Trauma is often the underlying issue encountered in overwork, chronic stress and burnout. A trauma can be a past physical or emotional experience where we experienced powerlessness. The (unconscious) memory of that experience can cause us to keep falling into a primal survival mechanism.
Fight, Flight, Freeze
Flee, fight or freeze; these are the choices that prey animals have when faced with immediate mortal danger. This is also called the Fight, Flight and Freeze response. This also applies to people in traumatic situations. But unlike prey animals that shake off the physical tension of a life-threatening moment very quickly, we humans do not always succeed. The trauma thus disables our inner compass; we can only respond from that FFF response. As a result, you develop a fear of anxiety, for example. And being afraid means living in a body that is always on guard and alert. Often tension settles in our bodies. This presents itself in insomnia, anxiety, difficulty concentrating or anger outbursts.