DEV Community: Coach Elizabeth

The Psychology of the False Alarm: Why Burnout Makes Every Bug Feel Like a Core Meltdown

Coach Elizabeth — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 17:42:04 +0000

These moments look funny because most of us can relate to these situations, especially in the IT, DevOps, or engineering space.

Coming to work, it looks like it will be a very chilled day, when suddenly alarms start blaring, and error messages appear everywhere!

Frantically looking for the cause (in the wrong place), spending hours looking through previous work and any changes that 'may' have happened. All the while the heart is racing 💓 with the painful awareness that this issue is costing the business money.

Only to find the issue was a minute easily solvable solution. Laughing giddily as the heavy breathing gradually calms down now that the 🔥 is over.

In hindsight, it's a funny situation, but during that period of frenzy the psychological and physiological toll on the body is taxing. Especially if this is a frequent occurrence, even on smaller scales.

The problem is that these frequent occurrences, fluctuating between peace then 🔥, causes the body to start operating in a constant state of high alert.

This causes some severe cognitive shifts:

Alert Anxiety: Fearing the next notification sound, even when you are off the clock.
Threat Miscalibration: When you are running on empty, your brain loses the ability to distinguish a minor hiccup from a catastrophic failure. Everything starts to feel like a Tier 1 emergency.
Cognitive Exhaustion: Spending massive amounts of mental bandwidth fighting a fire that wasn't actually there, leaving you entirely depleted for the tasks that actually matter.

Tech burnout isn't just about working long hours. It's also the repetitive fluctuations of peace/🔥 that can lead a workplace to eventually start calling this part of its 'culture'.

How do you handle your mental and physiological state after the fire is out? Are there set measures at your workplace that help you calm down your mind? Can we do more.

Let's discuss this 🤔

Do people actually know what a Clinical Coach does? I didn't know at first either, now I'm one of them. I only discovered this specialty two years ago and now I'm passionate about it. It's funny how life works. Anyway, how are you doing today?

Coach Elizabeth — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 22:29:30 +0000

Burnout isn't just "being tired"—it’s cascading symptoms.

Coach Elizabeth — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 21:27:36 +0000

Do we actually know what it is? Maybe we're experiencing it and just don't realize it.

Feeling depleted in spite of sleeping for hours.
Feeling negative, cynical, or mentally distant from your job.
Feeling ineffective at your work.

Does this resonate with you?

I’m curious to hear from the people actually sitting in the engine room:

How does burnout actually manifest in your day-to-day work? Do you experience the 3 AM background loop replaying code, the total emotional detachment from your team, or the severe processing latency where simple tasks feel impossible?

Let's discuss this. Maybe we'll find that even our own work neighbor might be experiencing the same thing and you aren't actually alone 🤷🏾‍♀️

Elizabeth is a Clinical Coach and the founder of Cognitive Shift Coaching (CSC), a practice dedicated to helping analytical minds optimize their mental processing capacity, feel less alone and recover from tech burnout. If your internal runtime is maxed out, you can book a private, free 15-minute Cognitive Clarity Call here.