Burning Out at Work

And I'm Emma Wells. I'll admit upfront that this one is personal for me. A few years ago, back when I was still a reporter, I hit a wall so hard at work that I could barely get out of bed some mornings.

It crept up slowly, which is what makes burnout so dangerous. I was working at a local paper, chasing story after story, telling myself I'd rest once things calmed down. Except in a newsroom, things never actually calm down.

Looking back, so many. I had constant headaches, I stopped sleeping properly, and I became irritable with Sam, my partner, over the smallest things. I even started dreading Sunday nights because Monday felt unbearable.

Not really, and that was my mistake. I felt like admitting I was struggling would make me look weak or incapable in front of my colleagues, so I just kept pushing through silently.

I was covering a council meeting, posting live updates for the paper, and I suddenly couldn't remember basic facts I had reviewed a hundred times. My mind just went completely blank, and I started shaking in the press seats.

I excused myself, went to the bathroom, and cried for probably twenty minutes straight. That was the moment I finally admitted to myself that I couldn't keep going the way I had been.

I booked an appointment with my doctor the following week, and she diagnosed me with burnout, along with mild anxiety. She recommended I take a leave of absence, which honestly terrified me at first.

I was worried about how it would look to my editor, whether I'd fall behind the other reporters, and whether I'd even have a job to return to once I felt better again.

She was surprisingly understanding, actually, which honestly surprised me given how demanding the newsroom usually was. She said she'd noticed I seemed exhausted for months but hadn't known how to bring it up.

Exactly, that's precisely what I've reflected on since. If check-ins about wellbeing were a normal, built-in part of our culture, maybe I wouldn't have reached such a breaking point in the first place.

I took eight weeks off entirely. The first two weeks, I mostly just slept and cried, honestly. It took until around week four before I even started feeling like a functioning human being again.

Therapy made an enormous difference, along with simply spending time outdoors without my phone. I also had to relearn how to set boundaries, something I had completely abandoned during my years at that job.

I did return initially, but with much firmer boundaries around my working hours. Within six months, though, I realized the underlying culture hadn't really changed, so I ultimately decided to leave for good. That decision, honestly, is a big part of why I'm sitting here doing this podcast.

I'd love to hear about that. What did your old school actually implement to try preventing burnout among teachers?

Those all sound like meaningful, well-intentioned initiatives on paper. But honestly, do they actually work in practice, or do they just look good in a company handbook?

That stigma issue is exactly the deeper problem, isn't it? You can offer all the resources imaginable, but if the underlying culture punishes vulnerability, employees simply won't use them.

That's genuinely disappointing to hear, especially considering the school presumably meant well when creating that programme in the first place. How did leadership respond once they found out about that situation?

That really illustrates how policies alone are insufficient without a genuine cultural shift happening alongside them. Do you personally think workloads at the school actually decreased, or was it mostly surface-level gestures?

That's such a familiar pattern across so many industries unfortunately. Companies often address the symptoms of burnout rather than confronting its actual root causes, like unrealistic deadlines or chronic understaffing.

Realistic workloads, adequate staffing levels, and managers who are genuinely empowered to say no to unreasonable demands from above, rather than simply passing that pressure downward onto their own teams.

Absolutely, and until that priority genuinely shifts, I suspect we'll keep seeing surface-level solutions applied to what is fundamentally a much deeper, systemic issue within modern workplace culture.

Don't wait for a dramatic breaking point like mine before taking action. If you're dreading work most days, losing sleep constantly, or feeling emotionally numb, please talk to someone before it escalates any further.

Check in with your team regularly, and actually mean it when you ask how they're doing. Don't just wait for someone to collapse in a meeting before you finally notice something's seriously wrong.

I saw a therapist who specialized in workplace stress, once a week initially. She helped me identify patterns, like my tendency to say yes to every story out of fear of disappointing people or seeming replaceable.

It did, actually. We traced it back to years of newsroom culture, where every deadline was treated like an emergency, and rest was almost treated as laziness. That belief followed me everywhere without me even noticing it.

I think it's cultural, honestly. Social media glorifies exhausting schedules and constant productivity, and certain workplaces reward overwork with praise, even when it's clearly unsustainable in the long run.

Yes, my hair actually started thinning temporarily from the stress, and I developed a stomach issue my doctor said was likely linked to chronic anxiety rather than anything purely physical.

Interestingly, my physical symptoms improved faster than my emotional state. Within a month, my sleep and stomach issues had mostly resolved, but the emotional numbness and anxiety lingered for several more months.

Reactions were mixed. Some colleagues were genuinely kind and asked how I was doing without prying too much, while others seemed almost awkward around me, as if burnout was something contagious they wanted to avoid.

Briefly, yes, especially during the first week back. But eventually, one colleague privately admitted she was struggling too, and my openness apparently gave her the courage to finally seek help herself.

Honestly, it can go either way. Remote work removed my commute, but it also blurred the boundaries between work and rest, since my laptop was always sitting right there in the living room, next to my plants.

I started physically closing my laptop and putting it in a drawer after six in the evening. It sounds simple, but that small physical action really helped signal to my brain that the workday was truly over.

Definitely. I started walking every morning before work, just twenty minutes, without my phone. It became a non-negotiable part of my routine, almost like a small daily reset before facing the day.

They did, actually. My contract and the paper's sick-leave policy meant my job was protected during my medical leave, which removed at least one major source of anxiety I had going into that eight-week break.

Absolutely, I wish I had known my rights earlier, instead of assuming the worst about job security the entire time I was struggling silently at my desk.

Before we close, I also want to mention something about generational differences, since I think younger workers are approaching this issue quite differently than the older generation of reporters I worked with ever did.

Younger people I meet now through the podcast seem far more willing to openly discuss therapy, set firm boundaries, and even leave jobs that harm their mental health, without the same shame my generation often internalized.

Mostly positive, I'd say, though I've heard some older managers privately grumble that younger employees are 'too sensitive' or unwilling to push through difficult periods the way previous generations supposedly did, without pay or recognition.

I actually think younger workers are onto something important. Pushing through unsustainable conditions silently, the way I did for years, isn't resilience; it's just delayed collapse, as my own story clearly demonstrates.

Exactly. Real resilience, I've learned, actually looks like knowing your limits and protecting them firmly, rather than proving how much pain you can silently absorb before finally breaking down completely at your desk.

I hope so. If even one person listening today decides to speak up sooner than I did, then sharing this difficult story publicly will have been entirely worth it for me.

Thank you for creating the space to talk about it openly, Jack. And thank you to everyone listening. If this resonates with you, please don't ignore it the way I once did.