Why Do I Feel So Drained All the Time?

You wake up to the alarm sound on your phone. You do not remember how many times you pressed the snooze button before, but this is the last call. You feel tired even before you open your eyes. You think to yourself, “I wish I were sick or something. I wish there were an excuse for me to stay in bed.” However, soon after, the thing that need to be done in your job starts racing. There is a massive list of things to do, and you think to yourself, “How am I going to get this done?”

You go to work, but the work you do no longer brings you the same satisfaction. The achievements that once excited you now feel like just another burden. You pretend to listen in meetings, but your mind is elsewhere. Maybe you find yourself unconsciously asking, “Why am I here? Why did I start this job?“ It’s funny, you remember when you applied for this job, how happy you were when they got back to you, how excited you were during the interview, and that acceptance email. The world was yours. What had happened to that? You feel so angry now about your job, and even small things throughout the day start to test your patience. A simple email, a colleague’s expectation, or a minor mistake… When you get home, you want to talk to your loved ones, but you have no energy left. You don’t want to hurt them, but you find yourself giving short, disjointed answers. Fatigue is no longer just a physical burden; it’s weighing on your mind and heart as well.

This is precisely where it is easy to blame yourself. You may think, “I am not strong enough, I must be weak.” However, the reality is quite different: Burnout is most commonly seen in those who care the most and try the hardest. Psychologist Herbert Freudenberger observed this in the 1970s. Doctors, nurses, and social workers who put helping others at the center of their lives gradually depleted their own energy and felt drained from within. Later, Christina Maslach and her team defined this phenomenon in three dimensions: intense exhaustion, emotional detachment from work, and a diminished sense of accomplishment. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2019) defines burnout as “a professional phenomenon resulting from the inability to manage chronic work stress successfully.” In other words, the problem is not a personal inadequacy; it is an uncontrollable, unmanageable vortex of stress caused by burnout.

How Do You Know If It is Stress or Burnout?

Burnout is often confused with stress or fatigue. You can think of the difference this way: stress says, “I have a lot of work to do.” Burnout says, “Nothing makes sense anymore.” Stress can sometimes motivate you and even make you productive. But burnout paralyzes you. Resting doesn’t help. You can sleep as much as you want, take a vacation, try to get away. If what you’re doing doesn’t feel meaningful to you, burnout will always come back. Burnout is much more chaotic and complex than ordinary fatigue, making it difficult for you to cope with stress and fulfill your daily responsibilities. Burnout hinders an individual’s productivity, causing them to feel hopeless, helpless, cynical, and resentful, and can even negatively affect their physical health, making them more vulnerable to illness. Therefore, it is essential that burnout be treated appropriately and that steps be taken toward the individual’s recovery.

At its core, burnout is about a loss of meaning. So if you’re feeling something beyond just being tired or overwhelmed, the real issue isn’t that you’ve lost your energy; it’s that you’ve lost your sense of purpose. The sad part is that this situation is often seen in people who love their work the most and are the most idealistic. Because they are the ones who find it most challenging to set boundaries. Therefore, burnout is not a shadow of your weakness but of your dedication.

Does Burnout Really Creep In Silently?

Burnout does not happen suddenly. It progresses slowly, without you noticing. Freudenberger and Gail North described this process in 12 stages. Most of the time, everything starts with great desire and enthusiasm. When you start a new job or a new project, your ambition drives you forward. You think, “I have to prove myself.” This desire motivates you to work harder. After a while, you believe that the more effort you put in, the more valuable you will feel.

However, this effort comes at a cost. You start to put your own needs on the back burner. You sleep less, skip meals, and forget to listen to your body. Exercising, resting, or engaging in the things you love takes a back seat. As you neglect yourself, burnout quietly grows.

Instead of recognizing this, most people project the conflict outward. The problem is that you’ve already crossed your boundaries, but instead of acknowledging that, you direct your anger toward those around you. Over time, everything outside of work begins to lose its value. The time you spend with your family, friends, and hobbies gradually decreases. Your life begins to revolve almost entirely around work.

Denial also comes into play during this process. Your patience with those around you diminishes, you get angry over small things, but you don’t associate this with yourself. You think, “They are insensitive, they are failures.” But in fact, your patience is slipping away.

You slowly begin to withdraw into yourself. You stop calling your friends, decline invitations, and weaken your family ties. As you distance yourself from those around you, your life loses direction; you feel more hopeless and cynical. Your behavior also changes in this loneliness. You, who used to be calm, may now be more aggressive and quick to anger. You notice that you react with anger for no reason.

Eventually, you start to feel alienated from yourself. It feels like you’re not in control of your life. It feels like you have no control over the things you do. A void grows inside you, one that feels foreign and unrecognizable. This is where burnout takes hold: a journey that began with passion gradually turns into a dead-end that distances you from yourself.

Perhaps you are unknowingly in one of these stages. You can ask yourself the following questions: Where am I in this process right now? When was the last time my work felt meaningful to me? What signals has my body been sending me in recent weeks, and which ones have I ignored? When I said “yes” to someone or something, did I say “no” to myself?

It is important to think about these questions and look for answers because what you are experiencing may not always be burnout. Especially in professions with a heavy caregiving burden, such as healthcare workers, social workers, and psychologists, other phenomena may be intertwined.

For example, if you are constantly witnessing others’ suffering and feeling drained as a result, this is compassion fatigue (Figley, 1995). If a single event is causing you distress, accompanied by symptoms such as insomnia, nightmares, or re-experiencing the event, this may be secondary traumatic stress (Bride, 2004). If witnessing trauma over the years has changed your belief system or your view of the world, this is vicarious trauma (Pearlman & Saakvitne, 1995).

They may seem similar, but their roots are different. Burnout stems from workload and the system. Compassion fatigue stems from excessive empathy. Secondary traumatic stress stems from a single event. Vicarious trauma stems from years of accumulated, lasting transformation. Whichever one applies to you, your path to recovery begins there.

What Have You Lost Along the Way?

There is another aspect that often goes unnoticed, which is that burnout is a grieving process. Because with burnout, you lose many things. Your curiosity about your work, the joy you derive from success, and the patience you can show to your loved ones. And most painfully, your self-confidence. There is no funeral for these losses, but there is grief. You mourn inwardly. When you say, “I am no longer the person I used to be,” you are mourning the parts of yourself that you have lost. That is why recovering from burnout is not just about resting, but about accepting your losses and mourning them because mourning makes room for rebirth.

The solution to burnout is not simply to run away. Taking a vacation or changing jobs may sometimes be necessary, but what you really need is to realign yourself with your values. Ask yourself: “When did I start ignoring my own needs? Which of my values have I strayed from? When did I say yes to someone else and no to myself?”

Healing begins with the answers to these questions. When you reconnect with your friends, make time for things that nourish you outside of work. Disconnect from technology, take a breath, give your body sleep and movement, and remember the rhythm of human life. Burnout slowly begins to dissolve.

But remember: Burnout is not a sign of weakness; on the contrary, it is a warning sign that something is not right. Your body and soul are expressing needs that you have been suppressing for a long time. If you hear this voice, you have an opportunity to rediscover your values, priorities, and boundaries. If you don’t listen to it, this sign will remind you in other ways. 

What Might Burnout Be Trying to Tell You?

Recognize your needs. You may have been prioritizing the needs of others for a long time. Now try to listen to your body, your feelings, and your boundaries. Expressing your needs is not selfish; it is the first step toward healing.

Make room for your feelings. Your anger, hopelessness, or indifference may be whispering to you that something is wrong. Don’t suppress or judge these emotions. Try to understand them, because every emotion stems from a need.

Show yourself compassion. Experiencing burnout doesn’t mean you’ve failed. On the contrary, it’s a sign that you’ve been pushing yourself beyond your limits for a long time. Try to offer yourself the same compassion you would show a client: understanding, patience, and kindness.

Take-aways

• Burnout is much more chaotic and complex than ordinary fatigue, making it difficult for you to cope with stress and fulfill your daily responsibilities.
• Burnout is not a shadow of your weakness but of your dedication.
• There is another aspect that often goes unnoticed, which is that burnout is a grieving process. Because at its core, burnout is about a loss of meaning.
• Burnout might be telling you to recognize your needs and listen to your body and boundaries, to make room for difficult feelings instead of suppressing them, and to show yourself the same compassion you would offer to someone else.
  

References

• Bride, B. E. (2004). The impact of providing psychosocial services to traumatized populations. Stress, Trauma, and Crisis, 7(1), 29–46. https://doi.org/10.1080/15434610490281101
• Figley, C. R. (1995). Compassion fatigue: Coping with secondary traumatic stress disorder in those who treat the traumatized. Brunner/Mazel.
• Freudenberger, H. J. (1974). Staff burn-out. Journal of Social Issues, 30(1), 159–165. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1974.tb00706.x
• Maslach, C., Schaufeli, W. B., & Leiter, M. P. (2001). Job burnout. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 397–422. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.397
• Pearlman, L. A., & Saakvitne, K. W. (1995). Trauma and the therapist: Countertransference and vicarious traumatization in psychotherapy with incest survivors. W. W. Norton & Company.
• World Health Organization. (2019). Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”: International Classification of Diseases. https://www.who.int/mental_health/evidence/burn-out/en/

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