Episode 7 — Burnout: Are We Burnt Out, or Are We Being Told We Are?

Season 1
Written By Tanya & Lisa
Episode 7 — Burnout: Are We Burnt Out, or Are We Being Told We Are?
Tanya & Lisa - 2-Together

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Burnout, Work Stress, and Core Emotional Needs: Starting a New Unstuck Miniseries

Lisa and Tanya, psychologist best friends behind Unstuck, introduce a new burnout miniseries after losing the audio of their first recording. They discuss burnout as defined by the WHO as an occupational syndrome from unmanaged chronic workplace stress, marked by exhaustion, cynicism or mental distance, and reduced effectiveness, while noting the term is now used more broadly and overlaps with chronic stress, tiredness, and depression.

They consider Natalie Dawson’s argument that hard work alone doesn’t cause burnout if purpose and reward are present, but caution this can invalidate lived experience and shift structural workplace issues into individual “resilience” judgments. They outline the Job Demands–Resources model and Maslach’s six mismatch areas (workload, control, reward, community, fairness, values), linking these to schema therapy’s core emotional needs and how unmet needs activate “lenses” and SOS coping (submit, opt out, storm in). The series will cover self-sacrifice, defectiveness/shame, and unrelenting standards, framing burnout as also driven by life demands and resources.

Prefer to read?

Schema Psychology Insights: The Unstuck Edit Blog
I'm Happy for You. So Why Am I Jealous?
I'm Happy for You. So Why Am I Jealous?

A friend gets the promotion, the house, the holiday, and you say something lovely. Then comes the but, in your head or out loud to a mate. This is Storming In, the third of our SOS coping responses, and it rarely looks like aggression. It can look like being organised, taking charge, or a bit of gossip. We talk envy, jealousy and the shame that follows both, and why envy can be useful information about something you want for yourself.

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The Friendship Fade Out: When Stepping Back Helps and When It Keeps Us Stuck
The Friendship Fade Out: When Stepping Back Helps and When It Keeps Us Stuck

A reply takes three days rather than three hours. Then a week. Plans get harder to make. Eventually the friendship exists mostly in birthday messages. Sometimes stepping back is exactly what we need. Sometimes it is Opting Out, our word for the avoidance side of coping, and the two look almost identical from the outside. The difference is usually what is driving it: whether you are choosing some space, or disappearing because something has made you feel vulnerable.

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The Good Friend: When Being Easy, Helpful and Available Starts Costing You
The Good Friend: When Being Easy, Helpful and Available Starts Costing You

Turning up, remembering birthdays, never making it all about you. Lovely qualities, until being thoughtful quietly becomes never saying no. We are both prone to people pleasing, and we both know the small, furious voice that arrives later asking: what about me? Some of our most familiar coping patterns look remarkably like being nice. Here is how to tell the difference between caring about a friend and disappearing inside the friendship.

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Tanya & Lisa

Dr Tanya Petersen and Dr Lisa Corbett met at university at 18, living next door to each other in halls. Nearly thirty years later, they're still friends, and for the past seven years they've been colleagues too.

Tanya is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist (DClinPsy), HCPC-registered, and an ISST Advanced Accredited Schema Therapist and Supervisor. She qualified in 2008, worked for years in NHS forensic services, and first encountered schema therapy in 2004 — which, in her words, felt like coming home.

Lisa is an HCPC-registered Counselling Psychologist (PsychD). She took the scenic route into psychology, via corporate work and volunteering with children's charities in South Africa, and has since worked across NHS and private settings.

They founded 2 Together to make schema psychology accessible — through the free Unstuck podcast, self-guided courses, and one-to-one online therapy.

Next

Episode 6 — I'm Happy For You. So Why Am I Jealous?