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Burnout symptoms are not sudden onset, Mike McKinney told RNZ's Nine to Noon.
"Like you wake up with a cold. These are insidious, incremental, unfortunately you get to a tipping point where it becomes too much for the person to handle and it starts to have really negative impacts."
Mike McKinney is a clinical psychologist with 25 years' experience. In his latest book, Beating Burnout, he said people who had an "all-or-nothing" approach to work could be more at risk of burnout.
Typical burnout symptoms often overlap with those of depression, he said.
"A loss of motivation or interest in things that had previously been quite upfront and central for them, that could be work but also family activities and hobbies."
A sense of detachment could also be associated with burnout, he said.
"The person becomes rather negative and indifferent to what's going on around them and they just want to pull back and don't feel like they have the cognitive or physical energy to participate anymore."
The all-or-nothing personality type, with a strong sense of focus on work and achievement is prime burnout material, he said.
"Their identity becomes wrapped up in the job or in the task at hand, and everything else has to go to the side, because it's not important at this particular point in time."
However, with this type of personality, a completed task brings little sense of fulfilment, he said.
"Once they get to the end [of a task] there's, unfortunately, not a sense of enjoyment or elation. It's just like, oh, well, it's on to the next one now."
So, friends and family notice tell-tale burnout signs, what can be done?
"One of the first things is to actually be brave enough to have a conversation about it, because people tend to rationalise the symptoms and signs of burnout and just keep going on because of the expectations," he said.
What he calls "getting back in touch with our values" can be helpful, he said, building some sense of a positive future.
"One of the big problems we have as humans is when things feel hopeless, we start to feel helpless, and that's a horrible place to be."
Making plans can help combat that sense of helplessness, he said.
"Reconnecting with a sense of purpose, and maybe even developing that sense of purpose outside of the workspace, so that there's something there for you to imagine, to relate to and plan for. And what that does is gives you hope."
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