Understanding Workplace Stress and Burnout
You can meet every deadline, answer every email and keep showing up to work while quietly struggling. This World Mental Health Day, we're talking about the hidden impact of workplace stress and why simply getting through the day doesn't always mean we're OK.
Have you ever been asked how you're doing at work and automatically replied, “I'm fine, just busy”?
Perhaps you've been feeling exhausted for weeks, struggling to concentrate or finding it increasingly difficult to switch off at the end of the day. Maybe you're still meeting deadlines, looking after your family and keeping up appearances, but underneath it all, you're running on empty. From the outside, everything might look fine. You're still working, still delivering and still doing what everyone expects of you. But internally, things feel very different.
The phrase “I'm managing, but I'm not coping” captures an experience that many people recognise. It's possible to keep functioning while your mental wellbeing gradually deteriorates, particularly when you feel unable to slow down or ask for help.
For World Mental Health Day, it's an important reminder that mental health isn't just about how we feel outside of work. Our working environments, workloads, relationships with colleagues and expectations of ourselves can all influence how we're doing emotionally.
At The Wellbeing Therapy Hut, we believe it's important to recognise the signs of stress before they become overwhelming and to understand that struggling at work is not a personal failure.
Why workplace stress deserves more attention
Work can provide purpose, routine, social connection and a sense of achievement. However, when demands consistently outweigh the time, resources or support available, work can also become a significant source of stress. In the UK, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) identifies work-related stress, depression and anxiety as major occupational health concerns. Its annual statistics highlight the considerable impact these difficulties have on workers and workplaces.
Work-related stress can arise for many reasons, including:
Heavy workloads and unrealistic deadlines.
Long hours or difficulty switching off outside working hours.
Uncertainty about job security or organisational changes.
Limited control over how work is completed.
Poor communication or a lack of support from managers.
Conflict, bullying or difficult workplace relationships.
Feeling undervalued, overlooked or unable to progress.
Trying to balance work with caring responsibilities or other pressures at home.
Sometimes, there isn't one obvious cause. Stress can build gradually as several pressures accumulate, until the things you previously managed with relative ease begin to feel exhausting. It's also important to remember that workplace stress doesn't affect everyone in the same way. Two people can have similar workloads but experience them very differently depending on their circumstances, available support and existing pressures.
Feeling overwhelmed doesn't mean you're incapable of doing your job. It may mean something about your current circumstances needs to change.
Presenteeism: When you're at work but struggling to cope
We often associate poor mental health with being unable to work, taking time off or visibly struggling to complete everyday tasks. However, there is another side to the conversation: presenteeism. Presenteeism describes a situation in which someone continues working despite being unwell or experiencing difficulties that affect their ability to work effectively.
In the context of mental health, this might mean logging on despite feeling emotionally exhausted, attending meetings when you're struggling to concentrate or continuing to work through significant anxiety because you feel you cannot take a break. You might be physically present, but your attention, energy and emotional resources are stretched far beyond what feels sustainable.
Why does this happen?
For some people, financial pressures make taking time off feel impossible. Others worry about letting colleagues down, appearing unreliable or falling behind with their workload.
There may also be an unspoken workplace culture in which being busy is celebrated and taking time to rest is seen as a lack of commitment. When everyone around you appears to be coping, admitting that you're struggling can feel particularly difficult. You might tell yourself that things aren't bad enough to warrant support, or that you just need to get through one more week. But when every week becomes something to survive, it's worth asking whether the way you're working is sustainable.
Presenteeism can also create a cycle that is difficult to break. When you're exhausted, tasks may take longer, mistakes may become more likely and concentration can suffer. You may then work longer hours to compensate, leaving even less time to recover.
Being present at work isn't the same as being well. Sometimes, continuing to push through is a sign that you need more support, not that you need to try harder.
Burnout: When stress becomes too much
The term burnout is often used to describe feeling exhausted after a particularly busy week. However, it can refer to a more persistent experience of depletion associated with chronic workplace stress that hasn't been successfully managed.
The World Health Organization classifies burnout as an occupational phenomenon, rather than a medical condition. It describes three key dimensions:
Exhaustion: feeling depleted, drained or unable to recover your energy.
Mental distance or cynicism: feeling increasingly detached from your job, negative about your work or emotionally distant from colleagues.
Reduced professional efficacy: feeling less effective at work or doubting your ability to do your job well.
You might recognise some of these experiences in yourself. Perhaps you used to enjoy your work, but now even straightforward tasks feel like a mountain to climb. You might feel resentful when another request lands in your inbox, struggle to find motivation or feel guilty because you're no longer performing at the level you expect of yourself. You may also notice changes outside work, such as becoming more irritable at home, withdrawing from friends or finding it difficult to enjoy activities that usually help you relax.
Burnout doesn't necessarily happen overnight. For some people, it's the result of months or years of feeling under pressure without enough opportunity to recover. It's also worth noting that exhaustion and loss of motivation can have other causes, including depression, anxiety and physical health conditions. If symptoms persist or affect your everyday life, speaking to your GP can help you explore what might be happening. Recognising that you're struggling is not a reason to criticise yourself. It's an opportunity to take your wellbeing seriously.
The pressure to look as though you're coping
One of the most difficult aspects of workplace stress is that you may become very good at hiding it. You turn up to meetings, smile at colleagues, respond to messages and say yes when someone asks if you can take on another task. You might even become the person everyone relies on because you're dependable, organised and always willing to help.
But what happens when maintaining that image comes at the expense of your own wellbeing?
Masking at work
Masking describes the ways people may conceal or minimise their feelings, difficulties or needs to meet perceived social expectations. At work, this could involve pretending to feel confident when you're anxious, hiding how overwhelmed you are or forcing yourself to appear cheerful when you're struggling emotionally. Some people mask because they fear judgement or discrimination. Others have learned that being capable and agreeable helps them feel accepted or valued.
For neurodivergent people, masking may also involve consciously or unconsciously adapting their behaviour to fit workplace expectations, which can be particularly exhausting when sustained over time. Not everyone who masks is experiencing burnout, and masking can mean different things to different people. However, consistently feeling that you must hide your difficulties can make it harder for others to recognise when you need support.
You might worry that if you admit you're struggling, people will question your competence or see you differently. As a result, you continue to say you're fine, even when you're far from it.
When being the reliable one becomes exhausting
Perhaps you're the person who always picks up the extra work, covers for colleagues or stays late to make sure everything gets done. You may take pride in being dependable, and there's nothing wrong with wanting to do your job well. The difficulty arises when reliability becomes an expectation that leaves no room for your own needs.
If you constantly prioritise everyone else's deadlines, feelings and expectations, you may eventually find that there's very little energy left for yourself. You might begin to feel resentful, but then feel guilty for feeling resentful. You might want to say no, but worry about disappointing people. Over time, the gap between how you appear and how you actually feel can become increasingly difficult to manage. You don't have to reach breaking point before you're allowed to acknowledge that something is too much.
Boundaries aren't a sign that you're not committed
When work feels overwhelming, one of the first things we may need to consider is our boundaries. Boundaries are the limits we set around our time, energy, responsibilities and emotional capacity. They help us recognise what we can reasonably take on and communicate what we need to remain well.
However, setting boundaries at work can feel uncomfortable, especially if you're used to saying yes. You might worry that declining a task will make you seem unhelpful, or that finishing on time will give others the impression that you're not working hard enough.
You may also be working in an environment where expectations are genuinely unrealistic, making it difficult to establish boundaries without support from management.
It's important to recognise that boundaries aren't simply about learning to manage your time better. They also depend on having reasonable workloads, adequate resources and a workplace culture that respects people's wellbeing. Here are some ways to begin.
1. Pause before agreeing to something new.
Instead of automatically saying yes, give yourself a moment to consider whether you have the time and capacity.
You might say, “Let me check my current priorities and come back to you.”
2. Be honest about competing priorities.
If your workload is already full, explain what you're currently working on and ask which task should take priority.
For example: “I can take this on, but I'll need to move one of my existing deadlines. Which would you like me to prioritise?”
This helps make workload pressures visible rather than leaving you to absorb them privately.
3. Protect your time away from work.
Where your role allows, establish a clear finishing time, take your breaks and avoid routinely checking emails outside your working hours.
If you need to be available outside normal hours, discuss what is expected and how that time will be managed.
4. Recognise what is and isn't yours to carry.
You can care about your colleagues without taking responsibility for every problem. You can be supportive without always being available.
5. Allow yourself to be human.
You won't always have the same energy, focus or capacity. A difficult day doesn't mean you're failing, and needing support doesn't cancel out your achievements.
Boundaries aren't about doing less simply for the sake of it. They're about creating conditions in which you can work in a way that is healthier and more sustainable.
What responsibility do employers have?
Although individuals can take steps to protect their wellbeing, workplace stress shouldn't be treated solely as an employee's responsibility to manage. Advice about mindfulness, resilience and work-life balance can be helpful, but it cannot compensate for an excessive workload, persistent bullying, inadequate staffing or a culture in which employees feel unable to speak up.
Employers have responsibilities to protect the health, safety and welfare of their employees. In the UK, this includes assessing and managing risks to employees' health, including risks associated with work-related stress.
The HSE's Management Standards identify six key areas of work design that can contribute to stress when they are not managed appropriately:
Demands: workload, working patterns and the working environment.
Control: how much say employees have in the way they do their work.
Support: the encouragement, resources and assistance available from managers and colleagues.
Relationships: promoting positive working relationships and addressing unacceptable behaviour.
Role: ensuring employees understand their responsibilities and that roles are not conflicting.
Change: how organisational changes are communicated and managed.
These areas offer a useful framework for understanding why workplace stress develops and what organisations can do to address it. Employers can help by reviewing workloads, ensuring expectations are realistic, providing clear communication, training managers to recognise signs of distress and creating a culture in which people can raise concerns without fear of being judged.
Regular one-to-one conversations can also help, particularly when managers ask open questions about workload and wellbeing rather than focusing exclusively on performance.
For example, instead of asking only, “Are you on track with your targets?”, a manager might ask, “How manageable is your workload at the moment?” or “Is there anything making it harder for you to do your job?”
These conversations are most effective when employees see that speaking honestly can lead to meaningful action. Ultimately, a healthy workplace isn't one where nobody experiences stress. It's one where stress is taken seriously, risks are addressed and people are supported to raise concerns before difficulties become overwhelming.
What can you do if work is affecting your mental health?
If you've recognised yourself in any of the experiences described above, you might be wondering where to start. You don't necessarily need to make a major change to your career or take extended time off work. Sometimes, the first step is simply acknowledging how you're feeling and exploring what might help.
Start by noticing the signs
Try to pay attention to how you feel before, during and after work. Are you constantly tired? Do you dread opening your emails? Are you finding it harder to concentrate or becoming more irritable with the people around you? You might find it helpful to write down what you're noticing, when it happens and what seems to make things better or worse.
This isn't about monitoring yourself more closely or finding another task to complete. It's about recognising patterns that may otherwise become easy to dismiss.
Talk to someone you trust
You don't have to explain everything perfectly. You could speak to a friend, partner, colleague or family member. If your workplace has an employee assistance programme, occupational health service or mental health support provision, these may also be useful options.
If you feel comfortable doing so, consider speaking to your manager about what is making work difficult and what adjustments or support might help. If you're worried about how your concerns will be received, you could seek advice from HR, a trade union representative or another appropriate source of workplace support.
Make space for recovery
When you're under pressure, rest can feel like something you need to earn once everything is finished. But if your workload is consistently overwhelming, there may never be a convenient moment when everything is done. Where possible, make time for breaks, sleep, movement, relationships and activities that help you feel connected to life outside work.
These things aren't a replacement for addressing the causes of workplace stress, but they can form part of looking after yourself while you seek the support you need.
Consider professional support
If stress is affecting your mood, relationships, sleep or ability to manage everyday life, talking to a mental health professional may help. You don't have to wait until you feel completely overwhelmed before seeking support. A GP can help you explore persistent symptoms and discuss appropriate options. Counselling can also offer a space to understand what you're experiencing, identify patterns and consider how you might respond differently to difficult situations.
You might explore why saying no feels uncomfortable, why you feel responsible for keeping everyone else happy or why you find it difficult to switch off when work is finished.
There may also be other pressures contributing to how you feel, and having space to explore these can help you understand the bigger picture.
You don't have to prove you're struggling enough
Perhaps the most difficult part of workplace stress is recognising that you need support when you're still managing to get things done. You might look at your colleagues and assume they're coping better than you. You might compare yourself with how you used to work or feel guilty because other people have responsibilities you believe are greater than your own. But your struggles don't need to be measured against somebody else's.
You can be grateful to have a job and still find it stressful. You can enjoy your career and still need a break. You can be capable, committed and hardworking while also reaching the limits of what you can reasonably manage.
Your mental health matters just as much as your productivity.
This World Mental Health Day, we can all play a part in changing the conversation around workplace wellbeing. That means being honest about our own experiences, checking in with colleagues, listening without judgement and recognising that a person who appears to be coping may be carrying more than we realise.
It also means looking beyond individual resilience and asking what workplaces can do to create healthier, more supportive environments. At The Wellbeing Therapy Hut, we offer affordable and accessible counselling in Epsom, Kingston and Worcester Park, as well as online across the UK.
If work has been affecting your mental health, or you feel you've been keeping everything together for everyone else, counselling can provide a space to explore how you're feeling and what you need. You don't have to reach breaking point to deserve support.
You can be managing on the outside and struggling on the inside. Both things can be true, and you deserve to be heard. Find out more about counselling at The Wellbeing Therapy Hut.
Further support and information
Health and Safety Executive (HSE): Work-related stress — information about workplace stress, its causes and how employers can manage risks.
NHS: Work-related stress — information about stress, symptoms and accessing support.
Mind: Work and mental health — information about looking after your mental health at work.
If you're experiencing persistent anxiety, low mood or exhaustion, consider speaking to your GP or another qualified health professional. If you need urgent mental health help, contact NHS 111 and select the mental health option where available. If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 999 or go to A&E.
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