“In the end, it’s positive, once you learn to walk again”

Series Die to be reborn, like the phoenix? Victims of burnout talk about their journeys and what the crisis taught them.

By dint of using it in all sauces, the word burn-out has almost become a catch-all term – and in fact, professional burnout is our evil of the century; even if precise figures are lacking, a study carried out by Ipsos for Malakoff Humanis in 2023 reveals that one in two employees report professional burnout. But what does burnout look like from the inside? Do those who go through this ordeal, this “dark night of the soul” as our elders said, come out stronger? With new keys to themselves and to the excesses of our society of which they have been victims?

From the moment of collapse to the moment they stood on their feet again, five people, patients who became experts in their illness, told us about their difficulties, their falls and relapses, and above all their reconstruction. What did the illness teach them and what changes were they able to make in their lives, in their relationship to work and the world to finally, little by little, get better? The example of Gilberte,…