Are your work friends helping your burnout, or making it worse?
- Christina - Spark Back Coaching
- Jun 25
- 2 min read
Are your friends at work helping you with your burnout, or are they actually making it worse?
If you ever needed proof on how much we value relationships at #work, take a look at these numbers: 57% of employees would accept a job paying 10% below market just to work with a close friend, and 87% say that friendships are crucial for staying with the company (KPMG).
The Conservation of Resources theory offers a solid explanation backing these statistics. Good friendships provide instrumental support and emotional grounding, acting as a buffer that replenishes your psychological resources when #job demands peak.
But there's a dark side to this. I've talked to dozens of people that stay in toxic environments because they don't want to leave their friends behind and burn any bridges. In fact, for some of them, there is even a twisted sense of loyalty and self-sacrifice, the "we're in this together" feeling that works great for team morale when things are good but can be destructive when the work environment becomes unhealthy.
How can you know your friendships are actually holding you back?
There are 2 important dynamics forming in work relationships that can prove harmful to your mental health and potentially even accelerate your #burnout:
Co-rumination: Often, what we consider "support" is actually just collective venting. Studies highlight that "unhelpful support", such as colleagues emphasizing the stressor rather than helping you navigate it, directly increases job-related negative affect and work-related burnout.
Emotional contagion: Research shows that "perceived collective burnout" (the shared perception that your team is burning out) predicts your own individual burnout, regardless of your personal workload. If your work friends are cynical and exhausted, you are statistically more likely to burn out through social information processing.
Interestingly, both of these dynamics can be helpful if they're well-balanced. A bit of venting and commiserating can release some of the pressure, and going through tough periods together as a team (especially during periods of big changes) can really help you stay engaged.
The takeaway here isn't that friendships at work are risky and you should avoid them. In late adulthood, work is probably the best place to forge meaningful relationships, considering how much busier life tends to get with each passing decade. Nevertheless, there is no friendship or team bonding dynamic that is worth risking your health over, and anyone who has tried to recover from burnout can surely attest to that.
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