Early Warning Signs of Burnout (and How to Catch Them Before you Crash)

Burnout doesn’t always show up as a breakdown. More often, it creeps in quietly. The early signs can be easy to overlook until exhaustion takes over, making it hard to focus, care for yourself or others, or even get through the day. As a therapist in Guelph who specializes in burnout and anxiety, I often help clients catch these subtle signals before they reach total shutdown.

5 early signs of burnout to watch out for:

1. Consistent fatigue (even after rest): 

Do you feel tired all the time, even after a good night’s sleep? Maybe mornings are filled with dread and getting through the day feels like wading through mud. You’re very likely on the verge of burnout. Many of my clients describe this as both physical and emotional fatigue - the kind that sleep alone doesn’t fix.

2. Snapping over small things

   
   

Things you used to brush off, but now the smallest irritations - a question from your partner, a request from your kid, or a reminder from your boss - seem to push you over the edge. If you find yourself more irritable and reactive than usual, your emotional gas tank is likely running on empty. Burnout lowers your tolerance for stressors and makes your nervous system more vulnerable to triggers.

3. Constant Urge to Scroll

   
   

Many of my burnt out clients tell me they can’t stop spending their down time doomscrolling, binge-watching Netflix, or playing video games. They know it's only making their burnout worse, but can’t seem to find the motivation to do the things that will really help, like reaching out to a friend or going for a walk. These habits gives a series of immediate dopamine hits that feel great in the short-term and offer a temporary escape from exhaustion, but in the long-term, they feed the burnout cycle by keeping us overstimulated and disconnected from real rest.

4. Drop in Productivity

   
   

Do you feel as if you’re working twice as hard, but getting half as much done as you used to? Burnout often brings brain fog, memory issues, and concentration difficulties that make it really challenging to be efficient with our daily tasks. It's not laziness - it's your brain struggling under chronic stress. Instead of pushing harder, it's crucial to heed your body's warning and allow yourself to slow down.

5. Getting Sick More Often

   
   

Are cold and flus hitting more frequently, and feeling harder to shake? Maybe you notice a constant low-level illness, like you're never quite feeling 100%. When you’re chronically stressed, your nervous system gets stuck in ‘fight or flight’, leading to too much exposure to cortisol and other stress hormones, which weakens your immune system. Of course, physical illness only exacerbates low energy and decreased motivation, perpetuating the burnout cycle.

How to Recover from Burnout

If any of these signs of burnout sound familiar, it’s not too late to take action. While there’s no quick fix for burnout, there are steps you can take right away to get on the path to recovery:

• Ask your body what it needs: all of the above signs are like indicator lights on your car - they’re your body’s way of communicating an unmet need to you. Unfortunately, we often ignore these messages until our bodies break down. Ask yourself - 'what is my body trying to tell me?' 'What do I need most right now?' When it comes to burnout, this is often more rest, balance, and connection with yourself. More on this below.

• Prioritize rest: in a hustle culture, rest is often seen as a luxury, but it's a basic human need. If you don’t make rest a priority, your body will demand it through illness, injury, or burnout. There are many different forms that rest can take: getting 7+ hours of sleep, spending time in nature, limiting stimulation from screens, and placing boundaries on draining relationships are just some of the ways you can take rest and support nervous system regulation. Explore and experiment with different types of rest, and notice how your mind and body respond. 

• Create more balance: burnout is often caused by being faced with demands that exceed your capacity. Take time to list out all the responsibilities on your plate. Are there any that you could drop, delay, or delegate, even temporarily? Sometimes, finding balance means making big changes in your life, like finding a workplace that prioritizes employee wellness, limiting your kids to one extracurricular each, or moving to a quieter area with a shorter commute.

• Address patterns underlying burnout: burnout often hides deeper patterns like perfectionism, people-pleasing, or hyper-independence. These tendencies keep you doing too much until you crash: perfectionism leads to overachieving to prove your worth, people-pleasing leads to sacrificing your own needs to keep others happy, and hyper-independence leads to doing everything on your own due to fear of rejection or seeming ‘weak’ if you were to ask for help. These patterns often evolve in childhood to protect you and aren’t easy to shift, so working with a therapist who specializes in these issues can be incredibly helpful.

Want to learn more about burnout recovery?

👉 Download my free guide — 7 Strategies to Banish Burnout for practical ways to restore energy and calm.

If you’re looking for more personalized support, let’s connect! I’m a burnout therapist in Guelph, offering both in-person and virtual sessions across Ontario. I help anxious overachievers, people-pleasers, and perfectionists rediscover balance and joy in their lives. Book a free 15-minute consultation to explore how therapy can help you recover from burnout and feel like yourself again.