What I'm saying is that it's especially easy to get caught up in this mindset when discussing mental health topics. The existence of "real" burnout artificially introduces the concept of "fake" burnout.
Let's be clear, the concept of burnout and worn out is more compassionate, descriptive, and most importantly has the important consequence that I'm interested in avoiding: not turning into a who has it worse spiral that ultimately ends in people with burnout not being able to identify it because someone else has it worse.
It's this class of false negative that I believe is important to have a conversation about. These people often go unnoticed, because despite having burnout will not identify it as such because someone has it worse.
I get that you're interested in the false positive case, and that's fair. I understand that if too many people misidentify worn out as burnout that it can make burnt out people feel like people aren't able to understand their circumstances as severe, but I trust you'll consider both types of error as important and deserving the attention they do.
The parent is saying "I broke my ankle - fractured in several places I was crippled and needed surgery you did not experience a broken ankle". You cannot fix this problem by icing it. You need a systemic reduction in everything.
The author is conflating a sprained ankle with a broken one. The parent is saying that is not true. A lot of people who have sprained their ankles have come into this topic to tell everyone "WELL ACKTHUALLY" in the most obnoxiously stereotypical HN way possible thereby diluting the actual meaning of the parent's statement. There are far too many HNers who have a permanent craniorectal issue.
> If you can be restored from simply doing a different task, then its not real burnout.
You're not wrong, it's just that you seem not to realize this statement was a "well actually", probably because you happen to agree with it.