As the third quarter begins, so does the next round of burnout within students. Everyone is tired, or bored, or just lost about everything, and it all feels like too much.

When burnout hits, it hits fast, and it’s overwhelming. Students get behind, and all the sudden, they’re 12 assignments behind and doing poorly in all of their classes.

Burnout is experienced by teens all over the world, but it can happen to anyone in high-stress jobs or heavy workloads.

The World Health Organization describes this as “an occupational phenomenon” resulting from chronic stress that has been managed ineffectively.

It happens to everyone at some point, as we get busy with responsibilities and we just don’t take a step back. You keep working and working without rest, and your body physically can’t keep up.

Burnout isn’t stress; they are two very different things. Stress is the result of too much pressure and demands on your energy. Burnout is almost the opposite: too little care left within you. Stress leaves you feeling overwhelmed and worried; burnout leaves you empty. You feel used up, depleted, and it doesn’t feel good.

It’s also not depression. Burnout will eventually ease up and go away. Depression doesn’t. Depression is a medical condition that needs medication or treatment prescribed by a professional. Burnout ebbs and flows, it only affects some parts of your life. Depression affects all aspects of your life. However, burnout can grow and turn into depression, so make sure to treat it if you see it forming.

There are types of burnout. The four types of burnout are as follows:

Habitual burnout: You feel fatigued, both mentally and physically, and the way you act changes. If you feel this way, it is important to seek help in some form.

Underchallenged burnout: You feel bored or unimportant. This could be if school is not helping you grow enough, or your job doesn’t allow you to get a promotion you feel as though you are qualified for.

Neglect burnout: You feel helpless. You’re aware that things are going wrong, but you feel incapable of fixing it. This can go hand-in-hand with imposter syndrome, a condition many face that involves doubting yourself and your accomplishments.

Overload burnout: You feel frantic or erratic, working in order to succeed, willing to risk your physical and mental health to feel good about yourself.

Burnout doesn’t usually just appear. It forms. Once it forms, it grows. It keeps growing and growing and growing and growing until it consumes you. Psychologists Gail North and Herbert Freudenberger came up with a list of the 12 stages of burnout.

1. A need to prove yourself: You want everything you do to be perfect and everyone to like you, as you fear you won’t make them happy.
2. Working harder: You feel like you have to do everything and as fast as you can.
3. Neglecting your needs: You begin to let your social life slip away, and think other people who go out of their way to keep it balanced are weird or wrong. You believe you’re still normal, but you start making mistakes here.
4. Interpersonal conflicts: You fight with others around you. You have physical representations of these issues, beginning to have a hard time sleeping or start forgetting things.
5. Revision of values: You see things differently now; people seem less important. You begin to become insensitive or rude.
6. Denial: You cut yourself off from the world, becoming bitter and angry. You’re impatient and intolerant, and you don’t feel good about it.
7. Withdrawal: Other people feel like a burden to you. You get upset (angry, disoriented, helpless, like a burden yourself) when you get any form of criticism.
8. Behavioral changes: You feel apathetic; nothing matters anymore.
9. Depersonalization: You are no longer yourself. You begin to feel like a shell of a person who just exists to complete the task at hand. You neglect yourself.
10. Feeling empty: You’re exhausted, worried, scared, etc.
11. Despair: You no longer like who you are as a person. This is where depression may form.
12. Total burnout: The last phase, you’re fully broken down. You should seek help in this stage.

The signs of burnout start out subtle. However, the longer you refuse to get better, the worse it will get. Some symptoms of burnout include, but are not limited to:

• Exhaustion
• Lack of enthusiasm or joy
• Inability to work
• Alienation from activities
• Reduced performance compared to usual
• Mental symptoms
• Self doubt, imposter syndrome, cynicism, dissatisfaction, feeling replaceable, defeated, like a failure
• Physical symptoms
• Fatigued, often sick, lack of energy, body aches, insomnia, food issues, headaches

The third quarter has begun, and here marks the point where burnout gets bad. As we prepare for AICE and AP testing, and every class just gets too difficult, it’s hard to stay afloat.

The most important aspect is that, in order to fix burnout, you have to recognize that it exists. Once you recognize it’s a problem, you can work to fix it. If you feel this way, just know: you are not alone. Everything will be okay as long as you try your best and work to fix issues.