I'm awake at 3 a.m. again, my mind racing about a 26-country re-org. I was the remote HR lead. The project was behind when I inherited it, the plan kept changing, the deadline remained. Most days I worked 18 hours, because the work demanded it and I'd been programmed to "never let them see me sweat," even when the goals were unrealistic. Working from home, it was easy to never stop.

I was wired, always at my desk, gained a bunch of weight, and my shoulders held deep knots. I chipped a tooth grinding my teeth in my sleep. I got short with my family and friends. My memory slipped, and my critical thinking ran on fumes.

Doctors were cataloging these signals as far back as 1869, when George Beard named "neurasthenia," or nervous exhaustion. He blamed the telegraph. I had Microsoft Teams.

True to my programming, I doubled down and pushed through. Months later, I had a stroke. My body upped the ante when I stopped listening.

In the 2025 Women in the Workplace report from McKinsey and Lean In, around 60% of senior-level women and 50% of senior-level men said they'd frequently felt burned out. By comparison, 47% of U.S. adults have high blood pressure, 42% have obesity, and 23% have arthritis.

Three things drive it:

Herbert Freudenberger's 1974 paper and later research list the early indicators:

Some signals show up long before a diagnosis. Swedish researchers found that people who weren't getting enough sleep were more likely to be diagnosed with burnout two years later. When these signals go unheard, the cost climbs: a study of 8,838 employees linked burnout to a 79% higher risk of heart disease.

Your body is your internal guidance system, and its signals are consistent. When researchers asked more than 700 people to map where they feel emotions, the maps matched. Anger, fear and shame showed up in the same places on the body across cultures.

Your mind is easier to fool. It can rationalize and pick only the evidence that proves its point.

Your body will tell you first. Mine had to shout. Listen before yours does.

Sources: Lean In and McKinsey, Women in the Workplace (2025). CDC. Beard, Neurasthenia (1869). Freudenberger, Staff Burn-Out (1974). Maslach and Leiter, six areas of worklife. Söderström et al., Journal of Occupational Health Psychology (2012). Toker et al., Psychosomatic Medicine (2012). Nummenmaa et al., Bodily Maps of Emotions, PNAS (2014). Dalton-Smith, Sacred Rest (2017).