Burnout is not a personal failure — it’s the predictable result of a system that demands far more energy than the human nervous system was designed to give. In practice, this means you work under constant pressure, emotional fragmentation, unclear expectations, and ever-rising demands, and when your body finally collapses, you don’t question the structure — you attack yourself. You tell yourself you’re weak, disorganized, undisciplined, or “not resilient enough,” because nobody ever taught you that environments can break people just as effectively as trauma does. Men respond by doubling down and pushing harder; women respond by blaming themselves and trying to “do better,” but both responses feed the same machine. The blade cuts deepest when you see that burnout didn’t prove anything about your character — it proved everything about the world you were forced to survive in.