Since January 2022, WHO has included professional burnout in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). In the everyday understanding, burnout, like depression, is what they call it. This article briefly describes the fundamental differences between professional (emotional) burnout and depression, chronic stress, difficult emotions and simple reluctance to do unpleasant work. In the ICD, burnout is interpreted as a clinically significant syndrome that occurs in a situation of chronic stress in the workplace that has not been successfully overcome. Are burnout and chronic stress the same thing? The fundamental difference between burnout and chronic stress is where they begin. Stress begins with a difficult external event and difficult emotions about it. They caught white mice, locked them in a box and began to shock them. There was an economic/political crisis, war, catastrophe. We experience what happened (fear), the brain collects the maximum amount of resources for flight/fight, slows down non-priority tasks (digesting food, sleep) and we run, fight or adapt. Adapting means learning to fulfill our basic needs in new conditions. If adaptation does not occur, stress becomes chronic, adaptive capabilities drop sharply (gasoline is consumed faster at a speed of 240 than at a speed of 90) and we begin to get sick. Then either the stress factors stop acting (the crisis has passed the rock bottom phase, white mice have stopped being shocked, the war is over), or we still adapt through illness and with the help of illness, or we die. Emotional burnout begins with enthusiasm. Only then will there be exhaustion, aggression, depression and disgust. The first step is the ascent, the readiness to move mountains and the anticipation of something special and long-awaited. Of course, the question arises: what exactly does a person expect when entering the first stage of burnout? Why will he invest so many resources? Why can't he refuse this? But he can't. Or even this: if he can, there will be no burnout. We will not discuss the answer to this question in this article, the main thing to remember is: the first stage of emotional burnout is enthusiasm. And this is its fundamental difference from stress. Or maybe it’s just melancholy? In the world of Instagram*, the idea is actively supported that a good life is a life filled only with pleasant emotions and feelings. Actually, of course not. A normal good life is filled with different events, and, accordingly, different emotions and feelings. Feelings are the energy that is born in us when we meet reality. As reality is, so are feelings. But in a normal, good life, we can withstand these feelings, let them pass through us and send them to the right place. In general, we know what to do with them, we live with them. Since not everyone knows what to do with difficult feelings, they are sometimes confused with burnout. The fundamental difference between an unpleasant feeling and burnout is that it is associated with a specific event or situation. For example, when you remember what your business partner did, you are overcome with an unpleasant feeling (disappointment, anger, resentment, fear - whatever). You try to move away from that memory so you don't have that feeling and deal with that reality. This is not burnout. With burnout, the range of emotions is not associated with a specific decision or event. Everything pisses you off. Or you don’t want anything. Depression or burnout? Since one of the stages of burnout (after exhaustion and aggression) is called depressive, it is quite difficult to distinguish them. Depression is a mental disorder, the main signs of which are a reduced, depressed emotional background, motor retardation, inability to enjoy everything (anhedonia), sleep disturbance, and all this for more than 2 weeks without pauses. If you have reached something similar as a result of professional burnout and at this stage you come to the doctor, the doctor can.