Think about his: What if there was a strange disease going around that affected almost half of all people in your office, and negatively impacted their work and personal relationships? What if 16% of all the workers in your office had to call in sick because of this disease? And what if the disease caused 42% of all workers to completely quit their job at least once? Well, it would probably be called a pandemic, and huge preventive measures would be undertaken. Yet when it comes to Burnout, the mysterious disease I’m talking about, vitrutally NO preventive measures are taken.

Isn’t that strange?

they come close to the bottom of their energy reserve, the body and mind start to malfunction. Those malfunctions show up as the symptoms that are related to burnout and chronic stress. Signs and symptoms can be constant anxiety, feeling down, sleep problems, pains in the body, more illnesses, and feeling a lack of disconnect to the world. They have the strong feeling they want to press ‘pauze.’

So Burnout is a result of slowly draining my energy reserve?

Yes. Think about a laptop computer. When you are working on your computer, without ever recharging it, the battery will start to go down. When you reach 10%, the laptop will give you a warning. “Please plug in the laptop and let me recharge!” it will say. Now if you still ignore the warning and continue to work, soon enough, the laptop will start to malfunction. Your mouse will start to jitter, and everything runs much slower. Still ignore that, and eventually, your laptop will just shut off. All you will see is a black screen and doing any more activities is impossible. This is burnout.

And so what exactly is the difference between burnout and chronic stress?

Burnout and chronic stress are both on the same spectrum. Chronic stress is simply the pre-stage of burnout. Like a cold can become a lung infection, chronic stress can (and easily will) become burnout. In both cases, immediate action is required. Burnout and chronic stress don’t go away by themselves.

Not treating burnout or chronic stress is like not treating a broken leg. It will only get worse and you will lengthen the time you ultimately need to recover.

What are the symptoms related to burnout and chronic stress?

There are A LOT of signs and symptoms related to burnout and chronic stress, which simply can be divided into two main groups:

1. Physical and emotional exhaustion
2. Feelings of depression, cynicism, detachment, and lack of accomplishment

Think about a laptop computer. When its battery is almost completely empty, nothing works as it should. It’s the same with the human mind and body. For a more complete list of symptoms, please see this page.

So how do I know for sure if I have a Burnout?

Go to the page with signs and symptoms.

If you check more than 75% of the symtoms, chances are very high you might be suffering from a burnout or chronic stress.

In both cases, action is required. Camp Burnout offers the most effective online recovery programme for burnout and chronic stress. See more about Camp Burnout here.

How does recovery from burnout or chronic stress work?

Recovery from burnout or chronic stress is definitely not easy. Unguided, you can and will make a lot of mistakes, making the recovery process much longer than necessary or even fail at recovering at all. At Camp Burnout we guide you through the entire process. Together we basically take these actions to get you back to your normal, pleasant life:

• 1: We unlock recovery:
  We take a set of actions in order to initiate the healing process of the body. Unguided, many patients skip this step. That’s why they never enter the phase of recovery even and keep walking around, trying everything there is, but nothing works.
• 2: We create the right circumstances for recovery.
  In a way, recovering from Burnout is like recovering from a broken leg: You body will do the healing, but ONLY if you create the right circumstances (put a cast on it, walk with crutches, etc). What circumstances will heal you from burnout or chronic stress, you’ll learn at the camp.
• 3: Change your habits and ideas.
  There’s only one person to blame for your burnout or chronic stress, and that’s you. Now we can get you recovered, no problem. But the problem is that if you don’t change your behavior, you will get yourself into the same situation again, very possibly even WHILE you are recovering. In order to successfully get you towards your normal life, you HAVE to change your behavior. We’ll teach you how.
• 4: Befriend the body.
  What you have basically been doing the past period, is you have structurally ignored the body’s signals. It has been telling you for a long time already you need to change your behavior. But you didn’t listen. The result is an exhausted – and frankly pissed-off – body. So one very important step at Camp Burnout is learning how to befriend the body. Learning how to work together as one team is essential if you want to recover.
• 5: Returning to the new normal.
  The last step sounds simple, but isn’t. When returning to society, there are numerous pitfalls along the way. We make sure you don’t fall back into old behaviour, and stay on that path upwards, towards a calm and great life.

How long does recovery take?

That depends on your case. Find more about recovery length here.

Let’s say I want to start my recovery at Camp Burnout, what do I need?

Just a smartphone or computer. That’s it. Camp Burnout is a fully online recovery program, based around simple audio lessons, great animated videos and exercises you can do from anywhere. Camp Burnout is the only place in the world that has made burnout and chronic-stress recovery into a step-by-step plan you can simply do on your phone. No books, no reading, no vague lessons. Just a clear path towards your recovery, so you can stop worrying ‘am I doing the right thing.’ Because the second you’ve entered Camp Burnout, you know you’re on the right path towards recovery. We’ll see you there.

Should I also seek help from a therapist?

Yes. While we offer a very clear step-by-step recovery program here at Camp Burnout, there’s a good reason why we always advise to also talk to a therapist, even if it’s only once:

A therapist or doctor can tell you for sure if your signs and symptoms are indeed (only) burnout/chronic-stress related, or if there’s perhaps something else going on.

See, if you start Camp Burnout, but you might be suffering from depression, personality disorder, or something else, we can’t see that. That’s why checking in with a therapist or doctor is always a good idea. (By the way, if you are suffering from feelings of depression, they could very likely also be related to burnout or chronic stress, as feelings of depression are one of the key symptoms. More about that here.)