Your Burnout Isn't a Badge of Honor-It's a Boundary Cry

"Burnout isn't only a workplace issue-it's playing out in bedrooms, classrooms, mom groups, traffic jams, social media comments, and nervous systems across the country. As a marriage and family therapist, I recognize it in the glazed-over eyes of clients emotionally collapsing under the weight of economic instability, parenting stress, political tension, influencer culture, and survival-mode love. They arrive at my doorway in the clenches of depletion."

"Most are convinced that the solution lies in more help, more time off, and more free hours. But a 2022 study challenges this belief, showing that while symptoms of burnout lessen during vacations, they sharply return once a familiar pulse of life is resumed. That's because-even while rest has clinical merit-it won't stick if the body believes slowing down is dangerous."

"In my practice, I see burnout emerge as a downstream effect of chronic self-abandonment-born from attachment wounds that make saying "no" to others and "yes" to oneself feel risky. Beneath the exhaustion is often a hunger pang for intimacy- self-intimacy. Much of the time, it's the nervous system 's way of shouting that it's at capacity-that your aliveness can no longer be shoved into tight corners that leave little room for authentic joy, connection, or self-expression."

Burnout often originates from shaky boundaries and chronic self-abandonment rather than only excessive workload. Physical and emotional symptoms include anger, brain fog, insomnia, gastrointestinal distress, and somatic collapse. Short-term rest or vacations can temporarily reduce symptoms but frequently fail to produce lasting change because the body interprets slowing down as unsafe. Attachment wounds and fear of saying no create patterns of people-pleasing that exhaust the nervous system. Recovery requires deliberate acts of self-advocacy, cultivating self-intimacy, and retraining safety beliefs to restore aliveness, joy, connection, and authentic self-expression.

Read at Psychology Today