Burnout

Burnout recovery doesn’t happen overnight, but with the proper support, you can regain your enthusiasm and avoid relapses. Axis Integrated Mental Health has offices in Louisville, Westminster, and Aurora, Colorado, where experienced professionals offer treatments, coaching, and paid mental health leave if appropriate for people suffering from burnout. Call the Axis Integrated Mental Health office nearest you to discuss your burnout problems or schedule an in-person or telehealth consultation online today.

What is burnout?

Burnout is a mental state where you feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and unable to perform your usual tasks. Job burnout is the most common problem, but you can also experience parenting, sports, relationship, caregiver, and other forms of burnout.

Everyone experiences stress or anxiety sometimes, and that’s no bad thing — you need some stress to keep you motivated, prepare for danger, and optimize your performance. However, if you reach burnout, long-term pressure has become so severe it causes significant mental and physical issues.

This pressure has various causes, like an excessive workload, difficult co-workers, poor or abusive management, and an unsuitable role. You’re more likely to suffer from burnout if you don’t learn to manage stress effectively.

Burnout is recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a condition that can seriously impact people’s quality of life. It was added to the ISD 10 as an official medical diagnosis but reclassified in ISD 11 as an occupational phenomenon. Regardless, it's a genuine problem that’s similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or high-functioning depression (persistent depressive disorder) and can lead to persistent health problems in the future.

What symptoms does burnout cause?

Burnout symptoms can be mental and physical. Common examples include:

• Constantly feeling exhausted
• Brainfog
• More frequent illnesses
• Regular headaches
• Appetite changes
• Poor sleep and insomnia
• Difficulty concentrating
• Feeling like a failure
• Continual self-doubt
• Depression and anxiety
• Feeling detached from everything
• Lack of motivation
• Increasingly negative outlook
• Little joy or satisfaction with life
• Social isolation
• Procrastination
• Frustration and irritability

When burnout is severe, you might start avoiding your responsibilities, skipping out on work, or simply giving up and staying home.

How do I overcome burnout?

The Axis Integrated Mental Health team uses a holistic approach, encouraging you to prioritize your mental and physical health. They create a personalized treatment program for you that focuses on tracking your stress levels so you learn what triggers stress and how to avoid it. This may include take paid mental health leave for up to 3 months at 90% of pay, which most Coloradoans are entitled to.

Working with our integrative psychiatrist will help you get sleep and mood under control through a combination of medications, lifestyle changes, and advanced therapies. We also recommend working with a therapist either at Axis or one you select to help define what success might look and feel like for you. Finally, we also provide 2 free sessions with a coach to help you navigate the bureaucracy of dealing with different insurance programs, state benefits programs, brainstorm potential career paths you may want to take to make your vision a reality and even review your resume if you want to change jobs.

For more information about burnout, please download our burnout survival guide. 

With our collaborative care team, you learn to set boundaries, like saying no to activities you can’t manage, and focus on things you enjoy. You also benefit from stress management techniques, meditation, a healthy diet, and feel-good hormones produced by lifestyle changes that we can coach you on.

Advanced treatments like esketamine therapy or transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) help many patients and are covered by most insurance plans.

Call Axis Integrated Mental Health to arrange a burnout assessment or paid mental health leave, or schedule a consultation online today.