Burnout

Burnout Therapy | Psychologist in Maastricht | English & Greek

When constantly running on empty starts to feel normal

There can be periods in life when demands simply become too much. Work may become increasingly demanding, responsibilities may accumulate, or you may find yourself trying to keep up with expectations for longer than your energy allows. At first, you may simply feel tired. You might tell yourself that you need a holiday, a quieter week, or a little more time to catch up.

But sometimes rest no longer seems to be enough. You may begin waking up already exhausted, struggling to switch off after work, feeling increasingly detached from what you do, or noticing that tasks that once felt manageable now require enormous effort. You may become more irritable, emotionally drained, or cynical about your work, while at the same time feeling guilty that you are no longer performing at the level you expect from yourself.

Burnout is generally understood in relation to chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. The World Health Organization describes burnout through three dimensions: exhaustion or depletion of energy, increased mental distance or negativity towards one's job, and reduced professional efficacy. It is classified as an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical condition in ICD-11.

Burnout can therefore involve more than simply being tired. It can affect your relationship with your work, your sense of effectiveness, your emotional capacity, and eventually the way you experience life outside of work as well.

Therapy can provide a space to understand how you reached this point, what has been maintaining the strain, and what may need to change so that recovery involves more than simply getting yourself back to work.

Does this sound familiar?

You may feel exhausted even after sleeping, find it increasingly difficult to concentrate, or notice that ordinary tasks require much more effort than they used to. Perhaps you spend your evenings recovering from the working day and have very little energy left for relationships, hobbies, exercise, or simply enjoying your time.

You may also notice a change in how you feel about your work. Something that once mattered to you may now leave you feeling indifferent, frustrated, resentful, or emotionally detached. You may find yourself becoming cynical about colleagues, clients, your organisation, or the work itself. At the same time, you may feel guilty about having these reactions because you remember caring much more in the past.

Another possibility is that you continue performing well but at a considerable personal cost. You may be meeting deadlines, taking on responsibilities, and appearing capable to everyone around you while internally feeling that you are running on very little. You might rely increasingly on pressure, perfectionism, caffeine, long hours, or simply pushing yourself harder to keep going.

You may also notice that you have become less patient, more easily overwhelmed, or more emotionally reactive. Things that you would normally handle without much difficulty may suddenly feel like too much. You might withdraw from people because you don't have the energy to engage, or feel guilty that you are not giving enough to the people you care about.

Sometimes the clearest sign is simply that you no longer feel like yourself.

Understanding burnout

Burnout is often described casually as being “completely exhausted,” but the concept is more specific than ordinary tiredness. According to the WHO's ICD-11 definition, burnout develops in the context of chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed and involves exhaustion, increasing mental distance or negativity towards one's job, and reduced professional efficacy.

This distinction matters because being tired after a demanding period at work is not necessarily burnout. You can have a busy week and recover after some rest. Burnout tends to involve a more persistent pattern in which exhaustion is accompanied by changes in your relationship with work and your sense of effectiveness.

You may find that you are no longer simply tired from your workload; you feel depleted by the thought of work itself. You may care less about outcomes, become more emotionally distant, or find yourself thinking about your responsibilities with a sense of dread rather than engagement. At the same time, you may begin questioning your own ability because tasks that once felt manageable suddenly seem much harder.

It is also possible for burnout to overlap with other difficulties. Prolonged stress can coexist with anxiety, depression, sleep difficulties, perfectionism, or physical health problems, and not every experience of exhaustion is necessarily burnout. This is one reason it can be useful to look at the whole picture rather than trying to fit your experience into a single label.

Avoidance can make a fear stronger

Avoidance is one of the most understandable responses to a phobia.

When something frightens you, getting away from it works. Your anxiety decreases, your body begins to settle, and you experience relief.

That relief can teach your brain something important: “Avoiding this kept me safe.”

The next time you encounter the possibility of the feared situation, avoidance can therefore feel even more necessary.

Over time, the range of situations you avoid may expand. You may start avoiding not only the original trigger but also places where you think it might appear or situations that remind you of it.

The result can be that the fear becomes increasingly powerful despite the fact that you encounter the feared situation less and less.

This is one reason avoidance is often an important part of understanding phobias. It protects you from anxiety in the short term, but it can prevent you from having the experiences that might gradually change your fear.

When a specific fear starts affecting your life

A phobia can affect your life in ways that are not always immediately obvious.

You might avoid travelling because you're afraid of flying, decline activities because they involve heights, avoid medical or dental appointments because of needles or medical procedures, or feel unable to relax in certain environments because you're constantly looking out for the thing you fear.

You may also depend on other people to help you manage situations you would otherwise prefer to handle yourself.

Someone may need to check a room before you enter it. You may need another person to accompany you somewhere. You might ask someone else to remove the feared object or take care of something you cannot bring yourself to approach.

Sometimes the impact is practical.

Sometimes it is emotional.

You may feel frustrated with yourself, embarrassed by your reactions, or disappointed that something seemingly small has begun influencing your choices. And sometimes the most important question is simply:

“What would I be doing if I didn't have to organise my life around this fear?”

The fear can become bigger than the thing itself

With a specific phobia, the feared object or situation may be only part of what you are afraid of.

You may also fear the physical sensations that happen when you encounter it.

You may fear losing control.

You may fear fainting, becoming sick, embarrassing yourself, or being unable to escape.

You may fear what might happen if you panic and nobody is there to help you.

This means that two people with the same phobia can experience it very differently.

For one person, the fear may be primarily about the object itself.

For another, it may be the anticipation of the bodily sensations and the feeling of being unable to cope with them.

Understanding what you actually fear will happen can therefore be an important part of therapy.

How we can work with specific phobias in therapy

Our work would begin by understanding your particular fear and the way it affects your life. We would look at what triggers the anxiety, what you predict will happen, what you do to protect yourself, and how the fear has influenced your choices over time.

A central psychological treatment for specific phobias is exposure therapy. This involves gradually approaching the feared object or situation in a planned and manageable way rather than continuing to avoid it. Exposure is typically structured according to the individual's needs and can begin with situations that feel more manageable before progressing further.

Importantly, exposure does not mean being suddenly thrown into the most frightening situation imaginable.

The purpose is not to overwhelm you or prove that you can tolerate anything.

Instead, the work is about creating opportunities to experience the feared situation differently and learn that anxiety can rise and fall without the catastrophe you fear necessarily occurring.

We may also explore the thoughts and predictions surrounding the phobia. What do you believe will happen? What would it mean if it did? What do you do to prevent it? And what have you never had the opportunity to discover because avoidance has always stepped in first?

Depending on your needs, we may draw primarily from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), with elements of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) where helpful.

CBT can help us understand the relationship between the feared situation, your interpretation of it, your physical response, and the behaviours you use to cope.
ACT can be helpful when the struggle to eliminate fear has itself become restrictive, allowing you to practise making room for uncomfortable feelings while moving towards what matters to you.

The pace of the work would be collaborative. You would not be expected to approach something that feels overwhelming simply because it appears on a treatment plan.

Taking the First Step

You may have lived with a phobia for years and simply worked around it.

Perhaps you've always let someone else deal with spiders. Maybe you've avoided flying. Maybe you've postponed medical appointments. Maybe you've stopped doing certain activities because they involve something you fear.

You may have adapted so well that other people don't realise how much planning goes into avoiding the trigger.

You don't need to feel that your fear is “serious enough” to seek support.

A useful question may simply be whether the fear is taking you away from things you would otherwise like to do.

Therapy can provide a space to understand the fear without judging yourself for having it, and to consider whether gradually approaching it could give you more freedom.

If you'd like to explore whether working together could be a good fit, you can arrange a short introductory call.

Arrange an introductory call