You're Not the Problem: How Burnout Reflects a Broken System

Burnout is everywhere. It’s on LinkedIn, in therapy rooms, tucked between sighs during Zoom calls. It’s become a buzzword, but like so many words absorbed into pop culture, its true meaning has gotten a bit blurry. We use it to describe everything from the yearning to take a nap in the middle of a work day to existential crisis. But burnout isn’t just “feeling tired.” It’s what happens when you hit a wall that productivity culture tells us doesn’t exist.

Journalist Sarah Jaffe, in her brilliant book Work Won’t Love You Back, puts it plainly:

“Burnout is not a personal failure. It’s a symptom of a system that over-relies on people’s willingness to care.”

Burnout is not a failure in your coping strategies. It’s not solved by a yoga retreat and a gratitude journal. Although, yes, those things can bring comfort. Burnout is what happens when your care is taken from you without giving back. And it looks different depending on who you are, what you carry, and how the world receives you.

Burnout Wears Many Faces

As someone who spent a decade in HR and is now training to become a counsellor, I’ve seen burnout show up in a hundred different ways. It’s the Sales Development Rep who’s never missed their quota but cries in the bathroom most days. It’s the Director of Marketing who is a single mom trying to show up fully for both her kids and her employer, knowing neither gets her best. Hell, it was me, earlier this year when I was a one-person HR team to 150+ employees spread across North America.

But burnout doesn’t just show up in the tech industry. It lives in classrooms, in kitchens, in delivery trucks, in community care roles. And it’s often felt most by those who are expected to be endlessly available: teachers, healthcare workers, nonprofit staff, and anyone in a so-called “helping profession.”

But it’s not just about the work itself, it’s about who’s doing it.

The Intersections That Matter

Burnout doesn’t impact everyone the same way. If you're a racialized woman in a white-led organization, burnout might come with constantly code-switching and the emotional labour of navigating microaggressions. If you're queer, disabled, neurodivergent, or balancing caregiving responsibilities, you’re often contorting yourself to fit into systems that weren’t built with you in mind.

We don’t burn out in a vacuum. Intersectional factors shape how much work is expected of us, and how much grace we’re given when we can’t keep up. This is why any conversation about burnout that doesn’t include race, gender, class, or ability is missing the point. Burnout is systemic. And systems impact us differently depending on where we sit within them.

Burnout Recovery Is a Relational Act

One of the most harmful myths about burnout is that recovery is a solo journey. That if we just meditate more, meal-prep better, or optimize our calendars, we can "self-care" our way out of it. But I can tell you first-hand, healing from burnout is rarely about going inward. It's about being witnessed.

When I was burning out in my HR role — silently, professionally, smiling through it — I didn’t need another productivity hack. I needed someone to say, “You shouldn’t have to carry all of this alone.”

Relational support is one of the most powerful antidotes to burnout. Not performative check-ins or annual “wellness days,” but genuine, consistent care. Colleagues who hold space. Friends who text “Just checking in, no pressure to reply.” Therapists who help you understand that you are not the problem, but that you’re responding exactly as a nervous system should when it’s pushed past its limits.

Let’s Stop Calling This Normal

If you're reading this and thinking, “This is me,” I want to say something plainly: You’re not broken. You're not weak. You’re responding to a culture that glorifies over-functioning and under-values care.

Burnout isn’t your fault. But you have the right to heal.

And while systemic change takes time (and policy and organizing and bold conversations), we can start here by telling the truth about how burnout really feels, who it hurts the most, and what it takes to come back from it.

Together. Not alone.