<story><title>Is our definition of burnout all wrong?</title><url>https://www.bustle.com/wellness/burnout-definition-what-we-get-wrong</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>notacop31337</author><text>I recently read &amp;quot;Lost Connections&amp;quot;, recommended to me after a long few years with depression.&lt;p&gt;I suspect if you&amp;#x27;re commenting in this thread, you&amp;#x27;d probably enjoy it.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the one thing that seems to always be a consistent theme in discussions of burnout, is work. I&amp;#x27;ve not yet seem a conversation on burnout where an employment scenario is not brought up.&lt;p&gt;One of the chapters in Lost Connections talks about meaningful work, and how a reduction or elimination of personally fulfilling work, can lead to a depression, as can a few other things.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t help but feel at this stage after dealing with a long running depression, that our relationships with work are probably broken, and we&amp;#x27;ve all been sold a lie.&lt;p&gt;My issue with the term &amp;quot;burnout&amp;quot; is that it feels like it&amp;#x27;s loading the topic to be a personal issue (which it technically is), when in reality, it&amp;#x27;s a reaction to a bad external stimuli.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d write more, but I feel like I&amp;#x27;m waffling, I&amp;#x27;m happy to discuss more if people want to chat about it.</text></comment>
<story><title>Is our definition of burnout all wrong?</title><url>https://www.bustle.com/wellness/burnout-definition-what-we-get-wrong</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>choxi</author><text>I’ve always thought burnout is the same thing as learned helplessness, which is a pretty well studied phenomenon in psychology. It doesn’t seem mysterious to me that if you repeatedly do a task that is unrewarding for long enough, you no longer want to do it. Then the COVID burnout can be explained by a large scale reduction in the rewards that typically keep people going.</text></comment>