Burnout doesn’t always look like exhaustion. Sometimes it’s the swear word slipping out mid-argument, or every driver on the road suddenly seeming like an idiot. University of Toronto psychology professor Steve Joordens says stress and burnout run on two very different systems, one built to help and one that turns against the body.
The chronic version doesn’t clock out. Steve points to a decades-old Montreal finding on how prolonged stress weakens the immune system, and why an unreadable boss or a job you can’t leave produces a different kind of exhaustion than a hard day ever could.
Steve lays out a game for catching stress in someone before they’ll admit it, plus the activities that flush the stress hormone out of the system like medicine. Whether it’s a swear word or a honked horn, there’s a way to catch it before it becomes the whole week.
Topics: burnout, chronic stress, cortisol, immune system, active listening
GUEST: Steve Joordens | https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-joordens/
Originally aired on2026-08-31
