professional is the very reason why so many of us get burned out sometimes to the point of no return, and we simply change careers.

This post is written to help you know the difference between stress, burnout, and depression, and why they are different, how they affect you differently, and what you need to do to find the right help. In a world where everyone is a coach today, it is very hard to find the right help, especially when it comes to these three. And the long waiting lists in mental health care do not make our choices and clarity better.

Table of content

• Stress

• Burnout

• Depression

• Where to start looking for help

Stress

Stress is a state of mental or emotional strain or tension as a result of adverse or demanding circumstances. When your nervous system has too much pressure from multitasking, a demanding workplace, and family, especially if you have small children, stressful deadlines, and experience illness yourself or in the family. Stress is the moment your body releases cortisol and adrenaline to help you get things done, move faster, think sharply, make decisions faster, and better. Your nervous system works with you to help you perform the tasks at hand.

In normal circumstances, once the task is done, or the pressure is gone, your nervous system goes back to the rest and digest state, where cortisol and adrenaline subside, and your body and mind rest and restore. This healthy cycle between the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system is called healthy stress – a kind of stress we need to perform. Take, for example, an athlete. Stress and the pressure of getting the best time help him or her to do their best and win.

The problems start when your nervous system does not go into rest and digest mode after a stressful situation. When the nervous system gets stuck in ON mode and can’t switch back to OFF mode. This kind of long-term stress is what gets you sick.

Here is how you know it is stress, but still not yet burnout:

• Your stress is caused by too much pressure (work/life)
• You feel: Anxious, tense, overwhelmed
• Your energy is high-strung, always “on”, and rest feels like a waste of time.
• Your focus is on the external situation
• Trouble sleeping due to overthinking
• You still care, but feel maxed out and with no resources or mental space

What helps when experiencing long-term stress is to use techniques like:

• Somatic movements – gentle, slow movements like stretching, grounding, walking barefoot, yoga, hugging, and physical touch (non-sexual), using all your senses while you pay attention to each sense.
• Breathing exercises – often overlooked, but the easiest way to regulate your nervous system. Simply paying attention to your breathing is enough to bring you into the present moment and relax your nervous system.
• Switch off your devices for 2 hours after work. I know that switching it off completely is not a realistic task, but 2 hours while you cook, connect with your family, and put your kids to bed, it is pretty doable with a little practice.

Burnout

Burnout is stress-related physical, emotional, and mental depletion. You see it manifesting as cynicism (that bitter attitude where you can’t bring yourself to care for your work or the people you work with anymore), feeling detached (you see your work as a mean to feed your family and pay your bills only), and diminished productivity (no matter how much you work extra, you seem not to be able to finish your work on time).

Burnout can happen in any professional or personal setting. Still, you will see it more commonly among people with a lot of responsibility or work in high-stress settings, like health care professionals, police, firefighters, the army, management, caregivers, young working parents, and security.

Here is how you know you experience burnout:

• The main known cause is chronic work overload.
• The lesser-known cause is unaddressed trauma, which makes burnout possible even if you are a stay-at-home parent.
• Characteristics: Emotional exhaustion, cynicism, feeling numb, emotionally distant, and physically exhausted.
• All you can think of is work and performance since you can’t get things done anymore.
• Can’t shut off, restless nights, and sleep disturbance.
• Work feels meaningless.

What helps in burnout is the following:

• Call in sick– I know that burnout brings a lot of stigma, but either you stop working, or your body and mind will stop you anyway. Burnout is a medical issue in both the physical and mental areas.
• Start feeding your body – nutrition is crucial at this point. As your body is weak and malnourished, your mind has no resources to keep going, you must start with what you can do, and that is making sure you eat nutritious, not junk food, as your emotions might require.
• Rest – rest is more than just sleeping. Rets is mental, emotional, social, physical, relational, and performance. To recover from burnout you need all those kind of rest.
• After you have done all these, it should take you about a month, you can start looking for help. A holistic Coach would be the best right about now, as you need to build up your entire being, from body to mind and relationships.

Depression

According to Wikipedia, “depression is a mental state of low mood and aversion to activity. It affects about 3.5% of the global population, or about 280 million people worldwide, as of 2020. Depression affects a person’s thoughts, behavior, feelings, and sense of well-being.” What we notice as mental health professionals is that after COVID more and more people experience severe anxiety or anxiety disorder, and an increase in the number of people experiencing depression.

The numbers are not the most important in this discussion. What is important thou is that you know what to do in case you feel that something is off with you and where you can find help.

Before you start looking for signs and symptopms, it is important to know that there are several kinds of depression and need different kinds of treatment. What is important for you to understand is that depression is not just having a low mood for 2 – 3 days, or having depressing feelings. Depression is a chemichal disbalance in your brain.

Types of depression:

• Clinical depression, or simply known as depression or unipolar depression – when you feel down all the time, you have no energy for daily tasks or motivcation to do anything that is not a must. In this kind of depression you need a psychiatrist to help you balance the chemicals in your brain. And yes, most of the time you’ll need medication for a while next to a balanced lifestyle in which you get to sleep, eat and move again in a way that supports your brain to do it’s job and produce serotonin as it should.
• Postpartum depression – it happens because of changes in your hormones after your baby is born, and doesn’t always mean you’ll develop depression, it might go away once your hormones are back in balance. It can also happen, as it happened to me, that you develop depression which takes longer to recover, and you need a doctor and long term therapy.

Now, before you jump and want to close you laptom and throuw away this article, hear me out: For me, as an Eastern European raised in a culture where you go to therapy only if you are crazy or police force you to, going to therapy for 3 and a half years, was the best thing that happened to me after having Jesus in my life. This article and anything you see here wouldn’t happen if I would not go to therapy, because I would be very much dead by suicide.

• Psychotic depression – in some cases depression can be so severe that can cause loosing touch with reality and going into posychosis. Symptoms of psychotic depression can include hallucinations (you might hear or see things that are not there), delusions (you believe something that no one else believe about yourself or others – eg: you think about yourself that you are a bad person, or your boss is evil and is always watching you wanting to hurt you), and paranoia (feeling like everyone is against you, someone is poisening you or intentionally making you sick).

No matter which kind of deperssion you might experience, it does not go away by itself, you need professional help if you want to get well in a sustainable way. You need trained professionals to help your body get back in balance and your mind recalibrate by integrating emotions and past expereinecs that need healing.

I know you are a strong person, and how do I know that? You read this article, isn’t it? That tells me you did not give up on yourself and genuinelly want to get better but you are still confused in how to do it. I am proud of you and I cheer for you on this journey of getting better. Do not let stigma stop you from becoming the person you are ment to be, radiant and full of life.

Here are some signs that you might experience depression:

• You feel hopeless, sad, and disconnected.
• Constant fatigue, sluggish and with no physical resources to move much.
• It has to do with life in general—not just work.
• Oversleeping or insomnia.
• Overeating or not eating at all.
• Lost interest in everything and can not find motivation to move forward.

What helps before you get to a doctor:

Understand that is not your fault. It is simply your brain having a hard time producing the chemicals like seronotin, dopamin and other vital chemicals ment to keep your brain, body and mind healthy. If you would have heart problems, would you blame yourself for your sick heart? This time is your brain that needs a doctor and that is perfectly okay.

Talk with your partner, family or friends about how you feel. Don’t carry this alone. It is heavy as it is, but carrying it alone is extra heavy, especially if you experience suicidal thoughts. Find one person you can talk with about how you feel, or someone who can hold space for you to simply be there without talking, but it is important to have someone who knows you are not ok.

This is a mistake I made when I had depression, I did not tell anyone and one day I was at the edge of the water to jump in front of a cargo. What saved me was the alarm on my phone to remind me to pick up my son from kintergarden. Don’t make the same mistake as I did, it might be too late and the pain we leave behind after suicide is a pain that often does not go away completelly.

Call your doctor and make an appointment – start with your GP and ask for a referal to a psychiatrist. In order to get help from psychiatry you need to ask for it, according to the law. So don’t be avoidant in telling your doctor what kind of referal you need and when. The when is today!

Give yourself space to sleep if you sleep, to eat is you eat, or not eat if that is what you feel that day, be sad when you are sad, and happy when you are happy. Allow yourself to be as you are, not the perfection that social media and society expects from you. You are you and your process is yours. You will be okay again but until then, it is what it is and that is also akay.

The fact that you read this sentence tells me that you love yourself enough to look for the kind of help you need for your problem.

Here to start looking for help:

1. If you read this article and you noticed that you experience stress, you can start directly with a Coach. A Coach will guide you to develop techniques that helps you manage stress in long term and develop a life style that prevent stress from pileing up and help your nervous system go back into rest and dysgest mode. I for example am certified on trauma coaching, and I can coach you on stress, and burnout, but I cannot coach you if you experience depression unless you have a psychiatrist and we work together.
2. If you recognise yourself more in the burnout area, you want to start by calling in sick at work, go to your family doctor, and ask for referal to a burnout professional. Ussually those are either coach or psychoterapist. They will help you discover, process and integrate to roots of your burnout, learn new habits and practices in your daily life to take care of yourself in a way that you don’t burn out in the future.
3. If depression is where you are, tell someone close to you, call your family doctor and ask for referal to a psychiatrist. There is no shortcut on this one, no coach, no therapist, and no delay is worth your well being and life in long term. It is ok to call a doctor for your tired and in need of medical assistance brain.

With this in mind, I hope and trust you found some guidance in where to start in your healing and recovery journey. If you still have questions, or want to work with me, make an appoiment, and let’s see how I may assist you further. In the mean time, stay safe, talk to people, and don’t give up hope, but keep searching for the kind of help you need for your own wellbeing.

Talk to you soon,

Cristina