A Personal Journey Through Burnout & Recovery: Unveiling the Deep-Seated Organizational Dysfunctions that Drive Employee Ill-Being
Introduction
Burnout is an increasingly prevalent issue across industries, affecting employees and managers alike. It is not just a result of individual stress management failures but a complex, multi-dimensional phenomenon driven by deeper organizational dysfunctions. While wellness programs and surface-level interventions are commonly employed, they fail to address the root causes embedded within leadership, culture, and structure.
Based on my experience with burnout and recovery, as well as my interdisciplinary background in engineering, naturopathic medical studies, formative psychology, strategic organizational management, and human-centered design - I have recognized at a foundational level, how leadership’s scarcity-driven narratives about value, worth and sufficiency, not only dehumanize individuals but also reinforce their own limiting beliefs about their intrinsic value and capabilities. These scarcity-driven narratives lay the foundation for a cascade of emotional triggers and downward spirals, profoundly affecting individuals at both physiological and psychological levels, ultimately driving them toward exhaustion and burnout.
My intention with this case study is not only to raise awareness about the root causes and profound impacts of burnout, but also to support the findings of the white paper The Hidden Causes of Burnout: How Deep-Seated Organizational Factors Drive Employee Ill-Being. By sharing my personal journey through burnout and recovery, I hope to unveil the systemic issues that many organizations unknowingly cultivate and provide a pathway for creating environments that not only foster employee well-being, but also advance human potential and fulfillment, for human and organizational success..
This is the first case study in a series that will further explore these dynamics, with future case studies focusing on real-world applications and results as I work with individual clients. Subsequent white papers will also delve into the solutions—particularly the innovative leadership and organizational framework that I was inspired to develop as a result of this experience. This innovative and comprehensive framework, not only addresses these deeper dysfunctions in leadership, culture, and structure, but also cultivates environments where employees and organizations thrive together.
Much like a plant depends on the integrity of its roots, employee well-being relies on the integrity of its leadership and the quality of its organizational culture. When these are misaligned, people are left feeling unsupported, disconnected, and trapped in cycles of chronic stress and exhaustion. To preserve confidentiality, specific details of my journey have been omitted.
Context and Background
In a former role, I joined an organization that publicly valued being a catalyst for change. However, beneath its admirable mission lay deeper dysfunctions within its leadership, culture and structure—rooted in scarcity-driven beliefs about employee value and sufficiency.
Leadership unknowingly operated from a place of lack, defining people by external performance metrics rather than honoring their humanity, human potential and lived experiences. As a result, this narrative of scarcity reduced people to their output, feeding into employees' existing internal limiting beliefs of "not being enough." By measuring value through productivity and performance, leadership unknowingly perpetuated a cycle of emotional disengagement, reinforcing the very fears and inadequacies many employees already carried.
Over time, this approach fostered chronic stress and burnout, leading to broader organizational issues such as an emotionally challenged staff, strained stakeholder relationships and stunted growth. Despite the organization’s admirable mission, these internal dysfunctions—rooted in dehumanization, dominant and controlling leadership, and maladaptive behaviors—created a toxic culture that limited the organization’s potential.
Journey to Burnout
My experience began with surface-level symptoms commonly associated with burnout, such as lack of role clarity, lack of support and exclusion from staff. Despite my continuous efforts to collaborate and resolve these challenges, the underlying leadership dysfunction and limiting scarcity narratives persisted, acting as barriers to meaningful change or improvement.
As time went on, these scarcity-driven narratives reinforced my limiting beliefs of “not being enough”. Leadership's constant demands for higher output, without providing adequate support or acknowledgment, mirrored the expectations that had shaped my internal fears and past emotional patterns. These external pressures fed directly into my internal narrative of inadequacy, creating a feedback loop where I continually felt that no matter how hard I worked, it was never enough to meet expectations—both my own and the organization's. Unbeknownst to me at the time, it was the scarcity-driven narrative initiated by leadership and perpetuated through the culture, that felt dismissive and dehumanizing, as if despite my endless efforts, my existence and lived experiences still held no value.
This deepened my feelings of insufficiency and further intensified my chronic stress, which placed me in survival mode, where I unconsciously felt like I had to fight or flee to survive “the bear”—except the “bear” was the “exclusive staff” or “the untrained boss”. The combination of chronic stress and dealing with a challenging staff member, unconsciously triggered a past emotional experience that mirrored the present day problem, leading me to unconsciously apply the behavioral patterns from my past to keep me “safe” or “survive” the current experience. Over time, I became exhausted, physically ill, and burned-out, with the effects rippling across every aspect of my being—mentally, emotionally, physically, and energetically.
My journey to burnout wasn’t just a result of external pressures but also a reflection of deeper systemic issues within the organization’s leadership, culture and structure. These persistent dysfunctions, initially originating from leadership, impacted me profoundly—both physiologically and psychologically—making recovery a lengthy process.
Uncovering the Deeper Root Causes - Using a Plant Analogy to Illustrate Organizational Dysfunction
To understand the underlying causes of burnout, consider the following a plant analogy. Imagine an organization as a living organism, much like a plant, as shown in Figure 1 below. When a plant’s leaves turn brown or wilt, it is not due to a malfunction in the leaves themselves, but rather because the environment meant to nourish them—the roots and soil—is failing. Similarly, when employees experience burnout, it’s not because they’re at fault, but because the organizational environment reflects deeper dysfunctions.
Figure 1: The Plant Analogy for Organizational Dysfunction
Based on my background and experience, I realized that the unconscious scarcity-driven narrative within leadership is the core dysfunction—a deeply ingrained belief that value, worth, and resources are limited. This narrative doesn’t just dehumanize employees, reducing them to productivity outputs, but also gives rise to multiple other dysfunctions. It fuels fear-based decision-making, control, and divisiveness, all of which reinforce employees’ own limiting beliefs of "not being enough”—particularly when leadership's demands for output overshadow any recognition of individual growth or well-being.
In this toxic environment, employees are trapped in a cycle of chronic stress, as their external environment continually validates their internal fears of inadequacy. Like a plant’s health depends on the integrity of its roots and nourishment of its soil, employees’ well-being relies on the integrity of its leadership and structure (roots), and the nourishment of its culture (soil). When these are contaminated by scarcity and fear, they create an overall toxic environment that leads to employee ill-being (withered leaves).
Scarcity doesn’t just exist in isolation—it creates a cascade of dysfunctional behaviors within leadership, culture, and structure. These interconnected dysfunctions ultimately shape the work environment and perpetuate the cycle of burnout.
In my experience of burnout, the limiting narratives of scarcity, fear, and control led to a leadership environment that demanded more output while offering no support to address challenges. Just as a plant starved of nutrients cannot thrive, I was left unsupported, my efforts unacknowledged, and my value reduced to what I could produce. The toxic soil of the organization perpetuated my limiting beliefs of "not being enough," reinforcing the very scarcity mindset that drove leadership’s actions.
Figure 2 below illustrates how the culmination of these root dysfunctions (listed at the bottom in red), originating from a scarcity narrative, culminated in a toxic culture (listed in the middle in gray), which led to the unresolved challenges I repeatedly encountered (listed at the top in black), setting me up for chronic stress and burnout rather than support and growth.
Figure 2: Applying Plant Analogy on Case Study #1: Understanding Depth of Organizational Dysfunction
Here’s how the toxic cultural dynamics that I experienced, were engendered by the scarcity-driven dysfunctions shown above:
Culture of fear, insecurity, and disempowerment: Leadership’s default to dominance, control and maladaptive behaviors, when stressed, led to a lack of psychological safety and engendered a culture of fear, insecurity, and disempowerment, where people refrained from speaking up due to the risk of backlash or shaming. This fear permeated the team, resulting in an emotionally challenging dynamic where I spent an enormous amount of time choosing my language carefully to ensure it didn’t trigger staff’s unresolved tensions, fears and insecurities. Their insecurities required constant vigilance, draining my energy and heightening my stress, setting the stage for eventual burnout.
Hostile and divisive mindset: The leadership's animosity and mistrust toward stakeholders, along with their overprotection of staff, cultivated an "us vs. them" mentality. This type of thinking bred exclusion and animosity within staff and against stakeholders, making it difficult to build collaboration or support. Staff mirrored leadership's attitude, contributing to a fractured team dynamic that left me and other team members feeling isolated, unsupported and excluded. This amplified my feelings of inadequacy, further feeding the burnout cycle.
Avoidance of authentic, tough conversations, lack of transparency and information hoarding: The reluctance to address difficult issues permeated through leadership, staff, and into external relationships. This avoidance was driven by fear of potential repercussions with stakeholders. It normalized exclusion and inauthenticity within the organization, where information was selectively shared and decision-making was often controlled by personal agendas. It also allowed unresolved issues to fester and escalate into larger problems unnecessarily, compromising our trust and ability to build authentic relationships with certain stakeholders. The continuous conflict avoidance and exclusion made it impossible for me to address unresolved issues and build authentic relationship with stakeholders, which fed the cycle of stress, and exhaustion leading to burnout.
Reactive communication and lack of support: Leadership’s chronic stress and associated fight-flight responses led to modeling and normalizing of maladaptive behaviors—such as blame, shaming, and defensiveness. This enabled staff’s negative conduct with no accountability and led to reactive, short-sighted decision-making. Combined with the fear, insecurity, and hostile mindset, leadership remained unsupportive of resolving certain challenges, leaving me to manage these unresolvable issues on my own. The absence of authentic, proactive, solution-oriented dialogue made it nearly impossible for me to address the issues I faced effectively, including the ambiguity of my role.
Tokenistic leadership: Although leadership presented an openness to feedback, at the end of the day it was top-down decision-making based on their own perceptions, needs and personal agendas. This modeled a lack of authenticity and sincerity, reinforcing the behavior of avoiding tough conversations. It deepened cynicism and the feeling of exclusion among staff, as it became clear that feedback would not lead to meaningful change. This made employees, including myself, withdraw from engagement and have low morale, recognizing that our input held little value in the decision-making process.
In summary, these root dysfunctions—driven by scarcity narratives and reinforced through leadership’s actions—created a toxic work environment, where I felt isolated, demoralized and overwhelmed by unresolvable challenges. This ongoing strain ultimately pushed me into a cycle of chronic stress, exhaustion and burnout.
Considering my experience, the scarcity-driven narrative and the resulting root dysfunctions above, engendering the toxic culture, can you see how merely addressing the surface level challenges or symptoms I had - like lack of role clarity and support, and exclusion from staff - fails to resolve the deeper dysfunctional causes of my employee ill-being and burnout?
The Deeper Impacts of the Journey to Burnout
Impact on My Well Being
In my case, the path to ill-being and burnout was deeply transformative in a negative sense. It gradually eroded my sense of self, leaving me in a state of despair, worthlessness, and disempowerment. The unresolved workplace challenges I faced, combined with the lack of support, created a downward spiraling loop that led to chronic stress, pushing me into survival mode - where I was either fighting for my survival or disengaging completely. At some point, I became exhausted from trying to do the “right” thing continuously, yet never have it be “enough” to satisfy program management staff or leadership.
Leadership's scarcity-driven demands reinforced this cycle of stress. This work environment dehumanized me by reducing my value to what I could produce—an output that was constantly deemed insufficient. I was no longer seen as a whole person with emotional, mental, and personal needs; instead, I was measured purely by external metrics. The lack of acknowledgment, combined with constant demands for more output, made me feel invisible, as though my value and experience were irrelevant. I became just a number in a system built on scarcity, which only further validated my own limiting beliefs of "not being enough.”
Unconsciously, I found myself reliving past emotional patterns from my childhood, where I had to face significant challenges without any support or guidance. Leadership's scarcity-driven demands and lack of acknowledgment mirrored these early experiences, causing me to default to my internal narrative of "not being enough" in an attempt to resolve present day challenges. As a result, every unmet expectation and unresolved challenge in my work environment seemed to confirm my deepest fears. My external world reinforced the very narrative I carried internally, trapping me in a cycle where my work environment was not only stressful but also validating my inadequacies, leading to emotional disengagement, exhaustion, and ultimately, burnout..
As these challenges remained unresolved, my stress compounded, and I became physically ill, with flu-like symptoms that persisted and from which I couldn’t seem to recover. I felt both physically and emotionally drained, and I started to detach myself from my work and my colleagues. This detachment was not just a coping mechanism; it was the outcome of a system that continually dehumanized me and failed to recognize my inherent worth.
Ultimately, I was left with a deep sense of failure, a loss of my self-worth and purpose—hallmarks of burnout:
Emotional exhaustion: I experienced fatigue and the inability to emotionally engage with my work or colleagues.
Depersonalization: I detached from both my work and people, leading to a deep disconnection from everything I had once cared about.
Inefficacy: I felt a profound sense of failure and loss of purpose, further intensifying my burnout.
Ultimately, this journey for me became a self-fulfilling prophecy of “not being enough”, echoing emotional patterns from my past. The work environment not only reflected my internal fears but also reinforced them, creating a feedback loop that cemented my burnout.
Drawing from my background and experience, I’ve developed Figure 3 to illustrate how my initial employee challenges led to chronic stress and eventually burnout:
1️⃣ Outer loop - Individual State : Continuous unaddressed challenges rooted in deeper dysfunctional factors, along with the lack of support in resolving them, lead to increasing stress. This cycle continues until it culminates in chronic stress, as shown in the middle loop.
2️⃣ Middle loop - Collective State : Chronic stress activates the fight-flight response and may reactivate past emotional memories and patterns. These patterns influence responses to current work stressors, normalizing behavior and feeding into the negative workplace culture. This cycle repeats until it leads to emotional exhaustion, in the inner loop.
3️⃣ Inner loop - Burnout State : Emotional exhaustion eventually leads to detachment and disengagement. Over time, individuals may fulfill childhood-based self-fulfilling prophecies such as “not being enough,” resulting in inefficacy, unworthiness, and disempowerment.
In summary, this process not only left me struggling with diminished engagement and productivity but also reinforced the dysfunctional environment that perpetuated my burnout. The deeper organizational dysfunctions drove both my personal ill-being and the collective cultural breakdown, leaving an environment where I and others were no longer seen or valued as whole human beings.
Figure 3: The Employee Experience - How Unaddressed Challenges Lead to Chronic Stress & Burnout
Impact on the Organizational Culture
Unaddressed dysfunction doesn’t just impact individuals—it takes a significant toll on organizations. I wasn’t the only one experiencing chronic stress and burnout in this environment. I recall a key moment when I walked into the office and saw that most people looked drawn out, tired, and uninterested in conversations, much less collaboration. Somehow, this lack of engagement had become the new norm, and I wondered, "How did we get here?” and "How did I get here?".
In that moment, I realized that I had normalized toxic behaviors and had become part of a culture that I never consciously chose. This culture—rooted in fear, insecurity, and scarcity—was not only driving my burnout but also contributing to the ill-being of my colleagues. Leadership's scarcity-driven narrative and failure to provide psychological safety dehumanized employees, reducing us to mere outputs rather than recognizing our intrinsic value as human beings. This narrative shaped the culture we operated within and allowed toxic behaviors like withholding, exclusion, and manipulation to thrive unchecked.
When a critical mass of employees operates from a place of chronic stress or survival mode, the organization becomes increasingly toxic and dysfunctional. Leaders often fail to recognize that behaviors such as disengagement, conflict avoidance, and aggression are signs of deeper stress responses—rooted in the organization's failure to provide psychological safety and adequate support. This is especially true if the leaders themselves are chronically stressed and operating from their own limiting beliefs. As a result, a collective emotional survival mode—characterized by constant stress triggers and maladaptive behaviors—takes hold, feeding into a culture of dysfunction, fear, mistrust, and disengagement.
In my case, this pattern manifested as a larger dysfunctional culture characterized by the fear, disempowerment, scarcity, and cynicism. Although I didn’t realize this at the time, this was the culture that I initially encountered when I started working there. I remembered trying to resolve challenges, only to face continuous excuses and barriers - almost like the culture itself resisted any attempt at positive change or improvement.
Looking back, I realized that I had been encountering these dynamics throughout my time there, even if I hadn’t fully recognized them at first. I remembered trying to resolve challenges, only to be met with continuous excuses, resistance, and barriers—almost as though the culture itself resisted any attempt at positive change or improvement. The scarcity-driven leadership narrative that dehumanized employees contributed to a deep-seated resistance to growth and change.
This resistance was embedded in the organization and it felt like a heavy cloak that I couldn’t take off—becoming a burden I had to carry. This burden weighed me down, drained my energy, and impaired my ability to contribute meaningfully. Over time, this inertia seem to diminish well-being and performance across the organization, leading to increased sickness, turnover, absenteeism, low morale, and lost productivity. Research shows that these patterns are costly, with burnout and toxic culture costing organizations billions annually (SHRM, 2019).
Since this experience, I have also observed similar cultural dynamics in other organizations, reinforcing my understanding that the culture of scarcity and resistance I experienced is not unique. Drawing on my experience and background, I’ve created two figures below that visually represent the cultural fabric I encountered during my journey to burnout.
Figure 4 below illustrates the downward spiral of a Culture of Resistance—highlighting how fear and scarcity lead to disempowerment and cynicism, creating an environment that stifles change, growth and innovation.
Figure 4: Culture of Resistance in Dysfunctional Organization Resulting from Fear & Scarcity Mindset
Figure 5 below illustrates the upward spiral of a Culture of Collaboration—demonstrating how psychological safety and an abundance narrative foster autonomy, belonging and engagement, leading to a thriving organization where people and business flourish together.
Comparing these two cultures - which environment would you rather create in your organization?
Figure 5: Culture of Collaboration in Thriving Organization Driven by Psychological Safety & an Abundance Mindset
Breaking the Cycle: My Path to Recovery
Once I recognized that my physical, emotional and psychological ill-being was deeply rooted in the dysfunctional organizational leadership, culture and structure of the organization, I made the decision to quit. At the time, I didn’t fully realize that I was suffering from burnout. I assumed my symptoms were tied to a persistent flu and the high stress levels at work. I had witnessed burnout in others at the organization and thought I knew what it looked like, but I didn’t recognize that burnout manifests differently for everyone.
Quitting marked the beginning of a transformative journey—one that would inspire me to develop an innovative leadership and organizational framework to address burnout. By reclaiming my sense of self, I realized how critical it is for leaders to evolve their unconscious narratives and limitations in order to cultivate thriving organizational environments.
For me, burnout recovery was a two-step process:
Reclaiming myself physiologically - The first step was physically removing myself from the source of stress—the toxic environment that had been weighing on me. Quitting gave me the space I needed to heal and release the physiological toll the chronic stress had taken, especially disengaging from the fight-flight response and moving from survival mode to a state of equanimity.
Reclaiming myself psychologically – The second, deeper step was reclaiming the empowered, joyful version of myself. This meant shedding the cultural values, beliefs, and patterns I had unconsciously adopted. I also had to let go of the scarcity-driven narrative instilled by leadership, which had reinforced my internal belief of "not being enough."
It’s important to note that when we "join" or “belong to” a culture, we unconsciously adopt its values, narratives, and fears—even if they are unhealthy. We do this to survive the environment.
This second step was a longer, deeper process. Over six months, I worked diligently to dismantle the internalized beliefs and behaviors from that environment and reclaim my wholeness, joy, and empowerment.
Key Takeaways and Lessons Learned
This journey—from burnout to recovery—provided invaluable lessons that became the foundation for the leadership and organizational framework I now teach. By evolving leadership and adopting human-centered approaches, organizations can create environments that nurture people and advance their potential and purpose, ensuring everyone thrives together.
Here are my key takeaways from this experience:
All humans have limiting beliefs – Everyone carries an unconscious narrative about themselves—often rooted in scarcity—that influences their actions and decisions.
Leadership’s limiting narratives dehumanize employees – When leaders operate from unchecked limiting beliefs, they project their fears of "not being enough" or "not having enough" onto employees. This creates a culture of scarcity, fear, and stress, reinforcing these same beliefs in others.
Organizational dysfunction reflects human limitations – Leadership, culture, and structures are shaped by these limiting narratives, creating environments that perpetuate stress, fear, and disengagement.
Employee well-being suffers in dysfunctional environments – Burnout and chronic stress arise when leaders fail to address the deeper dysfunctions in leadership, culture, and structure.
Surface-level solutions won’t resolve burnout – Superficial wellness programs won’t address the root causes of burnout. Real change requires tackling the underlying dysfunctions in leadership and organizational narratives.
Evolving leadership and embracing abundance can mitigate burnout – Evolved leaders embrace their imperfections and lead with humble confidence. This abundance mindset creates cultures rooted in possibility, collaboration, and growth, recognizing people as unique, valuable contributors.
A human-centered approach is essential – The leadership and organizational framework I’ve developed helps leaders address these dysfunctions by evolving and adopting an abundance narrative. This creates thriving environments that support human potential.
By embracing this challenge, organizations can reduce burnout, enhance well-being, and create environments that foster growth, innovation, and long-term success. Organizations that take on this challenge have the opportunity to:
Reduce Burnout and Increase Well-Being: Evolved leadership reduces stress by shifting the core narrative and addressing deep-seated organizational dysfunctions, leading to healthier, more sustainable work environments that prioritize well-being.
Engender Stronger Organizational Trust and Psychological Safety: By leading with selflessness and humble confidence, leaders build trust, creating a culture where people feel safe to share ideas, take risks, and engage authentically.
Improve Collaboration and Innovation: The focus on possibility, collaboration, and openness encourages teams to work together creatively, leading to innovative solutions and continuous improvement.
Empower People at Every Level: By empowering leaders and employees alike, the framework enables individuals to take ownership of their work, contributing to a sense of purpose and fulfillment.
Develop a Resilient and Adaptable Workforce: Leaders who embrace their humanity and promote an abundance narrative help employees develop resilience, allowing the organization to adapt more effectively to challenges and changes.
Increase Employee Engagement and Retention: By fostering an abundance mindset, organizations create an environment where employees feel valued, empowered, and motivated to contribute, reducing turnover and increasing loyalty.
Create Sustainable Growth and Long-Term Success: An abundance-driven culture fosters long-term thinking, ensuring that growth is sustainable and aligned with the organization's mission, values, and people-centric approach.
To take the first step toward this transformation and really mitigate burnout, I invite you to consider my leadership and organizational framework. This program provides leaders with the tools to break free from limiting narratives, beliefs, and patterns, and co-create environments where employees and organizations thrive together. To learn more about how this framework can be applied to your organization and its potential to transform leadership, culture, and structure - please connect with me for updates on my upcoming white paper, which will delve deeper into these innovative solutions.
Conclusion
This case study demonstrates how a scarcity-driven narrative and deep-seated dysfunctions ingrained in leadership, culture, and structure, are the root causes of burnout and ill-being. My personal journey of burnout and recovery highlights the profound impacts these dysfunctions can have and underscores the need for deeper solutions. To truly mitigate burnout, organizations must go beyond surface-level interventions and adopt a human-centered approach to address these deeper dysfunctions.
While this case study supports the findings outlined in my white paper The Hidden Causes of Burnout: How Deep-Seated Organizational Factors Drive Employee Ill-Being, it also serves as a precursor to future work. In my next white paper, I will present a comprehensive framework for addressing these dysfunctions, offering innovative solutions that can evolve leadership and transform organizations.
By evolving leadership and addressing internal limitations, organizations can break the cycle of burnout and unlock a future filled with growth, collaboration, and fulfillment. When leadership consciously shifts from a scarcity-driven narrative to one of abundance, they not only transform their own narrative but also create an environment where employees can thrive. This shift allows organizations to operate from a place of strength, recognizing the inherent value and potential of their people, which, in turn, drives sustainable growth and success for all.
