Harry Trosin loved his job.

The Oklahoma shoer simply couldn’t wait to get to work each morning for more than 30 years.

Then it all changed.

“I would drive up to the stable gate and I’d get sick to my stomach,” he recalls. “I was missing work. I had no idea what was going on. Everything was good, and then it wasn’t.”

The culprit? Burnout.

“This was a profession I dearly loved,” Trosin says. “I wish I had never stopped, but it’s too late now.”

He retired from shoeing in 2008 and became a behavioral health rehabilitation specialist and case manager at Pennington Creek Lifehouse and Crossway Counseling Services, both in Tishomingo, Okla.

“Usually I do this in an office one-on-one because people don’t know what’s going on,” Trosin says. “Their lives are kind of in shambles. It’s chaotic. They’ve always been happy, and all of a sudden, they’re not.”

It’s critical to understand what stress is, the difference between stress and burnout, and how to avoid and cope with the latter.

“That’s the most important thing,” he says of avoiding burnout. “If you learn to control your stress, you won’t burn out.”

What Is Stress?

According to the American…