It’s rare these days to pick up a newspaper and not read something about an entertainer being hospitalized for exhaustion. Yet a review of the table of contents, index and symptom/diagnosis charts in the standard medical reference books makes one realize that there is no disease or illness actually named exhaustion.

So why are so many entertainers and thousands of regular people hospitalized for something that doesn’t even exist? Exhaustion actually exists, but since it is generally a combination of a number of different symptoms, it is difficult to categorize. 

While entertainers are prone to exhaustion, business people are too. “Some people are natural people pleasers and will end up emotionally exhausted because they feel compelled to take on more and more work,” observes John-Henry Pfifferling, Ph.D., founder and director of the Center for Professional Wellbeing in Durham, N.C. “It is very easy for organizations to take advantage of people like this.” 

Pfifferling worked with one woman — a chief operating officer — who resigned from her job due to emotional exhaustion and is taking six months off to recover. “The company had just put more and more on her, and she had continued to take it all on,” he notes. Since she wasn’t assertive enough to say no, the organization was only too happy to keep piling the work on. 

One reason she continued to take on more work was that no one ever took the time to thank her or show their appreciation, so she never felt she was doing enough. As such, she felt compelled to continue to take on more work, hoping that someday she would be doing enough for the organization to show its appreciation. “Finally, she couldn’t handle any more,” Pfifferling says. “When she finally resigned, she was told the organization would be hiring four people to replace her.”