We live in a world where stress is part of our everyday lives. Burnout can be the result of too much stress but it isn’t the same thing. I once heard somebody say that if stress is like drowning in an overload of work, burnout is more like being all dried up. With stress we lose our energy, with burnout we lose much more – our motivation, our hope. And one very important difference between stress and burnout is that we know when we are stressed but we don’t usually realise we are suffering from burnout. H- Until it’s too late. P- Exactly. H- Steve, how did you know that your problem was more serious than just being stressed? S- Well, I didn’t realise myself. Other people realised first. I changed my behaviour and started feeling really negative and cynical about everything. That wasn’t me at all. I’ve always been a happy-go-lucky sort of bloke. It got to the point where I felt so hopeless and depressed that I couldn’t even face getting up in the morning.