The ACTUAL Stages of Burnout

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Summary

There’s SO much BS out there when it comes to the phases of burnout. Let me DEBUNK these! Instead, let’s talk about how burnout progresses. I’ll introduce you to the concept of the high achiever burnout cycle, where high achievers experience burnout in a cyclical fashion. I’m also going to break down the stages of this cycle, starting with a well-intentioned busyness all the way to the burnout breakdown. We’ll talk about the importance of catching burnout early and making changes to prevent it from progressing further and where the easiest and most effective places to catch burnout and reverse it are! Enjoy!

For show notes, head to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠coachellyn.com/podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and, of course, follow me on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠OR check out my ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more!

Keywords

burnout, stages of burnout, high achiever burnout cycle, well-intentioned busyness, overwhelm, denial, detachment, mental collapse, physical collapse, recovery, sustainable success, mindset, values

Some Takeaways

• Burnout does not follow a linear progression and the commonly accepted stages of burnout may not accurately represent how it actually progresses.

• High achievers often experience burnout in a cyclical fashion, going through phases of burnout and recovery.

• Catching burnout early and making changes can prevent it from progressing to more severe stages.

• Mindset and values play a crucial role in managing burnout and preventing its recurrence.

• Recovering from burnout is easier the earlier it is caught, but it may take longer to recover if it has progressed to more advanced stages.

Sound Bites

"I just don't agree with. So we're going to kind of debunk some of those things that I just kind of think are BS out there."

"I think high achievers in particular, and if you guys know me at all, you know my entire like business and how I approach burnout is built around high achievers."

"We're doing things, we're filling our time with things that feel good."

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TRANSCRIPT:

Ellyn Schinke (00:01.028)

Hello, my friend, and welcome back to another kick -ass new episode of the Burnout Proof Podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about the actual stages and phases of burnout because there is so much stuff online out there about burnout and how burnout progresses that I just don't agree with. So we're going to kind of debunk some of those things that I just kind of think are BS out there. And I'll share with you a little bit of how I think burnout progresses and some of the things to look for. I'm trying to really, really simplify it because I find a lot of these kind of stages of burnout, they're almost like,

tedious in terms of the ways in which they've named it. It's not very recognizable. And if you know anything about me, I really just want to make this recognizable for you guys. So that's what we're going to be diving into today. Before we do though, I want to give you a heads up that if you're somebody who needs some help with their systems right now, you're feeling really disorganized, very overwhelmed, feeling like your systems are hindering you instead of supporting you when it comes to wrangling all of the moving pieces in your life, come to the webinar I'm hosting on June 27th. It's head to CoachEllen .com slash systems. Again, I'm E -L -L -Y -N.

and join us and we're gonna be having this webinar where I'm gonna be teaching you some of the core fundamentals to creating sustainable systems. Some of the things that I see a lot of people do wrong and some of the things that I want to encourage you to do right when it comes to creating those sustainable systems for yourself. So again, coachellen .com slash systems, join us on June 27th and we're gonna be diving into that. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about.

these phases and stages of burnout. And I want to start by talking about the things that always just like make me roll my eyes. There's some very, very common things out there. And I feel like this is something that one person came up with and everybody else just like rolled with it. And they describe the stages of burnout as being the honeymoon phase, all the way up to habitual burnout. And every time I see this, I grin because I would never ever consider the first stage of burnout to be a quote unquote honeymoon phase. I think I know why they use this language. I think the idea is,

that whenever you start a new thing, like a new job or something like that, there is a honeymoon phase in that job where you're going to be very energetic and optimistic. And that's going to kind of be this first stage of having a job. I would consider that to be the first stage of having a job. I do not consider that to be the first stage of burnout because just being in a honeymoon phase does not ever mean that you are going to progress to burnout. Yes, with any new job, you're going to be in a honeymoon phase and then you're going to

Ellyn Schinke (02:22.244)

you know, proceed to a stress phase. But what I really find happens with burnout is this. So I actually find that.

Ellyn Schinke (02:34.628)

Simultaneously, there's also like the final stage is habitual burnout. I don't think you progress to habitual burnout. I think there's a lot of mindsets and habits and behaviors that are ultimately what create habitual burnout, particularly in high achievers. So here's how I break it down. I personally think that there is a high achiever burnout cycle. I think high achievers in particular, and if you guys know me at all, you know my entire like business and how I approach burnout is built around high achievers. I find that high achievers experience this burnout cycle where they,

They experience burnout in some sort of a cyclical fashion. And what usually happens is they burn out. There is some sort of a ramp up period from mild burnout to very, very severe burnout. And they'll hit a point where the burnout gets so unmanageable that they're forced to stop and slow down. So let's start and dive into this first stage of this cycle, this burnout stage. How do we get from mild to severe, to very, very severe burnout?

And I'm really going to try to choose my language really, really carefully as I talk about this, because ultimately here's the thing that I find that happens when we might, especially as a high achiever, when we might start a new job or get involved in something, or maybe we've gone through a period of, let's actually, you know what, I'm going to break it down. I'm going to bring it all the way back to the breakdown. So say with burnout, we reach a point where burnout is unmanageable. We're forced to stop and we kind of have to hit the reset button. So we experienced some sort of breakdown.

And that breakdown is when we have been forced to make some dramatic changes to our life. Maybe your breakdown led you to completely change careers. Maybe you changed jobs. Maybe you had to take a stress leave and really, really integrate some self -care habits into your life. So we have this breakdown. And you might have made some changes in that breakdown that actually felt really, really nice. This is usually where we all start. We have had some sort of life change, lifestyle change, and we've made some changes that we're really, really happy with and really, really proud of.

Now, what usually happens with the high achiever from there, and this is the bounce back period, I find, what usually happens with a high achiever from here is we start to look for ways to, quote unquote, do something with our spare time. A lot of high achievers struggle when they have too much time on their hands. They struggle because, and this could be for multiple reasons, we struggle because maybe we're people pleasers or we struggle because we're just high achievers and so much of our identity is wrapped up in work for us.

Ellyn Schinke (05:01.06)

So we made these changes that feel nice. We've had a forced slowdown. And now what we're trying to do is we're looking for ways and things to fill our spare time with. This is all in the bounce back stage. And at this point, we're probably not feeling any sort of burnout or stress. We're just kind of operating back at normal. So then what happens from there is we start to enter the burnout phase. So.

I would say the first stage of this is it's almost kind of like well -intentioned busyness. It is a well -intentioned busyness in the sense that we are trying to find things to fill our time, things that are fulfilling. But what happens as a result of that for a lot of high achievers is we fill all of the previously empty space in our schedule and in our lives with stuff. And that could either be because we are grasping at straws,

trying to find fulfillment or trying to overcome some sense of boredom, or maybe we are just being a people pleaser and we're saying yes to too much. I can talk in another episode about the three core mindsets that often lead to burnout, but usually there's some sort of thing that either it's fulfillment that we feel like we're missing or whatever that leads us to start filling all of the previous empty space in our schedule. And again, this is like,

well -intentioned busyness because it's not coming from a negative place. I don't ever think the, you know, even though I do say burnout is a choice and I do believe burnout is the result of our choices, I don't believe any of it's malicious. Like we're not trying to burn ourselves out when we do this. So we start off with this kind of well -intentioned busyness. And then whether as a result of that, it is because of people pleasing or it's because of just the high achiever mentality in general, what tends to happen as a result of that,

well -intentioned busyness, where we're filling all of the previously empty space, is we start to feel like our plate is getting overloaded. If this is the beginnings, like if you've never burned out before, this might be the beginning of a burnout cycle for you. If you've experienced burnout previously, this might be a situation where you start to feel like you're overloaded again. And we go from like this well -intentioned busyness to this conscious awareness. And I don't even necessarily like the notion of

Ellyn Schinke (07:26.148)

conscious awareness, it's kind of the onset of overwhelm. And if in these early phases, this is really where true, I might be getting ahead of myself, but these early phases are really where true burnout management comes into play. If you start to notice, shoot, I've been filling all of my previously empty space on my schedule with stuff, whatever reason.

whether it's people pleasing or just kind of the high achiever impulse, if you start to notice at that point that you're doing that and you dial it back and you give yourself more white space, you're gonna catch burnout before it ever gets bad. Like you are going, you're almost like catching it almost like before it even becomes noticeable. Like when we're filling all of our previously empty space, that well intentioned busyness stage, that is honestly to me, I almost hesitate to call it mild burnout at that point because,

that could be something that is stressful. That could be the place where you start to see that onset of stress, but it's subconscious because at that point it's such well -intentioned, it's such well -intentioned busyness that it almost feels good at that point. And I feel like that's where a lot of the burnout behaviors that we experience start, is we're doing things that feel good. Like how could this possibly lead down a bad road because we're doing things, we're filling our time with things that feel good.

So that's kind of where it starts. And then from there, like I said, we start to feel like our plate is overloaded again, right? And at that point, that's when it starts to veer into conscious awareness.

Ellyn Schinke (09:17.7)

I just coughed and I don't know where I coughed in there, but.

Ellyn Schinke (09:24.004)

I just coughed and I don't know where I coughed in there, but excuse me. So it starts to veer into our conscious awareness that we are starting to feel overloaded again. So we might make some adjustments, but I really feel like...

Ellyn Schinke (09:41.316)

instead of overwhelm.

Ellyn Schinke (09:47.076)

But I really feel like this could go one of two ways. You could either, if you have a healthy relationship with kind of busyness and achievement and whatnot and success, you could realize with this onset of overwhelm, you could realize, okay, I need to make some lifestyle changes. I need to either start saying no, start setting those boundaries, you know, more self care, et cetera, so on and so forth. So I feel like you can go one of two ways at this point. You can make...

productive changes that just send you back to having a really, really busy schedule, or what we can do sometimes if we don't have a great relationship with success and achievement, we can deny. And I really feel like that is the next step. That's why we proceed from this onset of overwhelm into the deeper levels of burnout is usually because of denial.

Ellyn Schinke (10:54.148)

It's like we are aware of the overwhelm we are feeling, but we are denying it's having any sort of negative impact on us. And usually,

Ellyn Schinke (11:18.244)

And what I would probably characterize everything from here as is almost like...

Ellyn Schinke (11:44.1)

And what I would characterize everything from here as is almost like you just see this progression. You see this progression of denial and you might progress from just kind of feeling exhausted to like, you might see this progression of proceeding from just feeling like you're numbing to feeling like there's a full blown exhaustion there. And then eventually what we do is we hit this point.

Ellyn Schinke (12:36.42)

As we've been talking about this, it's actually making me realize that I have a graphic that I created for one of my previous memberships that I actually feel like outlines this beautifully. So like we start off with having this kind of this excessive drive and ambition.

And again, it's well intentioned, it's well intentioned busyness and we might have this excessive drive or ambition, but usually what happens there is we start working harder and harder to either prove ourselves to others, prove ourselves to ourselves. And then what sometimes can happen, and this is where if you catch this at this point, it can be a very, very easy productive fix. But if you don't, this is where I think it really, really starts to.

The next stage after you having excessive drive and ambition, you keep working harder to prove yourself, from there what can happen is we might start neglecting our own personal needs and our personal self -care. Again, if you catch it at this stage, it's very easy to turn around. If you don't, it's a little bit harder to turn around at this stage. So we might start neglecting our personal care and our personal needs. And again, I think at this point it started to veer away from the well -intentioned busyness more into the onset of overwhelm.

because usually what happens from there is we might feel conflicted and start to blame others or the situation. Like what I think often happens here is if you're a business owner, you might start to blame your clients. So it's my client's fault that I'm like this, or it's just the nature of being in business or whatever it might be. Or if you're in corporate, you might blame your boss or your company or whatever. So we start to feel conflicted about the time that we're putting in, the effort that we're exerting, the fact that we don't have time for our personal care and our needs.

and we sort of blame others. And then what can happen here, and I think this is where we really start to veer into these stages of burnout that are really, really hard to overcome, is we might feel the need to change our values to focus on working more. I find, and this is why I love values work, and this is kind of right at the tipping point for burnout. This is really where it starts to tip into burnout that is very much something that we have to work long -term to overcome, and it's very much something that we...

Ellyn Schinke (14:45.06)

that can start to have a very ingrained impact on us. I just did values work with one of my clients where one of the things that came out of it is we talked about success. She thought one of her values was success. And the more we question it, the more we realized that what she thought was her value is something that had kind of been ingrained in her in her work environment. And I think that's exactly what we're talking about at this stage. We change our values to focus on working more because that's what we're validated for. And that's what we're encouraged to do. You know, when your environment,

is part of what's driving you toward burnout, your environment can have an impact. If you're not clear on your values and you don't have that clarity and compassion for yourself, your environment can start to have an influence on that. So at this point, you might start to see a change in your values that's gonna encourage that working more. Then the next stage from there is you're gonna start denying the problems that arise due to the stress that you're feeling. So I feel like at this stage,

you like previously it's almost like we were we had well intentioned busyness we have this onset of overwhelm and now we're kind of proceeding into this sort of denial phase we've changed our values to focus more on working so our values are almost reinforcing our behavior and then we might start to deny the problems that are arising due to the stress and the burnout that we are feeling we might deny that you know not taking care of ourselves as a problem we might deny that our relationships are being impacted we might deny this that and the other thing.

And so as a result of that denial, our social life and our family time starts to be affected. I actually, I'm so glad I realized that I had this printout. And actually what I'll go ahead and do is I will put this in the show notes if you want this. You just go ahead and you can head on over to the show notes and you'll be able to access this. But I'm really seeing my experiences burn out very much modeled in this in terms of.

graduate school. I feel like there was a change in my values that I was trying to adopt to get myself to work more. I started denying that there were issues that were happening. My social life and my family time started to be effective. And then usually what happens from there is your behavior changes and that upsets your loved ones. So if your social life and your family time is being affected and you experience these behavior changes that upset your loved ones, then the next part of that, and this is…

Ellyn Schinke (16:55.108)

All of these things are things that we can address. Earlier at stage three, we said, if you notice that you're neglecting your personal care and you should make a change so that you're prioritizing your personal care, that's very recoverable. That's very easy to bounce back from. But if you get to the point where you're denying the problems that are arising due to the stress you're feeling and you get to this place where your social life and your family time is being affected and you're upsetting your loved ones, that I would say is another big turning point. That is another big place where...

If we call attention to it, we can reverse the situation. We can reverse the burnout. I think it's going to be harder at this point because at this point, not only do you have to kind of repair relationships, but you also have to start to readdress the values that change and you have to get your personal care back. So it's like the further you progress down this, the longer and the more work it's going to take to recover because there's more things you have to reset as a result of this. So.

We started with, it was just a simple, well -intentioned, I have a lot of drive and ambition, I'm gonna work hard to prove myself. And now we're up to the point where our behavior changes upset our loved ones, and then from there, what usually happens is we start to feel detached from our life and our ability to control it. This is when it starts to have deeper impacts on our level of fulfillment. And that's really the thing that I find so interesting about burnout, is it starts at something that's so just...

exhaustion and overwhelm and our brain feeling overloaded and our body feeling tired to something that can literally impact like our sense of fulfillment and self -worth. So we might start to feel detached from our life and our ability to control it. We might start to feel numb and empty. And at this point, we can start to see an uptick in numbing behaviors that are just beyond overwork, that are beyond doing too much. We might see an uptick in numbing behaviors that are like down to like substance abuse. And then the next stage.

is feeling depressed, lost, and completely exhausted. And then the stage after that is mental or physical collapse and complete burnout. Now, I do find some of these stages, I would say some of these stages are optional. You do not have to progress to substance abuse or feeling completely lost and depressed to reach mental collapse and complete burnout. Heck, I actually think part of the difficulty with this and in framing this is the fact that

Ellyn Schinke (19:15.972)

For somebody realizing that they are experiencing substance abuse might feel like mental and physical collapse. That might feel like complete burnout for them. Feeling depressed and lost might feel like complete burnout to them. So I think as we start to progress to these really late stages, for certain people, that's going to feel like they have hit the point of complete burnout. And again, we all have this point where the burnout and the stress, it just no longer feels manageable and you're forced to stop. So how far you progress down these later stages, I feel like is very dependent upon the person.

But once we reach that point, that is when we hit breakdown. And breakdown, as I've said before, is that force reset. So this is, in my experience, the stages of burnout. And as I've kind of tried to detail as we move through this, the earlier you catch it, the quicker you make those changes early on in this process, the easier it's going to be to reverse this. If you catch burnout at the stage of...

I'm just realizing you're neglecting your personal care and your needs. It's going to be reversible. If you catch it at the point where you realize your social life and your family life is being affected, it's going to be reversible. Frankly, burnout is always reversible. The question that I often get asked is how long does it take to recover from burnout? How easy is it to recover from burnout? And the fact of the matter is the sooner you catch it on the spectrum, the easier it's going to be to recover from burnout. If you catch it at stage three, it's going to be relatively easy.

you know, maybe a couple months to recover. If you sketch it, catch it at stage seven or eight, it's probably going to take more like a year to recover from it fully. Because again, you have to reset all of these things that you moved away from. If you get all the way to stage nine, 10, 11, 12, that might take, you know, more than a year, if not years to recover from. The more, the further you progress along the spectrum, the more things that have to be done to ultimately bounce back and recover from burnout. Where we get out of the cycle,

where we get away from this burnout breakdown bounce back cycle is when we start to really nip things in the bud at stage one. Stage one was you have an excessive drive or ambition and you keep working harder to prove yourself. If you can at that stage beat the impulse to work harder, to create a healthier relationship with your drive and your ambition, burnout's never gonna be a problem.

Ellyn Schinke (21:38.564)

And that is really where the sustainable success framework I talk about comes into play. That's really where the sustainable mindset part of that sustainable success framework comes into play because sustainable mindset is going to help you question the behaviors that you previously wouldn't have questioned. It's going to question why do you feel the need to work harder to prove yourself? Who are you even proving yourself to? It's going to question why do you have to have excessive drive and ambition? Why is it constantly this I need to do more because of...

Ellyn Schinke (22:13.444)

Why is it constantly this, I need to do more because I'm not doing enough? If we can question those things, we are going to nip the burnout cycle in the bud. And that's why I personally am really passionate about getting away from this whole honeymoon phase to habitual burnout, five stages of burnout, because I don't think it's that simple. I don't think there's ever a honeymoon phase and burnout. And frankly, that five stages of burnout that you'll often see on the internet, I don't think teaches you how to get out.

of the burnout cycle. It kind of almost implies that it's inevitable that you're going to get into a burnout cycle no matter what position you have, no matter what career you pursue. And I don't believe that's the case. I do believe that high achievers have a natural burnout cycle that they can get in. But if they can nip some of these early stages in the butt, if they can catch it early, then you're going to have a burnout -proof life. Because you're going to be able to turn things around very, very early, before things progress too far.

And frankly, I think that is the goal for a lot of us. So I hope this resonated with you. I hope it gave you some signs to look for. I hope it gave you a clearer picture on really how burnout does progress. And what I would love to hear from you is what resonated with you? What jumped out at you about this? Did this give you hope? Did this give you perspective when it came to recovering from burnout and maybe even some of your own burnout experiences? Feel free to connect with me over at Instagram or on LinkedIn. I'm at Coach Ellen at both of those places. I would love to connect with you. And with that, my friends, I will talk to you next time. Bye.