Burnout
When the demands keep coming, and the resources run out!
Burnout is one of those words that now seems to mean everything.
We use it when work is relentless. When parenting is relentless. When caring is relentless. When life feels like one long list of things that need doing, and there is never quite enough of us to go around.
And yet, technically, burnout has a much narrower meaning.
The World Health Organisation describes burnout as an occupational phenomenon arising from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. Its three dimensions are exhaustion, growing mental distance or cynicism about work, and reduced professional effectiveness.
So already we have a slightly odd situation.
There is the formal definition of burnout.
And then there is the way ordinary people use the word.
Maybe the useful question is not simply, 'Am I burnt out?' but, 'What has been asking too much of me for too long, and what have I not had enough of in return?'
Burnout is not just 'working hard'
One of the things we wanted to explore in this episode was the increasingly popular argument that burnout is not really a thing.
Natalie Dawson, speaking on The Diary of a CEO, argued that people can work extraordinarily hard when the effort is connected to achievement, reward and purpose. We think there is something useful in that.
Most of us know the difference between hard work that feels meaningful and hard work that feels like being slowly ground into dust.
But saying that meaning and reward matter is not the same as saying burnout cannot happen.
People can care deeply about their work and still exceed their capacity. They can have purpose and still need recovery. They can love what they do and still be working inside systems that ask too much while offering too little support, control, fairness or recognition.
The problem with turning burnout into a character judgement
This matters because once burnout becomes a story about resilience, the question can quietly shift from 'What is happening here?' to 'Why can't you cope?'
We have both worked in systems where staff were offered resilience training while the demands being placed on them remained completely unrealistic.
There is something deeply uncomfortable about locating the problem entirely inside the person when the environment itself may be part of the problem.
It can leave someone who is already exhausted also feeling that they have failed.
That shame can be especially powerful when we look sideways at colleagues who appear to be managing perfectly well.
But people do not arrive at work with identical lives, bodies, histories, responsibilities or resources.
Demands and resources
One of the clearest ways of thinking about burnout comes from the Job Demands-Resources model.
The basic idea is beautifully simple: every job has demands, but we also need resources that help us meet those demands, recover from effort, retain some agency and stay connected to meaning.
Burnout risk rises when high or prolonged demands are not adequately matched by resources.
Christina Maslach and colleagues come at the issue from a slightly different angle, identifying areas of mismatch between people and work, including workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values.
What struck us, when we looked at these models, was how psychologically familiar those words felt.
Where Schema Therapy comes in
Schema Therapy is not a burnout model, and neither Maslach nor the Job Demands-Resources researchers are writing about schemas.
What we are doing here is making a 2Together conceptual bridge.
Schema Therapy starts with core emotional needs. We need safety and stability. We need to be able to express needs and emotions. We need autonomy and a growing sense of competence. We need realistic limits and boundaries. We need spontaneity and play.
When we started placing those needs alongside the burnout literature, there were some striking overlaps.
A workplace with unpredictable or punitive leadership can frustrate safety.
A culture where nobody can admit they are struggling can frustrate the freedom to express needs.
Micromanagement, impossible targets or constant role ambiguity can undermine autonomy and competence.
Emails at 9pm, weekend calls and no protected recovery time can erode boundaries.
And a culture of relentless demand, surveillance and repetition can squeeze out creativity, humour and play.
The models are not the same. But both invite us to look beyond the individual and ask what is happening between the person and their environment.
When the workplace activates old lenses
This is where our own model becomes useful.
In Schema Therapy, when emotional needs are repeatedly frustrated early in life, schemas can develop. At 2Together we call these lenses.
Those lenses shape how we interpret ourselves, other people and the world.
We are not consciously walking around thinking, 'My lens has been activated.' What we are usually aware of is the emotion.
Then we cope.
That is where SOS comes in.
We might Submit, putting our own needs aside and carrying on.
We might Opt Out, withdrawing, numbing, procrastinating or mentally checking out.
Or we might Storm In, trying to regain control through overwork, perfectionism, anger or taking charge.
And this is why two people can be in the same organisation and experience it very differently. The environment matters, but so do the particular lenses that environment activates and the way each person has learned to cope.
What about 'life burnout'?
The formal burnout definition belongs to work.
But that does not make the wider experience people are describing imaginary.
Many women are trying to meet demands across work, parenting, relationships, caring for parents, menopause, fertility, domestic labour, friendships and the invisible admin of ordinary life.
In our own conversations, that broader accumulation matters.
One of us can look back at something that appeared, on paper, to be occupational burnout and see that it was happening alongside caring for a parent, bereavement, fertility difficulties and years of competing demands.
So when we use the phrase 'life burnout', we are using it deliberately as everyday 2Together language, not as a formal diagnostic term.
What interests us is the same underlying question: what are the demands, what resources are available, which emotional needs are being frustrated, and what patterns are being activated?
The next part of the series
Over the next three episodes we are going to look at burnout through three lenses that we think can make people particularly vulnerable to getting stuck: Self-Sacrifice, Unrelenting Standards and Defectiveness/Shame.
Not because those lenses cause burnout.
And not because burnout is simply an individual psychological problem.
But because when an environment is demanding too much, our own longstanding patterns can influence what we do next.
Do we keep saying yes?
Do we work harder because anything less feels like failure?
Do we hide how badly we are struggling because we are terrified somebody will discover we are not good enough?
That is where the psychology becomes personal.
A few questions to sit with
Where in my life are the demands currently highest?
What resources do I have, and which ones are missing?
Do I feel I have enough control, support, recognition, fairness and recovery?
Which emotional needs feel particularly frustrated at the moment?
When I am overwhelmed, do I tend to Submit, Opt Out or Storm In?
Am I treating an environmental problem as evidence that there is something wrong with me?
Listen to the conversation
This article grew out of our Unstuck episode Burnout, where we try to work out what the word actually means, look at the debate around whether burnout exists, and place the burnout literature alongside core emotional needs, lenses and SOS.
More from the “Unstuck Conversation” series
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