Work burnout and rebuilding meaning

Every break she returned to exactly the same place. Despite good ratings at work she felt that nothing she did mattered. She had been working for three years without wanting to, only because she could not bear to stop.

First came the boundaries: an end-of-work time, and an examination of what had been allowing it not to be kept. For two years she had not set the boundary herself.

Then we worked on meaning in ACT: examining why the work was being done at all, and which parts of it had never been seen.

She put the boundary into practice in month three and raised it at work. By month six she had a five-day week and felt she had chosen it, rather than continued it because she could not stop.