Lion Counseling Podcast

šŸŽ™ļø Episode 80: Burnout or Depression? How to Tell the Difference (Most People Get This Wrong)

Many people say they're "burned out." But what if burnout isn't actually the whole story?
In this episode of the Lion Counseling Podcast, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Zack Carter analyzes a real-world example to explain the important differences between burnout and depression. While the two often overlap, they aren't the sameā€”and understanding the difference can help you find the right path forward.

In this episode we discuss:
     * The six major causes of burnout
     * How depression can look different from burnout
     * Signs that your struggles may be affecting more than just work
     * Practical ways to address burnout
     * When it's time to seek professional help
     * If you've been feeling exhausted, unmotivated, emotionally numb, or overwhelmed, this conversation may help you better understand what you're experiencing.

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Click here to watch a video of this episode.ā€™
Have you ever mistaken depression for burnoutā€”or burnout for depression? Let us know your experience in the comments below.

#Burnout #Depression #MentalHealth #Therapy #EMDR #Stress #SelfImprovement #MentalHealthAwareness #LionCounseling #Psychology

Creators and Guests

Host
Zack Carter
Zack Carter is a Counselor and Coach with Lion Counseling LLC.

What is Lion Counseling Podcast?

The Lion Counseling Podcast helps men escape the cages that hold them back and become the Lions they were created to be. It exists to help men obtain success, purpose, happiness, and peace in their career and personal lives. The podcast is hosted by the founder of Lion Counseling, Mark Odland (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified EMDR Therapist), and Zack Carter (Counselor and Coach with Lion Counseling). In their podcasts, they address a variety of topics relevant to men, including: mental health, relationships, masculinity, faith, success, business, and self-improvement.

Zack Carter:

Welcome to the Lion Counseling Podcast. You know, one of the most common things I hear as a therapist is I feel burned out. It's something I hear at work and in my personal life. But sometimes burnout isn't actually burnout. I think this is a really good snapshot to show how sometimes it may be more complicated than this is just burnout.

Zack Carter:

Now, we're not here to diagnose anyone from a Reddit post. Diagnosing depression is much more complicated and you need to be talking to the person themselves and there's lots of different criteria we have to look at. Anyone else feeling increasingly burnout? Do I just step away from the nine to five and become homeless and free? Yeah, I bet a ton of people just want to leave their job and just not deal with it anymore.

Zack Carter:

Do I double down on the nine to five in hopes of enough savings to break free? Maybe I try and start a company on the side to be free in ten years when I've built it up. But by then, I'll be too old to fully enjoy the freedom. Yeah. That sounds like a few years ago, a book came out that was what was it called?

Zack Carter:

It was called, like, the five hour work week or four hour work week. And it it it my understanding of the book is it's something like that where you you really just kinda, like, grind it out for a period of time and then the business operates on its own and you make the passive income. Yeah. There's a there's a ton of people thinking about that too. Oh, well, another HR training just dropped.

Zack Carter:

Yeah. So so far, we're we're seeing this person does not love their job. They don't know if there are better options. And so, you know, I have so many clients that I've talked to where they're in the same boat, where they're thinking through starting their own company, switching jobs. But a lot of times, it's really hard to find that exact direction you wanna head.

Zack Carter:

Alright. Can't look at my phone anymore because it's just war, famine, crime, disease, collapse, and corruption on repeat. Can't date anymore because frankly, it's a nightmare and I don't have the emotional or financial capital to burn on it. Okay. So here so let's start to notice this.

Zack Carter:

So the first section is mainly talking about the job. Okay? So that's that's gonna be very common in burnout. Usually, there's, you know, one or two main things that are burning you out. Your work, family, maybe you're serving too much in your church.

Zack Carter:

So there's a few different things among those things that could cause the burnout. But as you move away from those things, do you feel rested, relaxed, rejuvenated? If you don't, you know, might be signs of depression. And one of the signs of depression is going to be it's more global. There's lots of things that are overwhelming you.

Zack Carter:

There are lots of things depressing you. It's not just like one or two main things. And we're now seeing in this paragraph that it's not just the job. It's also me looking around the world, seeing all kinds of terrible things happening. I don't wanna date anyone.

Zack Carter:

Don't wanna make friends because during a bad breakup, there was a friend group that cheated with her. I I don't know what that means exactly, but sounds like that's really hard. Not only did this person lose his girlfriend, but also the the group of friends something bad happened with a group of friends. Now they're no longer trusting romantic partners or friend groups. This is not this is not good.

Zack Carter:

I lashed out in a very public forum, taught me I'm better off just avoiding people because they usually end up being crappy and or I could make a mistake that cost me my career. Yeah. So we're seeing, you know, it's expanding and expanding and expanding of the things that are not going well in this person's life. Sounds like it they're they're going through a really hard time. My only escapes are nature, food, gym, and alcohol.

Zack Carter:

Alcohol makes me more depressed, so that's not a great avenue. So, you know, I'm glad they're saying that alcohol might be making the problem worse, but they do have some really healthy coping mechanisms. So nature is great. Get that healthy serotonin from the sun, from trees, plants, animals, food. Yep.

Zack Carter:

Yep. And the gym. So food could go either way. And yeah, the gym is a really good coping mechanism. There are like seven or eight things I can eat where I can trust it's not processed garbage while still getting enough protein and nutrients for the day.

Zack Carter:

When I have the time for the gym, I'm usually exhausted from all the other nonsense and sometimes even end up hurting myself at the gym because of bad form while being exhausted. Yeah, and that's another potential sign of depression is that that exhaustion. Nature is literally the only free thing available to me for now. We don't see problems with sleeping so far, so that's good because that's in the depression category. We don't see thoughts of harming oneself.

Zack Carter:

So that is also good. Those are positive signs because those are criteria for depression. They don't you don't have to have those criteria in depression necessarily, but those are some other signs that we look for. Lastly, it just feels like HR, bills, and taxes all have guns pointed at my head. Okay.

Zack Carter:

So now we got financial troubles. While I try carefully to walk a tightrope, does anyone else relate to this? Yeah. There's there's a lot of people that relate to this, unfortunately. So, you know, main thing.

Zack Carter:

So this is this what we're seeing is lots of problems, not just not just work or not just family or one one or two main things that are causing this person to feel burnout. It's it's life. Life is not going well. And so I don't I don't think it's an accident that this post has, like, a thousand upvotes and a 128 comments. It's got a lot of people talking.

Zack Carter:

And so I just wanted to show this graphic real quick just so we have a basic understanding of burnout. So burnout is caused by six main things, and it can either be you or the workplace or church. You know, in the past, I got burned out from working at church a lot. So number one, workload. It can either be caused by you or the workplace or the problem that's burning you out.

Zack Carter:

Okay? So if you're overworked and you have trouble boundary setting, if you have that constant pressure, that could be the workplace that's burning you out. For you, maybe you're taking on too much. You can't say no. Okay?

Zack Carter:

You have difficulty setting limits and over committing. Number two category we're looking for in burnout is control. For the workplace, maybe you feel micromanaged that you don't have autonomy to do the projects that you want to work on. Maybe on the other end, it's you that you're a control freak, you don't want to delegate, you need to control everything, you struggle to let go. Number three, reward.

Zack Carter:

Do you feel like the workplace is paying you enough compensation for the effort and what you bring to the company? But then there's also the amount that you want. So sometimes we want an amount that's not reasonable. This is why it's like amazing to have chat GBT around nowadays because you can just like easily look up, you know, here are my here's my background. Here's how long I've worked at my workplace, here's what I'm getting paid, what should I expect to get paid for this kind of place?

Zack Carter:

Is this average normal? And then you can talk to your boss about, hey, what does it look like for me to begin to move up in the company or for me to be able to get a raise and actually get that sketched out for you? Next, got community. So do you feel isolated? Do you feel like the workplace is not set up for connection with other people?

Zack Carter:

Social anxiety or avoidance on your part can cause you to withdraw from others. Number five is fairness. If you feel like you're being treated poorly, disrespected, ignored, But sometimes we perceive poor treatment. Sometimes we think the boss is not being fair. But if we were in their shoes, we they may be aligning things the best they can, and it just kinda stinks, dude.

Zack Carter:

Lastly, values. Do you feel like you're being challenged or valued at your workplace? Or do you feel like your values are unaligned? Sometimes we just don't feel like we're working in a place where we're making a difference or that we find meaningful. Depression can be caused by no clear trigger.

Zack Carter:

It can be widespread. Many areas affected in life, we see that in this particular post. Once again, diagnosing, but it's just like a thing I'm noticing. Is it persistent? So this is another thing that we don't know about this post.

Zack Carter:

We don't know how long they've been feeling this. And if they haven't been feeling it for super long, then we need to have a certain amount of time in order to diagnose something like depression. Emotional numbness, do you feel what is called anhedonia, which is a lack of pleasure is another thing we look for. In burnout, you do feel pleasure outside of the workplace or the area that's burning you out. Hopelessness, that's big.

Zack Carter:

If I have clients that are overwhelmed, that's a huge sign that depression might be occurring. Loss of self worth. So a lot of shame. If you feel a lot of shame in your life, that's that's gonna be another another thing to look for. I don't see a lot of shame in that post.

Zack Carter:

But once again, like, this is, like, this is why you don't diagnose us because we only see a little bit. What do you do to treat each condition? So if it's burnout, a lot of it is setting boundaries and delegating. So we need to reduce that workload if we if we're able to. Learn about negotiation if you want a larger amount.

Zack Carter:

If you're feeling isolated, find ways to connect with others. If you can't connect with others inside the workplace, you have to find ways to do it in your life. If you're being treated poorly, you know, this is one of the things I teach clients is communication skills. How do we engage in healthy confrontation? So if you're not good at that, reach out to us at escapethecagenow dot com.

Zack Carter:

If you're not challenged or valued, if you're like this place doesn't challenge me, it doesn't align with my values, or I don't feel valued, I walk through those kinds of things with clients. So reach out to us. If it's depression, that's where it gets more difficult, right? We got to reach out to a mental health provider, a licensed mental health provider. And there's things you can do.

Zack Carter:

Try to improve your sleep, exercise, a lot of the basics that you've heard, but depression is going be a lot more complicated to treat, especially on your own. So burnout and depression overlap much more than most people realize, but the good news is both are treatable, but the treatment isn't always the same. So what do you think? Have you ever thought you were burned out and later realized it was something different or vice versa? Let us know in the comments.

Zack Carter:

Once again, if you need any help, reach out to us at escapethecagenow dot com. We'll set up a free clarity call where we could talk about what the problem is and how we can help you.