When Work Beats You Up and Burnout Sinks In, Start Here

Disappointment at work is an everyday experience for most of us. It happens when work fails to live up to our hopes or expectations. We don’t finish everything on our to-do list. Only one person attends the online event we planned. Customers prefer our competitor’s product to ours. Our boss tells us that our report needs another round of revisions. We overcook the chicken — again. 

It’s all frustrating. But for the most part, we can deal with that level of disappointment. We reexamine our priorities and brush up our time management strategies. We receive the one attendee with hospitality and gratitude and think about how we might better promote the next event. We do some market analysis to reassess our customers’ needs. We dig in and fix the report. We finally buy a new oven.

But sometimes the disappointments are more profound. I think of a 2019 Indeed commercial that depicts a group of professionals standing in a conference room. At the front of the room, we see Claire, gleaming in expectation as her boss prepares to announce the name of the company’s newest vice president. As soon as the “m” sound rolls off her boss’s tongue, Claire’s face begins to fall. The promotion went to her colleague Michael. We get the sense that she had been passed over before. She’s crushed.

In 2022, news outlets began talking about the “Great Resignation” because people in the United States were quitting their jobs in record numbers. They quit their jobs during the Great Resignation because work had become a Great Disappointment. The Pew Research Center found that people who quit their jobs during that period tended to do so because of low pay, no opportunities for advancement, and feeling disrespected at work. Patrick quit a job for all three of those reasons.

Patrick was working as an adjunct professor for a small college. From the outset, the pay was terrible. Patrick had dreamed of becoming a professor for years and thought he could tolerate the low pay for a season in exchange for an opportunity to get his foot in the door. At one point, he did the math and figured he could have been making about the same amount working retail. That was rather infuriating since the teaching job required a doctorate; still, he was willing to accept it for a while.

But soon, the possibilities for advancement went from slim to nil. He felt like some people in the university didn’t respect him. Others made him feel like he had nothing to contribute to the school beyond the few tasks they had asked him to do. Patrick’s disappointment became so profound that it festered into resentment and bitterness. Like a poison, it started seeping into his relationships and his work. Even his students began to pick up on his cynicism. He knew he should quit but needed the money and wanted to hold out hope that it would get better. But it didn’t. Things got worse. Burnout arrived. And he left. To Patrick, it felt like a bad breakup, like waking up to the realization of unrequited love. And it hurt.

Job loss is incredibly painful, and it’s an all-too-common occurrence today. It’s also far from the only form of devastation we can experience in work. Even when our position isn’t on the chopping block, there are thousands of different ways we can have our hearts broken on the job. I think about those whose bosses never encourage and only ever tear them down. Or those whose colleagues take the credit for their ideas. And then there are those who witness violence, physical harm, and even death in the workplace. It’s too much. Come, Lord Jesus.

When work wounds us, sometimes it leaves little cracks — cracks small enough that we can mend with patience, time, and care. Other times work smashes us to pieces. When that happens, we can stay on the tear-stained carpet for a while. But even though it feels safer on the floor, where there’s no way we can fall any further, we can’t live there. Eventually we need to get up and survey the damage.

The Bible offers some insight on how to stand up and examine all the broken pieces in and around us after work demolishes us. There’s a place in the Bible where we see God’s people leveled, their city reduced to rubble. And there’s a man who finds himself left to take in all the destruction. If we study his response, we can glean some wisdom for what to do when work tears us apart.

When work knocks us down, the temptation can be to quickly begin to pick up the pieces. But the invitation here is for us to survey the damage first and bring our pain to God, to tell God how many ways work has beaten us up, burned us out, and broken our hearts, and to tell God that the walls have fallen down and that we’re sitting in a pile of ruin and rubble. I encourage you to make a list of the ways work has disappointed, disillusioned, and even devastated you. Be gentle and patient with yourself while making this list. The work of remembering could resurface the pain.

As you do, cry. Groan. Shake your fist in the air. Because this is not the way work is supposed to be. Then ask God to bring you comfort. Ask God to extend his compassion to you. As you bring your pain to God, know that he loves you. God delights in you, and he wants you to flourish. It may still take some time to pick up the pieces — but this is where we start.

Adapted from When Work Hurts by Meryl Herr. ©2025 Meryl Herr. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.