Burnout: When Rest Stops Working

Burnout is a word everyone uses and no one can formally diagnose — it sits in the ICD-11 as an "occupational phenomenon," explicitly excluded from being a medical condition, yet the exhaustion people describe is measurably physiological. This episode works through what the research actually establishes: how chronic stress flattens the cortisol rhythm so that rest stops restoring, why Sweden's two-decade-old exhaustion disorder diagnosis is the closest anyone has come to formalizing it, and what the evidence says about recovery — CBT targeting stress avoidance and rumination, graded return to activity, and a timeline measured in months rather than weekends. The conversation also takes seriously the question of prevention, and where standard detachment advice breaks down for people who can't step away from the stressor in the first place. Episode #758114 — open it directly at myweirdprompts.com/758114