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Nathan Yan (he/him/his), Low Entropy Volunteer Writer

I’m sure you’ve experienced stress before. After a long day of work, you collapse from exhaustion and just want to take a break but can’t. There’s always another assignment, another task, another job. People often try to brave through the stress and ignore the negative consequences, and this is how burnout happens.

When stress is ignored for long periods, burnout happens. Burnout is a state of extreme exhaustion that comes from prolonged exposure to stress, and the excess cortisol in your system it comes with can create physical fatigue. It can cause headaches, fatigue, stomachaches and changes in your appetite, and it can make you more susceptible to illnesses. When you are burnt out, you will likely feel extremely physically weak.

Furthermore, you will also experience emotional fatigue, which can impact your relationships with others as you are too tired to interact meaningfully. These effects can take a heavy toll on your body and mind, so it’s important to address the issue and recover. But how long does it take for someone to recover?

In response to burnout, many people take time off away from what they are burned out from. This includes indulging in hobbies and doing relaxing activities like snacking or drawing warm baths. After this bit of relaxation, people say they feel refreshed and can return to whatever task burnt them out in the first place. However, they soon start to experience burnout again and wonder if they took enough time.

You must recover from both emotional stress and physical stress to fully recover from burnout. This means, at the very least, you must take a minimum amount of time to recover from stress on your body. At the very least it will take a few days to stop headaches or stomach aches, and in the worst case when you catch a cold or flu, it might take a few more days. However, this time does not include how long it takes to recover from emotional fatigue.

The issue is that burnout is often perceived as a simple issue. It is assumed that it will go away after taking some time to recover, like a cold. Unfortunately, burnout is the accumulation of many different factors and not just a singular event or effect. If one doesn’t recover correctly, then the factors are much more likely to return and cause a relapse of burnout and exacerbate the fatigue.

Imagine a student who’s struggling to focus in class because of burnout. They are taking eight different courses every day and are overloaded with homework. If they start to experience burnout, they are likely to take a day off to recover and relax. Even if the student finishes their work, as soon as they return to school, their eight classes will give eight more loads of homework and they will begin to feel overwhelmed again.

Recovering from burnout does not just require time off or relaxation. Recovering from burnout requires lifestyle changes. To properly recover from burnout, you need to find ways to adjust the factors that caused the burnout. Otherwise, the same factors will stack up and the burnout will return as soon as you stop resting. Like an illness, recovering could take months, depending on the case. If you are overworked, burnout might only go away once you learn to manage or adjust your workload. If you become emotionally distant because of burnout, it might go away once you begin to feel joy in your relationships again, or once you develop a stable support system.

The point is that recovering from burnout takes time. It’s not something you can get rid of because you took a quick break. According to online sources, it takes three months to a year to recover from burnout. During this time, you have to focus on the factors that caused your burnout and slowly learn to live and deal with them in your daily life so you can avoid a relapse of burnout. It is important to remember that burnout is a serious issue that is not an easy thing to recover from and will require effort and time.

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Hi my name is Nathan Yan, I am a student at David Thompson Secondary School. I enjoy activities like debate, computer science and chess, and my favourite subject is math.