For me[0] it just happened when I realized that no matter how hard I worked the company I worked for where going to go bankrupt anyway.
I started crying anytime I was alone. Sounds that reminded me about problems at work (e.g. a loose drive belt) would instantly give me pain in my stomach. It took months before I could work in customer facing work again. I was lucky, worked at a farm and completed military (draft) in between and little by little things got better.
I sometimes feel really exhausted and unmotivated, going to work only because it is a duty (to work and my family) but I never burned out again.
[0]: This was before burnouts was a thing so I never got a diagnosis and I only realized later that I hat hit the wall hard.
And is it possible to "burnout" of something else than work?
Burnout is a stress disorder, as is PTSD, but trauma is typically not involved. Indeed, the lack of trauma is often why burnout sneaks up on people so easily. At least with PTSD you often have some "big event" that you can track things back to that is something that most people would say "ok, that's something that can be life altering". But you can burnout even if you're working only 20 hours a week at a "fun" job and earning 6 figures a year. Burnout is caused by stress, PTSD is stress and other symptoms caused by trauma. They share some similar symptoms because they both involve stress, but they are not the same. Removing the stress and spending time relaxing usually helps clear up burnout to a substantial degree, but the stress in PTSD is caused by the memory of trauma that happened in the past, and that doesn't go away, it's internal not external. Additionally, PTSD is not only harder to tackle it's also typically more life altering because it has much more severe symptoms (arousal, hypervigilance, constant reliving of the trauma, guilt, being easily startled, etc.)
Post traumatic stress disorder - trauma. Coding is not trauma and can't be compared to trauma.
Two issues: 1. it seems lots people mix up burnout with exhaustion or lack of motivation. It is not the same.
2. I'm afraid, and I am not alone to think that people feel like burnout == bragging rights.
It is not. It is just painful and unproductive. I now say (tongue-in-cheek, admittedly) that it is far better to keep going at 95-120% for year after year than going all the way to 160 for weeks, meet the wall and needing months to fully recover. Often families and other relationships suffer as well.
So is your second sentence inaccurate, insulting, and offensive? yeah
Still can't compare it to PTSD.
It was the fact that I had worked so hard only to see it fail anyway and people I worked with not caring rather still buy tools while they had already IIRC started looting the place.
Another thing: That job was way beyond stressful. At some points two big blokes, one coworker I had though of as a friend together with a friend of him came to "take" me whatever that meant and the way I got away was running for the kitchen, grabbing a knife and place myself in the doorway so nobody could get behind me. Eventually they gave up.
I'm speaking from personal experience here!
Burnout is really hard to understand when it happens to you. The best symptom I can give is that you become less productive - work never flows anymore, you always have to force yourself into it, all the time, not just at the start/end of a day. It did not feel like exhaustion for me, but like a steady state of helplessness.
And if you get this, don't compensate by pushing yourself harder into work (what I did). You'll just make it worse.