Burnout is not just stress. It is your mind and body setting the boundaries you have not been able to.

There is a moment we hear again and again in therapy rooms.

A woman who is high-performing, deeply capable, and used to holding everything says something like: “I don’t understand what’s happening. I’ve always been able to push through.”

She is still showing up. Still delivering. Still functioning, at least on paper.  But inside, something has shifted.

Her brain feels slower. Her patience is thinner. Her emotional range is unpredictable. She feels both wired and exhausted, as if her body is running on emergency power while her mind is quietly dimming the lights.

This is burnout.

Burnout rarely arrives with a dramatic announcement. It comes like a slow leak in a tyre. You can still drive for a while, especially if you are competent, conscientious, and used to taking pride in coping. You adjust. You grip harder. You promise yourself you’ll sort it soon.

And because you are still moving, everyone assumes you are fine, including you.

Until one day you realise this is not tiredness. This is depletion.

Not “a lot going on.” Not “a busy season.” Something deeper.

People describe it in beautifully ordinary ways:

• feeling tearful at the smallest thing, or feeling nothing at all

• dreading emails

• struggling to start tasks that used to be easy

• reading the same paragraph three times

• being snappy with the people you love

• being wired at night and exhausted in the morning

• losing your sense of humour

• losing your ability to care

• losing the sense of being yourself

Burnout can feel like betrayal: by your body, by your brain, by your identity.

And here is the part we want you to hear clearly: you cannot work harder to get out of burnout. If anything, working harder is often what takes you further in.

Burnout is not you failing. It is your system protecting you.

What burnout actually is

The World Health Organization includes burnout in ICD-11 as an occupational phenomenon (not a medical condition) resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterised by: exhaustion, increased mental distance or cynicism about work, and reduced professional efficacy.

That definition matters because it anchors burnout where it belongs: not in your character, but in the relationship between you and the conditions you have been living and working within.

You can be achieving and still feel exhausted, detached, and less effective. High-functioning burnout is one of the most common patterns we see, because competence can hide the cost for a long time. People burn out quietly, professionally, privately, and often while still being praised.

Stress versus burnout, and why a holiday does not fix it

Stress and burnout can look similar on the surface. Both can involve:

• disrupted sleep

• irritability

• reduced concentration

• physical tension

• feeling like you cannot switch off

But they are not the same thing.

Stress is often “too much.” Burnout is often “not enough.”

Not enough energy. Not enough emotional bandwidth. Not enough cognitive flexibility. Not enough space to feel like yourself.

Stress tends to mobilise you. You might feel revved, urgent, driven. Adrenaline can even create a grim kind of productivity.

Burnout is what can happen when mobilisation has been running for too long. The system that once gave you extra fuel starts conserving what’s left. Motivation drops. Focus becomes unreliable. You may feel foggy, flat, cynical, avoidant, emotionally brittle.

A small request feels enormous. A normal setback feels catastrophic. Not because you are dramatic, but because the reserves are gone and your system is trying to prevent further depletion.

This is also why rest does not always work in the way you expect.

If you take time off but your nervous system is still scanning for threat, still anticipating the return, still rehearsing what is waiting, your body does not experience rest as safe. It experiences rest as a brief pause before the next wave.

If you have ever thought, “I had a break and I still feel broken,” hear this: the problem is not that you are doing rest wrong. Rest alone cannot fix a chronic mismatch between demand and recovery.

The nervous system explanation that makes burnout feel less mysterious

One of the most compassionate ways to understand burnout is as a state shift, not a personality problem.

When you are under pressure, your brain and body prioritise survival. The trouble is that modern life can keep the survival system switched on with no clear endpoint. Your body does not distinguish between a tiger and a leadership meeting if your nervous system experiences both as threat.

Under chronic strain:

• the amygdala stays online scanning for danger

• the hippocampus keeps comparing the present to past threat patterns

• access to the prefrontal cortex reduces (planning, perspective, decision-making, self-regulation)

Over time, you may find it harder to initiate, organise, hold perspective, regulate emotions, and remember things.

This is not a moral issue. It is a capacity issue.

And because the brain and body are linked, it shows up physically too:

• sleep becomes lighter or fragmented

• digestion becomes more sensitive

• muscle tension becomes chronic

• immune function dips

• rest stops feeling restorative

This is not drama. It is physiology.

Polyvagal theory as a useful lens

Polyvagal theory is one framework that can help you make sense of stress states. It highlights how your autonomic nervous system shapes your capacity to feel safe, connect, mobilise, or shut down.

In everyday language, it can be useful to think of three broad modes:

Safety and connection You have more access to curiosity, social ease, perspective, humour, creativity, and problem-solving.

Mobilisation - You are geared for action. You may feel driven, vigilant, tense, impatient, over-focused, anxious. You can function here, but it is costly.

Shutdown - Your system conserves energy. You may feel numb, foggy, flat, detached, unable to initiate. From the outside it can look like apathy. Inside it often feels like collapse.

Burnout often involves oscillating between mobilisation and shutdown. You push, then you crash. You rally, then you go quiet.

Once you see it as a nervous system pattern, it becomes less personal and more workable. You stop asking “What is wrong with me?” and start asking “What state am I in, and what does my system need to move back towards safety?”

The early signs of burnout are quiet, and we often ignore them

Burnout rarely starts with a breakdown. It often starts with small betrayals of your needs that feel reasonable in the moment:

• working a little later because it is “just this week”

• replying to emails in bed to “clear your head”

• skipping lunch because pausing feels like falling behind

• living with shallow breath, braced shoulders, clenched jaw, and not even noticing anymore

Then the signs become clearer:

• sleep stops restoring you

• you wake up tired even after a full night

• you feel low-grade dread before the day begins

• your attention becomes unreliable

• noise and interruptions irritate you more than they used to

• you feel less generous, less patient, less like yourself

And shame often arrives right here. - You should cope. You should be grateful. Other people manage. Nothing is wrong with you. Something is happening to you.

Physical signs can include:

• constant fatigue, heavy limbs

• jaw clenching, headaches

• palpitations, chest tightness, shortness of breath

• gut issues, reflux, nausea, appetite changes

• frequent infections

• early waking or broken sleep

• dizziness, shakiness, temperature dysregulation

• libido drop and hormonal shifts (for many women)

From a nervous system perspective, these are cues that your system has been running too hot for too long.

Prevention matters. Catching it early is far easier than recovering once the system tips into sustained shutdown.

Why burnout feels so emotional, even when you “know better”

One of the most disorientating parts of burnout is that it changes your emotional range.

You might feel embarrassed by your reactions. You are used to being calm and competent. Suddenly you are tearful in the supermarket, furious at a minor inconvenience, or detached in a meeting that used to matter.

This is not you losing it. It is nervous system logic.

When you are under chronic stress, your brain becomes biased towards threat. Your capacity for ambiguity drops. Your tolerance for extra demand shrinks.

So you can react strongly to a small email not because it is catastrophic, but because your system is already operating at the edge.

Burnout can also bring up grief. Not always obvious grief, but the quieter loss of creativity, connection, softness, and time. Sometimes burnout is the first time you notice how long you have lived in performance mode.

What actually causes burnout

Burnout is rarely one dramatic thing. It is usually the slow accumulation of smaller things that, together, become too heavy.

Workload matters, yes. But two ingredients often turn “busy” into burnout:

ControlWhen demand is high but control is low, your nervous system stays switched on. Lack of agency is read by the body as threat.

MeaningWhen effort is high but recognition is low, your system begins to detach. Caring starts to feel expensive.

And then there is values conflict. When your values are repeatedly compromised, cynicism often shows up. Not because you have become negative, but because cynicism can be the mind’s way of numbing the pain of caring in an environment where caring feels unsafe or futile.

Culture matters too. In psychologically unsafe workplaces, your body learns to stay on guard. Even if nothing “bad” happens on a given day, your system never fully stands down.

And then there is the personal layer, held gently and without blame.

Burnout is not your fault, but your inner rules can keep you over-functioning long past the point where your body is begging you to stop.

Many high achievers have an internal pressure system that sounds like:

If I don’t do it, it won’t be done properly. If I rest, I’ll fall behind. If I say no, I’ll disappoint people. If I’m not exceptional, I’m at risk.

These are not random thoughts. They are learned strategies. They may have helped you succeed. They may have helped you feel safe.

Burnout is often the moment they stop working.

Executive women and the specific flavours of burnout

Executive women carry a unique cumulative load. Senior roles often shift from tasks to complexity: strategy, risk, people, visibility, high-stakes decisions, and fewer places to put uncertainty.

The data reflects that strain. In the Women in the Workplace 2025 findings, six in ten senior-level women report frequently feeling burned out.

Beyond workload, patterns show up again and again:

• the performance tax of being decisive and warm, ambitious and agreeable

• invisible labour: mentoring, smoothing dynamics, carrying culture

• the second shift at home, even with support

• the toll of bias, microaggressions, and needing to be twice as good to be seen as credible

This is not fragility. It is cumulative pressure.

Boundary-setting is not a script. It is nervous system retraining.

Boundaries are often talked about as if they are purely cognitive and easy to set. As if you decide, say the words, and everyone adjusts.

But boundaries are embodied learning, especially if you did not have them from the start.

If your nervous system learned that safety comes from pleasing, performing, being useful, or staying available, holding a boundary will initially feel unsafe.

You might feel:

• guilt

• anxiety

• a tight chest

• urgency to over-explain

That discomfort is not proof the boundary is wrong. It is proof the boundary is new and needed.

Boundary work often resembles exposure work. You start small, practise, tolerate discomfort without undoing the boundary, and let your body learn that nothing terrible happened.

A subtle but powerful skill is the pause, the moment between request and response that lets your thinking brain come online:

Let me check my capacity and come back to you.

I can do X by Friday or Y by Wednesday.

Which is the priority?

I’m not able to take that on this week.

These are not rude. They are adult.

Regulation is not a luxury. It is the foundation.

If burnout is a state shift, recovery is partly about teaching your system to come back towards safety.

That happens through change, repetition, and consistency, not insight alone.

Regulation does not have to be a perfect two-hour morning routine. In reality, it often looks boring.

Small downshifts throughout the day that interrupt the stress loop:

• breathing slower than your stress breath

• a brief walk with your eyes moving, not glued to a screen

• deliberately unclenching jaw and shoulders

• stepping into daylight

• eating without multitasking

• five minutes of quiet before opening your inbox

These are cues of safety. They are not about forcing calm. They are about giving your nervous system repeated evidence that it can downshift without punishment.

What recovery looks like when it is realistic

Burnout recovery is rarely a dramatic reinvention. It is usually a series of honest adjustments, repeated consistently.

It often starts with one meaningful reduction in pressure. Something concrete:

• renegotiating a deadline

• delegating a responsibility

• protecting focus blocks

• setting a limit on availability

• reshaping meetings

Then it deepens through inner-rule work: noticing the beliefs that keep you over-functioning and practising new ways of measuring worth that are not tethered to output.

Over time, it becomes about meaning. Not abstract meaning, but grounded meaning. What matters. What is sustainable. What you want your life to feel like. What you are no longer willing to trade your wellbeing for.

A helpful framework is three layers:

Symptom settling. Sleep stabilises. Your body stops feeling permanently wired. Concentration returns. Emotional range returns.

Capacity rebuilding. Ordinary tasks stop requiring huge effort. You tolerate small stressors without tipping over. Recovery takes a day or two, not a week.

Pattern change. You stop relying on adrenaline, people-pleasing, perfectionism, or fear to keep functioning. Your boundaries hold even when someone is disappointed. Your values lead more than your anxiety does.

And yes, sometimes real recovery requires structural change. Self-care cannot compensate for an impossible system. If your environment stays relentlessly high demand with low control and low recovery, burnout is very hard to shift.

Even within hard realities, there is usually a first lever you can pull: one boundary, one conversation about priorities, one commitment to recovery time being real.

 Work with your nervous system, not against it

Burnout is not only cognitive. It is physiological.

Helpful daily practices include:

Breath practices that downshift. Longer exhales, paced breathing, gentle humming, nasal-breathing walks.

Body-based grounding. Feet on the floor, sensory scanning, progressive muscle relaxation, warm showers, weighted blankets.

Safety cues. Slower movement, softer lighting in the evening, nature, calm music, people who feel easy.

If your body has learned that rest equals danger, which is common in high achievers, you may need to retrain rest as safe. That is a psychological process as much as a physical one.

Name the rules that keep you over-functioning

Burnout often persists because the internal pressure system is still running.

A key recovery task is updating those rules through evidence, not wishful thinking:

What actually happens when you say no? What is the cost of being the person who always copes? What would “good enough” look like if you believed you still mattered?

This is where psychology becomes the difference between short-term relief and long-term change.

Rebuild boundaries in behaviour, not theory

Burnout recovery requires behavioural boundaries:

Time boundaries. A clear finish time, protected lunch, meetings capped, emails in a window.

Role boundaries. Clarity on what is yours to own, and what is not.

Emotional boundaries. Noticing when you absorb other people’s urgency, anxiety, or poor planning.

Digital boundaries. No inbox as your nervous system’s alarm clock.

If boundaries feel terrifying, that is information. Fear often means the boundary is necessary.

Repair meaning and identity, not just energy

Burnout often includes a loss of self. You can be functional but disconnected.

Recovery includes asking:

What matters to me now? What parts of my life have become only “shoulds”? Where have I been living out of alignment with my values?

Values-based work, often from ACT, can be powerful here. It helps you build a life you do not need to escape from.

Why retreats can help, and what to look for if you choose one

A psychological retreat is not a holiday with pretty views and inspirational quotes. Done properly, it is a designed environment that creates the conditions your nervous system rarely gets in ordinary life: reduced demand, fewer cues of threat, real recovery space, and structured relearning.

There are two mechanisms that make retreats powerful for burnout recovery:

Deactivation. When you are removed from constant triggers, the body can finally downshift. Sleep deepens. Breathing slows. Appetite normalises. Your mind stops rehearsing. You remember what it feels like to not be on guard.

Relearning. Burnout recovery is not only about feeling better for a few days. It is about building new patterns that survive contact with real life. Retreats can create enough bandwidth to practise boundaries, emotional regulation, values-led decision-making, and nervous-system resets that fit into a working day.

A retreat is most helpful when it offers:

• nervous-system-first structure built into the day

• psychological depth with skilled support

• a realistic integration plan and aftercare

The goal is not a week of relief. The goal is a lasting shift in capacity, boundaries, and self-leadership.

In many ways, the clever part is not the escape. The clever part is the transfer: turning what you learn into a realistic operating system for Monday morning.

Final thoughts

Burnout is not weakness. It is what happens when a human nervous system is asked to run on high demand, low recovery, and low emotional safety for too long.

Good recovery is not “rest and get back to it.” It is stabilising your system, rebuilding capacity, and changing the patterns that made burnout possible in the first place.

If you are recognising yourself as you read this, do not wait for full collapse before you take it seriously, take it seriously.

Not with fear, but with respect.

Burnout is your mind and body saying: the pace, the pressure, and the self-abandonment cannot continue.

You do not need to wait for a breakdown to deserve support.

Recovery is not something you earn when you have done enough. It is something you protect because your life, your health, your leadership, and your relationships depend on it.

If that is where you are, Lumeah is here for you.