According to Lim, it’s a combination of VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

“After an exhausting two-plus years, it’s no wonder people are feeling and thinking in primal “fight or flight” ways,” she tells Stylist. “Companies shutting their doors and the unpredictable economy has had a direct impact and forced people to question how they’re going to make ends meet and whether they’re still going to have a job next week/month/year.”

Of course, the pandemic added another element to the strain of a global recession and produced anxiety around literal life and death situations. “Essentially the virus was the latest incarnation of a sabre-tooth tiger, kicking in our primal instincts to just survive (minimally “getting by”) with the anxiety of not knowing how to adapt,” Lim continues.

Burnout has steadily been on the rise since the World Health Organisation updated its classification to a “syndrome” in toxic workplaces in 2019. But the pandemic caused it to spike in unprecedented ways.

As Lim shares, when we experience things like working too much, employers not being supportive enough or the hassles of adjusting to a remote or hybrid lifestyle – these are all work conditions that ladder up to elevated levels of burnout. “Then of course, when we layer in VUCA to our everyday lives, burnout levels (and therefore anxiety) are sure to be exacerbated,” she adds.

“But the silver lining is that there are ways to ground ourselves with things that are within our control to reduce burnout. If we’re more conscious of what we can control in our lives, how we spend our time, our sense of purpose and values, then we actively act accordingly.”

Why we feel more anxious than ever about going to work