Matthew Sexton, LCSW, NATC — Telehealth: New York · Maine · Delaware · Florida
Burnout is not tiredness. It is a three-dimension clinical state — emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment — documented since 1981 and classified by the WHO in ICD-11. Matthew Sexton, LCSW works with physicians, founders, attorneys, and senior leaders navigating burnout and moral injury via telehealth in New York, Maine, Delaware, and Florida.
Burnout is not tiredness. It is a three-dimension clinical state — emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment — documented by Christina Maslach in peer-reviewed research since 1981 and classified by the WHO in ICD-11 (code QD85) as an occupational phenomenon. It requires targeted clinical treatment, not rest and a vacation. The recovery arc is typically 12–18 months of structured work.
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Clinical treatment for adults in high-demand roles — physicians, attorneys, executives, founders, clinicians, caregivers — who have hit a wall that rest alone does not resolve. Burnout therapy addresses the structural gap between your values and how you are living, the depersonalization that makes the work feel meaningless, and the nervous-system dysregulation that underlies both.
Sessions map the specific dimensions of your burnout — which of the three (exhaustion, cynicism, inefficacy) is primary — and build a targeted treatment plan. Work draws on polyvagal-informed regulation, values clarification, IFS parts work for the inner critic, and schema therapy for the beliefs that made unsustainable performance feel necessary.
Moral injury is the specific wound that occurs when you are forced — by institutional pressure, resource constraints, or authority — to act against your values. Common in healthcare workers, first responders, and anyone inside a system that demands performance at the cost of integrity. It overlaps with burnout but requires different clinical attention.