[eldude]

Burnout is your body trying to save itself because your conscious brain is killing it.

The solution is not to rest and then resume consuming toxins but to eliminate the toxicity.

In order to do that, you must identify what is killing you.

[exabyte]

could you expand a bit more on this? I'm a bit confused. First you're saying the conscious brain is killing your body and burnout is the body's attempt at trying to save itself. Then you seem to imply that it's an external toxin being consumed and you have to consciously identify it and stop consuming it?

[jerojero]

Stress can have many causes, but at the root of it, stress is mediated by the brain. The brain tells the body to be on high alert, it does this by mediating hormonal responses.

Stress is good in certain situations: if you are being chased by a lion your body doesn't need to worry about hunger, your blood needs to go into your muscles, etc. These are typical signs of the stress response: loss of appetite, libido, tense muscles, loss of sleep. There are a group of molecules that are extremely important in putting your body in stress mode, these are cortisols.

Your brain is capable of putting your body in stress mode at any point, in fact, if you measure cortisol levels on people who are struggling with depression in most cases you see very elevated levels of this hormone. It's literally your brain telling your body they are in danger.

Now, if you are working so much you become stressed then your body will suffer and eventually your body will not be capable of dealing with being on "high alert" for so long that it will quite literally shut down. That is burn out, if your work is making you stressed then your work is becoming poison. If you stop drinking poison then your mind will go back to a normal functioning state and the stress will go down.

[doubled112]

I interpreted toxin and toxicity as a metaphor for whatever you were doing that was burning you out.