When your work and your values don’t match: how to recognize the most overlooked form of burnout.
The most insidious form of burnout doesn’t come from working long hours or feeling overwhelmed by a to-do list.
It comes from feeling like the work we do—or the way we have to do it in order to be successful—goes against our core values and convictions.
This is misalignment burnout: the burnout that isn’t just a crisis of work, but a deeper crisis of meaning and identity.
Just like burnout that stems from overwork, misalignment burnout can lead to exhaustion and fatigue; feelings of meaninglessness; bone-crushing cynicism; and detachment.
In this article, we’ll explore how to recognize misalignment burnout. We’ll hear firsthand stories from folks who have experienced it; explore how, in our current political moment, we may be feeling it more than ever; and share three steps to begin finding realignment and healing.
Ultimately, as someone who’s been there, I see misalignment burnout as our innermost selves taking a stand, refusing to have their values ignored. It can be destabilizing, but it’s also a profoundly clarifying experience that gives us insight into what matters most—and opens the door to design our lives around it.
(PS: Do you feel disenchanted with your old notions of success—and crave a way of working and living that feels more deeply meaningful and alive? Join me on February 17 at my live, hands-on workshop, Redefining Success: From a Life That Looks Good on Paper to a Life that Actually Feels Good. Recording available for those who can’t attend live.)
The Four Types of Burnout
When we hear the word burnout, we imagine someone sitting at their desk till midnight, surrounded by mountains of papers. Someone rushing from meeting to meeting, with hardly a moment to breathe.
But burnout caused by overwork—frenetic burnout—is only one of the four types. All four eventually lead to the same core symptoms—emotional exhaustion, cynicism or detachment, and a sense of personal inefficacy¹—but the how and the why vary:
Frenetic burnout occurs when you’re highly invested in your career and work beyond your sustainable limits for a prolonged period. As your workplace demands rise, you increase your efforts—leading to overwhelm and neglect of your personal life and needs. Frenetic burnout tends to affect high-achievers who feel a strong internal pressure to do well; who believe that their worth is dictated by their performance.
Under-challenged burnout comes from working in an environment that’s monotonous or under-stimulating: where you don’t feel a sense of meaningful growth. The work feels superficial and your talents aren’t utilized, which, over time, makes you feel indifferent and exhausted.
Neglect/worn-out burnout comes from experiencing repeated situations at work where your efforts aren’t acknowledged or don’t make a difference, leading to feelings of cynicism or hopelessness. As the result of lack of structure, support, or clear direction, you begin to feel incompetent as your motivation falls and sense of apathy rises.
Misalignment burnout comes from feeling like your values are constantly at odds with what your work requires of you or rewards you for. It’s not about how much you’re working—it's about how deeply your work conflicts with your ethics. Over time, doing work that grates against your convictions leaves you feeling demoralized and resentful.² Like frenetic burnout, it tends to affect achievers: those who derive a sense of worth from being externally successful, sometimes at the expense of inner alignment.
Sometimes, one type of burnout can lead to another; sometimes, we experience multiple types simultaneously.
But of the four, misalignment burnout is the most overlooked—which leads many to suffer in silence, disregarding their obvious burnout symptoms because they don’t feel they “have it badly enough.”
Misalignment Burnout: The Hidden Demoralizer
Amy*, 42, was hired as a 7th grade English teacher at one of the best public schools in her district. Since she was young, she’d believed in the transformative power of education to spark creativity and expand students’ worlds.
But quickly, Amy realized that the values that had propelled her into teaching—meaningful growth, creativity, and transformation—weren’t the values her workplace demanded of her.
“In our district, standardized test results were used to evaluate the teachers and principals,” she explained. “My assistant principal constantly reminded me that if my students got low scores, it meant negative performance reviews for the entire chain of command—and potential loss of funding to school. So there was this incredible pressure on us to ‘teach the test.’”
Amy’s assistant principal discouraged her creative lesson plans. She was pushed to adopt a dry, rote-repetition approach—one that she knew favored students who learned in a linear way, while neglecting those who thrived with more visual or experiential support.
All of the innovative education models she’d studied—which Amy not only enjoyed, but felt crucial for meaningful learning—were useless here.
“My students were great. Bright and curious. But I literally watched their eyes glaze over as they copied facts into their notebooks. It was so demoralizing. All of the emphasis was on retention, not thinking originally. Not broadening their minds or connecting meaningfully with peers.”
But when Amy complained to her friends teaching in other districts, they dismissed her complaints: “They told me what I already knew: That I had a good job in a great district. That my workload was way less than theirs. That I had good staff support, small class sizes, summers off. And the kids were learning, in a way. Shouldn’t that be enough?”
As time passed, Amy noticed herself becoming disengaged. Despite her reasonable workload, she felt tired and depleted. Eventually, she began to feel resentful toward her assistant principal, her colleagues, and even the students she’d wanted to help.
Her students scored well on the tests—Amy actually received a school-wide teaching award based on her classes’ high scores—but a deep cynicism set in as she grappled with the reality that she was directly contributing to an educational system that contradicted her values.
Misalignment burnout is often overlooked because it doesn’t necessarily involve visible, external indicators of distress: long hours, demanding workload, pronounced conflict with higher-ups.
The tension it creates isn’t a matter of capacity, but a matter of meaning and values — and often, a mismatch between what we expected of a role, and its reality.
When Your Work Looks Good on Paper, but is Misaligned in Practice
I can relate to Amy’s story.
I first began my coaching business because I wanted to help people. I dreamed of helping my clients envision and bring to life the person they wanted to become.
Coaching was where my heart and my skills overlapped, and my values of connection, curiosity, and creativity drove me to it.
But I hadn’t anticipated how much of my work, as a self-employed coach, would by necessity involve marketing. I quickly amassed a social media following, and at first, I celebrated this—it was what fledging coaches dreamed of, what my peers envied.
But as the years passed, I experienced the values conflicts of a business model that required me to spend my 75% of my working hours “creating content” to sell my services.
Whether or not my posts performed well directly impacted whether or not I could pay my bills. I became preoccupied with metrics and engagement: writing “hot takes,” monitoring comments, making sure I looked “presentable enough” to record reels and avoid trolling comments that disparaged my appearance.
Despite initially being motivated by values of connection and compassion, I was spending 75% of my working hours embodying values like output, appearance, visibility, and status.
Frustratingly, this 75% was what I became “known” for—not my coaching, not my courses, but my social media accounts. I joked with friends that it felt like I’d built a beautiful museum, but people recognized me for the bathrooms in the basement instead of the art. I was widely recognized for the part of my job I hated most—the part that made me feel one-dimensional, performative, and incomplete.
Between this misalignment and the stress of releasing my book, I developed all the symptoms of burnout: I was exhausted. Cynical. I began to despise social media and my followers, and despite receiving daily emails from folks claiming my book had helped them, I didn’t believe that my work made any difference.
Deleting my accounts, running away, and retreating to a remote cabin in the mountains became a daily daydream.
The way the research on misalignment burnout describes it was spot on: “They lose their sense of efficacy and accomplishment as they devote their time and talents to activities of little personal importance.”²
At first, misalignment burnout can be hard to spot because the values a role, organization, or business publicly promotes are not necessarily the values it embodies or indirectly upholds behind the scenes.
This is why—if you think you might be experiencing it—it’s crucial to trust your lived experience—your gut—not what the job looks like on paper, or what it sounds like to others.
From the outside, I was a coach helping people-pleaser—but behind-the-scenes, my work-life was dictated by the algorithm.
From the outside, a business might value compassion and service—but it might make decisions that constantly privilege profit over people.
From the outside, a social service org might value dignity and care—but if it’s repeatedly subject to budget cuts, employees might spend their time navigating scarcity and impossible constraints, rather than actually delivering the care the organization claims to value.
Misalignment burnout doesn’t just come from values discrepancies around what you do—it can come from values discrepancies around how you have to do it in order to be successful at it.
These schisms aren’t always immediately apparent, and we might not recognize them until we’re already deeply embedded in a career or workplace.
The Silver Lining of Misalignment Burnout
Though I wouldn’t have used this language when I was deep in its trenches—exhausted, fatigued, and in full-blown paralysis about what to do next (like I share in my story here)—misalignment burnout is a difficult but meaningful homecoming.
Ultimately, it’s an expression of our innermost selves taking a stand, refusing to have their values ignored—even when it might be more convenient for our professional trajectories if they quieted down.
For high achievers, especially, misalignment burnout is a paradigm-shifting experience: one that demonstrates that while we’ve been taught to find our worth in what things look like from the outside—titles, status, visibility, wealth—it’s our moment-to-moment lived experience, and how deeply that experience aligns with our core, that keeps us energized, inspired, and alive.
Your misalignment burnout is a messenger. The dissatisfactions you feel with your work are signposts calling your attention to the unembodied values beneath.
Three Steps to Begin Healing Misalignment Burnout
⚖️ 1) Clarify The Values Mismatches
First, we have to identify the misalignments between our values and the values we’re obligated to embody at work.
It’s crucial, as we’re interrogating this, to be honest about the lived experience of our work, day in and day out—not how the work is perceived by others, or how it looks on paper.
You can spot mismatches by the way they make you feel: cynical, drained, exhausted, resentful, distinctly not-yourself.
When I was investigating my own misalignment burnout, some of the key mismatches were:
I value nuance, curiosity, and complexity, but being successful on social media requires me to prioritize clear solutions and reductive hot takes.
I’ve come to value community and collective change, but I’ve built a business with a more individualistic, self-help focus.
I value justice and democracy, but when I speak up about politics on social media, I’m shadowbanned and lose income—so I’ve chosen to embody silence and compliance.
I value presence and mindfulness, but how I run my business means I’m always online and always distracted.
💭 2) Brainstorm Shifts for Alignment
Once you clarify your mismatches, you can consider what shifts would adequately resolve them.
(As an aside: Unless your career is to Literally Be Yourself™, every job involves some degree of mismatch. In a capitalist culture, we labor for our basic security, and for many, this alone creates misalignment! That said, if you’re reaching the point of burnout, the misalignments you’re experiencing are beyond a tolerable level; they’re demanding your attention.)
Sometimes, making shifts within our existing role or organization is enough.
This was the path I chose. Over time (two years), I made my business less dependent on social media; shifted my niche into a more collective focus; and released certain financial goals so I could do the work in a way that felt true to me.
Sometimes, the misalignments can’t be resolved in our current role, organization, or field—so we’re faced with the choice to make a change.
Amy, the 7th grade teacher, went this route. After 2 years of increasing burnout, she chose to leave her position and found work at an adult education center in a neighboring town. There, no longer subject to the public school system bureaucracy, she now leads hands-on courses for curious adults in her community. She earns slightly less and no longer has summers off, but for her, the exchange was well worth-it.
🎨 3) Imagine New Success Narratives
Often, choosing to realign with our values means rewriting our definitions of success—a process that can take time, support, and imagination.
Had I stayed the old course, I could’ve been very successful in a way Younger Hailey had dreamed of. I could have amassed millions of followers; earned a lot more money; started a popular podcast; gotten more six-figure book deals.
But while this life would have shimmered from the outside, I knew from my lived experience that inside, it would feel hollow.
Letting go of these old success narratives opened up space for a new sort of dreaming—not the the “copy-pasting what my culture told me to want” sort, but the authentic sort. The sort that looks within, asks “What matters to me?” and moves to build a life around it.
For me, this meant centering more community, connection, and creativity at work and beyond work—which has led me to a life that feels more vital and meaningful.
I restructured my life around my values after misalignment burnout, and now, I help others do the same. If you want to connect with your values at work and beyond in a way that makes life feel meaningful again—
join me on February 17 at my live, hands-on workshop Redefining Success: From a Life That Looks Good on Paper to a Life that Actually Feels Good.
Redefining Success is a 2-hour interactive workshop designed to help you understand why you’ve outgrown the myth of achievement-as-fulfillment, and create a new personal definition of success: one oriented around not how much you achieve, but how deeply your life aligns with your values and sense of meaning.
🎥 Recording available if you can’t make it live.
🫂 Financial aid tickets are available for those in need.
PS: Misalignment burnout + our current political moment.
Writing this piece, I realized that many of us are at risk of entering a state of misalignment burnout as we confront escalating state violence and authoritarianism.
As our country’s grasp on democracy loosens, our personal values of justice, fairness, dignity, and compassion are increasingly activated—but many of us don’t feel able, or welcome, to bring these values into our work.
It feels eerily dystopian to proceed with business as usual as our neighbors are detained, the Epstein files are released, and American citizens are being shot by government agents in broad daylight.
This dissonance is especially pronounced for content creators, why is why I’m coordinating a free, facilitated session for influencers—those who have historically run less-political accounts—who want to begin speaking out on their platforms against state violence, but need help figuring out how.
I’m bringing in an experienced movement organizer to lead a live Zoom training that will (1) address the unique challenges we face depending on social media engagement for our livelihood; (2) share the unique influence we have to create social change with our platforms; and (3) help us strategize an effective action plan for how we can individually (and collectively) leverage our platforms for change.
If you’re a large-following influencer (50k+) who would like to join this effort, just contact me here.
Citations
¹Montero-Marín, J., García-Campayo, J. A newer and broader definition of burnout: Validation of the "Burnout Clinical Subtype Questionnaire (BCSQ-36)". BMC Public Health 10, 302 (2010).
²Leiter, M. P. (2008). A two process model of burnout and work engagement: distinct implications of demands and values. Giornale Italiano di Medicina del Lavoro ed Ergonomia, 30(1 Suppl A), A52-A58.
³Hossli, N., Natter, M., & Algesheimer, R. (2024). On the importance of congruence between personal and work values – How value incongruence affects job satisfaction: A multiple mediation model. International Journal of Wellbeing, 14(3), 1–18.
⁴Dyląg, A., Jaworek, M., Karwowski, W., Kożusznik, M., & Marek, T. (2013). Discrepancy between individual and organizational values: Occupational burnout and work engagement among white-collar workers. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics, 43(3), 225–231.
⁵Norman, S. B., & Maguen, S. (n.d.). Moral injury. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD.