Burnout Or Breakdown?

Post Reply New Topic

I actually do not know which I have had the last few times, but I was explaining a few things that happened to me during the last one back in 2019, and my Mother said "That is a mental breakdwon rather than a burnout" and she told me why.

So what are the differences between a severe burnout and a mental breakdown? All I know is they take years to recover.

probably depends on who is describing it, or defining it.

I don't think the definitions are that rigid and they might overlap. You may have even experienced both!

You are your own best judge of what happened to you and what is going on in your own mind and heart.

A mental breakdown for me would look like a meltdown, where you want to sit and cry for hours. The severe burnout thing would include dissociation (it has happened to me), and probably is accompanied by clinical depression. I believe it is much worse and that really takes years to recover from. Talking from my own experience.

With me, whilw it was taking place I was losing the abilities to do basic physical things. My mind forgot how to walk and I had to quickly learn again. I forgot how to change gears while driving the car during that time. I lost my hand to eye co-ordination and thw ability to grab things or hold things. I could hold things but not be able to use my strength and I had strong hands. Somehow the mental ability to use my strength in my hands went. Still is not the way it should be, so I have to bring scissors with me if I am alone to help me open packets. (If I am with my Mum she can open things for me). It is hard to explain, as it is not that I don't have strength, but more accessing the strength is the issue.
My balance was effected and it took ages to walk across an icy carpark. Something I used to do without thinking. Yet walking on the grass I could go normal speed. Would wake up in bed feeling as if I was slipping backwards so my body would automatically correct myself, when I ddin't need to because I was lying down. Had this happen a lot during the burnout or breakdown. The time I was stranded in the middle of a carpark having forgotton how to walk, I could not get help because I could not think how to shout to the people that passed in the distance. All I could think of doing was to watch them to try and work out how to walk. Had I not done this, the only thing I reasoned I knew I could do was collapse on the floor, but it was wet so for a while, even though standing up takes effort, it was the only other thing I could do until I saw those people in the other side of the carpark (I was standing in the middle).
I could still think. Was my thinking of how to tell what my body needed to do and the muscle memory of that which was effected.

Is that the question that we should trouble ourselves with, or how to recover faster from those ? What is a shortcut to recovering, and not needing ten years to recover from example from a massive meltdown or shutdown.

Any well thought answers, are welcome..

They are similar. Burnout is caused by stress that builds up over time. Breakdowns can evolve over time or be triggered by one event.