What is burnout?
Not extreme tiredness but a depletion of meaning — Maslach's three dimensions, the effort-reward imbalance underneath, and why rest alone doesn't reverse it.
Burnout is not extreme tiredness — rest fixes tiredness, and rest does not fix burnout. Maslach mapped three dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism (a grey distance from the work and the people in it), and a collapsed sense of efficacy — "nothing I do here matters." Underneath often sits what Siegrist called effort-reward imbalance: output stays high while what flows back — recognition, control, meaning — keeps thinning. The account empties from both sides.
The everyday tell isn't collapse; it's flatness. The teacher who once stayed late now watches the clock; the nurse tells the story of a hard shift in a monotone. The caring went first — that is the signature.
The nuance: burnout is less a depletion of energy than a depletion of meaning, which is why a holiday postpones it rather than ending it.
In Arkhetia this concept doesn't stay a definition — it meets you in your sessions, tied to a moment in your own story.
Reading about a pattern is one thing. Seeing where it runs your own life is another. Arkhetia works through these lenses — with you.
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