Why we should not abandon burnout altogether: A response to a critique of activist burnout

Abstract

Despite active conversations around activist burnout, Domonkos Sik argues that burnout is a misinterpretation of the problem underlying activists’ loss of motivation, as it shifts our attention to a group of symptoms and therapy while ignoring the structural and existential dimensions of activism. This paper argues that this critique only loosely grasps burnout through the mainstream direction of framing and solving burnout, and misrepresents activist burnout research. While Sik argues that burnout is unfit to offer critical reflections on the toll activists face in struggling for emancipation, this paper argues that this is not the case. Instead, activist burnout has been approached from various perspectives, offering insights for interventions beyond therapy.

Keywords

burnout activist burnout activist fatigue consolation therapy

Introduction: A rejoinder to “critique and consolation: countering ‘activist fatigue’ in a non-therapeutic way” of Domonkos Sik

Activist burnout has become a widely discussed topic, both within and outside the scholarly world. However, Domonkos Sik (2025) has recently argued that framing activists’ loss of motivation as burnout is a misstep from the start, as it merely leads to therapeutic intervention. Sik's argument can be divided into two parts: (1) the critique of interpreting “activist fatigue” as burnout and (2) the articulation of consolation as an alternative to burnout therapy. My discussion will focus primarily on the first part, as I find the second broadly persuasive. Moreover, I will highlight that many of the existing insights about burnout and activist burnout can readily resonate with Sik's idea of consolation more than he might have perceived.

Sik argues for using the term “activist fatigue” instead of activist burnout. The former is defined as “a phenomenon referring to the gradual loss of motivation caused by the uncertainty of success and a sense of futility among activists” (Sik, 2025: 169). According to Sik (2025: 169–170), “activist fatigue”—a form of social suffering that reveals “a complex structural-existential impasse” and undermines “contemporary emancipatory praxis” has been, due to “the hegemony of the modernist paradigm,” misinterpreted as burnout. Burnout, in Sik's view (2025: 169), is “a term that comes from the medical and psy-discourses of stress-related (mental) illness” and carries with it a “fundamentally individualistic, objectifying, and essentialist-biomedical framework.” In short, Sik (2025: 169, 173) sees burnout as a “biomedical diagnostic category” that obscures the roots of the problem many activists face, aiming only to “transform the individual so that they can cope with the demands of an exhaustive way of life.” Sik then proposes a critical alternative to burnout therapy, based on the concept of consolation, which is understood as an intersubjective practice centered on the acceptance of existential contingency. According to Sik (2025), while burnout therapy aims to alleviate the symptoms affecting the body, consolation seeks to create a space for collectively working through uncertainty and contingency, and leading activists to accept the limitations of emancipation.

It is evident in the article that Sik (2025: 173) is aware of the background of the concept of burnout, namely, its emergence from the Free Clinic movement (Freudenberger, 1974), where individuals dedicated to a social cause became exhausted and lost their motivation. According to Sik (2025: 173), burnout, as found in this context, reflects a structural–existential impasse; however, this is not articulated in the concept of burnout. Sik's critique (2025: 173) is directed at when burnout is framed as “a combination of mental and physical fatigue, emotional distancing from the initially idealised activity, disappointment, cynical defeatism and ultimately decreased activity and productivity,” in which Sik cites the World Health Organization (2019). In other words, Sik's critique is pointing to when the loss of motivation/idealism—specifically in the context of struggling for social change—becomes downplayed or ignored in favor of a framework that views burnout primarily through its symptomatology rather than its possible root causes. Sik (2025: 173) explains:

This reinterpretation [from activist fatigue to activist burnout] has several consequences: the existential and structural components of fatigue are ignored, whereas the biomedical interventions targeting individual bodily, cognitive and affective capabilities become predominant.

For Sik (2025: 173), these interventions—such as stress-management exercises—“do not provide solutions for demotivated activists, losing their identity and prospect.” I propose that two conditions are required for Sik's critique to hold. First, burnout would have to have always been framed in the individualistic, biomedicalized fashion; in that case, it might be better, as Sik suggests, to adopt a new term like “activist fatigue,” since burnout would be inherently unfitting for the critical reflections needed to go beyond individualistic analysis as well as therapy. Second, it would need to be demonstrated that research on activist burnout ultimately reproduces this individualistic, biomedicalized discourse of burnout, offering only uncritical analyses and therapeutic recommendations. However, these conditions are not being met, which substantially weakens Sik's critique.

This paper argues that Sik's critique rests on an overgeneralization as it bases its understanding of burnout on the mainstream direction of framing and solving burnout, and fails to engage with the nuances and diversity within activist burnout research. If left unchallenged, this critique could potentially discourage critical engagement with the broader problem of burnout, and downplay the critical potential of research on activist burnout. This paper provides an in-depth response to this critique, illustrating how the concept of burnout and activist burnout research resist such overgeneralization and are, instead, readily capable of engaging with critical reflections for the sustainability of activism. The following sections articulate my response to Sik's critique. Finally, this paper concludes with a call for a synthesis of critical and clinical interventions into activist burnout.

Is burnout a biomedical diagnostic category?

For Sik (2025), burnout is understood in the same way as the WHO frames it, namely, as a workplace syndrome characterized by certain constituent symptoms. What Sik fails to establish is that this view of burnout does not represent the concept of burnout in and of itself. It is one thing to say that burnout is now popularly framed within an individualistic and biomedical perspective that tends to avoid confronting broader structural conditions and existential contingency, and even risks slipping into political conformism. (One might gain this kind of impression when skimming through a web page on an activist self-help guide, one that Sik (2025: 184) includes in his notes.) However, it is entirely different to suggest that this is the only way burnout has been—or must be—understood. Sik's insensitivity to this distinction may stem from his understanding of the concept prior to how it is widely viewed today.

Sik (2025: 169, emphasis mine) states that burnout is “a term that comes from the medical and psy-discourses of stress-related (mental) illness,” in which he cites Khan et al. (2023). This claim should be challenged, especially since it serves as the starting point of Sik's argument that burnout resembles a form of individual illness more than a form of social suffering. We shall consider the source cited by Sik (Khan et al., 2023). In their Foucauldian discourse analysis of burnout in postgraduate medical education, Khan et al. argue that burnout was originally framed as an individual illness. To support this, they cite Freudenberger's (widely known as the originator of the burnout concept) and Richelson's (Freudenberger and Richelson, 1980) well-known definition of burnout as “a state of fatigue or frustration brought about by devotion to a cause, a way of life, or relationship that failed to produce the expected reward.” Khan et al. (2023: S118) conclude,

From this definition, it is clear that even though the individual was depleted, exhausted, or striving, these descriptors are based on the individual's choices. Herbert Freudenberger saw the individual as the person responsible for their burnout, evidencing his belief that burnout was a result of poor coping. Even if society's values are based on unrealistic expectations, the individual was directly responsible for their responses to these expectations.

I argue that this conclusion goes too far. It is true that, as a practicing psychoanalyst, Freudenberger assigned a significant role to the subject, encouraging the subject to see that they are implicated in their own suffering. This is evident in his writings. For example,

Those of us who work in the movement too frequently forget that there is a difference between mature commitment and involvement, and commitment as a sign of a personal need to be accepted and liked (Freudenberger, 1974: 161–162).

Another example:

People embark on denial as a way of avoiding the pain … you have to acknowledge that something crucial to your well-being is going wrong. Then you have to assess how much of it is your fault (Freudenberger and Richelson, 1980: 86).

However, this does not mean that Freudenberger denied the role of wider social factors of burnout. In fact, in the very same book cited by Khan et al. (2023), we find the opposite:

In such a group [sufferers of burnout], what was happening could not merely be something inside of them. Much had to be attributed to the times we live in, the swift acceleration of change, the depersonalization of neighborhoods, schools, and work situations (Freudenberger and Richelson, 1980: xvii).

Another example:

More than likely, if you’ve been functioning well in the past and have seen yourself progress from one level of development to the next, you’re not suffering from deep-rooted psychological problem. You may not need to dig for traumas and other significant events of long ago to explain your decreasing ability to function or to care. That nameless malaise with its physical symptoms, its feeling of depression, anger, and weariness may be a developing case of Burn-Out … a demon born of the society and times we live in and our ongoing struggle to invest our lives with meaning (Freudenberger and Richelson, 1980: 2, emphasis mine).

Freudenberger also emphasizes the need to convince the government not to focus on productivity and progress at the expense of human beings (Freudenberger, 1983: 27). The question of how best to interpret Freudenberger's conception of burnout falls outside the scope of this paper, and it can be argued that his writings are at times inconsistent. Nonetheless, it is highly debatable whether burnout in Freudenberger's work should be read strictly as an illness of an individual. Although, as a practitioner, Freudenberger deployed psychotherapeutic approaches in working with his clients, he certainly did not advocate treating one's pain in isolation and retreating from the meaningful world:

Society doesn’t change quickly … we feel less capable of making a difference … Our tendency is to give up trying and let them take care of it. Yet if we do that, we’re a cinch to slip into hopelessness and Burn-Out. To maintain our sense of being more than ciphers, we must continue to do what we can, no matter how tiny it seems … On the other hand, we can’t increase our frustration by looking to idealistic visions. What we must do is strike some middle ground (Freudenberger and Richelson, 1980: 203).

In my view, this attitude of Freudenberger resembles Sik's idea of consolation, such as when he writes (Sik, 2025: 182), “instead of expecting the spectacular collapse of paradox structures, emancipatory activists might become aware of the limitations of their efforts without becoming demotivated.” This suggests that Sik's view of “activist fatigue” is closer to Freudenberger's view of burnout than Sik might have perceived.

Another issue lies in Sik's assertion that burnout comes from “the medical and psy-discourses,” particularly with respect to the reference to “medical,” which is problematic. As shown above, Freudenberger did not frame burnout in medical terms. In fact, he explicitly rejected such an approach:

Intrinsic to this type of formulation [medical formulation] is the thought that the maladaptive behavior is a function of something observably wrong within the person. When we use the medical approach in investigating and explaining burnout, we significantly limit our visions and applications of burnout … there is a need to understand the psychosocial context in which burnout occurs—to think in terms of process, values, and social systems (Freudenberger, 1983: 24).

Therefore, contrary to Sik's perception of burnout as originally and simply a form of illness of an individual, burnout was then situated at the intersection of social, existential, and psychological dimensions. This is evident not only in the work of Freudenberger but also that of other early authors of burnout, who see burnout as revealing, for example, a failure to acquire existential meaning and moral purpose (Cherniss and Krantz, 1983; Pines and Aronson, 1988) or alienation (Karger, 1981; Harrison, 1983). Burnout has also been explored in critical theories and philosophical reflections, which link it to broader social and historical conditions (see, for example, Chabot, 2018; Farber, 1983; Han, 2015; Sakharov and Farber, 1983). For instance, in Pascal Chabot's analysis, burnout reflects a consequence of our techno-scientific-oriented society, and a solution to burnout needs “changes to our systems of production and consumption” (Chabot, 2018: 87). In short, burnout should not be simplified as always an individualistic, biomedical category. Doing that means collapsing its nuanced history and existing plurality into—and giving way to—the popular discourse around burnout today.

It is more appropriate to situate Sik's critique of burnout within the mainstream direction of framing and solving burnout often found in the fields influenced by work psychology and clinical psychology. In this direction, the usual definition of burnout is the one the WHO uses:

Burnout-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions: (1) feeling of energy depletion or exhaustion; (2) increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and (3) reduced professional efficacy (World Health Organization, 2019).

This definition of burnout is derived from the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI), widely regarded as the “gold standard” model for defining and measuring burnout, developed by the social psychologist Christina Maslach and colleagues (Maslach et al., 1996). When not citing the WHO verbatim, those who subscribe to the MBI tradition generally define burnout as a workplace syndrome characterized by three dimensions of symptoms: exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced work efficacy. This is the model of burnout that Sik refers to in forming his critique.

From this model of burnout as a workplace syndrome, there is also a trend to push the concept of burnout toward more clinical use. For example, by redesigning a burnout measure toolkit that can identify if an individual is suffering from severe burnout, which the MBI cannot do, and redefine burnout to differentiate between its constituent symptoms and possible causes or consequences (Schaufeli and Witte, 2023). These tasks have been achieved by an alternative to the MBI: the Burnout Assessment Tool (Schaufeli and Witte, 2023). Moreover, there is a trend in clinical psychology to treat burnout as a mental disorder that can be classified based on medical criteria, with a focus on the biological aspects of burnout (Van Dam, 2021). For clinical psychology, it no longer matters where burnout originates; what matters is its impact on the body and how to treat it (Van Dam, 2021: 732). Therapeutic interventions can include, for example, psychoeducation, taking sick leave, dropping domestic tasks, and relaxation exercises, among others of a similar nature (Van Dam, 2021: 737).

In this direction of framing and solving burnout, there is less visible concern with what burnout reveals about human life in relation to the contingent world, but more emphasis on identifying burnout by measuring and treating its symptoms. Therefore, there is a discursive shift; burnout transitions from being nicknamed, for example, the high cost of high achievement (as part of the book's title, Freudenberger and Richelson, 1980) to being established as a workplace syndrome, as in work psychology, or as a mental disorder, as in clinical psychology. It is safe to say that there is a trend to medicalize burnout. Sik's critique becomes much stronger when situated specifically in this trend. However, the point remains that this has never been the only way of understanding burnout.

Undoubtedly, other views of burnout are less prevalent today, but by no means extinct. A domain that exhibits a conceptual and methodological distance from the mainstream discourse of burnout is activist burnout research. Since its early days, this field has attempted to approach activist burnout not simply as an illness but as its own distinct and complex social phenomenon connected to various structural and psychosocial elements. Activist burnout research can be seen as an example of a field in which burnout is not reducible to a workplace syndrome nor a mental disorder.

Activist burnout

Pines and Gorski

Before turning to the broader landscape of activist burnout research, let us first examine the specific works that Sik (2025: 169) cites in support of his critique of activist burnout. It is unclear how deeply Sik has engaged with the activist burnout literature in formulating his critique. What is evident, however, is that Sik (2025: 169) cites the works of Chen and Gorski (2015), Gorski (2018), Gorski and Chen (2015), and Pines (1994). Two issues arise here. First, basing one's understanding of activist burnout solely on these four articles—although it is uncertain that this represents the entirety of Sik's engagement with activist burnout research—is insufficient. Second, engaging with Pines (1994) in particular should have prompted Sik to reconsider his assertion that burnout is merely a “biomedical diagnostic category.” This is because Pines (1994: 381) approaches burnout from “an existential perspective,” emphasizing that “burnout is caused by failure in the existential ‘quest for meaning’.”

Unlike the mainstream discourse of burnout today, Pines (1994: 384) situates burnout within the existential dimension: “the most stressful burnout-causing aspects of work are those that prevent highly motivated people from getting a sense of existential significance from their work.” This stark difference between Pines’ approach to burnout and that of the MBI is also noted by Khan et al. (2023). Thus, contrary to Sik's critique, Pines does not neglect but rather underscores “the existential and structural components of fatigue” (Sik, 2025: 173) in burnout. From my perspective, framing activist burnout in this way facilitates, rather than hinders, the incorporation of Sik's suggestion that activists need to accept existential contingency. However, it is true that Pines (1994) does not explicitly make this move, but it is clearly conceptually possible from the way Pines framed burnout. I articulate this intervention through the Lacanian concept of drive elsewhere (Nunarnan, 2025).

Moreover, Pines (1994: 391) does not prescribe therapeutic exercises but suggests that burnout is less likely to occur if activists frame their goals in more concrete, rather than abstract, terms. We can certainly debate whether this kind of suggestion amounts to deradicalization. However, it would be a stretch to label Pines’ suggestion as therapy. Pines’ suggestion can be read as a call for activists to assess the discrepancy between the actual circumstances and their abstract ideals. In my view, this is one way for activists to “become aware of the limitation of their efforts” and begin “making sense of contingencies of activism, without falling into the trap of dogmatic certainties or medicalization” (Sik, 2025: 182). For this reason, citing Pines (1994) undermines Sik's critique of activist burnout more than it supports it.

Admittedly, the work of Paul Gorski, both that he authored independently and that he co-authored with others, initially makes it more understandable why Sik would draw such an impression about activist burnout. However, it is understandable only if one reads Gorski's work too lightly. Gorski often draws on well-known scholars of workplace burnout (e.g., Maslach and Schaufeli) who primarily define burnout in terms of its symptomatology rather than its social or existential roots, as Pines (1994) does. However, it is important to note that Gorski employs an eclectic style; he also draws from a variety of sources that do not approach burnout in the same direction as Maslach or Schaufeli. For example, Pines (1994) is cited in all seven articles of Gorski on activist burnout (Gorski, 2015, 2018, 2019; Gorski and Chen, 2015; Chen and Gorski, 2015; Gorski et al., 2019; Gorski and Erakat, 2019), and in all but one (Gorski and Erakat, 2019) it appears in direct relation to how burnout in activism in conceptualized; burnout as reflecting a failure to achieve existential meaning. Additionally, all seven articles cite Rettig's The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way (2006), typically referencing the line: “Burnout is the act of involuntarily leaving activism, or reducing one's level of activism” (Rettig, 2006: 15). Clearly, this definition is not tied to any specific set of symptoms; activist burnout is here approached primarily from a social and context-specific perspective, rather than a psychological or clinical one.

Such an eclectic style is not to be seen as a conceptual inconsistency, as many different approaches to burnout are not mutually exclusive; they mostly differ in the extent to which they stress the important part of the phenomenon, and because burnout is so complex that “probably a single general and valid theory of burnout will always remain an illusion” (Schaufeli and Buunk, 2003: 403). Gorski's eclectic style can also be attributed to the fact that he is not focused on arriving at a unified definition of burnout nor attempting to measure it by systematically measuring symptom scales—a typical practice in empirical studies on workplace burnout. Rather, his interest lies in how burnout—loosely defined—emerges and affects activists and their movements, which he explores mainly through interviews. His primary concern, thus, is not with what academic authorities on burnout have to say, but rather how activists themselves interpret their experiences. This focus on activists’ subjective interpretations allows for a distance between his work and the MBI. For instance, Gorski and Chen (2015: 394) explain,

Although we initially considered using these components [MBI three dimensions of burnout symptoms] as a framework for our analysis, recognizing that our data came from activists working in a different sphere, we chose, instead, to allow categories to emerge from our analysis, providing a more precise synthesis of the participants’ experiences … which we synthesized into three symptom categories: (a) deterioration of psychological and emotional well-being, (b) deterioration of physical well-being, and (c) disillusionment and hopelessness.

It is true that even with this revised version, Gorski is still dealing with a combination of symptoms; nonetheless, this is because he aims to learn about the symptoms of a specific group of activists, not to define the nature of activist burnout through these symptoms. Moreover, discussions of symptoms play a rather minor role in Gorski's research. What receives greater attention is his phenomenological studies of activists’ experiences, which can reveal the broader structural and existential layers that activists themselves link to those symptoms. In fact, this has been a consistent pattern across many studies on activist burnout, which have utilized interviews to explore activists’ experiences and self-interpretations of burnout. In such interviews, one can find that burnout is rarely discussed as a biomedical diagnostic category because activists are hardly clinicians; they tend to describe burnout in a complex manner, revealing life stories that shed light on their structural and existential impasses. As Valocchi (2010: 129) notes: “While scholars may be reluctant to talk about the fullness and complexity of these lives, the activists themselves are only too willing.” If nothing else, qualitative activist burnout research continues to invite readers to immerse themselves in these stories, in which burnout is rarely applied to but often constructed from.

After all, what is activist burnout in Gorski's works? The influence of Rettig's (2006) style is evident: when attempting to define activist burnout, Gorski emphasizes not specific symptoms but the impact burnout has on activists and their movements. For example, Gorski and Erakat (2019: 784) define activist burnout as that which occurs “when the stressors of activism become so overwhelming they debilitate activists’ abilities to remain engaged, as a formidable threat to the sustainability of social movements.” Comparing this definition to Sik's (2025: 169) definition of activist fatigue—“a phenomenon referring to the gradual loss of motivation caused by the uncertainty of success and sense of futility among activists”—clearly, they are not the same. Yet, Gorski does not ignore the elements of loss of motivation, uncertainty, and sense of futility, but discusses them in the body of research. In fact, much of his work explores factors that contribute to them, including fragile solidarity, lack of recognition, underappreciation of effort, lack of collective support, and lack of space for sharing experiences of suffering (see, for example, Gorski and Chen, 2015; Gorski et al., 2019; Gorski, 2018). From my perspective, these insights make Sik's concept of consolation more, not less, applicable.

Additionally, Gorski rarely suggests that therapeutic intervention is a solution to activist burnout. Surprisingly, the article by Gorski (2015) that has the strongest therapeutic tone is not included in Sik's bibliography. Yet, even in that article, Gorski (2015: 714) stresses that mindfulness practices (e.g., yoga and meditation) are not about a fashionable lifestyle, but rather a way to help activists process their experiences. Elsewhere, Gorski et al. (2019: 377) stress that “No amount of self-care can counteract these burnout causes.” More significantly, what Gorski has consistently raised in terms of burnout intervention is the need to critique and dismantle the activist culture of selflessness that discourages sharing or expressing suffering, thereby forcing activists to internalize and individualize suffering. Therefore, what Gorski is suggesting here can be seen as building an “intersubjective practice of mourning” or seeking “the supportive other” as suggested by Sik's idea of consolation: “it [consolation] establishes intersubjectivities wherein the general existential contingency can be endured by sharing experiences” (Sik, 2025: 177).

To summarize, the influence of mainstream discourse of workplace burnout is evident in Gorski's work. However, it does not determine the entirety of his approach to activist burnout, but exists as one source among many. Gorski contextualizes activist burnout, revealing possible factors such as in-movement conflict, racial discrimination, social and political resistance to change, and the culture of selflessness. Moreover, Gorski does not equate therapy with a solution to activist burnout. Gorski's work represents a more recent development of activist burnout research. To further highlight the nuances and diversity within activist burnout research, let us now consider some other works on activist burnout.

Other works on activist burnout

Burnout and activism are not an unexpected couple. Freudenberger (1974) first conceptualized burnout within the context of the Free Clinic movement, and although the literature rarely emphasizes this point, he and his colleagues were themselves activists. By referring to this root of the concept, Hannah Proctor (2024) proposes reclaiming the concept of burnout as a phenomenon specific to activism from its inception. The idea that activists are particularly prone to burnout has been recognized by some well-known scholars of burnout more broadly (Pines, 1994; Maslach and Gomes, 2006). This idea is based on the general observation that activists tend to be idealistic, emotionally invested, and self-sacrificial, characteristics that have long been thought to make one a candidate for burnout. Additionally, the unique nature of activism is noted in this frequently cited line:

The very nature of activist work involves cultivating and maintaining awareness of large and overwhelming social problems, often carrying a burden of knowledge that society as a whole is unable or unwilling to face. This can lead to feelings of pressure and isolation that easily feed into burnout (Maslach and Gomes, 2006: 43).

Activist burnout, therefore, is not a new subject, but its academic development has been much slower compared to research on workplace burnout. To the best of my knowledge, during the four decades (1974–2014) since Freudenberger published his first article on burnout (Freudenberger, 1974) there have not been many publications that explicitly and extensively discuss burnout—“extensively” meaning that they treated it either as the main topic or as a key component of the discussion (see, for example, Cox, 2011; Fisher, 1986; Kammer, 1978; Kovan and Dirkx, 2003; Lee 2014; Maslach and Gomes, 2006; Norwood, 2013; Pines, 1994, 1997; Plyler, 2009; Pogrebin, 1994; Rettig, 2006; Sheridan, 2012; Shields, 1991; Sohr, 2001; Valocchi, 2010; Vaccaro and Mena, 2011). From 2015 onwards, with the work of Gorski constituting a leading group of texts, more research on activist burnout has emerged.

Most of the texts cited above are mainly descriptive, drawing from personal experiences and/or unsystematic observation, while some (Kovan and Dirkx, 2003; Lee, 2014; Pines, 1994, 1997; Sohr, 2001; Valocchi, 2010; Vaccaro and Mena, 2011) rely on interview-based analyses. Among this group, only Pines (1994, 1997) and Maslach (Maslach and Gomes, 2006) were established scholars of burnout; the rest are more associated with the fields of activism and social movement research. In these texts, the meaning of burnout varies from one text to the next. For the burnout scholars, Pines (1994, 1997), as mentioned, does not clearly define burnout, but often emphasizes its root cause framed within an existential perspective, which views burnout as resulting from the failure of one's existential quest for meaning. Maslach and Gomes (2006) define burnout according to the MBI.

Apart from the two burnout scholars, the others were much less concerned with providing any theoretical grounding for the burnout concept or clarity regarding its symptomology. They were primarily interested in the burnout experiences that emerged and were interpreted by activists. In most of these texts, the discussions of burnout were driven much more by pragmatic than conceptual-theoretical concerns. Burnout is often discussed without a clear definition—although a few refer to the MBI for scoping the main symptoms—instead, the authors make loose conceptualizations. Let us consider some lines by the early authors.

What the title expression “burn-out” refers to is a physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual phenomenon—an experience of personal fatigue, alienation, failure, and more (Kammer, 1978: 1, emphasis original).

To begin with, I think it is helpful to think of this state of discouragement, weariness, and even depression as “moral burnout” … People dealing with burnout in work often point to the ways in which we overload ourselves—how we take on more jobs than we can realistically accomplish. Moral burnout, as it expresses itself in political activism, involves an added dimension: the job we have taken on, the job of changing the human condition, implies the highest possible standard … Moral burnout is a sort of trap we set for ourselves by trying to give our lives political meaning. If we want our lives to have such meaning, it is unlikely that we can avoid entirely the moral costs involved (Fisher, 1986: 2).

Burnout is qualitatively different from an acute stress reaction caused by a sudden crisis or a short burst of overwork. The effects are usually deeper. It is also a spiritual crisis … We may observe that the seeds of burnout are sown in how we enter into the helping act and in what we bring with us—particularly the models we have of ourselves (Shields, 1991: 120–121).

As I see it, there are three major causes of burnout—backlash, backsliding, and backbiting. What we call backlash, of course, is the invidious, often invisible, countervailing response to any serious effort to challenge the status quo … backsliding, a term that describes the nasty tendency of legal, social, and economic progress to follow a zig-zag pattern, lurching two steps forward and on step back … backbiting—a hazard familiar to anyone who has ever worked in a group. Burnout results when good people get sick of bad things being said about them (Pogrebin, 1994: 36–38, 80).

As shown in these lines, which were written well before the MBI became widely popular, each views burnout slightly differently and attempts to capture certain elements that, from their perspective, help them understand the nature of burnout in activism. The all-encompassing and elusive characteristics of burnout (Kammer, 1978); the activist's desire for political meaning (Fisher, 1986); the self-models (Shields, 1991); the reality of movement politics (Pogrebin, 1994). What we can say is that they did not view burnout simply as a biomedical diagnostic category. Moreover, within just the quoted lines, two of them (Fisher, 1986; Pogrebin, 1994) imply that activists need to face the reality of their activist life, which express the same tone of suggestion that Sik (2025: 182) makes: “They become actors who have an understanding of the constraints of their agency … become aware that dealing with social suffering is a never-ending, uphill struggle, which can hardly be won.”

The diversity persists in other texts as well. Some of them continue to discuss burnout in a non-MBI style. For example, Sohr (2001: 205) relies on Freudenberger's idea of an idealistic worker struggling through a difficult and insoluble project; Kovan and Dirkx (2003) were mainly interested in the interpretations of burnout expressed by the activists they interviewed without setting any conceptual benchmark for burnout, and the same approach is adopted by Valocchi (2010). Interestingly, Kovan and Dirkx (2003: 112) found that for the activists they studied, burnout was not only negative but also a call for “deep leaning,” such as accepting “the enormity of the tasks ahead and to recognize that the activists’ own needs were important and valid.” Retting (2006: 15) situates burnout in close proximity to compassion fatigue, but provides his own definition, as mentioned in the previous subsection, which also aligns with Plyler's discussion (2009). Cox's article (2011) was a review of numerous previous works on burnout and post-traumatic stress. Vaccaro and Mena (2011) follow the MBI definition of burnout, but acknowledge that the experiences of the activists they interviewed extend beyond the MBI framework. For Sheridan (2012: 194), “burnout refers to the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion”; Norwood (2013: 30) defines burnout as “feelings of hopelessness, emotional exhaustion, and difficulty in dealing with work or in doing our work effectively, a sense that our effort makes no difference.” Finally, Lee (2014: 24) defines burnout as “a physiological state in response to stressful environments with such symptoms as exhaustion, depersonalization, emotional detachment, helplessness, and reduced personal accomplishment.”

What is observable is that recent articles, based on their definitions of burnout, demonstrate the influence of the mainstream discourse of burnout in workplace contexts, specifically in the works of Sheridan (2012), Norwood (2013), and Lee (2014). However, the distance remains; activist burnout in these works is not fully submerged by the mainstream discourse. For example, Sheridan (2012: 202, 205) ties activist burnout to the realm of spiritualism and recommends not biomedical self-care per se, nor decreasing one's emotional investment in activism, but rather an individual and communal spiritual practice of facing suffering. This approach, similar in tone to Norwood (2013), views self-care as a form of resistance against the activist culture that overlooks health and emotions. In Lee’s (2014) study on “why activists seek psychotherapy,” burnout is generally defined in accordance with the MBI model. However, Lee employed the same approach as Gorski: the burnout concept was not imposed, but rather taken from the activists’ self-interpretations. Additionally, while Sik claims by citing Lee (2014) that “As an obvious solution to their burnout, the activists often turn to therapeutic intervention,” we found that Lee (2014: 120) concludes that “burnout in and of itself is not a common factor in this sample of activists’ reasons for seeking therapy.”

Beyond the work of Gorski (covered above), which constitutes the largest and most cited cluster of recent research on activist burnout, numerous studies exist, and the field continues to grow. While it is impossible, due to the sheer number of publications, to offer a comprehensive review of recent works on activist burnout, a limited review reveals that diversity persists among these recent works. Many approach activist burnout as a context-specific phenomenon and do not tie themselves to the discourse of the MBI or other burnout measure models (see, for example, Chen et al., 2024; Conner et al., 2023; Gauditz, 2025; Mazur, 2023; Lord et al., 2025; Prosser et al., 2025); while others have drawn on such models quite substantially for defining or measuring burnout or designing interventions for burnout symptoms (see, for example, Hamann et al., 2025; Mynam et al., 2025 Tavarez, 2024); there is also an example of a selective approach that adapts some items from burnout measure models (Vandermeulen et al., 2023).

In trying to capture the root causes of activist burnout, some highlight, for example, the loss of idealism (Chen et al., 2024); sense of belonging (Conner et al., 2023); emotional fit (Vandermeulen et al., 2023); the desire for social power (Mazur, 2023); internal conflict, political reality, and the split between activism and outside life (Gauditz, 2025); sense of crisis and pressure (Lord et al., 2025); and the struggle between desire and enjoyment (Nunarnan, 2025). Regarding interventions—considering all works mentioned in this section—not every piece on activist burnout proposes intervention; however, among those that do, a wide range of approaches can be found. These include therapeutic approaches aimed at healing the symptoms (see, for example, Danquah et al., 2021; Gorski, 2015; Hamann et al., 2025), broader collective strategies for reforming the environment (see, for example, Chen et al., 2024; Gorski et al., 2019; Prosser et al., 2025; Shields, 1991), and more critical or radical approaches that call for rethinking activism itself in relation to burnout (see, for example, Fisher, 1986; Nunarnan, 2025; Pogrebin, 1994; Proctor, 2024).

Conclusion: Imagining a synthesis

So far, this paper has demonstrated that (1) the nuanced history and existing plurality of the burnout concept should not be reduced to the mainstream discourse surrounding workplace burnout; thus, the concept of burnout in and of itself cannot be regarded simply as a biomedical diagnostic category as Sik perceives; and (2) activist burnout research is a separate field that tends to treat activist burnout as a unique social phenomenon, attempting to make sense of it through different, sometimes eclectic approaches. While discussions of burnout in many domains are being increasingly subsumed by the mainstream discourse and the culture of work–life balance, activist burnout research as a whole is rather diverse and does not simply reproduce such discourse. Therefore, Sik's critique fails to fairly portray burnout and activist burnout. Yet it reflects an undeniable trend: the growing tendency to view burnout as a clinical disease, pushing the concept further into the domains of clinical psychology and professional health institutions while leaving its psychosocial and critical elements behind. This tendency is strong, and Sik's intervention offers an opportunity to reflect on this before it is too late.

I propose that what we need today is more critical engagement with burnout and activist burnout, rather than leaving them in the hands of clinicians alone, and not succumbing to its mainstream discourse. After all, critical reflections on burnout and activist burnout are still very much possible. It is important to note that although one might define burnout in a symptom-based manner, the definition alone cannot determine the causes of, nor the interventions for, burnout: the room for interpretation remains. For example, in their discussion of burnout (defined according to the MBI) in activism, Maslach and Gomes (2006) propose six areas where burnout might stem from: five of them involve workplace conditions (workload, autonomy, proper rewards, internal conflict, fairness), the last one, however, is the mismatch between reality and one's idealism. One possible intervention here is that activists should aim lower. From here, it is only a short road to political cynicism or conformism. However, another possible intervention is to accept the uncertainty and contingency of social struggles without lowering the aim. The latter moves toward the approach Sik proposes. Here, I would like to highlight the possibility of critical reflections on burnout, even when initially defined as a workplace syndrome, and emphasize the undetermined relation between defining and tackling burnout. Of course, denying that a definition implies the way one should approach the problem is a mistake. When burnout is presented as a combination of symptoms, the temptation is to focus on measuring these symptoms to identify and treat them, rather than reflecting on their deeper meanings. However, this does not mean the door is closed; what we need is not for critical thoughts to abandon burnout because of its name, but to engage beyond its popular appearance.

There are many approaches, including Sik's (2025), to burnout that can be read as attempts to grapple—of course, in different ways—with the discrepancy between initial expectations and exposure to the contingency of the world, or to help us examine our goal-oriented mentality (see Schaufeli and Buunk, 2003: 403–406). Although different approaches present their arguments in varying styles, and some may be less critical than others, they all provide a starting point for further critical engagement. What we need is a synthesis of both attention to symptoms and attention to the wider structural and existential conditions of burnout; it must be both critical and clinical.

Amid today's neoliberal world, where corporations worry about burnout because they fear decreased productivity and thus try to make the workplace feel more like home, and where health coaches speak about burnout while slipping in the sale of yoga courses, critical minds still need to be cautious not to dismiss therapeutic practices in and of themselves. According to Sik (2025: 173), therapeutic interventions for burnout are not useless, but they address only the symptoms rather than “the structural and existential levels of ‘fatigue’.” I partly agree with this argument. I propose that therapeutic interventions (e.g., mindfulness practices) can, to some extent, help activists reflect on their structural and existential impasse. After all, activists will struggle to reflect on the radical contingency of reality if their bodies remain too exhausted and their minds continue to race. In this case, a therapeutic practice can help build a bridge. While bodily well-being alone is insufficient to resolve activist burnout as a structural and existential challenge—not just a combination of symptoms—it nonetheless plays a role. The task at hand involves incorporating such practices alongside critical reflection.

It is also important to consider that self-care in activism, more broadly, can—and has been noted in research—to be culturally suppressed for no good reason. For example, some have observed that self-care is frowned upon because many activists believe it to be rooted in the ideology of individualism (Gorski, 2015), and others reflect that the taboo on self-care serves as a foundation of power hierarchies based on who can suffer more (Pigni, 2016; X, 2005). In such circumstances, the self-care taboo becomes an ideology for exploitation, and thus, self-care practices become a form of resistance and political warfare (Lorde, 1988; Norwood, 2013).

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Omar Nunarnan

Ethical considerations

Not applicable.

Consent to participate

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Statements and declarations

Not applicable.

References

Chabot

(2018) Global Burnout. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Chen

Gorski

(2015) Burnout in social justice and human rights activists: Symptoms, causes, and implications. Journal of Human Rights Practice 7(3): 366–390.

Chen

McCarron

Owen

(2024) The emotional labour of college student activism: An interview-based study. Journal of Human Rights Practice 16(3): 964–980.

Cherniss

Krantz

(1983) The ideological community as an antidote to burnout in the human service. In: Farber

(eds) Stress and Burnout in the Human Service Professions. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 198–212.

Conner

Greytak

Evich

, et al. (2023) Burnout and belonging: How the costs and benefits of youth activism affect youth health and wellbeing. Youth 3(1): 127–145.

Cox

(2011) How do we keep going? Activist burnout and personal sustainability in social movements. Helsinki: Into-ebooks.

Danquah

Lopez

Wade

, et al. (2021) Racial justice activist burnout of women of color in the United States: Practical tools for counselor intervention. International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling 43(4): 519–533.

Farber

(1983) Introduction: A critical perspective on burnout. In: Farber

(eds) Stress and Burnout in the Human Service Professions. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1–22.

Fisher

(1986) Over the long haul: Burnout and hope in a conservative era. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 8(3): 1–7.

10.

Freudenberger

(1974) Staff burnout. Journal of Social Issues 30(1): 159–165.

11.

Freudenberger

(1983) Burnout: Contemporary issues, trends, and concerns. In: Farber

(eds) Stress and Burnout in the Human Service Professions. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 23–28.

12.

Freudenberger

Richelson

(1980) Burn-out: The high cost of high achievement. New York: Anchor Press.

13.

Gauditz

(2025) Activist burnout in No borders: The case of a highly diverse movement. Transcultural Psychiatry 62(2): 167–180.

14.

Gorski

(2015) Relieving burnout and the “martyr syndrome” among social justice education activists: the implications and effects of mindfulness. Urban Review 47(4): 696–716.

15.

Gorski

(2018) Racial battle fatigue and activist burnout in racial justice activists of color at predominately white colleges and universities. Race Ethnicity and Education 22(1): 1–20.

16.

Gorski

Chen

(2015) Frayed all over:' the causes and consequences of activist burnout among social justice education activists. Educational Studies 51(5): 385–405.

17.

Gorski

(2019) Fighting racism, battling burnout: Causes of activist burnout in US racial justice activists. Ethnic and Racial Studies 42(5): 667–687.

18.

Gorski

Erakat

(2019) Racism, whiteness, and burnout in antiracism movements: How white racial justice activists elevate burnout in racial justice activists of color in the United States. Ethnicities 19(5): 784–808.

19.

Gorski

Lopresti-Goodman

Rising

(2019) Nobody’s paying me to cry’: the causes of activist burnout in United States animal rights activists. Social Movement Studies 18(3): 364–380.

20.

Hamann

Junge

Blumenschein

, et al. (2025) The psychology of collective climate action: Building climate courage. Abingdon: Routledge.

21.

Han

(2015) The Burnout Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

22.

Harrison

(1983) A social competence model of burnout. In: Farber

(eds) Stress and Burnout in the Human Service Professions. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 29–38.

23.

Kammer

(1978) Burn-out: Contemporary dilemma for the Jesuit social activist. Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, 10(1), American Assistancy Seminar on Jesuit Spirituality.

24.

Karger

(1981) Burnout as alienation. Social Service Review 55(2): 270–283.

25.

Khan

Hodges

Martimianakis

(2023) Constructing ‘burnout’: A critical discourse analysis of burnout in postgraduate medical education. Academic Medicine 98(11 Suppl): S116–S122.

26.

Kovan

Dirkx

(2003) ‘Being called awake’: The role of transformative learning in the lives of environmental activists. Adult Education Quarterly 53(2): 99–118.

27.

Lee

(2014) Why activists seek psychotherapy. Master’s thesis, Smith College, Northampton, MA. Available at: https://scholarworks.smith.edu/theses/775.

28.

Lord

Reilly

Löffler-Stastka

(2025) Activist burnout among climate justice activists in Austria: An interpretative phenomenological analysis. Healthcare 13(16): 2045.

29.

Lorde

(1988) A burst of light. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books.

30.

Maslach

Gomes

(2006) Overcoming burnout. In: MacNair

(eds) Working for Peace: A Handbook of Practical Psychology. San Luis Obispo, CA: Impact Publisher, 43–49.

31.

Maslach

Jackson

Leiter

(1996) Maslach Burnout Inventory Manual. 4th edn. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.

32.

Mazur

(2023) The desire for power within activist burnout: An illustration of the value of interpretive social science. Sociology Compass 18(2): e13186.

33.

Mynam

Kumar

Jonnala

, et al. (2025) A cross sectional study on the influence of stress and burnout on the quality of life of accredited social health activists (ASHA) in telangana. Indian Journal of Forensic and Community Medicine 12(2): 109–118.

34.

Norwood

(2013) Promoting self care and well-being among feminist activists and women’s rights defenders: Reflections from Burma and Palestine. Santa Fe, NM: Upaya Zen Center.

35.

Nunarnan

(2025) Activist burnout and the struggle to heal: Reflections from a Lacanian perspective. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 30: 282–297.

36.

Pigni

(2016) The idealist’s survival kit: 75 ways to avoid burnout [ebook]. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press.

37.

Pines

(1994) Burnout in political activism: An existential perspective. Journal of Health and Human Resources Administration 16(4): 381–394.

38.

Pines

(1997) Gender differences in burnout: Israelis’ responses to the Intifada. European Psychologist 2(1): 28–34.

39.

Pines

Aronson

(1988) Career burnout: Causes and cures. New York: The Free Press.

40.

Plyler

(2009) How to keep on keeping on: Sustaining ourselves in community organizing and social justice struggle. Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action 3. Available at: https://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/03-how-to-keep-on-keeping-on/.

41.

Pogrebin

(1994) Staying fired up: Antidotes for activist burnout. Tikkun 9(4): 35–80.

42.

Proctor

(2024) Burnout: The emotional experience of political defeat [ebook]. London: Verso.

43.

Prosser

AMB

O’Neill

Whitmarsh

, et al. (2025) Overcoming (vegan) burnout: Mass gatherings can provide respite and rekindle shared identity and social action efforts in moralized minority groups. Political Psychology 46(2): 257–278.

44.

Rettig

(2006) The lifelong activist: How to change the world without losing your way. New York: Lantern.

45.

Sakharov

Farber

(1983) A critical study of burnout in teachers. In: Farber

(eds) Stress and Burnout in the Human Service Professions. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 65–81.

46.

Schaufeli

De Witte

(2023) A fresh look at burnout: The burnout assessment tool (BAT). In: Krägeloh

Alyami

Medvedev

(eds) International Handbook of Behavioral Health Assessment. Cham: Springer, 1–20.

47.

Schaufeli

Buunk

(2003) Burnout: An overview of 25 years of research and theorizing. In: Schabracq

Winnubst

JAM

Cooper

(eds) The Handbook of Work and Health Psychology, 2nd ed. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 383–425.

48.

Sheridan

(2012) Spiritual activism: Grounding ourselves in the spirit. Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought 31(1–2): 193–208.

49.

Shields

(1991) In the tiger’s mouth: An empowerment guide for social action. Sydney: Millennium Books.

50.

Sik

(2025) Critique and consolation: Countering ‘activist fatigue’ in a non-therapeutic way. Thesis Eleven 192(1): 168–187.

51.

Sohr

(2001) Eco-activism and well-being: Between flow and burnout. In: Schmuck

Sheldon

(eds) Life Goals and Well-Being: Towards a Positive Psychology of Human Striving. Washington: Hogrefe & Huber, 202–215.

52.

Tavarez

(2024) “There’s people out there doing more than me…”: Activist burnout among bisexual college students within LGBTQ campus spaces. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 17(4): 588–597.

53.

Vaccaro

Mena

(2011) It’s not burnout, it’s more: Queer college activists of color and mental health. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health 15(4): 339–367.

54.

Valocchi

(2010) Social movements and activism in the USA. New York: Routledge.

55.

Van Dam

(2021) A clinical perspective on burnout: Diagnosis, classification, and treatment of clinical burnout. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology 30(5): 732–741.

56.

Vandermeulen

Hasan Aslih

Shuman

, et al. (2023) Protected by the emotions of the group: Perceived emotional fit and disadvantaged group Members’ activist burnout. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 49(7): 1086–1096.

57.

World Health Organization (2019) Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”: international classification of diseases. World Health Organization News, 28 May. Available at: https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases (accessed 30 August 2025).

58.

X A (2005) Give up activism. libcom.org, 27 March. Available at: https://libcom.org/article/give-activism (accessed 30 August 2025).