How To Recover From Burnout: What To Do When You Just Can't Anymore
Updated: 2 days ago
You hit the wall.
Maybe it’s getting a concussion on the vacation that was the only thing stopping you from a breakdown.
Maybe it’s an alarm blaring in your head — “CRISIS! CRISIS!” — and sobbing uncontrollably at the thought of logging on for one more day.
Maybe it’s the “needs improvement” performance rating from an ineffective boss who’s been ignoring all of your valuable ideas.
Maybe it’s one more “urgent” project being dumped on your desk when you’re already barely keeping your head above water.
Whatever the final straw was, my clients come to me with the same question:
What am I supposed to do now?
No one ever teaches us what to do when we just can’t do anymore.
We live in a society that has a myth of uninterrupted and unending productivity.
We glorify progress and growth.
We’re taught to chase accolades and promotions.
We post our achievements on LinkedIn, hitting refresh over and over to get the next dopamine hit of someone liking or commenting.
We hustle and grind.
We proudly answer the question “How are you?” with “Oh, you know. Busy, busy.”
What we don’t do nearly as much is pause, reflect, rest, recalibrate, take a time out.
Most of us feel guilty for resting in our day-to-day lives, and many of my clients report that they don’t actually know how to do it.
“Does doom-scrolling count?” they ask.
Resting is a lost art. But it’s also the first thing to consider when we hit the proverbial wall.
It often feels impossible to imagine resting or pausing when we’ve been on the hamster wheel and operating in overdrive for so long. Our switch has been flipped to “MAX,” and we’ve been running on adrenaline to push through whatever needs to get done.
We tell ourselves that we’ll rest when this project is over.
After that deadline.
When things calm down.
But the expectation that we should be able to keep going indefinitely is completely at odds with the rest of the living world.
The natural world moves in cycles of activity and rest, growth and dormancy. Animals hibernate. Trees drop their leaves and go dormant for the winter. Fields are left fallow so the soil can recover. Day gives way to night.
Nothing in nature blooms year-round.
And yet somehow we’ve decided that human beings should be able to produce at the same pace in every season. Day after day, month after month, year after year. And that something is wrong with us when we can’t.
Late-stage capitalism has us so well-trained in America. 🙄
When we see rest as weakness, as a burden on our team, as a lack of commitment to the cause, or as an optional indulgence, we continually gaslight ourselves into pushing way past our natural limits.
Until eventually, something in us says: I just can’t anymore.
So how do you begin to recover from burnout when you've hit the wall? If you can feel yourself nearing that point, I have some recommendations for you.
How To Begin To Recover From Burnout:
Stop what you’re doing right now and take a deep breath in through your nose. Let your belly become as full as you can. Hold for a few seconds. Then exhale slowly through your mouth.
Do it two more times.
Get quiet and go inside yourself. Where is the part of you that’s been holding so much for so long? Does she live in your tense shoulders or jaw? In the thousand-pound weight on your chest making it hard to breathe? In the pit in your stomach?
Ask that part to tell you what it feels like to be her. And then just listen. Let her rant, sob, or share her quiet struggle. Encourage her to tell you more about how hard it’s been.
Then ask her what she would wish for if she didn’t have to worry about anyone else. Let her wish for as much as she wants (as impossible as her desires might seem) until she comes to a natural stop. Do not interrupt her with all the reasons her wishes are unrealistic.
Thank her for telling you. Let her know how sorry you are that it’s been so hard. Tell her that you understand and that it makes sense that she’s exhausted. Talk to her gently, like someone you care deeply about who you can see is struggling.
Then identify one small step you might take to offer that part some relief. The smaller the better here. You might be surprised by how much of a difference you can make just by canceling or rescheduling one non-essential commitment, lying down on the couch or the floor and closing your eyes for a few minutes, stepping outside to feel the sun on your face, or drinking a glass of water with no distractions.
Burnout recovery is built on small moments of reconnection to ourselves, our needs, our desires, and our boundaries. So start small, and keep going.
If you want to read a whole manifesto about rest, I highly recommend Tricia Hersey’s book Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto. Hersey challenges the idea that rest is something we have to earn through productivity and explores ways we can reclaim it even within lives that don’t leave much room for it.
I also encourage you to think creatively about what’s truly possible, not just what’s convenient, when it comes to giving yourself a break.
When I hit the wall in my corporate job and listened to what my exhausted inner part was begging for, she wanted time off.
A month off, to be exact.
She told me that in a tone that indicated, “This is totally ridiculous and impossible, but if I could have anything that would help me feel better, it would be a month off.”
I had very limited PTO and didn’t want to spend it on a mental health crisis. But it felt like something I couldn’t avoid anymore.
So I listened to her.
I trusted that what she was telling me was valid and valuable information.
And I put in to take all nine of my PTO days.
Even still, the “good girl / responsible one” part of me proposed making my leave start date one week later so I would have time to help my team make arrangements for my absence.
Then I woke up the next morning and began hyperventilating when I thought about logging on.
My body physically couldn’t do it for one. more. second.
I couldn’t force myself to put other people first for a single second more.
Once I went on leave, I discovered that there were options for taking paid mental health leave that I hadn’t even known about. My company had short-term disability, which paid a reduced portion of my salary for two months.
What had previously felt impossible and unrealistic suddenly became obvious and accessible.
The thing I thought I couldn’t possibly have was, in fact, possible.
I just couldn’t see how yet.
And I think that distinction matters.
You don’t have to know how you’re going to give yourself what you need before you allow yourself to know what you need.
We so often collapse those two things into one.
I need a month off.
Well, I can’t take a month off, so I guess that’s not helpful.
I need to quit this job.
Well, I can’t afford to quit, so stop being dramatic.
I need everyone to leave me alone for a week.
Well, I have kids and responsibilities, so that’s obviously impossible.
We hear the need and immediately put it on trial.
Is it reasonable? Is it practical? Can I afford it? Will someone be disappointed in me? What will my boss think? Who will pick up the slack? Am I allowed to want this?
And somewhere in that interrogation, we lose the actual information.
I am exhausted.
I need help.
I need space.
I need something to change.
Listening to yourself doesn’t mean you can magically eliminate every constraint in your life. It doesn’t mean quitting your job tomorrow or abandoning your responsibilities or getting everything you want.
It means you stop arguing with yourself long enough to hear the truth.
Because maybe you can’t take a month off.
But maybe there’s a leave policy you don’t know about yet.
Maybe you can cancel something.
Maybe you can ask for help.
Maybe you can disappoint someone.
Maybe something you’ve been treating as completely non-negotiable is, in fact, negotiable.
You don’t know until you let yourself ask.
So listen to the inner voice that is screaming for you to acknowledge her.
Don’t immediately shut down her requests.
Don’t make her prove that what she needs is reasonable before you take her seriously.
Let her tell you the truth.
And then see what becomes possible when you start treating that truth as valid and valuable information.
That is self-connection.
And every time you listen to yourself and respond to what you hear, you build self-trust.
Sometimes the first step out of “I just can’t anymore” isn’t figuring out what to do next.
It’s finally believing the part of you that’s been telling you that something has to change.
Want to keep exploring?
If something here resonated, there are a few ways we can stay connected:
Stay in the conversation. Subscribe to my newsletter for reflections, practices, and resources on self-connection, navigating change, and building a life that actually feels like yours. Subscribe →
Get curious about your own self-connection. Take the free Self-Connection Check-In to explore where you are right now with self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-trust — and get a personalized report to help you understand where you might want to focus next. Take the free Self-Connection Check-In →
Get some support. If you’re feeling stuck, disconnected from yourself, or unsure what you want next, schedule a free Clarity Call. We’ll talk about where you are, where you want to go, and whether coaching together might be a good fit. Schedule a Clarity Call →
Comments