The Burnout Reset

Experts say employees can't eliminate burnout on their own. I set out to prove them wrong

- By Jamie Ducharme. Photographs by Benjamin Rasmussen

I have been in dance therapy for all of 90 seconds when I embarrass myself. The group is doing a follow-the-leader exercise, with one person picking a dance move that everyone else must mimic. When my name is called, I panic and launch into an extremely uncool move that could be generously described as disco-inspired, my cheeks flaming as a group of strangers mirror it back at me.

I'd traveled to the University of Colorado's School of Medicine to take this humiliating stab at vulnerability in the name of science (and my own sanity). The Colorado Resiliency Arts Lab (CORAL), an ongoing research project at the school, aims to help people who are burned out from their jobs build resilience and improve their mental well-being. For three months, participants meet weekly for 90-minute sessions that weave together therapy, community, and art to provide an outlet for the stressors of working in health care.

But this week, the group includes one participant who doesn't work in health care: me, a health journalist with a personal interest in whether CORAL's program really works.

After writing about the pandemic for three years, I had started seeing in myself some of the warning signs of burnout, as compiled by Christina Maslach, who has researched burnout for four decades: emotional and mental exhaustion, feeling negative or cynical about work, and believing your work doesn't matter or your efforts aren't enough. Tick, tick, and tick. Toward the end of 2022, I experienced significant writer's block for the first time. The quiet quitting trend-doing the bare minimum at work-spoke to me more than it should have. And as the world forgot about COVID-19, I sometimes wondered if there was any point in continuing to cover it.