As burnout language becomes part of everyday wellness culture, the She Sells founder argues that some people may be confusing recovery with retreat.
When the World Health Organization defined burnout as an occupational phenomenon, it gave clearer language to a serious workplace problem. Burnout, according to the WHO, comes from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed and is marked by exhaustion, mental distance from work, and reduced professional efficacy.
That definition matters. It also raises a question now appearing more often in wellness and career conversations : what happens when the language of burnout is used to explain every form of fear, hesitation, or disconnection?
That is the line Brooke Triplett, founder of She Sells With Brooke, has been drawing in recent public commentary. Triplett, an Australian sales trainer and entrepreneur whose work focuses on helping women enter remote sales roles, has built much of her public voice around confidence, action, and self-leadership. But her latest argument is less about sales and more about the way ambition is sometimes reframed as dysregulation.
“Somewhere in the wellness conversation,” Triplett wrote, “I think we started confusing peace with staying still. Calm with smallness. Regulated with stuck.”
Triplett’s point is not that burnout is imaginary. In the same post, she acknowledged that rest, nervous system regulation, and protecting one’s energy are important. Her criticism is aimed at a narrower habit: using therapeutic or wellness language to avoid action that is uncomfortable but necessary.
“Some of you are confusing alignment with avoidance,” she wrote. “Burnout is 100% real. Nervous system regulation is real. Rest is important. But if we’re going to be honest, some of you do not need another six months of healing in a dark room with a journal. Some of you need to move.”
The phrasing is blunt, but the distinction is useful. Burnout describes depletion from sustained occupational stress. Avoidance, by contrast, is often a response to fear, uncertainty, or discomfort. The two can overlap, but they are not the same problem and they do not always require the same solution.
The distinction is not always simple, and burnout should not be minimized, especially when it is tied to workplace conditions outside an individual’s control.
Avoidance is difficult to identify because it often feels good in the short term. When a person delays a hard conversation, skips a public post, avoids a job application, or postpones a business decision, the immediate result may be relief. That relief can make the avoidance feel like wisdom.
Behavioral research on anxiety has long treated avoidance as a pattern that can maintain fear rather than resolve it. A review published in Clinical Psychology Review describes avoidance as a common maladaptive response to fear and anxiety, particularly when it reinforces the belief that the avoided situation cannot be handled.
Triplett makes a similar argument in more direct language. “Every time you avoid the thing, your brain gathers more evidence that you cannot handle it,” she wrote. “But the opposite is also true. Action creates evidence. Evidence builds confidence. Confidence shifts identity.”
That idea is consistent with the psychology of self-efficacy. The American Psychological Association describes Albert Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy as centered on the belief that people’s sense of capability is shaped partly by performance accomplishments. Put simply, people often build confidence by doing the thing, not by waiting until they feel fully confident beforehand.
One of Triplett’s central observations is that some people may be misreading their own state. “A lot of people right now are not burnt out,” she wrote. “They’re under-stimulated, disconnected, suppressed. They’ve stopped moving in the direction of the person they said they wanted to become.”
This is where the argument becomes more nuanced. Genuine burnout often requires reduced demand, better boundaries, organizational change, or recovery time. Under-stimulation points in a different direction. It may require more challenge, clearer goals, renewed structure, or a return to meaningful work.
Workplace research has also examined the role of boredom and low engagement. A study on boredom and work engagement found that workplace boredom and engagement have different antecedents and are inversely related to employee well-being and organizational outcomes. That does not mean boredom is the same as depression or burnout. It does suggest that disengagement can become its own problem when it is mistaken for rest.
For women who have spent years in demanding jobs, family roles, or unstable career paths, the difference can be difficult to see. A person can be tired and still need movement. A person can need rest and still be avoiding a decision. Triplett’s argument sits inside that uncomfortable middle ground.
Triplett’s perspective is shaped partly by her own career shift . On her website, she describes moving from primary school teaching into sales after years of feeling exhausted and underpaid. Her public biography says she later built She Sells as a training platform for women seeking more flexible, remote sales careers.
An Authority Magazine interview described She Sells With Brooke as a recruitment and education company and reported that it grew to $10 million in annual revenue within two years. The same profile noted that Triplett’s early growth was shaped by action before certainty, including a moment when a business partner told her, “There is no business until you post.”
In that interview, Triplett reflected that she had been “hiding behind planning” and waiting for confidence to arrive. Her conclusion was that confidence came after action. That story is central to her current message because it gives the argument a practical foundation. She is not speaking only about discipline as a personal brand. She is speaking from a career built after leaving a role she has described as genuinely draining.
A More Useful Question
The risk in Triplett’s argument is that it can be misread as a dismissal of rest. The stronger reading is different. She is asking people to examine whether rest is helping them recover or helping them avoid.
That question is especially relevant in a culture where wellness vocabulary now moves quickly across social media, coaching, work, and personal development spaces. Words like burnout, alignment, regulation, and healing can be useful. They can also lose precision when used to explain every pause, every fear, and every delayed decision.
Triplett’s closing question is direct: “Am I genuinely burnt out, or have I just stopped moving?”
It is not a clinical test. It is not a universal answer. But as a self-inquiry, it is a useful question in a wellness culture where broad terms are often used loosely . For people who are truly depleted, the answer may still be rest. For others, the answer may be a practical next step they have been postponing.
