What functional burnout looks like when quitting is no longer an option

There was a time, not long ago, when employees began drawing invisible lines around their work lives—logging off on time, refusing unpaid overtime, prioritising rest over hustle. The world called it 'quiet quitting'. It was, in its way, a rebellion: a collective exhale after years of overwork and pandemic-era exhaustion.

But in 2025, a quieter, more unsettling phenomenon has taken its place. Call it 'quiet cracking'.

It is the sound of workers who no longer have the luxury to quit—those who stay, perform, endure—while slowly unravelling on the inside. It’s the subtle slump of shoulders during meetings, the blankness behind once-bright eyes, the eerie politeness of conversations drained of warmth. As layoffs rise and job markets tighten, the modern worker’s defiance has given way to quiet endurance—drained, disengaged, yet grateful to still have a paycheque.

When empathy became efficiency

“Workplaces have become emotionally colder since the Great Resignation,” says Vrinda Taneja, HR head at Media Graphic PR. “And perhaps not intentionally.”

The Great Resignation, she explains, didn’t just empty offices; it rewired them. In its wake, many leaders—exhausted from rebuilding teams and absorbing workloads—hardened out of necessity. What began as survival has turned into style. Less empathy, more efficiency. Less trust, more control.

The early days of the pandemic were filled with earnest attempts at empathy—flexible hours, mental health days, wellness check-ins. But as the economy cooled and layoffs mounted, that warmth “calcified into quiet caution”. Meetings today, Taneja notes, are efficient and polite, but emotionally vacant. “The pandemic taught companies how to function remotely; the aftermath is teaching them how to disconnect.”

The silent symptoms

If quiet quitting was an act of resistance, quiet cracking is a slow collapse. “Quiet cracking rarely announces itself. It begins subtly—a drop in creative energy, fewer questions, humour disappearing from the workday. It’s not laziness—it’s emotional erosion,” says Taneja.

Employees still show up, but the light behind their effort dims. Even leaders are showing signs of what she calls “silent fatigue”—managing from depletion rather than inspiration. “When leaders start running on empty,” she warns, “cultures start breaking quietly.”

Aseesinder Kaur Khurana, a counselling psychologist at Rocket Health, describes this as a form of functional burnout. “Emotional suppression becomes a survival strategy, but the cost is internalised by the body and mind,” she highlights.

In clinical terms, it looks like allostatic overload—when chronic stress keeps cortisol levels high, and the body never returns to baseline. “Sleep falters, focus fades, irritability rises,” Khurana explains. “Even joy starts to disappear. You stop feeling alive.”

From ambition to anxiety

For many mid-career professionals, ambition has quietly morphed into fear. “It’s not that people have stopped dreaming,” says Taneja, “it’s that they now have more to lose.” Mortgages, families, ageing parents—stability becomes the new success metric.

Khurana adds, adding that “the fear of instability rewires the modern worker from a goal-setter to a threat-scanner”. When employees feel disposable, their nervous systems stay in a state of low-level panic. “Prolonged uncertainty shrinks mental bandwidth. People stop planning for the future. They’re not participating in their careers anymore—they’re just bracing for impact,” she explains.

This fear, ironically, has become both a stabiliser and a symptom. “Fewer resignations mean less volatility,” Taneja says, “but they also mean less innovation. Fear might keep people in their seats, but it doesn’t keep them inspired.”

The resilience trap

If “resilience” was once a rallying cry, today it has become a burden. “Resilience has turned into corporate code for ‘keep going no matter what—and with a smile’,” says Khurana. “It’s subtle blame-shifting. When the tank is dirty, you can’t blame the fish for feeling unwell.”

In glorifying over-functioning—the employees who answer emails at 2:00 am, skip meals, and never complain—companies have turned endurance into a moral virtue. “This version of resilience,” she adds, “makes workers view exhaustion as a personal failure rather than a systemic one. It breeds shame.”

The same goes for corporate wellness programmes. “Most of them are bandages,” says Taneja. “They treat burnout, not prevent it.” Yoga classes and mindfulness apps are well-intentioned, but they don’t fix the root causes: chronic uncertainty, blurred boundaries, and a culture that glorifies overwork.

“You can’t ‘breathe’ your way out of a system that rewards exhaustion,” she says flatly. 

The psychology of staying

In many cases, workers aren’t quitting—they’re trapped. “It’s learned helplessness,” Khurana explains, referencing Martin Seligman’s famous experiment in which dogs stopped trying to escape shocks after repeated failure. “Modern employees reach that same point. They stop believing things can improve, so they stop trying.”

Recovery, she adds, requires both personal and structural repair. “You can’t heal in the same environment that broke you—at least not without changes around you.”

For individuals, recovery begins with “safety signalling”—small routines that calm the nervous system: sunlight, mindful eating, breathing breaks. “But true healing starts when energy once spent bracing for the next curveball begins to flow into creativity again,” she says. “When agency, not fear, becomes the default.”

The quiet erosion of trust

If there’s one emotion that defines this era, it might be disillusionment. “When loyalty stops feeling reciprocal, employees no longer see their workplace as a community. It becomes a transaction,” says Khurana. That shift, she warns, breeds a kind of collective burnout—teams that function mechanically, not meaningfully.

Taneja believes the antidote lies in respect—but not the old, hierarchical kind. Respect today is quieter. It’s not about perks or promotions. It’s about fairness, honesty, and humanity in an environment where both feel scarce.

It also means dropping corporate platitudes. “Don’t say, ‘We’re a family,’ if you’re not,” she adds. “Say the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. People can handle honesty better than they can handle false reassurance.”

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