Hi there, I wanted to share with folks my personal experience taking a medical leave for burnout reasons. I've been at this big girl tech job for a few years and in the past year, I began to get extreme stress, anxiety, and extreme fatigue from my job.

I work remote full time since the pandemic, and I would find myself waking up with intense anxiety, checking work chats at 2am and staying up for a few hours to respond and "make progress" on projects. Daytime was back to back meetings while nights and weekends were when I would be expected to do my "actual" work.

I researched a ton about burnout leaves for mental and physical health. I found one podcast with an employment lawyer who really helped me recognize my rights, and what could be done about the situation. --Most people think the FMLA is reserved for a well known physical ailment, when in fact our mental health /wellbeing, when severely impacted enough, can be just as debilitating. I have a hard work ethic, and was put in a number of pretty intensely gross situations with bad sexist and a narcissistic boss (would take credit for his reporters work as his own, had 12 people leave under him in one year, etc).

anyway, I wanted to share this in case anyone else is experiencing similar things with their health. Burnout is real, and with your doctor's support you do have a right to the FMLA. For me, I experienced migraines, Severe insomnia, fatigue, and anxiety -- medically, she is supporting (paid) leave for me to take time and space to get back to a healthy place both mentally and physically.

one of the podcast I listened to was called "How to request medical leave + what you're entitled to according to an employment lawyer"

please take care of yourself!