When work starts costing you more than it should.
Burnout, workplace harm, and finding your way back.
Work can leave you exhausted, questioning yourself, or changed in ways that are hard to explain. Sometimes that comes from what’s happening at work. Sometimes it comes from what the workplace does about it. Still Cracked helps you work out which — and what might actually help.
Not sure where to start?
You don’t need to know what you need yet.
Answer a few questions about what’s happening, and we’ll point you somewhere useful.
If you’re here, something happened
Work can take more than you agreed to give.
Time and energy are the expected costs. Most people plan for those.
Nobody plans for the rest of it. Three people leave and their work doesn’t. The target goes up and the hours don’t. You finish on time now — you just finish the work later, at home.
And somewhere in there it starts taking something else: your sleep, your confidence, the sense that you’re good at something you used to be good at.
None of that appears on a timesheet. It is still a cost, and it is still real.
Beyond burnout
Burnout is part of the story. It isn’t the whole story.
Burnout can develop when the demands of work chronically outweigh the resources, support or capacity available to meet them. Workload, long hours, inadequate staffing, lack of control and poor organisational support can all play a part.
But not every harmful experience at work is best understood as burnout. Work can also affect people through repeated exposure to others’ trauma, being required to act against deeply held values, or feeling betrayed by an organisation that was expected to protect or support them.
Different experiences can overlap, and more than one may be happening at the same time. Having language for them can help make sense of what work has been taking from you.
Six are worth knowing:
Resources
Start with something practical.
Free reading, a short quiz that narrows things down, workbooks you can buy, and support if that is what you need.
Find the right resourcePrograms & learning
Learning that takes the work seriously.
Professional education for people who want more than a wellbeing morning. Three ways in: the in-person program, the free online community, and short CPD.
See programs and training
Why this exists
Suzanne Robertson
Psychologist
For more than twenty-five years as a psychologist, I’ve worked with people trying to understand what happens when work starts costing them more than it should.
What people experience can take many forms — burnout, anxiety, exhaustion, distress, loss of confidence, disconnection from work, or a sense that something they once valued has changed. And those experiences don’t happen in a vacuum. Workload, workplace relationships, exposure to distress, moral conflict, organisational culture and the way people are treated when something goes wrong can all be part of the picture.
I created Still Cracked to help people make sense of that bigger picture. To look not only at what they’re experiencing, but at what may have contributed to it — and what might help from here.
Everything here draws on psychological research and more than two decades of clinical experience, translated into practical resources people can actually use.
Sometimes it’s what’s happening at work.
Sometimes it’s what the workplace does.
Sometimes it’s what it all gets put down to.