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Corporate burnout is a workplace problem long before it becomes a personal one, and HR sits right in the middle of it.

HR consultant Martina Teufner joins Chris Wilson for a two part conversation about what burnout looks like from inside the function that is expected to fix it. Martina brings twelve years in HR and her own burnout, and she is candid about the position that puts her in: able to see absenteeism, dropping performance and a culture shifting, but not able to diagnose anyone, and often unsupported herself.

Part 1 covers what burnout actually is, how it spreads through a team, and where HR's role genuinely ends.

• Why employees hesitate to go to HR, and what that trust gap costs
• What the return to office debate reignited, and why flexibility is prevention
• The emotional position of being HR inside a culture you cannot fix

Season 1, Episode 7

Connect with Martina Teufner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martina-teufner/

Share. Inspire. Explore. is the podcast from Where I'm At, honest conversations on burnout, career change, and what comes next for working professionals.

Join the Where I'm At Community, free to join: https://community.whereimatcommunity.com/store/product/membershipWebsite: https://www.whereimatcommunity.com

Where I'm At is based on lived experience, reflection, and educational support. It is not therapy, counselling, crisis support, or professional advice. Please consult a qualified professional for individual medical, psychological, legal, financial, employment, or specialist support where relevant.

The signs of burnout are easy to miss in yourself, and easier still to miss in someone you work with.

Psychotherapist Claudia Bayer joins Chris Wilson to talk about what burnout actually looks like before it becomes a crisis. They cover where the line sits between ordinary stress and something clinical, why burnout gets mistaken for depression, and what the people around you tend to notice first. Claudia is Head of Psychotherapy at Lebens Resort Ottenschlag and runs a private practice in Vienna.

- The clinical difference between burnout and everyday stress

- The early warning signs most people explain away

- How burnout shows up in colleagues and family, and what to do about it

Season 1, Episode 6

Share. Inspire. Explore. is the podcast from Where I'm At, honest conversations on burnout, career change, and what comes next for working professionals.

Join the Where I'm At Community, free to join: https://community.whereimatcommunity.com/store/product/membership

Website: https://www.whereimatcommunity.com

Where I'm At is based on lived experience, reflection, and educational support. It is not therapy, counselling, crisis support, or professional advice. Please consult a qualified professional for individual medical, psychological, legal, financial, employment, or specialist support where relevant.

Burnout sends warnings long before it stops you. I got most of mine and ignored every one.

This episode is the honest version of what came before my breaking point: the chronic fatigue I explained away, the headaches, the irritability, the loss of anything that used to feel like joy. It also looks at the culture around all of it, where exhaustion gets treated as commitment and rest has to be earned.

You do not have to reach rock bottom before you are allowed to do something about it.

• The physical warnings that are easiest to explain away
• Irritability and lost joy, and why those read as personality rather than symptoms
• Why isolation is a signal, and what checking in with yourself looks like

Season 1, Episode 5

Share. Inspire. Explore. is the podcast from Where I'm At, honest conversations on burnout, career change, and what comes next for working professionals.

Join the Where I'm At Community, free to join: https://community.whereimatcommunity.com/store/product/membershipWebsite: https://www.whereimatcommunity.com

Where I'm At is based on lived experience, reflection, and educational support. It is not therapy, counselling, crisis support, or professional advice. Please consult a qualified professional for individual medical, psychological, legal, financial, employment, or specialist support where relevant.

Burnout is a gradual process, not an overnight collapse. It arrives in stages, and most of them look like something else at the time.

This episode walks through two models of how burnout develops and stays with the five stage version, because it is the one you can actually recognise in your own week. It starts with the honeymoon phase, where the work feels good and personal time quietly disappears. Each stage comes with the red flags I missed and what I would pay attention to now.

• Why the honeymoon phase is where it begins, not where it is safe
• The point where chronic stress turns into cynicism and detachment
• What listening to your body actually means when you are already depleted

Season 1, Episode 4

Share. Inspire. Explore. is the podcast from Where I'm At, honest conversations on burnout, career change, and what comes next for working professionals.

Join the Where I'm At Community, free to join: https://community.whereimatcommunity.com/store/product/membershipWebsite: https://www.whereimatcommunity.com

Where I'm At is based on lived experience, reflection, and educational support. It is not therapy, counselling, crisis support, or professional advice. Please consult a qualified professional for individual medical, psychological, legal, financial, employment, or specialist support where relevant.

The signs of burnout creep in slowly, disguised as ordinary stress. By the time most people notice, it has already taken hold.

This episode works through the physical, emotional and behavioural signs, with examples from my own collapse rather than a checklist off a website. Persistent exhaustion and broken sleep. Cynicism and self doubt that arrive so gradually they feel like personality rather than symptoms. Withdrawing from people, and the coping habits that quietly make it worse.

Recognising them early is what buys you options.

• Physical signs: exhaustion, disturbed sleep, a weakened immune system
• Emotional signs: overwhelm, cynicism, self doubt, loss of motivation
• Behavioural signs: procrastination, withdrawal, unhealthy coping

Season 1, Episode 3

References:https://mentalhealth-uk.org/burnout/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_burnouthttps://www.helpguide.org/mental-health/stress/burnout-prevention-and-recovery

Share. Inspire. Explore. is the podcast from Where I'm At, honest conversations on burnout, career change, and what comes next for working professionals.

Join the Where I'm At Community, free to join: https://community.whereimatcommunity.com/store/product/membershipWebsite: https://www.whereimatcommunity.com

Where I'm At is based on lived experience, reflection, and educational support. It is not therapy, counselling, crisis support, or professional advice. Please consult a qualified professional for individual medical, psychological, legal, financial, employment, or specialist support where relevant.

Burnout is not just extreme stress. If we treat it like stress, we miss it completely.

This episode covers the history and the science: the term being coined in the 1970s, and the WHO formally recognising burnout in 2019. I break down the three dimensions the research uses, exhaustion, cynicism and reduced efficiency, and where the real lines sit between burnout, stress, depression and anxiety.

The distinction matters because it changes what actually helps.

• How burnout became officially recognised, and what took so long
• The Maslach Burnout Inventory, and what it does and does not measure
• Why burnout has to be addressed at the source rather than managed

Season 1, Episode 2

References:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Freudenbergerhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslach_Burnout_Inventoryhttps://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseaseshttps://mentalhealth-uk.org/burnout/

Share. Inspire. Explore. is the podcast from Where I'm At, honest conversations on burnout, career change, and what comes next for working professionals.

Join the Where I'm At Community, free to join: https://community.whereimatcommunity.com/store/product/membershipWebsite: https://www.whereimatcommunity.com

Where I'm At is based on lived experience, reflection, and educational support. It is not therapy, counselling, crisis support, or professional advice. Please consult a qualified professional for individual medical, psychological, legal, financial, employment, or specialist support where relevant.

Burnout recovery does not start with a plan. It starts with the moment your body and mind refuse to go any further.

At 45, that moment came for me. Work addiction, a toxic workplace, a nervous system completely shot, and a life that looked fine on paper but felt entirely broken.

This first episode introduces the Share. Inspire. Explore. podcast and the Where I'm At Community: what it is, why it exists, and what honest burnout recovery looks like when you stop hiding it.

• How burnout showed up, and why it was so hard to see coming
• Work addiction and the escape tactics that made things worse
• The moment that changed everything, and what to expect from this podcast

Season 1, Episode 1

Share. Inspire. Explore. is the podcast from Where I'm At, honest conversations on burnout, career change, and what comes next for working professionals.

Join the Where I'm At Community, free to join: https://community.whereimatcommunity.com/store/product/membershipWebsite: https://www.whereimatcommunity.com

Where I'm At is based on lived experience, reflection, and educational support. It is not therapy, counselling, crisis support, or professional advice. Please consult a qualified professional for individual medical, psychological, legal, financial, employment, or specialist support where relevant.