The Burnout Puzzle (2): How Managers Can Help Us Escape The Shame Trap at Work
Burnout is not just overwork — it’s shame, social comparison, and brains forced to operate against their design. This post focuses on how identity, cognitive wiring, and culture collide at work — and what we can do to turn friction into energy.
Reports of occupational stress resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed are everywhere. Managers recognize it in missed deadlines, quiet quitting, and rising absences.
But beneath the exhaustion, cynicism, and stress lies a less visible culprit: rising shame and diminished self-worth, in part eroded by our technological dependence.
Our previous piece in our Burnout Puzzle series — on the role of expectations, boundaries, and ego — focused on the relentless drive to overperform, the fear of falling short, and the inability to set limits. In this second installment of The Burnout Puzzle, we delve into how shame directly threatens our sense of self.
High achievers often equate overwork with dedication, mistaking exhaustion for excellence. This mindset turns over-functioning into an expectation, creating a cycle where success demands ever more effort, yet individual fulfillment and genuine contribution remain elusive.
Over time, burnout erodes energy, perspective, and self-worth, leaving us depleted and disconnected from our work and our selves.
True resilience is not about pushing through and endurance but about knowing when and how to recalibrate.
Preventing burnout requires shifting from reactive survival mode to proactive energy management.
Sustainable performance comes from recognizing limits, adjusting expectations, and valuing effectiveness over relentless output. Organizations must stop rewarding burnout as commitment, and individuals must learn to detach self-worth from constant achievement.
The “gerbil on the wheel” may expend enormous amounts of energy — and go absolutely nowhere. And if our lives have become “exhaustion performance art” — and not actual creative production, it begs the question of what exactly we are doing it all for? Has exhaustion, or burnout, somehow become a goal in and of itself?
Letting go of the need to prove oneself is not failure — it is freedom.
Shame Talks to Us: Ego, Identity, and the Workplace
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt
This transformation requires an understanding of shame. Shame occurs in all of us and, like other emotions, can be a source of important data and feedback for self-correction, self-reflection, and self-connection. Biologically it is innate, but as an emotion, it becomes a story to each of us as unique as our fingerprints. In parallel, Nathanson (1992) highlights the experience of pride as a counterpoint to shame.
Shame, as part of our biology, is ultimately benign as it serves to interrupt our positive feelings before they go too far. As we grow and develop, we learn rules to manage the moments when the positive feelings are interrupted. This is the story of shame and pride we all write as children.
As adults, everyone has their own rules — we know the range: from the shameless person (who tunes out the experience of shame and is always proud) to those who magnify shame to the point of paralysis, lacking any confidence or ability to rally when shamed.
Shame is the disconnect between what we are being told and who we know ourselves to be. It is accepting that difference, which allows our self-esteem to adjust and stay reality based. When we learn to think about the experience of shame as a threat to our self-worth defensive reactions are triggered to preserve our sense of identity.
If shame is consistently accepted as evidence that we are forever inadequate, then it becomes too powerful and our relationship to it needs to be adjusted. It can, then, even if just for a moment, override our sense of self-worth. When shame is experienced as diminishing our self-worth, we call into question our very selves.
Ideally, all workplaces would maintain or expand our self-worth, driving their business and increasing impact. These workplaces would be sensitive to excessive shame and the resultant impact on the self-esteem of its employees and business partners. The environment would be one of support and growth that is mirrored in the work itself. But truly supportive workplaces with trained middle mangers are literally and figuratively exceptional.
Stagefright on the Stage of Work
When work becomes “exhaustion performance art,” we are not just employees completing tasks—we are actors on a stage, following an incomplete, shifting, and often unstated script. In playing our role, we become deeply vulnerable to external critique and internal shame. Did we work hard enough? Did we say the right thing? Are the “producers” (our employers) and the “director” (the CEO or our manager) satisfied with our performance?
The parallels between the stage and the workplace are not accidental. If everyone is always acting to meet arbitrary rule sets, who are they, really? Do we seek authenticity or acceptance? And if we choose acceptance over our authentic selves — and sell those authentic selves short, producing shame — what is actually lost? The answer: much is lost.
Shame and the fear of failure or not living up to expectations are prevalent in the workplace.
- The junior employee stops speaking up after their first idea is dismissed.
- The high performer overworks because they believe their worth depends on perfection.
- The manager lashes out at feedback because they feel exposed and incompetent.
Burnout is especially prevalent in areas such as nonprofits, education, and healthcare workers, where individuals often sacrifice a great deal on the altar of work in the name of the cause — work that is typically both under-compensated and underappreciated. Passion, however, can easily turn to pathos when workplaces cannot give up what we could not get from ourselves or our loved ones.
The challenge of constantly selling ourselves, operating without support, and dealing with serial rejection, as happens with entrepreneurs and freelancers, can also take a substantial toll on mental health.
When employees feel constant pressure to prove their worth, avoid mistakes, or meet impossible standards, they are not just tired — they can easily become ashamed of falling short. And shame, left unchecked, can turn into withdrawal, perfectionism, self-doubt, or defensiveness.
Even divas doubt themselves
Many leaders struggle with the shame from incomplete knowledge and fear that others will discover they are not as competent as they seem. This often leads to imposter syndrome, perfectionism, or an avoidance of learning, which can create stagnation and blind spots in decision-making.
Other leaders experience the shame of failing publicly, where mistakes can become not just personal failures but highly visible organizational failures. This results in leaders who are more proactively risk-averse and defensive in day-to-day interactions.
Leaders may also start to feel inadequate, pining for the “good old days” when older management techniques still worked. They are lost in transition. And their work, and usually quite effective leadership, often ends up lost in translation.
Instead of learning from failure, leaders may resist transparency or reject bold ideas to protect their reputation, which ultimately stifles innovation and erodes trust organization-wide. Whether self-protection and self-preservation manifest as overcompensation, avoidance, or micromanagement, shame can silently undermine leadership effectiveness, reinforcing stress and burnout at the very top.
And everyone in a 24/7 performance review
Regardless of level, chances are that we are connected to social media, our personal 24/7 performance review, which amplifies self-comparisons and fear of public failure. While often framed as a focus issue, this behavior can also reflect emotional regulation patterns — especially in environments where shame, boredom, or exclusion are quietly at play.
Americans spend an average of 4 hours and 30 minutes per day on their phones, a 52% increase from 2022. Recent studies show that the average person checks their phone 58 times a day, with over half of those checks happening during work hours. Most of us keep our phones within reach at work and spend two or more hours per workday distracted by our devices. Social media apps are the most commonly checked apps, followed by video and music streaming.
In other words, employees are no longer just comparing themselves to their colleagues. They are measuring their success against a constantly curated feed of perfection — where everyone seems to be “thriving, leading, earning, and achieving” apparently without effort. This can make even high performers feel like they are falling behind, inadequate, or imposters.
For leaders, the pressure is just as intense. A mistake in the workplace is no longer just a mistake — it can be screenshotted, shared, and turned into a viral social media embarrassment. An embarrassment that often can lead to a leader being fired within hours.
Leadership missteps, once confined to private meetings, can now spark public criticism, fueling defensiveness, risk aversion, and self-protection. This makes it impossible for leaders, as well as the boards and investors to which they are accountable, to acknowledge Steve Jobs’ idea (see ending)—that employees and leadership should be long-term plays where the timelines are counted in decades. Mistakes and missteps are inevitable. As a result, those mistakes and missteps should be inherently forgivable.
When negative workplace feedback mirrors and is often amplified by social media shaming, burnout becomes inevitable. The constant scrutiny, judgment, and fear of being “canceled” at work — whether through exclusion from projects or outright dismissal — make it even harder for employees and leaders to recover from setbacks.
The solution is not to tell employees to “tune it out.” It is to better understand the role of attachment patterns and cognitive variability in shame.
Factor One: Attachment Patterns
But shame is not only shaped by our environment — it is also filtered through our earliest relationships and emotional wiring.
Shame and attachment are deeply intertwined because our earliest experiences of connection shape how we respond to shame throughout life.
John Bowlby's attachment theory explains how early relationships with caregivers influence our sense of security, self-worth, and emotional regulation. When attachment is secure, shame can be a temporary and constructive signal—something we acknowledge, learn from, and move through.
When attachment is insecure, however, shame can feel overwhelming and permanent. This often leads to patterns of withdrawal, perfectionism, or defensiveness — especially in high-stakes environments like the workplace.
People with secure attachment (who had consistent, supportive caregivers) tend to experience shame as feedback rather than as an attack on their identity. They can acknowledge mistakes without feeling fundamentally unworthy, making them more resilient in leadership and teamwork.
However, those with insecure attachment often internalize shame more deeply. Anxious attachment (from inconsistent caregiving) can lead to hypersensitivity to criticism, where individuals seek external validation but feel easily ashamed if they fall short. Avoidant attachment (from emotionally distant caregivers) can lead to a denial of shame altogether, with individuals dismissing mistakes, blaming others, or avoiding vulnerability.
In the workplace, attachment patterns influence how people handle feedback, failure, and leadership dynamics.
- A securely attached leader can own mistakes, foster trust, and encourage a healthy culture of learning.
- An anxiously attached leader might overwork, seek constant approval, or react emotionally to perceived rejection.
- An avoidantly attached leader might shut down emotionally, reject input, or micromanage to maintain control.
Understanding the connection between shame and attachment helps leaders create workplaces that promote psychological safety, allowing employees to take risks and learn without fear of exclusion or humiliation.
For more on attachment and stress management, see this post on how the stress-strain curve can help you track vulnerabilities along the path to potential burnout; its companion post extends the material science analogy to considering employees as metals with different properties, which when they are strained under different circumstances, might behave in specific ways.
Factor Two: Cognitive Styles
Recent data indicates that the prevalence of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has been increasing among both children and adults. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), during 2020–2022, 11.3% of U.S. children aged 5–17 years had been diagnosed with ADHD. The diagnosis was more common among boys (14.5%) than girls (8.0%), and higher in adolescents aged 12–17 years (14.3%) compared to children aged 5–11 years (8.6%).
In adults, a 2024 study estimated that 6.0% of U.S. adults, approximately 15.5 million individuals, had a current ADHD diagnosis. The prevalence was higher among males (5.4%) compared to females (3.2%). Globally, it’s estimated that 6.8% of adults have symptomatic ADHD, with prevalence decreasing with age.
The pandemic blurred boundaries between work, school, and home, making it harder for many to focus — and easier to notice attention struggles that had been masked by structure. For some, this led to new ADHD diagnoses; for others, it amplified existing shame about inconsistent performance.
Individuals who have ADHD can be particular targets of shaming and particularly vulnerable to feelings of shame, notes Doctor Scott Shapiro. This can lead to persistent negative self-perceptions, avoidance of challenges, and difficulties in personal and professional life. Individuals can become rooted in what schema therapists call the ‘defectiveness/shame schema’ — a deeply held belief that one is fundamentally flawed.
For individuals with ADHD, shame often develops early in life due to repeated struggles with focus, organization, and impulse control in environments that do not accommodate their unique ways of thinking.
And we know that many workplaces reward focus, structure, and predictability — leaving individuals with cognitive variability, such as those with ADHD, feeling like they are constantly falling short.
This disconnect can create deep shame, as employees internalize their natural distractibility, impulsivity, or decision fatigue as personal failings rather than recognizing them as potentially different cognitive strengths. The pressure to suppress their natural thinking patterns leads to overcompensation, excessive self-monitoring, and exhaustion — all key drivers of burnout. They end up like actors who have no way off the stage.
When individuals feel ashamed of their fluctuating focus or changing decisions, they often push themselves beyond their limits to “prove” their competence, accelerating the burnout cycle.
Additionally, the fear of being perceived as inconsistent or unreliable can stifle creativity and innovation, as employees avoid taking risks or sharing unconventional (but often quite valuable) ideas. Schema-driven shame often creates a sense of chronic failure. But that story can be rewritten.
Indeed, distracted minds can also be superpowers argued a recent Forbes article. Instead of shaming cognitive variability, workplaces should recognize its benefits — encouraging structured flexibility, allowing for bursts of deep focus, and fostering psychological safety so employees can work in ways that align with their strengths.
Steve Jobs came up with many of his best ideas when out for a walk — either alone or with Johny Ives. So if the “utility of your work” is substituted for “how hard you work” (a subtle but important distinction), it can create a sea-change in how work is done and how your work is seen by others.
In other words, you might say, “What is that guy walking barefoot around the office actually doing?” And if you said, “Well, that’s Steve Jobs” — it changes the entire conversation. And yet, are people in the typical workplace given the latitude to walk around the office barefoot and actually “do their best work in the best way they could do it?” Not often.
In other words, burnout is not just about working too much; it is about working in ways that go against how our brains naturally function. In this context, ADHD is not a character flaw; it is a different way of experiencing the world.
By reframing cognitive variability as an asset rather than a weakness, and by providing flexible workplaces where “work” isn’t just about sitting at a desk and staring at a computer monitor for 80 hours a week — organizations can help employees avoid burnout while unlocking their full creative potential.
This shift is not just theoretical. Our book on Compassionate Management of Mental Health in the Modern Workplace features a CEO with an ADHD diagnosis. His restlessness drove him to be always on client visits and interacting with staff members, on the corporate floor and factory floor. His company outperformed its peers.
Using the Shame Compass: How We React at Work
Not everyone responds to shame the same way. Some retreat. Some lash out. Some overcompensate. This is where the Shame Compass comes in.
Psychiatrist Donald Nathanson identified four common responses to shame. We wrote about this concept in the concept of couple’s therapy. A couple that does not find a way to move back from their various directions will erode mutual trust and mutual comfort just as a workplace that ignores the shame compass feeds burnout. A couple and workplace that understands the shame compass has a chance to use it to open communication and build resilience.
For example, people with ADHD may move rapidly between reactions (withdrawal, attack self, avoidance, attack others) due to emotional dysregulation. The Shame Compass becomes even more relevant when ADHD individuals experience rapid cycling between self-attack and avoidance or overcompensate to mask perceived incompetence.
A post co-author, Daven Morrison, MD, and Len Sperry of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry adapted them to the workplace:
- Withdrawal: Employees shut down, disengage, or avoid tough conversations to protect themselves.
- Attack Self: Employees internalize mistakes, engaging in negative self-talk or overworking to compensate.
- Avoidance: Employees distract themselves with busyness, scrolling, engaging in office gossip, or discussing any topic unrelated to the team's work.
- Attack Others: Employees lash out, shift blame, or become overly critical when feeling exposed or vulnerable.
Each reaction has consequences. The withdrawer stops contributing, the self-attacker burns out, the avoider stays stuck, and the aggressor damages team trust.
The Shame Compass plays out constantly at work. During performance reviews, an employee may hear vague or critical feedback and immediately withdraw, avoiding future feedback or challenges. In Slack or team messages, a manager’s silence or a curt reply can trigger “self-attack,” as the employee spirals into overthinking or overworking to “make up” for perceived failure. Other examples include excluding employees from meetings or rolling our eyes to an idea.
In leadership transitions, new expectations or unfamiliar cultural norms may trigger avoidance, as employees stay busy with safe tasks but avoid taking the initiative. And when teams face public setbacks — like a failed product launch or missed targets— “attack-other” reactions may emerge, with blame-shifting and criticism eroding psychological safety.
From Shame to Pride: Practical Tips for Managers
Shame makes employees doubt their abilities, disengage, or avoid challenges. Pride makes employees feel capable, connected, and motivated to take on new challenges.
If managers want to reduce burnout, they must actively shift their workplaces from shame to pride and engagement.
Shame is not just about big failures or dramatic firings. It happens in everyday conversations.
- “Nice of you to join us.” (to an employee joining a team meeting late) → Signals you do not belong before enquiring why the person might be late. The person might be struggling with time management issues.
- “Everyone else figured it out/gets it.” (to a struggling worker) → Signals you are not competent before enquiring why the person might have trouble — it could be their skill, but it could also be something else. Shame here can be used to discourage dissent or reinforce control.
- “You are not leadership material.” (even as a joke) → Signals you are fundamentally unworthy before understanding how the individual feels about this possibility — do they even want to be a manager or leader?
- “You always have the weirdest ideas!” (perhaps to a person with ADHD) → Highlights differences in a negative way, instead of finding ways to channel creativity, hyperfocus, or problem-solving as assets, not anomalies.
And it is not just words. Excluding employees from meetings, ignoring messages on Slack, rolling your eyes in response to an idea.
Another way to shift from a culture of fear, disconnection, and burnout is to help employees reframe responses to situations.
For instance, if a deadline has been missed or a science experience did not work out, instead of making failure feel personal — “I do not think you have what it takes” — follow Steve Jobs instead. Reframe it as a problem that can be worked on, and be as specific as possible: “Here is what needs to improve, and here is how I can help.” Having something to work on paired with the reassurance of support can make a huge difference to employee engagement.
Instead of assuming that silence means agreement, verify and ask — and if possible, try to do it in a way that feels comfortable to the person, perhaps after a meeting or in a one-on-one: “I have not heard your thoughts yet, and I value your perspective.” In meetings with many parties, pause to ask if someone else might offer a counter perspective or have anything else to share. The signal is that contributions are valued.
Instead of focusing only on outcomes — “Did you hit the target?” — recognize progress: “I saw how much effort went into that. What did you learn that will make the next step easier?”
Another approach is to reframe outcomes. For example, writers and creatives often have to abandon drafts or campaigns. There is often regret and shame about wasted effort. But every draft and campaign means acquired knowledge that can make the next draft better.
Instead of setting impossible expectations that lead to burnout, set stretch goals with a safety net: “This is ambitious, and I know there will be obstacles. Let’s plan for them.”
In addition to realistic goal setting, managers and team leaders can break down projects into manageable chunks, and help employees find rhythm and momentum (which may include working at “odd” times, from home, or while taking a walk).
Finally, there are approaches to promote emotional regulation, such as encouraging breaks, mindfulness tools, or structured flexibility to reduce “emotional overwhelm.”
For some of us, being on video on Zoom or sitting in longer meetings or presentations is stressful—so give people a chance to be off video or stand and move in a meeting if the setting allows and it helps them focus. Make it crystal clear, however, that full attention and engagement are expected. Test for it, but don’t be overwhelming in demands. Trust, but verify.
Managers who understand how shame and pride function will not just reduce burnout — they will build teams that are confident, engaged, and ready to take on new challenges.
The best workplaces are not just those where employees work hard. They are the ones where employees feel safe enough to try, fail, and keep going. Whether a leader, an employee, or a caregiver, breaking free from shame starts with recognizing that our value is not tied to exhaustion. The most sustainable success comes not from proving yourself but from knowing you are already enough.
Steve Jobs said the following in response to the question, “What’s the most important thing you personally learned at Apple that you are doing today?”
I’m not sure I learned this at Apple, but I learned it based on the data when I was at Apple. And that is that I now take a longer-term view on people. In other words when I see something not being done right my first reaction isn’t to go fix it. It’s to say we’re building a team here and we’re going to do great stuff for the next decade not just the next year. And so… what do I need to do to help so that the person that’s screwing up learns, versus “how do I fix the problem?” And that’s painful sometimes. I still have that first instinct to go fix the problem. But taking a longer-term view on people is probably the biggest thing that’s changed.
Take a long view — of yourself and others.
All our posts reflect the thoughts and research of many many people before us, we see ourselves as vessels for them from our various disciplines. Sources are hyperlinked, as are companion posts. This piece builds on a previous piece with Sreedhar Potarazu. We appreciate all feedback and conversations!
