They Call It Burnout—We Call It a Broken World

Why Exhaustion Isn’t a Personal Failure, but the Cost of Survival

Burnout isn’t a personal failing—it’s the inevitable result of a system that extracts until we collapse. From shell shock to survival mode, this is a call for solidarity in a world that refuses to change.

Introduction

Burnout is always framed as a personal issue—as if it is the result of failing to manage stress properly, of not being resilient enough, of lacking the ability to adapt. Those who burn out are told it is their fault, that they should have paced themselves better, sought balance, learned coping strategies, taken breaks. The burden is placed squarely on the individual, reinforcing the idea that burnout is a personal shortcoming, rather than what it truly is: the inevitable consequence of being trapped in an inhuman, unrelenting system.

Much like shell shock was once dismissed as a failure of nerve—a coward’s affliction rather than a natural response to prolonged trauma—burnout is treated as something self-inflicted. It is never framed as a rational reaction to unsustainable conditions, but instead as an individual weakness. If a soldier in the trenches trembled, froze, or lost his words, he was seen as lacking discipline, failing in duty. If an autistic person reaches the limits of forced adaptation—struggling with executive function, losing the ability to mask, unable to push forward at the required pace—they are met with the same accusations in modern form: not trying hard enough, not managing themselves well, not being resilient. The expectation is the same—push through, return to the front, function at full capacity, no matter the damage sustained.

This is not simply about overwork. It is not about the usual ebb and flow of stress, nor about temporary exhaustion that can be fixed with rest. This is about a world that demands everything from us, extracts all it can, and then punishes us when we collapse under that weight. Burnout is not a personal crisis—it is a systemic failure, one that will continue to be framed as an individual issue because the alternative—acknowledging that the system itself is brutal and unsustainable—would require those in power to take responsibility. Instead, the blame remains with those who fall. It has always been easier to call someone weak than to admit they were placed in an impossible position.

Shell Shock, Burnout, and the Shifting Language of Blame

During the Great War, soldiers returned from the trenches with tremors, paralysis, mutism, and exhaustion—what was then called shell shock. Their bodies and minds, battered by the unrelenting horrors of industrial warfare, could no longer function as expected. Yet rather than recognising these symptoms as reasonable reactions to sustained trauma, the system dismissed them as weakness. Men who had spent months, even years, under bombardment, living in filth, breathing in death, were called cowards, failures, malingerers. Their suffering was framed not as a consequence of the brutal conditions they had endured, but as a defect in their character. They were subjected to ridicule, punishment, even execution—because to admit that war itself was breaking them would have meant questioning the entire machinery that kept it going.

Over time, the name changed. Shell shock became battle fatigue, which later became PTSD. With each shift, the reality of systemic trauma was sanitised, made more clinical, more distant from the conditions that produced it. The term shell shock held raw truth—it acknowledged that something had been done to these people, that they had been broken by forces beyond their control. Battle fatigue softened that reality, suggesting tiredness rather than trauma. PTSD removed all traces of context, turning the consequences of war into a psychiatric disorder, a personal affliction, a matter for the medical establishment rather than the system that created it.

The same pattern plays out with burnout. Just as soldiers were expected to return to the front despite their shattered nerves, autistic and disabled people are expected to keep functioning, no matter the cost. Collapse is not seen as a rational response to inhumane conditions—it is framed as a personal failing, a lack of resilience, an inability to cope. Those who burn out are told they should have paced themselves better, learned to manage stress, adopted better strategies. The unspoken message is always the same: it is not the system that is broken—it is you.

But if a system demands constant extraction, constant adaptation, constant survival-mode, is burnout really a failing? Or is it the only natural response to an environment that refuses to make space for recovery? The reality is simple: burnout is not an individual crisis, but a systemic inevitability. Yet just like the soldiers who trembled in the trenches, those who cannot keep up are shamed, discarded, or pushed until they break. Because to admit otherwise—to acknowledge that the conditions themselves are inhumane—would require change. And change is not something that those in power, those who benefit from this endless extraction, are willing to consider.

The Modern Trench Warfare: Capitalism, Burnout, and the Firehosing of Survival

The constant barrage of capitalism mirrors the relentless bombardment of the trenches—a system that takes and takes, expecting people to march forward even as they break. There is no respite, no relief. The demand is always for more: more labour, more compliance, more resilience in the face of worsening conditions. Those who falter are left behind, deemed unworthy, unproductive, unfit for survival in a world that sees human value as nothing more than an economic calculation. Like the soldiers sent back over the top despite shattered nerves, the burned-out, the exhausted, the disabled, the marginalised are expected to pick themselves up, patch their wounds, and keep going.

Today’s warfare is not fought with artillery, but its devastation is just as real. Instead of bullets, there is economic precarity—wages that never keep up, the constant fear of losing employment, and with it, the healthcare and housing necessary to survive. The cost of existence is relentlessly driven higher, while safety nets are deliberately unravelled. For many, particularly those at the intersections of oppression—disabled, queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, people of colour, immigrants, the working class—this precarity is not new. It is a lifelong battle, where the margin for error is nonexistent, and where every setback threatens to send them plunging into poverty, homelessness, or death.

Then there is the firehosing of political violence, an unceasing psychological assault designed to exhaust, destabilise, and overwhelm. The reactionary forces of white supremacy, fascism, and corporate greed do not merely seek power—they seek to create an environment where resistance feels impossible, where burnout is a weapon, where the sheer volume of injustice is enough to paralyse those fighting against it. For the marginalised, the attacks are not just rhetorical, not just theoretical. They manifest in policy, in policing, in healthcare disparities, in school boards and courtrooms and hospitals that strip away dignity, rights, and even the ability to exist safely. The battlefield is everywhere, and the cost of survival is exhaustion without end.

And then, layered on top of all of this, is the demand to mask, to assimilate, to prove value under neurotypical and capitalist standards. Autistic people are expected to suppress their natural ways of thinking, processing, and communicating—to force themselves into unnatural shapes for the comfort of those around them. Disabled people are told that they must strive for independence at all costs, that needing help is failure, that their worth is conditional on productivity. Black and Indigenous people, immigrants, and people of colour are expected to code-switch, to shrink themselves, to navigate white supremacy delicately so as not to provoke violence or exclusion. Women and femmes are expected to endure, to care for others before themselves, to carry the emotional and physical burdens of an ungrateful society.

These pressures do not exist in isolation. They compound, intersect, and multiply, grinding people down at every turn. To be autistic and trans, to be Black and disabled, to be a migrant and poor—each layer adds another set of expectations, another battlefield to navigate, another layer of exhaustion that those at the top will never have to consider.

And yet, burnout is still framed as an individual failure. The system demands constant extraction, constant adaptation, constant survival-mode, and when people collapse under that weight, it is not the system that is blamed—it is the individual. But this is not a temporary crisis. It is not a personal problem to solve. Burnout is not a failure of the worker. Burnout is an expected outcome of an impossible system. The trenches are still here, the bombardment never ceases, and the only thing that changes is who is left standing at the end of it all.

The Piper’s March: A Reflection on Survival

There is no relief from this march. No moment of stillness, no true rest. The expectation is always to continue—to keep producing, keep complying, keep enduring, no matter the cost. Those who cannot keep up are discarded, and those who remain are left with no choice but to push forward, even as they fray at the edges.

It is not just exhaustion; it is extraction. The body, the mind, the will—drained for the benefit of a system that never gives back, never pauses, never acknowledges the damage it inflicts. For autistic and disabled people, burnout is not an event but a condition of survival, a state of being. It is the natural consequence of being forced to navigate a world that refuses to accommodate us, that demands our conformity, that sees our suffering as irrelevant unless it disrupts productivity.

But the truth is there, waiting in the margins, in the quiet spaces between exhaustion and erasure. If burnout is so universal among autistic and disabled people, shouldn’t we be asking why? Shouldn’t we be questioning why this system, this world, is designed in such a way that our destruction is inevitable?

And so, we march. Not because we believe in the cause, not because we have the strength, but because there is no other option. The piper in the trenches played not for joy, not for belief, but because the march demanded it. And now, the march is different—but the exhaustion, the lack of choice, the expectation to continue despite depletion remains.

This is not weakness. This is the cost of survival in a world that refuses to change.

Not a Failing

Is it weakness, this silence?
This exhaustion that settles in my bones,
this heaviness that turns thought to fog,
this wordlessness that leaves me staring at a world
that never makes space for breath?

They tell me I should push through,
that I should adapt,
that I should regulate,
that I should manage myself better—
as if I am a machine
with faulty wiring
instead of a body that has been running
too long without rest.

But what if this isn’t failure?
What if this is the body doing what it was meant to do—
shutting down in the face of too much, too fast, too cruel?
What if the real failure
is not in me,
but in the world that takes and takes,
then wonders why I have nothing left to give?

A tree that does not bloom in poisoned soil
is not broken.
A flame that gutters after burning too long
is not weak.
A voice that falls silent
after screaming for years
is not a failure.

I am not failing.
I am responding.
I am surviving.
I am still here.

And if the system calls that weakness,
then let it.
I will not let a world that refuses to make space for me
tell me who I am.

Final thoughts …

A system that forces people to burn out is a broken system. Yet, rather than question why this happens, society asks why the individual could not endure. The contradiction is clear—we are told to push through, to keep going no matter the cost, yet when we collapse, we are blamed for not being stronger. The world demands resilience but refuses to build a world worth surviving in.

Autistic burnout, like shell shock, is a rational response to an irrational world—one that extracts everything it can and punishes those who falter. And yet, when we burn out (not if we burn out), we are told to seek help—help that too often comes in the form of charity, a system that mirrors the very structures that harmed us in the first place. Charity is top-down, selective, conditional—it flows at the discretion of those with power, dispensed to those deemed deserving, reinforcing the same hierarchies that create the need for it. The contradiction is built into its core: charity exists because the world refuses to create justice.

Solidarity, however, moves differently. It is not given from above but extended person to person, across the horizontal plane of shared struggle. Solidarity does not ask whether someone is deserving; it does not dictate terms or require gratitude. It simply insists: No one should have to suffer alone. No one should have to prove their worth to survive. Solidarity is not an institution—it is a force, a commitment to acknowledging the suffering of others and refusing to allow the system to isolate and discard them.

We are still here—despite it all, despite the exhaustion. That is not failure. That is proof of resistance. We are not resilient because we were given the tools to survive. We are resilient because we were left no other option. The world will continue to blame the individual, because to acknowledge the truth—that the system itself is unlivable—would demand that those in power relinquish control.

But we can refuse to accept that framing. We can refuse to believe that burnout is a personal failure. The question was never “Why are you burned out?” The question should be, “Why does the world demand this of you?” The answer to that question, and the path forward, will never be found in the hands of those who created this system. It will be found in each other, in solidarity, in the quiet but relentless insistence that none of us should have to march alone.