As burnout becomes part of everyday health culture, She Sell’s founders argue that some people may confuse 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 characterized by exhaustion, mental distance from work and reduced professional effectiveness.
That definition matters. It also raises a question that now comes up more often in health and career conversations: what happens when the language of burnout is used to explain any form of fear, hesitation or interruption?
That’s the line Brooke Triplett, founder of She Sells With Brooke, has drawn in recent public comment. Triplett, an Australian sales coach and entrepreneur whose work focuses on helping women move into 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 how ambition is sometimes recast as dysregulation.
“Somewhere in the health talk,” Triplett wrote, “I think we began to confuse peace with holding still. Calm with pettiness. Regulated with firm.”
Triplett’s point is not that burnout is imaginary. In the same post, she acknowledged that rest, regulation of the nervous system, and protecting one’s energy are important. Her critique is aimed at a narrower habit: using therapeutic or wellness language to avoid actions that are inconvenient but necessary.
“Some of you are confusing adaptation with avoidance,” she wrote. “Burnout is 100% real. Nervous system regulation is real. Rest is important. But let’s be honest, some of you don’t 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 work stress. Avoidance, on the other hand, is often a response to fear, uncertainty or discomfort. The two may overlap, but they are not the same problem and they do not always require the same solution.
The distinction is not always straightforward, and burnout should not be minimized, especially when it is tied to workplace conditions beyond an individual’s control.
Avoidance is hard to identify because it often feels good in the short term. When a person delays a tough conversation, skips a public post, avoids a job application, or puts off a business decision, the immediate result can be relief. That relief can make avoidance seem 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, especially 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 collects more evidence that you can’t handle it,” she wrote. “But the opposite is also true. Action creates evidence. Evidence builds trust. Trust changes 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 ability is shaped in part by performance achievements. Simply put, people often build confidence by doing things, not by waiting until they feel completely confident beforehand.
One of Triplett’s central observations is that some people may misinterpret their own state. “Many people right now are not burned out,” she wrote. “They’re understimulated, disconnected, repressed. They’ve stopped moving in the direction of the person they said they wanted to be.”
This is where the argument becomes more nuanced. Genuine burnout often requires reduced demand, better boundaries, organizational changes, or recovery time. Understimulation 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 performance. This does not mean that boredom is the same as depression or burnout. It suggests that disengagement can become its own problem when confused with rest.
For women who have spent years in demanding jobs, family roles or unstable career paths, the difference can be hard to tell. A person can be tired and still need movement. A person may need to rest and still avoid a decision. Triplett’s argument sits in the uncomfortable middle ground.
Triplett’s perspective is partly shaped by her own career shift. On her website, she describes moving from K-12 teaching to sales after years of feeling exhausted and underpaid. Her public bio says she later built She Sells as an educational platform for women seeking more flexible careers in distance sales.
An interview with Authority Magazine described She Sells With Brooke as a recruiting and training 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’s no business until you post.”
In that interview, Triplett reflected that she had been “hiding behind planning” and waiting for the trust to come. Her conclusion was that trust came after action. That story is central to her current message because it gives the argument a practical basis. She doesn’t just talk about discipline as a personal brand. She speaks 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 could be misinterpreted as a dismissal of rest. The stronger reading is different. She asks people to examine whether rest helps them recover or helps them avoid.
That question is especially relevant in a culture where wellness vocabulary now moves quickly across social media, coaching, work and personal development. Words like burnout, adaptation, 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 really burned out, or have I just stopped moving?”
It is not a clinical test. It is not a universal answer. But as a self-examination, it’s 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’ve been putting off.
