Burnout at the Top: Why a Holiday Doesn't Fix It

You come back from two weeks away and, for a few days, the world looks manageable again. By the third week it is as if you never left. Why does rest so often fail to last?

What the research on holidays shows

A meta-analysis led by Jessica de Bloom found that people do recover on holiday, but the benefit fades quickly after they return, often within weeks. That finding is less a verdict on holidays than a clue: if the effect disappears so fast, rest was probably never the missing ingredient.

The recovery paradox

The psychologist Sabine Sonnentag, who has studied recovery from work for two decades, describes what she calls the recovery paradox. The people who most need to recover, those under the heaviest demands, are the ones who find it hardest to do so. High pressure makes it harder to detach mentally, harder to sleep and harder to do the very things that restore energy. The need and the capacity move in opposite directions.

Three parts, not one

The World Health Organization describes burnout as having three parts: exhaustion, a growing mental distance or cynicism about one's work, and a sense of being less effective. Exhaustion is the part people notice. Cynicism is the part senior people often mistake for realism, and it can look like experience from the outside.

Responsibility without control

A classic model in work psychology, developed by Robert Karasek, links strain to the combination of high demands and low control. At the top this takes a curious form. Formal authority is high, yet much of what decides success sits elsewhere: a board, voters, markets, a coalition partner. The title suggests control; the experience is often of carrying the consequences of decisions that are only partly one's own.

Questions worth sitting with

• When did you last spend a day in which nobody could reach you, and what did that feel like?
• Is your cynicism information about the situation, or a symptom of how long you have been in it?
• Which of your responsibilities do you actually control, and which do you only carry?
• What would you stop doing if nobody could see you stop?

What the research suggests

Recovery depends less on the length of a break than on what happens in ordinary weeks: whether a person can detach, relax, experience mastery outside work and have some control over their own time. When sleep, mood or anxiety have changed for weeks, the conversation belongs with a doctor or a psychotherapist, because burnout and depression overlap.

Sources: World Health Organization, ICD-11 (QD85); de Bloom, J. et al. (2009), Journal of Occupational Health; Sonnentag, S. (2018), The recovery paradox, Research in Organizational Behavior; Sonnentag, S. and Fritz, C. (2007), Journal of Occupational Health Psychology; Karasek, R. (1979), Administrative Science Quarterly.

These ideas are developed in Michele's book Leadership Coaching with Horses: The Power of Psychometrics and Biofeedback (Routledge, 2025).

If this is familiar, write to Michele's office in confidence: info@nature-motivation.com. Every enquiry is read by Michele.