Coercive burnout is the burnout that follows from an extended period in which permission for action was held by another person or system rather than by the person themselves. This is distinct from ordinary work pressure or high demand. The defining feature is the transfer of the permission architecture itself.
When another person holds the architecture, the system learns that its own predictions are unreliable as guides to action. It learns that expressing need invites punishment. It learns that the cost of self-disclosure is higher than the cost of concealment. These are not wrong conclusions. In a coercive environment, they are accurate adaptations. The problem is that the adaptations persist long after the environment has changed, because the system learned them as survival knowledge.
Why it takes so long to recognise
Coercive environments rarely announce themselves. They present as high standards, necessary pressure, or earned difficulty. A person inside a coercive environment will often defend it, because their system has adapted to it and the cost of recognising it is the cost of naming their own situation as harmful. The naming arrives late, often after leaving, when the system begins to relax its protection and the person begins to see what the protection was for.
The route back
Recovery from coercive burnout is slower than recovery from overwork burnout, because the architecture has to be rebuilt from the inside out. The person has to re-learn that their own predictions carry weight, that expressing need carries an acceptable cost, that the system can give permission. This re-learning cannot be rushed. It happens at the pace of evidence, not at the pace of intention.