Jobs are a major part of our lives. Whether we're teachers or therapists secretaries or homemakers chances are we spend as many hours on the job as we do with our families. As Drs. Michael P. Leiter and Christina Maslach point out in Banishing Burnout: Six Strategies for Improving Your Relationship with Work (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass 2005) our sense of identity and self-esteem are often wrapped up in what we do. This means that if we're not happy with what we do we're probably not happy with ourselves either.

Most people won't recognize the symptoms of burnout right off the bat explains Dr. Aviva Weisbord a licensed psychologist and executive director of Shemesh Baltimore an advocacy program for special-needs children. “When a person feels disengaged and unmotivated and begins to question what he's doing that's burnout. Everyone has days where he or she doesn't feel like going to work but if it's happening on a regular basis that's a tip-off.”

A person who's impatient or irritable and no longer feels eager to rise to the challenge of her job is also probably suffering from burnout. As Lena Shore family therapist and coordinator of The Place the Jerusalem Centre for Emotional Well-Being explains “Burnout is a process. It happens over time. A person can feel tired and disinterested or find faults in her boss and coworkers. Homemakers who are experiencing burnout can find fault with their family members. At first the feeling comes and goes. You might start forgetting appointments and deadlines perhaps in a subconscious attempt to sabotage yourself.”

Unlike depression where a person loses interest in all areas of life burnout is usually concentrated on the place where the person is feeling dissatisfaction. A person who's burned out and unaware of what's going on can develop troubling physical symptoms – exhaustion headaches insomnia or digestive problems – all of which are a sign that something's off. If these symptoms are ignored the burnout can develop into full-scale anxiety or depression.

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