Stress & Recovery
When rest stops working
You have probably been managing this for a long time. Carrying on, taking things on, saying yes — long after your body started asking you not to.
Perhaps you sleep and wake just as tired. Perhaps the weekend didn't touch it, and neither did the holiday. Things that used to be straightforward now take a strange amount of effort. Your memory slips, your patience is short, and what you used to enjoy feels like one more thing to get through.
Burnout rarely arrives suddenly. It builds, often in people who are conscientious and used to coping — the ones who keep going a little longer. Which is exactly why it is so hard to see from the inside. It can turn around. And you don't have to work it out alone.
If you are still working out whether what you are dealing with is burnout or something closer to low mood, Burnout or Depression — How to Tell is a good place to start.
What can we work on?
Chronic stress and burnout look different from person to person. What I offer support with includes:
Burnout and exhaustion – when rest no longer restores. You sleep but don't feel recovered. You take time off and come back just as empty.
A nervous system that won't stand down – under sustained pressure the body stays braced long after the pressure has passed. That is often what is behind the broken sleep, the short fuse and the sense of running on adrenaline.
Not being able to switch off – when work follows you home, into the evening and into your sleep. Many describe being unable to stop thinking about it even when they finally have time.
Workload, boundaries and what sits underneath them – burnout is often less about how much there is to do and more about how hard it is to say no, hand over, or let something be good enough.
Exhaustion that looks like low mood – burnout and low mood share a great deal, but they don't ask for quite the same things. Part of the work is telling them apart.
Finding a way back – returning to work at a pace that holds, and managing the fear of ending up here again.
It's worth saying plainly: burnout is not a clinical diagnosis. It describes a real and well-recognised pattern of depletion, and not having a diagnostic label attached to it takes nothing away from how serious it is, or from what can be done about it.
How we work together
We look at what led here
We start by mapping what your days actually consist of — what drains, what restores, and where it leaks away. There are often demands that were never said out loud: always be available, don't be a burden, cope on your own.
Burnout is sometimes described as having done too much. Just as often it's having done too much of the wrong thing, for too long, with nothing in between. Once the pattern is visible, it becomes something you can change.
From insight to changed patterns
Drawing on CBT, we work concretely with what keeps the load in place. It is rarely just a matter of resting more — rest without change returns you to the same point. We look at how your day is built, how recovery can be built into it, and how you rebuild activity at a pace that holds.
We also work with the thoughts that make rest difficult: that you should be coping better, that others manage, that stopping lets someone down.
Towards a pace you can sustain
Drawing on ACT, we look at what actually matters to you, beyond performance and expectation. Many people discover during recovery that they have spent years measuring themselves against someone else's standard.
The goal isn't to get back to managing as much as you did before. The goal is a way of living that doesn't require you to empty yourself to feel you've earned your place.
What can you expect?
A course of sessions for burnout usually runs to somewhere between 12 and 20, often longer than for other difficulties. Recovery takes time and it rarely runs in a straight line — most people describe stretches of progress interrupted by setbacks. That is a normal part of the process, not a sign that it isn't working.
Many notice something ease quite early simply from understanding what has been happening: why the body reacts as it does, why the rest hasn't been enough. That understanding is usually the first step back.
Thinking about reaching out?
An assessment call is a first, no-obligation conversation — a chance for you to share what you're experiencing and for us to listen. No commitment, no pressure. Just a calm conversation about how you're feeling and what might suit you.
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