Explore every episode of the podcast Unstuck

Some of us are always the one who says "I'll do it."

This is the second episode of our burnout series, and we're looking at the self-sacrifice lens: the belief that other people's needs come before yours. We talk about where it starts, whether that's being the responsible child, the good and undemanding child, or watching a parent put herself last for years.

Then we follow it into adulthood. What happens when your core emotional needs aren't met at work or at home, the lens switches on, and you cope by giving in, zoning out, or finally losing your temper with everybody. None of the three work. All of them make the lens stronger.

We also draw a line between the guilt that's yours to work on and a genuinely toxic system that needs addressing properly.

Three things to try: pause before you agree, tolerate the guilt without rushing to fix it, and run a resentment audit.

Next: the defectiveness lens.

Burnout is everywhere, which is part of the problem. Is it a real psychological experience, or have we started using the word for every kind of exhaustion?

This week we look at what the research actually says, and start a miniseries on burnout.

In this episode:

The World Health Organisation definition, and why burnout is classed as an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical condition

The argument that burnout doesn't exist, and why it's part fair and part invalidating

Reward, purpose and achievement, and whether hard work alone burns anyone out

Why "resilience training" often locates a systemic problem inside the individual

Christina Maslach's six areas of working life: workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values

The job demands-resources model, and the simplest version of it: burnout becomes more likely when demands keep outrunning resources

The five core emotional needs, and what each one looks like in a workplace rather than a childhood

How lenses develop, how they get activated at work, and where SOS comes in

Why burnout isn't only about work, and what we mean by life burnout

An important note: Maslach and the job demands-resources researchers are not writing about schema therapy. Placing their findings alongside the core emotional needs is our own formulation, not a claim that the models are the same.

Over the next three episodes, we're taking one lens each: self-sacrifice, defectiveness and shame, and unrelenting standards.

Storming in is the last of our SOS coping styles, and the hardest to spot in yourself. Sometimes it looks like control: the friend who organises everything. Sometimes it looks like being needy, moody or hard to predict. And sometimes it's a perfectly pleasant conversation where you rubbish someone you secretly envy. We look at shame, envy and jealousy, why storming in feels powerful, what it costs, and how envy can stop being something to hide and start telling you what you want.

Opting out is the O in SOS. Going quiet. Letting things drift. Cancelling. Or sitting right there at dinner with your head somewhere else entirely.

In this episode we look at avoidance in friendships: what it protects you from, why the relief lasts about an hour, and what it quietly costs over years. We get into the two kinds of opting out, physical and emotional, and why the second one is far harder to spot in yourself.

Submitting is the S in SOS. People-pleasing. Saying yes when you mean no. Quietly putting yourself last and calling it being a good friend.

We get specific about what that looks like: moulding yourself into the funny one at school because it was reliably likeable, and pulling over to apologise by text while lost in a car with the petrol light on.

Then we look at why we do it — the needs for connection, belonging and acceptance sitting underneath — and why it never quite delivers the closeness it's reaching for.

The question we land on: can you be a good enough friend without losing yourself in it?

Friendships change in your forties and nobody warns you.

We start with a fallout of our own — the time one of us abruptly announced she was moving to Gibraltar because she was lonely — and use it to look at what happens when circles shrink, time runs out and priorities quietly shift.

We talk quality versus quantity, the childhood experiences that shape how comfortable you are on your own, and the coping styles that surface when a friendship wobbles: storming in and taking charge, or submitting and tolerating far less than you deserve.

And the question underneath all of it: what is it that keeps loneliness in place?

Do women become invisible in midlife? We disagree on this one, fairly openly. One of us reckons older women are more visible now than they have ever been. The other, having left a senior NHS role to start again from scratch, feels distinctly less so.

Somewhere between those two positions we get into middle-agism, perimenopause, and the shift from being valued for how you look to finding meaning in what you contribute. We introduce our SOS coping model — submit, opt out, storm in — and what it looks like to respond as a Lifeguard instead.

Also: celebrity examples, marketing pressure, and how money changes the whole experience.

In our very first episode, we introduce ourselves, explain a little bit about what schema therapy actually is, and discuss why we decided to turn our years of friendship and professional partnership into this podcast.

In our very first episode, we introduce ourselves, explain a little bit about what schema therapy actually is, and discuss why we decided to turn our years of friendship and professional partnership into this podcast.