Burnout in America: Why 66% of Us Are Exhausted and How to Spot the Early Warning Signs

Burnout isn’t just about being tired – it’s a nervous system in overdrive. In the United States, studies show that 66% of the workforce is burned out, with some reports as high as 85%. Younger generations are hit hardest, and women carry the heaviest burden due to caregiving, emotional labor, and workplace inequities. Globally, burnout rates are climbing too – from 63% in Southeast Asia to Australia recently named the most burned-out nation.

In this episode, I explore what burnout really is: a chronic state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress. We’ll look at the early signs of nervous system dysregulation – from a racing mind and overscheduled calendar to emotional numbness, lack of empathy, and disconnection from joy. I also dive into the health consequences of chronic stress, including cardiovascular problems, autoimmune flare-ups, depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline.

I share my personal story of hitting burnout while running multiple businesses and parenting during the pandemic, pushing myself until my nervous system shut down and chronic illness took over. That painful chapter became my wake-up call – the beginning of reconnecting with my body, realigning my energy, and rebuilding my life around authenticity, purpose, and nervous system care.

Burnout isn’t an individual failure. It’s the outcome of living in a culture that prizes productivity and hustle over human alignment. But healing is possible. When you learn to spot the signs, reclaim your energy, and build tools for nervous system regulation, you create space to live and work with greater alignment, clarity, and purpose.

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 If you’re ready to move beyond burnout and reconnect with yourself, explore my burnout and alignment coaching designed for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and parents who are tired of doing it all alone. You’ll find resources on nervous system healing, energy alignment, and purpose-driven business coaching at https://www.jesscallahan.com/entrepreneurs or connect with me on Instagram at @jesscallahan_ 

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Sources: 

https://www.apollotechnical.com/statistics-on-workplace-stress/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2025/02/08/job-burnout-at-66-in-2025-new-study-shows/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

Hey guys, welcome back. Today I want to talk about burnout and this is a subject that it's near and dear to my heart because it's had a huge impact on my life and my life path. And it's also something that impacts so many people. I think it's something that we talk about a lot, something we hear about a lot. It's something I think like on the surface, most people feel like they have an understanding of what it is, but there are so many people who are living in burnout who don't actually know that they're living in burnout burnout is this weird thing that it's like it's almost like cyclical and the more you live in burnout the deeper your burnout becomes the more disconnected you become from yourself so somebody who's living in burnout is like they're not even able to spot the signs of burnout they're living so disconnected from themselves from their emotions from from being able to advocate for themselves. It's like it creates this like freeze state where you're literally just going through the motions. You can't do anything else. There's no capacity to take on more, to do more, to feel more, to think more deeply. Because anything that's more or deeper threatens this equilibrium, this balance that you have to maintain. It's a really fragile balance of keeping all of the balls in the air. And anything deeper threatens to sort of throw that off. And so I want to talk about burnout and how to spot the early signs of burnout and just why it's so important for each of us to go inward, really thinking for ourselves, what are the areas that are impacting my life here? Maybe you're not in burnout. Maybe there are some early warning signs here that might just be helpful to kind of tune into so that you can make some small adjustments. It could also be listening to this discussion and thinking of somebody that you love in your life you know and just reaching out to them. I think when you're in burnout, it's hard to advocate for yourself. And it is also hard to hear from somebody else who, you know, might be spotting the signs of burnout. So if you if there's someone in your life that you love, and you you know, you suspect that they may be heading into like a able to take, you know, your hand or what you're offering, but you will be planting seeds for them. You will be planting seeds that might pop up later that might resurface and help them start to tune inward and like really just advocate for themselves. Yeah, I mean, okay, I read this. I read the statistic recently that there that 66% of America's workforce is experiencing burnout at some level. And when I read that number, like I want to say I was surprised, but I wasn't surprised. I mean, I know it is just like sweeping through our workplaces, our homes, our schools. It's, yeah, it's something that is damaging us. everyone a lot of people at least 66 percent of people and the problem you know here is that it's like it's a systemic problem it's not something that is going to just be fixed you know it's like I think that when you're in burnout it's easy to just sort of like think you know it'll get better when it'll get better when when my kids are older when I get a new job and a lot of times it's it's not like that one thing we peg it to like one thing and we tell ourselves Like, this is the thing. The grass is greener. Like, it's going to be better at this time. But... It's systemically rooted. It's like it lives in the operating system that we're all working from. It lives in the unspoken rules and expectations that we acquire through life. You know, it's not always that the job is just really, really demanding. Sometimes it is. And of course, there's different industries that, you know, burnout rates will be higher. But it doesn't always live in the fact that like you live in an industry that's more prone to burnout. Sometimes it lives in our ability to set and hold boundaries or set expectations for ourselves or others. It lives in our connection to purpose or the type of work that we're doing every day. It can be a negative work environment. It can be the fact that you have kids and they're young and they're really just demanding and taxing on your nervous system, but those kids get older and they carry with them problems. problems later too. You know, maybe in that situation, it's rooted in finding support in areas that maybe you didn't expect it, or even like learning how to process the emotions that you're feeling on a day-to-day basis and what you're bottling up, the emotions that are coming out. So it hides, like the causes and the solutions hide in little like corners of how we live our lives. And until we're ready to go inward and make the commitment ourselves and say like, I'm the one that's going to change how I do things, even if it's not like full burnout or the road to burnout, it could be, you know, constant fatigue or exhaustion that you're feeling. There's some sort of like something here just has to change. But until we make the choice to go inward, until we make the choice to like fix it for ourselves, Nothing changes. So today I want to, I guess, just continue that invitation to go inward. So that we can all look to ourselves to spot the lesser known signs of burnout and advocate for ourselves and just reach out to the people in our lives who are facing these situations. There was like a study of Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia, and collectively they found a burnout rate of around like 63% among their workforce. So that's also a really high rate of burnout. 2024 study named Australia as the most burnt out country and their burnout rate was also in the mid 60s so you know it's happening all around the globe and like interestingly the rates are much lower in certain pockets of the world and I'm interested to dive into some of this more deeply and again it's this it's a subject for another podcast another day but Some of the countries with the lowest burnout rates, Finland reports a burnout rate of like 4.3%. And El Salvador comes in at 2.5%. So more on that later. But it's just it's so interesting to me to like think about it cross culturally. And, you know, what are the factors at play and the support systems and the, you know, harmful systems that are at play around the globe. that impact these burnout rates. In Japan and South Korea, actually, they previously experienced really high rates of burnout and the government started intervening to curb working hours. And the Netherlands, actually, they have a concept around embracing the art of doing nothing. And that's to do the same thing. Like the which I love, and I would love to bring more of that into my life. It sounds like it might still be catching on over there, but still, it's equally interesting for me to hear about the countries who have stepped in and implemented real change in order to curb the burnout rate. Because burnout, it's not just being stressed and irritable. burnout has really really like very real physical consequences um okay so unsurprisingly women in the united states face burnout at a much higher rate than men and it's you know thought to be attributed to things like the disproportionate amount of household work that we carry the emotional labor the caregiving but you could also add in like workplace inequities and i mean the labor could go on and on. I could probably just go down this list forever, but I won't. Interestingly though, if you talk about the link then to the physical symptoms of burnout, like what happens to our bodies physically when we have toxic stress coursing through our bodies nonstop, autoimmune disease and stress are directly linked. And there are other factors at play here. So it's not like stress isn't the only reason for this, but of people who are diagnosed with autoimmune in the United States, 80% are women. And it's linked, like burnout is linked to, I think the number, it's an estimate of 120,000 deaths per year. That's not a link to autoimmune disease, but like other health consequences of burnout are cardiovascular issues, sleep disruption, immune suppression, anxiety, depression, cognitive impact. So it can have an impact on your memory. problems with concentration. It can manifest as tension, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, IBS. And those are just the physical health challenges. You think about how stress and burnout can impact you. At home, say, stress and burnout can have an impact on relationships at home, an increased amount of conflict or interpersonal strain, social withdrawal, not wanting to like be around your friends or family, exhaustion that won't go away, irritability, and disconnection from joy. And I think sometimes like we notice this, you can notice this when you're spending time with your kids and you're like, I don't know, just like biding the time, passing the time, not enjoying the actual time spent together. And it doesn't have to just be kids. Like it can be But, you know, pets are... Yeah, just, like, different situations that you just stop and you think, like... Why am I wishing this away? And in the workplace, burnout, you know, I mean, think about when you value quantity over quality, of course, like the work product, the work quality is going to decrease, right? So like, you know, just decrease quality of work, distraction or disengagement from work, absenteeism. So people who are battling, especially like these, the byproducts of burnout. So So chronic exhaustion or any of the health conditions that we just talked about, right? People are staying home for home. But I think one of the other things in the workplace that another byproduct is really this disconnection from inspiration, creativity, innovation. So it's really hard for businesses to grow, do better, do more, reinvent themselves, add new revenue streams if the culture isn't one that really supports creativity and innovation. And that's not just like a workplace culture thing. The burnout is happening at an individual level, and then it's creating these environments. So anyway, the definition of burnout clinically, it's described as a chronic state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion caused by prolonged stress. So I said at the This topic is really personal for me. And burnout is a story that really it's had a tremendous impact on the trajectory of my life, my personal health. And it's just it's something I feel really strongly about helping other people avoid because I really didn't know what the early signs were. I really didn't know how to spot the signs of burnout. And even if I did, I really didn't have the tools to advocate for myself. to really make change and hold firm, hold my ground on the areas that I really needed to see change in my life. And so it just continued to burn out. And it's also really linked to purpose for me. So I think when you're living disconnected from your purpose, you outsource your purpose. So you start to link your purpose with accomplishments, job title, how much you make, the things you have, right? So you work harder to get those things. Perfectionism also plays a role. I think that we carry perfectionism a lot more closely when we're disconnected from purpose, because I think that when we're laser focused on the one thing that we want to share with the world, and that doesn't have to be like the work of your life, but like it could be in volunteering and it could be in, you know, a side project. It's just, When you know the impact that you want to make on your world, everything else sort of falls away. Your rigid expectations for yourself, you're able to bend a little bit more because your worth and your purpose are all coming from inside of you, right? But when you are outsourcing the purpose and the meaning in your life, you're you're like constantly looking for like the next it thing. And so it's easier to fill your plate with things that just don't make sense or things that don't work for you. Maybe they don't work with your energy. Maybe they don't inspire you or light you up. Or you said yes because you thought you were supposed to. But it's just, yeah, it's like just this constant like race for the next it thing that will make you feel successful or fulfilled or connected to meaning. For me, I was in real estate for 10 years and I had maximized the amount of real estate that I could do in a way that felt really in integrity with how I was working. And I had grown a significant business, but I also had, at the time, two young kids at home and a husband who traveled. But there was still just something missing. And so for a little while, I I was like adding in various like nonprofit board positions or, you know, chairing different committees and none of it was really doing it. And so I was like, well, maybe I need to like, you know, switch or add something professionally. So I built an entire like bricks and mortar. I dreamt up an entire bricks and mortar business, a kid's play space. And it was amazing. And I really loved it. But it also just wasn't. And the work of the business was not aligned with the work that fuels my energy. And there, you know, there's always like, other factors, right? I was working two full time jobs. And at that point, I had a third child. And it was a difficult pregnancy, you know, with NICU stay and all of that. So I Yeah, I basically had just like filled my plate to the point that like, there was no room for anything else, nothing. And anything that did like fall off balance, really, again, it like threatened that very, very like fragile balance that I had in place that I could just like, keep all of the balls in the air if nothing, if nobody moved, you know. And like overall, my, you know, my journey into business is layered with the difficult pregnancy, um facing some postpartum depression and anxiety all of this culminating at the same time as a pandemic opening my business expanding my real estate business and at the end of the day like I just I didn't know how to hold my own boundaries I didn't know how to say no I didn't know how to genuinely care for myself and speak up for what I needed or ask for help and so I got sick and I ended up in the middle of this massive flare-up I had been experiencing like smaller bouts of chronic pain for my whole life. We like pegged it to different things and injury when I was young. You know, it's been a long journey, but at this point in time, it was just like this massive flare up. And I was like hoping actually that it was some sort of sickness that had a medicine or a procedure or a something that I could just like, you know, I knew what the answer was. I didn't want to live in that uncertainty. I just I wanted an answer. And there were no answers, right? Like it was just physically I was in perfect health, but my body, I was experiencing head to toe pain and I was having cognitive difficulties. I had fatigue to the point that like I needed at least one nap every day. And by like one nap, I mean like at least an hour, maybe two. And if I didn't get a two hour nap in, then I needed to take two separate naps. Like I couldn't drive distance. instance by myself, I was really struggling and I had no clue how to help myself. I had no clue how to dig my way out of this. And so, yeah, the diagnosis of fibromyalgia was really scary at first because, you know, all of the reading that I did, I knew that people really struggled with this for their whole lives and that there was like no way to manage it definitively. There's no cure. And it was at that time I was was like like that's that's not an option for me like and so I became a true student of of fibromyalgia I became a true student of like healing myself and all of the work that needed to go into it I like it's crazy to say but I'm like grateful for the pain I'm grateful that even though my body had been sending me like pain signals for so long and I had been sending me whispers of like Jess that you're going down the wrong road here like we got to do something different I I ignored all of them. And so the signals got louder and louder and louder until finally I couldn't ignore it. But it really was the wake up call that I needed to go inward again, to reconnect with myself, to understand my energy, to understand my strengths, to understand my why and why I was burning out. And then from there, once I was able to sort of like deconstruct all of that, and get at just the core of who I am and why certain work burns me out, how I can hold better boundaries, what it was, the void that I was trying to fill with all of my yes projects, that's really what helped me then shift everything. It was that process of going inward that then helped me build the tools that I needed to heal, to manage my chronic pain. and to continue to live in balance. And so today, I live my life pain managed. I have a toolkit that I turn to almost daily, but it's just become second nature that I know when I start to feel certain things, I know what tools that I have to keep me living in balance. But it's a really intentional process. And when you get to the point that your nervous system becomes so Like, jacked up that it's like... permanently rewired. I mean, I know it's something I'm working on all the time, so I won't use the word permanently, but I just, I feel really passionately about helping other people avoid that same road and reconnect with themselves before they get to the point that like, it just becomes really, really hard to reconnect because the longer you let the stress course through your body unchecked, the harder it is to reconnect. So yeah, I mean, I think that this is, it's a topic that I talk about often. It's a topic that I'll bring into the podcast often. Healing and overcoming burnout has been a long and interconnected journey for me, and it's one that... you know i'll continue to share um for me it really involves this process of being able to spot the signs of burnout so learning not just like what burnout itself looks like but what are the earliest signs what are those but what are the earliest signs like what are those early warning signs that say like i've got this unprocessed stress coursing through my body um how can i spot it and what can i do to start to release some of that stress and then it also involves self-discovery and understanding my own energy so like it's this is a process of constantly understanding yourself better because we change all the time like we live hundreds of different versions of ourselves in a lifetime or maybe in a month I don't know and so it's just like this constant evaluation of like where's my energy right now where are my emotions right now what am I processing what could I process a little bit more it's getting really in touch with like my natural strengths, the areas where I need more support, like my challenge areas, not as a sick person, but like as a human being who's not supposed to do this alone, right? Like what are the areas if I'm going to outsource something, I know myself well enough to know like exactly what I need to outsource because that's like the work that's From there, once you have this deep understanding of the self and also this ongoing commitment to understanding the self, there's a process of realignment. So realigning work with energy, realigning your purpose, connecting with your purpose, building a toolkit to keep you in that state of balance. And your toolkit might be nervous system regulation tools and meditation. It might be this whole process of release. So releasing emotions, releasing thought patterns, and then creating space to allow inspiration and flow to come back in. And then lastly, it's just, it's like reclamation, like living in authenticity and being vulnerable, not hiding parts of the self, um, finding, you know, finding our voices is a big part of authentic expression and this whole process of release. But, you know, these are all topics that I'll get into as the as the weeks go by. But so today, I really want to make sure that we touch on the early signs of burnout. And I just I wish that I would have not only like known the early signs, but related to them more, I guess. Like if you go online right now, you'll find like the early warning signs of burnout are things like irritability or withdrawal or like fatigue, exhaustion, brain fog. And I think those are things that are really easy to just like bypass. You're don't know like maybe it's just that they're overspoken I'm not sure but I have a list of five things that I think are things that just like show up if we like if you just take like a minute to tune in in the next like weeks months like where is your capacity for this stuff so okay the first one is your mind is constantly racing and like yeah we all have thousands of ideas and we have thousands of things like on our plate we have a to-do list a mile long but But it's this whole idea that your mind is constantly racing, but you never feel focused. So you're never able to really just super focus on one task and do it really well, especially with inspiration behind it. when you rest, your mind is still focused. And I mean, honestly, maybe you're not even like actually ever resting, but if you do sit down to rest, it's not restful because you're just worried about the to-do list that is still running through the back of your mind. Like you take a shower and that's actually one of the biggest like areas that I think I've noticed a difference in myself. I mean, there's a lot of areas when, from being burned out to like being healthy and balanced now, but one tangible area, like if I take a shower Or now I notice I'm like that's where my best ideas and inspiration flow through. But when I'm overdoing it and certainly when I was like living in burnout, it was just like I wanted to like I almost like bring my phone into like the shower with me and just like check off to do list items. Like what can I what can I accomplish while I'm in the shower? You know, like because I'm not going to turn my racing thoughts off anyway. So let's just figure out what can be accomplished. So that defeats the point. Okay, the next one is you're overscheduled and resenting your obligations. So your calendar might be full of commitments. They might be things that you freely scheduled, but now you resent them and you just want to say no. You don't know why you said yes. And actually, that's a great question. Why did you say yes? Because I think can lead you to like some of those areas where we're more prone to taking actions that like perpetuate burnout in our lives. So was it out of obligation? Was it out of like guilt? Is it something you actually really need to do? Is it something you can say no to? Is it something you can cancel? But if you have appointments on your calendar that you are resenting, that is really something to take a closer look at. Number three is a numbness or absence of emotions. And like, so irritability, frustration, anger, those things can still be really like common in burnout because I think we still can lash out. But like, actually, ironically, things like stress, like you might not even be feeling stress. Overall, you might just be feeling like flat, like no peaks and no valleys, just flatness. It's like our emotions, especially in a burnout situation, can be like a dial. You know, you think like you turn them up or down. And I think in a burnout situation, you can totally just like turn them down, turn them off so that you can just like cope and get through your life. Maybe there are situations that pop up and you're like, I really should care about this more. I should care. But deep down somewhere, you know that like you don't actually care. Like maybe you're going through the motions of caring. but you're not actually feeling the emotions associated with caring, that's another early sign of burnout. Another one is that you have difficulty relating to others. So Maybe you have like less patience or warmth or compassion for others. Like this could be coworkers, friends, family, even your kids. You just, you cannot, no matter what you do, you can't make your brain work in that way. And empathy probably feels completely out of reach. You know, you should care, but again, like you can't make yourself care. And that one's tied to emotions, but also just like relatability. Like you're, you have a hard time putting yourself in somebody else's shoes and understanding how their experience is different from yours, validating their experience. You have a hard time even just like understanding maybe why someone in your life did something that they did. And yeah, it's just like it's an inability to like walk in their shoes, feel something for them or with them. yeah, it's just, it's like a neuropathway that's just like completely severed. Or, and you know, if you're in the earliest signs of burnout, it could just be that you feel that waning. You feel like a disconnection to other people. And that's definitely, you know, a sign to look into. The next one is that you, this is the last one, number five, you lose your capacity for depth. So deep conversations feel like too much effort. Like you literally don't have space in your brain to hold anything deeper than surface level conversation. Somebody brings something up that you're not ready to talk about or think about. And you are like, I am not touching that with a 10 foot pole. Usually it's because you are, you're just, you're at capacity. And, you know, as part of this at and connection with others might feel really draining instead of nourishing you might start to like avoid some of these social situations or these people and that's another huge red flag for burnout there's like this analogy about burnout being like driving a car with the gas tank on e it doesn't matter what kind of car it is it doesn't matter what the car looks like how far it has traveled if it is the very best type of car in the world without the proper fuel the car is gone to run out of gas. I think there's this idea that even though we solve burnout at an burnout is an individual failure and burnout is not an individual failure burnout is a product of living in a culture that values productivity output profits over people a society we're saying yes has more value than protecting our boundaries and where we derive our worth from like our job title or our income it's a product of living in society that values like hyper productivity it tells you to hustle that rest is weak You know, this is a world where our identity becomes intermingled with our job title or the things we own. So we're constantly working to climb the ladder, make more money and buy more things. Yeah, it's like. the society where we compare ourselves to others so we're constantly worried about like how we look how much we weigh the clothes we're wearing do we have too many wrinkles and like think about the added burden that we carry like say as parents like um what products are we bringing into our lives every day that are like actively causing cancer like we shouldn't have to think about that we should have like systems in place that we can trust that you know prevent us from bringing all of these toxins into our house we have to worry if our kids are safe when they're going to school are our kids facing bullying are they having mental health problems that we don't know about or are we going to be able to pay the bills like there's so So many other factors that go into it that are outside of like, you know, work and caregiving and emotional labor. And man, it's like, I mean, the Surgeon General, did you know that, I think it was last year, that the Surgeon General actually issued a health advisory around how stressful it is to parent right now? Just because parenting's hard. Like that's how hard parenting is, is that they literally issued a Surgeon General's warning. It's like, yeah, I don't know. It's just the systems are broken. We're living in a world that like in a culture, in a society, in a country that really just like does not care about like us at an individual level. We have to advocate for ourselves. And so I don't know. It's something I sit with a lot, how to help people avoid the same road that I've traveled. And so the coaching programs that I've developed help with just this, like how an aligned business coaching model that helps people, especially women entrepreneurs, any entrepreneur that resonates with this message, but we're not supposed to do this alone. We're not supposed to do this. It's not supposed to feel this hard. And so I help people align their businesses with their energy, do an audit of their energy, figure out what are the systems that we can put in place to help you expand your impact while also reducing your energy expenditure so that you have time to like experience joy and happiness with your kids or do a side project that will allow you to like connect with purpose a little bit more. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I want to do more eventually, like just helping people connect with the parts of themselves that they've lost along the way, create community where people can support each other and help each other and just make this whole like life of building business building family like easier on each other um we're just we're all wearing so many hats and I think we're all so sick of doing it by ourselves we're sick of it feeling so freaking hard all the time I just I don't think this is how we're supposed to be living and I just um it's just yeah it's my mission to just help connect people with themselves with each other and with the systems and processes that they need to really improve their quality of life and do the work that they feel the most connected to doing. So I think like... I know I'm going to expand on this whole idea of burnout as we go, but I just want to say this. If you're exhausted, if you're spinning your wheels, if you're feeling like you're teetering on the edge of burnout, the hard truth is that it's not going to go away until you make the choice to make it go away. It's not going to be solved in your workplace. It doesn't go away when you get a pill. We want to look outside of ourselves. We want to reach for anything that's just going to make it better, but there's no quick fix here. We are the answer. The answer comes when we tune in, when we go inward, when we connect with ourselves more deeply, when we understand the you know, the energy that drives us when we really like connect at the deepest parts of ourselves, we're able to shed what's not working and lean into whatever it is that's really like filling us up the most, giving us the most like purpose and passion and inspiration. But the process really starts by first going inward, first making the commitment to be the change and to Yeah, just to like not pass this on to the next generation, right? To not pass this forward and to just like stop the cycle now so that... you can do all of the things that you've been working so hard to do without the stress and burnout and fatigue and chronic pain and, you know, everything else that comes with it. So, all right, I'll be back with more next week and we'll continue our discussion of burnout soon. If you have questions, definitely reach out. If you have a story to share, I'd love to hear it and I look forward to connecting soon. Bye.

UNKNOWN: 39:00

Bye.