How I Shifted Out of Feeling Guilty Taking a Sick Day at Work and Recovered from Emotional Burnout

Ashley Elliott
Mar 31
4 min read

My Experience with Burnout and Feeling Guilty for Taking a Sick Day

A story that I want to share today is an experience I had over a year ago. I remember it was the end of a work week in my 9 to 5 job. I was feeling exhausted. Not only was I doing my work, but I was also doing the work of another person on PTO.

Near Friday I could sense that I was coming down with a cold. I woke up Friday morning stuffy and congested. I felt terrible because I also knew how much work needed to get done at my 9 to 5 job.

I was in this moment where I knew I felt sick, but I felt guilty for taking the day off and calling in sick. There are many reasons why this happened.

Why Did I Feel Guilty For Taking A Sick Day?

There are many ways to look at this. For one, why did I feel guilty for taking a sick day? It begs us to ask the question, what did I believe it meant to be a good worker? For me, it meant being always available and ready for work. It meant not to disappoint others on the team and not to be a burden either.

But where does this come from, this story of always being on and available at work?

The Story Behind “The Good Worker”

This story that a good worker is someone who is always on and available comes from the culture that we live in. In the West, it’s a story of binaries, where there are two categories:

The good worker: always on and available
The bad worker: not always on, not always available

From a young age, we are taught this by our culture, and it started before the Industrial Revolution. This idea was analyzed by the sociologist Max Weber in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

These binaries leave out the nuanced spectrum of possibilities in between that each human can inhabit. These binaries sculpt the systems that we exist in today in Western society, such as extractive capitalism and hustle culture.

The idea that workers fall into two moral categories—‘the good worker’ who is always on and available and ‘the bad worker’ who is not—helps sustain systems often described in sociology and political economy as extractive forms of capitalism. This binary classification shapes:

Behavior
Expectations
Power

When there are two binaries, there will typically be a projection of preferences, where one category is superior and the other category is inferior. This creates hierarchies in our society. As a result of this dynamic, inequality is created.

Why Hustle Culture May Make Us Feel Guilty and Burned Out

Another important question that helped me keep my time and freedom for connection and fun was asking myself:

What level of commitment makes someone a good worker?

What I believed in that moment, when I was feeling that sense of guilt, was commitment from a good worker meant pushing through sickness and showing up to work. Commitment meant:

Working extra hours
Pushing through
Staying busy

This narrative of what it means to be a good worker is one that is all too common in the culture we live in in the West. Some people may refer to this as hustle culture. Hustle culture is a modern work ideology that glorifies:

Constant productivity
The pursuit of success through relentless effort
Long hours, side projects, and perpetual “grind”

All of this often comes at the expense of rest and well-being.

Shifting Out of Feeling Guilty for Taking a Sick Day

What helped me shift out of feeling guilty for taking a sick day was reflecting on questions like:

What does it mean to be a good worker?
Where does the story come from that a good worker is always available and constantly stays busy?
Where does that sense of guilt come from when taking a sick day?

Reflecting on the stories that I believed around work was key to starting to shift out of feeling guilty for taking a sick day. Furthermore, I would look at how the stories I believed around work were similar to the covert and overt messages that our culture tells us about work. Bringing curiosity to the stories that I believed around work and how they stem from narratives that I learned from culture helped me reflect on what values matter to me the most. Reflecting on my own beliefs and stories helped me explore and discover what I deeply desire and value, and to learn how to embody them. Furthermore, it helped me understand what stories I believe to be deeply true and to start to release the ones that do not feel deeply true.

Lesson 2: Creating Boundaries

The second lesson that I learned that helped me shift out of feeling guilt for taking a sick day was learning how to create boundaries.

Creating embodied boundaries comes from learning how to connect with:

Ourselves
Our heart
Our Intuition

More deeply so we know more of what we deeply desire to create in our lives. And from a place where we know what we desire to create in our lives, with greater ease we are able to stand for what we are available for.

Routine embodiment practices have helped me clarify on a deeper level what my boundaries are.

How I Can Support You

If you desire to have an embodiment practice where you can reconnect with your heart, intuition, and what you deeply desire, try my moving meditation practice called Rejuvenate Your Energy After Burnout, which can support you with this.

If you want deeper support with creating boundaries so you can shift out of feeling guilty for taking a sick day and instead create spaciousness in your calendar to rest guilt-free, I invite you to book a 1-on-1 coaching session with me here.