I see that the author of this post is a woman. I wanted to write something about overworking and burnout as a result of our normative (but toxic) masculine arch

I see that the author of this post is a woman. I wanted to write something about overworking and burnout as a result of our normative (but toxic) masculine archetypes (disclosure: I am a man; I have a wife and a step-daughter; I have burnt out twice in the past two years, the first time was really bad). Last year, around this time of the year, I read "Tantra Illuminated", which changed how I view work (and overwork), and play. Tantra is not really that accessible to most people though, and it takes a long time to explain. This year, personal crisis led me to the book, "The Trickster, Magician, and Grieving Man". Unlike "Tantra Illuminated", the book is very accessible, though it might evoke significant emotional resistance in men who attempt to read it. The book is a critique on the normative archetype of masculinity, and has a powerful way of explaining why overworking and burnout is appealing. The book starts with the first chapter on the shadow archetype of unacknowledged pain. The rest of the first half of the book explains the consequences of the unacknowledged pain, with the latter half of the book explaining three additional masculine archetypes. Although the book covers a lot of ground, I'll narrow it down to just overworking and burnout. Pain is the experience of something in the world imposing on your sense of self. The normative masculine archetypes is such that, we try to chose our pain (by being a hero). The reality is that we cannot control and master all that we see. Each of us is connected in a complex intertwining of relationships, both physically and emotionally. In order to achieve the perceived ideal of being untouched, and untransformed, the classical male archetypes tends towards deadening ourselves towards pain and cut ourselves off from the connections that pain is signaling to us. That pain doesn't really go away, and instead, accumulates as a rejected shadow-side of our psyche. One of the things that happens after that is to the taking on of the burden of the world as a proxy. The strain of upholding something is substituted for becoming present to the pain we carry. It brings with it thrill, the exhilaration. We tell ourselves narratives such as, "I am doing this for you", but it is just another way of avoiding the pain. Taking this to its extreme leads to violence and war, drawing in others into the maelstrom of rage in a fit to avoid that pain. Burnout happens when you can no longer avoid the pain. It looks like external stress, but what it really is, is the accumulation of unacknowledged pain of living. It's not something you can move past (which was what led to that accumulation in the first time). Being present to that pain, and just letting it be, letting it speak, letting it unfold in its own time is the only way to recovery. This whole thing goes deeper than that if you want to avoid the cycles of overworking and burnout.