Stress & burnout

Stress becomes a problem when it stops being episodic and becomes the climate. Burnout is its end-stage: exhaustion that sleep doesn't touch, cynicism about work you used to care about, a creeping sense of ineffectiveness — and often a body that starts sending invoices in the form of tension, illness and broken sleep.

How therapy helps

The first task is recovery — settling a nervous system that has forgotten how to stand down. The second is more interesting: understanding why the overload happened to you in particular. Burnout is rarely just about workload. It tends to involve the rules we run on — never disappoint, never say no, worth equals output — that make rest feel like failure and boundaries feel like guilt. Those rules have histories, and therapy is where they get examined and renegotiated.

What we'd work on

Restoring sleep, energy and perspective; identifying the beliefs that drive over-functioning; learning to set boundaries you can actually keep; and rebuilding a relationship with work and rest that is sustainable rather than heroic.