Burnout or Anxiety? How to Tell the Difference

Esther Dietrichsen-Farley
Sep 8
4 min read

It’s 3am. Your body is wired and your mind is heavy. One part of you keeps rehearsing tomorrow, another part can’t find the brakes. You’re asking a question more and more people are asking: is this burnout, anxiety, or both?

This isn’t about boxing you in. It’s about noticing the shape of what’s happening, so you can decide what kind of help makes sense for you.

Young woman sitting alone on a windowsill in loungewear, looking tired and restless, unable to sleep and picking at her fingers, showing signs of burnout or anxiety.

Why the confusion happens

Burnout and anxiety share a lot: restlessness, poor sleep, irritability, trouble concentrating, a nervous system that will not settle. Contemporary research notes substantial overlap between burnout, anxiety and depression, which is one reason the experience can feel fused rather than tidy.

But their drivers are different.

Anxiety is about persistent threat perception: worry and physiological arousal that follow you across settings and time. NHS and NICE describe ongoing, hard-to-control worry with physical symptoms like a racing heart, breathlessness, tremor and sleep disturbance.

Burnout develops when there is a prolonged mismatch between demands and resources. The WHO frames it as an occupational phenomenon characterised by exhaustion, cynicism or distance, and reduced efficacy. In practice, the mismatch also arises in unpaid roles: caring, parenting, study, or even the emotional labour of “being fine” for others. Research on parental and caregiver burnout confirms this broader picture.

Same surface, different engines. And often, both running at once.

The lived shape of burnout

You’ll often notice burnout in relation to roles, responsibilities and identity demands:

A sense of nothing left to give, even as you keep going.
Emotional flatness or distance from work, relationships or commitments you once cared about.
A creeping cynicism or irritability, where everything feels like too much.
The feeling that whatever you do, it will never be enough.

Archetypes (not case studies):

A teacher who still crafts lessons but feels progressively numb by Friday.
A carer balancing parenting with elder care, whose inner life has shrunk to tasks.
An early-career professional performing well while privately running on fumes.
A high flyer or high earner whose outward success masks a private depletion that no achievement can touch.

For many, this is high-functioning burnout. Outwardly, they are thriving. Inwardly, the cost keeps rising. (Read next: what high-functioning burnout feels like)

The lived shape of anxiety

Anxiety has its own texture:

Worry that is constant, not tied to one role.
A sense of dread that turns up even when life is objectively calm.
A body that feels permanently on alert: tight chest, racing heart, shaking, unsettled stomach.
Sleep and concentration that are poor regardless of workload.

Imagine the student who panics even on holiday. The parent whose worry fills the room after bedtime. The professional who jolts every time their phone pings, even on weekends.

Unlike burnout, anxiety does not tether itself to one specific demand. It follows you.

When it’s both

Many adults sit in the overlap. Long-term anxiety can erode reserves into burnout. Long-term burnout can heighten anxiety, leaving you restless and on edge. Recent studies map close links between exhaustion, anxiety and depression, which is why you may recognise parts of all three in your own experience.

This is often where therapy can help, offering a space to untangle what feels confusing or overwhelming. It creates space to see which patterns belong to burnout, which belong to anxiety, and how they interact in your life.

Beyond the office: the wider picture

Although the WHO definition locates burnout in the workplace, lived experience shows it far more widely:

Creators and digital life: In 2025, studies showed around half of UK creators reported burnout, driven by an always-on culture of algorithms and engagement.
Teachers and education: High stress and insomnia among teachers remain consistent, contributing to retention crises and emotional depletion.
Carers and parents: Unpaid carers and parents report declines in mental health that mirror burnout symptoms. Balancing parenting and elder care has been shown to create long-term strain.
Healthcare staff: UK reports in 2025 continued to highlight dangerous fatigue among clinicians. This is burnout as human cost, not just productivity dip.
Cost-of-living pressures: National surveys connect financial stress with spikes in anxiety and low mood across the population.
Everyday culture: Social media posts about “Sunday dread”, “quiet quitting” and “running on fumes” echo the reality for many, making exhaustion and worry feel like a new normal.

Burnout and anxiety are not private failings. They are cultural as well as clinical.

A working distinction

These questions are not diagnostic, but they can help you notice what might be driving your distress.

What does it feel tied to?
Burnout often emerges in relation to roles and responsibilities, whether in work, care, or identity demands. Anxiety tends to spread across contexts, untethered to one role.
What is the inner tone?
Burnout feels depleted, flat, cynical. Anxiety feels restless, catastrophic, hypervigilant.
What helps, even briefly?
Neither burnout nor anxiety is “fixed” by a weekend away. If you notice that rest never touches the depth of your exhaustion, it may be burnout that is embedded. If worry follows you even into moments of ease, anxiety may be in front. In both cases, therapy offers a way of understanding why you burn yourself out or stay on high alert. That understanding does not happen all at once. For some it comes quickly, for others it unfolds more slowly, depending on what they need.

How therapy can help

Most people arrive hoping the feelings will stop. Person-Centred Counselling and Psychotherapy does not remove them on demand. What it does offer is a steady, dependable space to slow down and explore why you feel the way you do.

At The Farley, that often means:

Exploring the pressures, roles and histories that keep your system on high alert.
Noticing the patterns that helped you cope but now cost too much.
Working at your pace to reconnect with yourself, so life feels less like survival and more like living.

Whether you call it burnout, anxiety, or both, the name matters less than your lived experience. Therapy gives you space to make sense of it. Get in touch to arrange a free consultation.

The Farley