While work-related stress continues to be a major cause of burnout, new research shows that non-work stressors like caregiving demands, financial instability, and personal life conflicts also greatly increase the risk. Yet, the dominant narrative has not caught up, and many still believe burnout is only a workplace problem, overlooking the deeper, life-wide imbalance it often reflects.

Recently, I spoke to a nurse on sick leave for the third time in less than two years due to burnout. She was seeking strategies to improve her work-life balance. While discussing her recurring burnout, she focused entirely on work: the pressure, panic attacks, toxic environment, and the heavy burden of being a nurse and single mom in a broken system. However, as I listened, I realized something that shocked me. She never mentioned the emotional weight of her recent separation, the stress of going through a tough divorce while raising three children alone, or the invisible burdens she carried outside of work. It was as if her entire life had been overshadowed, with all the light directed at her job. That moment was a wake-up call for me. I understood that many efforts have been misdirected, and some people have been looking for answers in the wrong places.

The World Health Organization (WHO) qualifies burnout as “an occupational phenomenon” and defines it as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” While this definition is helpful in some respects, it is also deeply misleading in others.

It is helpful for several reasons:

• First, because it acknowledges chronicity rather than just momentary stress.
• Second, it affirms that burnout is real, not a sign of laziness, weakness, or personal failure.
• Third, it opens the door to addressing systemic issues and the need for change in the workplace.

What is missing and misleading is that it places all the responsibility on the job, without recognizing the human who is also managing life and whose self-leadership still matters. It also overlooks the quiet exhaustion people carry (the fact that many are already emotionally, physically, and mentally drained before they even start work). Finally, it fails to reflect the modern experience of overwhelm influenced by technology, parenting fatigue, emotional labor at home, caregiving stress, and societal pressures.

The result

This definition of the WHO conditions us to look outward only for the cause of burnout, as it subtly portrays us as victims. Doing so weakens our ability to consider this experience as a turning point or an invitation to turn inward, the one place that holds the answers. We turn all the focus on the challenges at work rather than questioning the hidden beliefs, choices, and habits that quietly push us beyond our limits, override our needs, and fill our days with pressures and pursuits that do not truly belong to us, while the parts of our lives that matter slowly fade away.

This definition also misleads health systems in offering solutions that fail us. When the symptoms show up (exhaustion, detachment, emotional numbness, irritability, brain fog, and hopelessness), we are told to manage stress, download an app, take a wellness vacation, or go to a yoga class. But when understood fully, burnout is more an invitation and a mirror than a sentence. An invitation to self-awareness, self-responsibility, and self-leadership. It strips away illusions. It shows us, often brutally, that the way we have been living, giving, or working is unsustainable. It calls us to rise, realign, and begin again from a place of truth.

Beyond the syndrome, burnout is a feedback loop that encourages self-leadership. It highlights the imbalance and helps us recognize the gaps. Not just workload, staffing, long hours, and overtime, but also where we have overextended ourselves and neglected our well-being. It reveals where our boundaries have been crossed, what we have been carrying that no one notices, the values we are betraying, the support we are not asking for, and the stories we have inherited about what it means to be “compassionate.” Ultimately, burnout pushes us inward and makes it impossible to continue letting external demands control our lives. It forces us to ask: What do I need? What matters most? How do I want to lead my life from here? That is self-leadership.

Numerous studies confirm that burnout causes measurable structural and functional changes in the brain. It reduces activity in the prefrontal cortex, disrupts the limbic system, and disconnects us from the brain’s reward and meaning centers, reducing focus, decision-making abilities, emotional regulation, motivation, and satisfaction. Physiologically, burnout triggers chronic stress responses, including flattened cortisol rhythms and disrupted sleep cycles that impair resilience and recovery.

Translation

Burnout disrupts the inner chain of self-leadership.

Therefore, it is time to acknowledge burnout for what it truly is: a breakdown that happens when we remain in survival mode for too long, disconnected from our needs, values, and truths. When spirit is silenced, the heart goes unheard, the mind is overwhelmed, and the body is overused, burnout becomes more than just a result of unaddressed workplace stress. It turns into a call for agency and healing from the inside out, a reminder of what genuinely matters and how to lead our lives from within. It is not a time to get distracted by the noise. Burnout is not just a “work problem.” Do not fall into the trap of blaming your job while overlooking the deeper truth your life is trying to reveal. Stop pushing harder. Reclaim your power, own your voice, and work smarter.

Perrette St. Preux is a nurse.