Burnout: What the Hell Is Happening to Us? (Part 1)
Why you feel like you're falling apart—and why it’s not your fault
It starts quietly. Maybe you’re forgetting words. Maybe it’s harder to make a decision—any decision. You start staring at your phone without knowing why you picked it up. You make another coffee. You snap at your kid. You cry in the car.
That’s burnout. And it’s everywhere.
It’s Not Just About Work
Yes, burnout happens in the workplace—when expectations constantly outweigh support, when the culture rewards over-functioning, when you can’t remember the last time you logged off and actually logged off.
But it also happens at home. To the women who carry the emotional load of an entire family. To the ones up at 2am with a teething baby and still expected to be sharp for a 9am meeting. To mums who aren’t “working” but are somehow constantly on the clock. It’s the invisible labour that builds up until your system crashes.
“I Just Thought I Was Getting Older”
You blame it on age. On motherhood. On a sluggish metabolism. You think, Maybe this is just what happens when you hit your mid-thirties. The weight that won’t shift. The brain fog. The 3pm crash that turns into an evening of staring at a screen, dissociating.
But what if that’s not aging?
What if that’s burnout?
Burnout doesn't just live in your mind—it makes a home in your body.
What’s Actually Happening to Your Brain and Body?
When you're constantly in survival mode—juggling, performing, caregiving—your body floods with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. In short bursts, those chemicals are helpful. They get you through tough moments.
But when stress is chronic, your nervous system doesn't get a chance to reset. Over time, your body starts to break down under the weight of always being “on.” You lose access to memory, focus, emotional regulation. Your brain rewires around stress, and your body stops prioritising anything that isn’t about surviving.
Here’s what that looks like:
Your metabolism slows down. Cortisol stores fat, especially around the belly. Insulin spikes. Digestion suffers.
Hormones go haywire. Your period shifts. PMS worsens. Thyroid might start to struggle. Libido drops.
Inflammation rises. Joints ache. You get sick more easily. You feel puffy and heavy.
The nervous system gets stuck. You’re either on edge or completely shut down—fight or flight, or freeze.
Exhaustion hits deeper than sleep. No amount of rest seems to help, because your system doesn’t feel safe enough to relax.
Burnout in Real Life: Katie’s Story
Katie* was in her mid-thirties when she came to a retreat I ran in Bali. From the outside, she looked like she was managing—a young child, long-term career, a household that kept ticking. But inside, she was sinking.
Her anxiety had hit like a sledgehammer, but the depression crept in slowly. It started with a flatness, a sense of disconnection. Then came the weight gain—made worse by stress, not laziness. Her body was in survival mode, flooded with cortisol. Her nervous system didn’t feel safe enough to rest, let alone lose weight or rebuild strength.
She wasn’t craving movement. She was craving relief. A break from the pressure. A chance to feel like herself again.
What really stood out, though, was how often she said sorry.
“Sorry, I think I just want to rest today.”
“Sorry, is it okay if I skip the massage?”
“Sorry, I know I should want to do more.”
Eventually, we made a rule: no apologising for your needs. And we kept each other to it.
That shift opened something deeper. She began to see how often she made herself small to stay agreeable, palatable, “easy.” She started catching herself mid-sentence. And when she went home, she kept catching herself. She still does.
Now, when she hears herself say sorry reflexively, she pauses.
She asks: Why am I apologising? Am I sorry for needing something? Or am I apologising for existing?
That is the unlearning.
That is the healing.
(*Name shared with consent, story shaped with permission.)
The Power of Being Witnessed
Katie didn’t need another fix. Not a productivity hack or a 5am routine or another plan to "get back on track."
She needed space.
She needed permission.
And most of all, she needed to be witnessed.
That’s the part we rarely talk about—how healing begins when someone sees you clearly, without trying to fix you. When you’re met not with advice, but with presence.
What we noticed, as the retreat unfolded, was that the apologies weren’t just for needs. They were for wants.
The things that brought her pleasure.
The things that made her feel alive.
The things that served no one else but her.
So we expanded the rule: no apologising for what you want.
And something subtle, but radical, began to unfold.
She stopped filtering her preferences. She stopped managing the experience for myself, for others. She began to allow herself to want—to rest, to be alone, to change her mind. To choose based on what felt good, not what felt acceptable.
Because this is where healing lives:
Not just in meeting your needs, but in reclaiming your wants.
Burnout teaches you to make yourself smaller.
Healing invites you to expand.
To be witnessed in your wants—to be allowed to take up space, to prioritise joy, to stop performing okay-ness—is a kind of nervous system re-patterning we don’t yet have words for.
But we feel it.
When we speak the truth.
When we move towards what we want.
In the quiet exhale that says: I’m allowed to be here.
And that’s when the thaw begins.
It doesn’t arrive like a breakthrough. It creeps in quietly.
You notice you’re hungry again—not just for food, but for life.
You hear music and feel it stir something in you.
You wake and, for a moment, you don’t dread the day.
This is the nervous system shifting out of freeze.
Out of survival.
Back toward desire.
You don’t go from burnout to brilliance in a weekend.
But you can go from numb to noticing.
From “I don’t know what I want” to “maybe I could try.”
From “I’m sorry” to “I’m here.”
And that flicker of wanting again?
That’s you, coming back to life again.