What Recovery from Burnout Actually Looks Like
← Part 1: What the Tech Layoffs Are Doing to People’s Mental Health
If you’ve made it to this post, you’re probably somewhere in the thick of it — burned out, exhausted, maybe on leave or thinking about it, wondering if you’re going to feel like yourself again. I want to tell you something first: I’ve seen people get better. Real recovery is possible, and it happens more often than people expect when they finally let themselves slow down and get support.
Phase one: resourcing
When someone comes to me in a state of serious burnout, the first thing we work on is resourcing — giving your nervous system enough capacity to even begin the deeper work. You can’t do meaningful therapeutic work from a place of total depletion. The nervous system has to come down first.
For most people, that starts with rest. More rest than you think you need. I tell my clients: over-rest. It’s okay to not be productive for a while. Get massages. Take baths. Go for walks. Eat balanced meals — ones that include some ice cream. Feel the sun on your skin. Read books that aren’t about optimizing yourself.
The goal in this phase isn’t to fix anything or figure anything out. The goal is to remember that your body is safe, that you are allowed to rest, and that the world will not fall apart if you slow down.
“It’s okay to not be productive for a while. It’s okay to just sit and let your nervous system settle back down.”
Phase two: finding your way back to yourself
Once you’re starting to feel like you can think clearly again — reading things and actually taking them in, noticing curiosity and interest coming back, finding things that make you laugh — then we can begin to explore what actually brings you joy. What lights you up. What gives you meaning.
This sounds simple, but for a lot of people who have been in survival mode for a long time, they genuinely don’t know the answer anymore. Their identity got so tied up in work and performance that when the work stopped feeling good, everything stopped feeling good.
Phase three: what gets in the way
Once we start to get a picture of what brings you joy, we tackle what gets in the way of you actually having those things in your life.
Maybe you’re an engineer, but you love baking, and in an alternate reality you bake for a living instead of code. If you could have that life in this reality, what’s keeping you from it? Is it just the belief that you can’t? We learn what mental blocks are present, and we figure out together how to shift those beliefs into ones that are more open to possibilities — and still rooted in reality.
When leave is ending: returning to work
When leave is coming to an end, we prepare for the return. Some of my clients go back to their same jobs because they need to, and we figure out together what that return will look like and how to not fall into the same patterns that caused their health problems in the first place. Others leave for new jobs. Others make real career pivots.
What matters most isn’t the job itself — it’s how you can show up for yourself in new ways. That’s ultimately what we’re building: a relationship with yourself that no layoff or restructure can take away.
If you’re navigating burnout and wondering where to start, I’d love to connect. I work with adults throughout California and Colorado via telehealth, and I specialize in burnout, work-related stress, and the deep life recalibration that recovery from this often requires.
If you’re interested in doing this work alongside others who get it, I also run Running on Empty — a small virtual group for high-achievers navigating burnout recovery.
Reach out here — you don’t have to figure this out alone.