TL;DR: even HR has meltdowns. And when it’s the HR Lady ugly-crying from burnout in HR? Yeah, that’s a special kind of nightmare.
As the HR Lady, I thought I was immune. I mean, I literally had a poster in Slack and the company intranet about “wellness.” I had policies, processes, and resources for burnout. What I didn’t have? A form for when the HR person completely falls apart at her desk.
The Breaking Point
My burnout story didn’t start with a dramatic collapse. It started with crying. And not the “wipe away a dignified tear with a tissue” kind of crying. Oh no. We’re talking about ugly, snotty, can’t-stop-even-though-I’m-in-front-of-my-boss crying. At work.
The irony wasn’t lost on me: I was the HR Lady, starring in my very own HR nightmare. You think you’ve seen awkward? Try being the one responsible for documenting workplace meltdowns… while having your own meltdown in the middle of the office.
And my body wasn’t done with me yet. It decided to escalate and threw me into a year-long colitis flare. A whole year of my gut staging daily riots.
The Fallout of burnout
Then came the depression—dark, heavy, suffocating. Three years and counting. And my generalized anxiety disorder? It skyrocketed. Picture me vibrating like an over-caffeinated hummingbird with a doom playlist on repeat.
Burnout wasn’t just “feeling tired.” It was:
- My brain buffering like a 2006 YouTube video.
- Crying in the bathroom so much I should’ve had my mail forwarded there.
- Feeling like my own body filed a hostile workplace complaint—against me.
The Plot Twist
It got so bad, I had to quit. Yep. The HR Lady quit. Not because I found a dream job. And not because I was chasing a passion project. It was because burnout burned me down to the studs. That’s how bad it was: I couldn’t even HR anymore. I still can’t.
The Turning Point
The “turning point” wasn’t some inspirational movie moment with swelling music. It was me, finally admitting: “I can’t keep doing this. I can’t HR my way out of this one.” And weirdly enough, that was progress.
The Recovery (Kind of, Sort Of, In Progress Forever) from burnout
Recovery has been messy. It looks like unapologetic naps. It includes therapy and medication. It also involves a whole lot of saying no to things that once felt mandatory. It’s redefining success as “didn’t cry in public today” or “today I washed my face.”
It’s learning the hard way that burning yourself out doesn’t make you strong—it makes you sick.
The Takeaway
If burnout can flatten the HR Lady—the one with all the policies, resources, and cheery wellness flyers—it can happen to anyone.
So here’s my HR-approved, unofficial, off-the-record advice: don’t wait until you’re crying at your desk and Googling “can colitis kill me?” before you take burnout seriously.
Because when your body decides it’s done, it won’t send you a polite HR warning. It won’t put you on a Performance Improvement Plan. Nope—burnout skips straight to termination.
And guess what? There’s no appeal process.
