We might be in an adapted or more accurately a maladapted state. In other words your nervous system, brain and body have conspired to keep you safe and help you survive based on your experiences in the world. And because the brain lives in a dark cave and only has memories to make decisions with, it doesn’t always make the best choices. The only choices it gives you are fight, flight or freeze. And those can end up looking like anxiety, hypervigilance and depression. How can we balance these perfectly rational moods for better mental, physical and emotional health?

Burnout is really characterized by three things beyond the fatigue, feeling emotionally drained feeling overwhelmed. Those pieces are part of burnout. But when you are waking up more days of the week than not, and you feel as though your work is unmanageable or that your work is a burden, or that you have lost the joy and passion that you previously had for your work. You're likely in a state of burnout.