The Things We Avoid and the Things We Ache For
Avoidance isn't always laziness. Explore why we avoid difficult tasks, conversations and decisions, how emotions shape procrastination, and what our desires can teach us about what matters most.
We all have something we've been meaning to deal with.
The email we haven't opened. The text message we haven't replied to. The work project that has been sitting in the corner of our desktop for months. The difficult conversation. The bank statement. The decision.
Sometimes it can feel as though there's a monster under the bed. We suspect it's there. We can hear it scratching around in the dark. But as long as we don't look directly at it, perhaps it can't hurt us.
So we keep our heads down. We busy ourselves elsewhere. We tell ourselves we'll deal with it next week, next month, when things calm down.
But whatever it is hasn't disappeared simply because we haven't looked at it.
And often, that's where the exhaustion begins.
What Are We Really Avoiding?
The thing itself is not always the problem.
The unopened envelope might only take thirty seconds to open. The email could take five minutes to answer. The phone call might last less time than we've spent worrying about it.
What we're often avoiding is how we expect we'll feel.
Shame. Guilt. Disappointment. Regret. Anxiety. Self-doubt.
It's rarely just the task.
Many of us tell ourselves we're avoiding something because we're busy, and to be fair, that's often true. Life can feel relentless. There are school runs and deadlines, caring responsibilities and life admin, work demands and household logistics. We are trying to keep a lot of plates spinning at once.
The journalist Brigid Schulte describes modern life as being made up of "time confetti" — little scraps of time scattered throughout our days rather than long stretches of uninterrupted space. We might have five minutes here and ten minutes there, but not the emotional energy needed to climb the hill of something that feels difficult.
So we choose the easier path.
We check our phones. We reorganise the kitchen drawer. We watch another episode. We answer easier emails first.
For a moment, we feel relief.
But avoidance often comes with a hidden cost.
The thing remains. The emotional energy it requires remains. The quiet hum of guilt or dread remains.
And so we find ourselves carrying it around with us anyway.
When Avoidance Isn't About Time
Sometimes the issue isn't that something feels difficult.
Sometimes it's that it no longer matters.
We can spend months trying to motivate ourselves towards something that simply isn't aligned anymore. A commitment we've outgrown. A goal that belonged to a previous version of ourselves. A project that no longer reflects what we value.
In those moments, avoidance may not be a sign that we need more discipline. It may be information. A gentle indication that something needs revisiting, revising or perhaps even releasing.
Of course, the opposite can be true as well.
Sometimes we avoid something because it matters deeply.
The novel we want to write.
The business idea we can't stop thinking about.
The course we'd love to take.
The conversation we know we need to have.
The dream that feels so important that we become afraid to touch it.
If it stays in our imagination, it remains perfect. Once we engage with it, it becomes vulnerable to disappointment, rejection or failure.
Avoidance and fear tend to keep each other company.
What Helps When We're Stuck
One thing I've noticed is that the things I avoid often become enormous in my imagination.
The task expands. The conversation grows. The consequence becomes catastrophic.
Then I finally look at it and discover it was far smaller than I'd made it.
Not always easy. But smaller.
I've found it helpful to stop asking, "How do I finish this?" and instead ask, "What would fifteen minutes look like?"
The writer Maggie O'Farrell once spoke about writing one of the most painful scenes in Hamnet. Rather than forcing herself through it, she would write for ten minutes, walk around the garden, and then come back. Ten minutes at a time.
Sometimes courage looks less like a leap and more like a series of tiny returns.
I've also found self-compassion matters more than self-criticism. When we're already struggling with something, adding shame rarely helps. Instead, I try to remember that avoidance usually makes sense.
There is often a reason I'm hesitating. A fear. A wound. A protective instinct.
Sometimes I find it helpful to imagine speaking to myself the way I would speak to a friend:
"I know this feels difficult. I know why you're avoiding it. But we'll be okay. Let's take a look together."
Finally, I've learned to notice when avoidance moves beyond procrastination and becomes something else entirely.
There are times when avoidance can be connected to anxiety, depression, burnout or emotional overwhelm. The world becomes smaller. Opportunities narrow. Relationships drift. We stop participating in our own lives.
If that's where you find yourself, it's worth treating that experience with curiosity and care rather than judgment and getting the support that you need to help you move through this.
On the Other Side of Avoidance
On the other side of avoidance sits something else. Wanting.
Not wanting in the consumer sense. Not the endless message that we should always be striving for more.
A different kind of wanting.
The quiet question: What do I actually want?
It sounds simple, but many of us struggle to answer it.
We're often very clear on what needs doing. What is expected of us. What other people require from us.
But what do we desire? That's harder.
Perhaps because wanting can feel indulgent. We learn early that practicality is admirable. Responsibility is admirable. Self-sacrifice is admirable. Wanting can feel frivolous by comparison.
And yet some of the most meaningful parts of life begin there.
Because I want to learn a new instrument.
Because I want to travel somewhere I've never been.
Because I want to spend more time with friends.
Because I want to make things.
Because I want to.
The aviator Amelia Earhart famously answered the question of why she flew across oceans with this simple statement:
There is something wonderfully freeing about that. Not because every desire should be followed. But because sometimes wanting itself is enough..
Following the Threads of Aliveness
I've come to think of wanting as a signal. It points us towards what feels alive. Towards connection. Creativity. Curiosity. Joy. Meaning. Play.
Many of us spend so much time coping that we forget to ask what brings us pleasure.
What delights us.
What energises us.
What makes us feel more like ourselves.
And yet these questions matter. Not because they solve our problems. But because they remind us we're more than our responsibilities.
More than our productivity.
More than our to-do lists.
There is a life beyond coping.
And sometimes our longings help us find it.
What Are You Avoiding? What Are You Wanting?
Lately I've been wondering whether I'm spending more energy keeping things at bay or moving towards what matters.
Perhaps that's the question I'm leaving with you too.
What are you avoiding? And what are you wanting?
Sometimes the things we're avoiding contain important information. So do the things we're longing for.
One points towards what feels difficult, uncertain or unresolved.
The other points towards what feels meaningful, alive or true.
Neither needs to be fixed immediately. But both deserve our attention.
Explore Emotions Coaching
If you're finding yourself stuck in patterns of avoidance, overwhelmed by difficult emotions, or unsure what you want next, emotions coaching can help you slow down and make sense of what's happening beneath the surface.
Together we'll explore what you're feeling, what's driving your reactions, and how you can respond with more clarity, self-trust and choice.
Because sometimes the next step isn't about pushing harder. It's about understanding what's really going on.
Find out more about emotions coaching and book a discovery call.
Thoughts Kept… About Burnout
What does burnout really feel like? Drawing on conversations from A Thought I Kept, this piece explores the signs of burnout, emotional exhaustion, perfectionism, grief, people pleasing, and what sustainable burnout recovery can actually look like.
The first sign was probably the resentment. Just a low, constant irritation that seemed to follow me everywhere. The email arriving five minutes before the end of the day that made my shoulders tense instantly. The friend asking for a favour and my internal reaction feeling disproportionate to the request. Sitting at my laptop already tired before I’d even really begun. Feeling strangely annoyed at tiny inconveniences, while also somehow too exhausted to explain why.
At the time, I wouldn’t have called it burnout. I think I imagined burnout as something more obvious than that, something involving collapse or crisis or the inability to get out of bed. But one of the things I’ve learned from the guests on A Thought I Kept is that burnout often arrives much more quietly than we expect. It can look like functioning. Achievement. Keeping going. Being capable. It can look like replying to emails, meeting deadlines, hosting meetings, making dinner, posting on Instagram, smiling at people in supermarkets, all while feeling increasingly disconnected from yourself underneath it all.
Over the past year of recording conversations for the podcast, burnout has surfaced again and again, sometimes explicitly and sometimes hiding beneath conversations about perfectionism, people pleasing, creativity, ambition, neurodiversity, work, identity, caregiving, or the pressure many of us feel to keep performing wellness while privately struggling to cope with ordinary life.
And the thing that has surprised me most is that very few people describe burnout as simply “working too hard.” Instead, they describe years of overriding themselves. Years of separating achievement from joy. Years of confusing resilience with endurance. Years of not noticing what they needed until their body eventually forced the conversation.
Listening back to these episodes, there are five lessons about burnout that I keep returning to, especially because they say something much bigger about how many of us are living right now.
1. Burnout often begins long before we recognise it
One of the most powerful things I’ve learned from these conversations is that burnout is not always obvious while you’re inside it.
Matthew Bellringer described how many neurodivergent people become so used to masking distress and unmet needs that they can function at levels of overwhelm that would feel completely unsustainable for somebody else, until eventually “the system cannot continue doing this.” This explains why burnout can be so difficult to recognise early on. Many people experiencing burnout are still functioning. They are still showing up to work, replying to emails, caring for children, making dinners, meeting deadlines, laughing in meetings, organising birthdays, and keeping everything moving while privately feeling increasingly exhausted, emotionally numb, or disconnected from themselves.
Liana Fricker spoke about realising, after a major burnout in her forties, that she could no longer ignore what her body had been trying to tell her for years. “You can’t fight this anymore,” she said. “You’re going to have to learn new ways.” There was something in that conversation that felt deeply relevant to the moment we’re all living through now, because so many people are trying to cope with a world that feels relentlessly demanding. The cost of living crisis, constant bad news, workplace pressure, caregiving, uncertainty about the future, digital overload, the sense that there is always more to respond to, improve, optimise, manage.
It means burnout symptoms often become normalised. Which is perhaps why so many people only recognise burnout once their body, mind, or emotions become impossible to ignore.
2. Burnout is often connected to grief, loss, and emotional overwhelm, not just overwork
One thing I’ve found myself thinking about while making the podcast is how often burnout conversations are really conversations about loss. Not only the loss of energy, but the loss of identity, meaning, connection, certainty, or the version of yourself you thought you were supposed to be.
In Hiroko Yoda’s episode, she described the period after the death of her mother as feeling as though “the flames of my soul had been snuffed” and “the world had drained of color.” Listening to her speak about grief, spirituality, and slowly finding her way back to herself through nature and ritual made me realise how many forms emotional burnout can take, particularly when we are carrying loss that hasn’t fully been acknowledged.
Similarly, Toni Jones spoke movingly about how much of her life had been spent avoiding her feelings entirely, pushing through burnout during a high-pressure media career before eventually turning toward books, reflection, and self-development as a way of reconnecting with herself.
I think this matters because burnout is often discussed in incredibly practical terms, as though it can be solved purely through time management or better routines. But many guests described something much more emotional underneath their exhaustion. Grief. Loneliness. Emotional suppression. A life lived too long in survival mode.
And when people search for how to cope with burnout, I think part of what they are often really asking is: how do I come back to myself after a long period of disappearing from my own life?
3. Perfectionism and people pleasing are often hiding underneath burnout
Again and again, conversations about burnout on the podcast eventually circled back to approval.
Approval at school. Approval at work. Approval in relationships. Approval online. Approval through achievement.
Matthew described learning early in life to separate what felt intrinsically rewarding from what earned praise and validation from other people.
Liana talked about slowly untangling intuition from perfectionism and people pleasing, laughing as she realised they were “three distinct balls of wool.”
What struck me listening back was how often burnout seems connected not simply to doing too much, but to becoming trapped inside identities built around usefulness, capability, achievement, or being easy for other people to rely on.
For many people, burnout recovery is difficult because the behaviours that created the burnout were also the behaviours that earned love, praise, security, or success.
And that’s why simply telling people to “rest more” often doesn’t touch the deeper issue. If slowing down makes you feel guilty, anxious, purposeless, or unsafe, then burnout management is not just about changing your schedule. It’s also about understanding the emotional engine underneath the overworking in the first place.
Liana put it beautifully when she reflected on her repeated burnout cycles and asked herself: “What is this internal engine that keeps making me run at full speed, ultimately off a cliff?” I suspect many of us are carrying versions of that same question.
4. Burnout recovery is less about becoming productive again and more about rebuilding your relationship with yourself
Something else that comes through strongly in these conversations is that burnout recovery rarely looks like bouncing back quickly into the old version of your life. Instead, many guests described it as a slower rebuilding process that required them to pay attention to themselves in entirely new ways.
Liana spoke about recognising patterns she now calls “burn downs,” smaller recurring cycles of depletion that eventually accumulate into something much larger if ignored. She described reorganising her calendar around her actual energy levels rather than the version of productivity she thought she should be capable of sustaining, deliberately creating more spaciousness during certain periods because she knew her nervous system needed it.
There was something profoundly compassionate in that conversation because it wasn’t about becoming perfect at wellbeing. It was about becoming more honest. And honesty appears repeatedly across these episodes as one of the real turning points in burnout recovery. Honest recognition of limits. Honest recognition of exhaustion. Honest recognition of what no longer works.
Matthew described burnout recovery not simply as reducing stress, but as “getting something back” again. Joy. Playfulness. Meaning. Intrinsic reward. Time spent doing things that actually feel alive rather than merely productive.
That feels important because many people experiencing burnout are not simply tired. They are disconnected from pleasure, creativity, curiosity, and spaciousness, the very things that make life feel sustainable over time.
5. People recovering from burnout are often becoming more curious, not more perfect
Perhaps my biggest takeaway from these conversations is that sustainable burnout recovery seems to involve curiosity much more than self-optimisation.
Not becoming a “better” person.
Not becoming perfectly balanced.
Not finally mastering wellness.
Just becoming more aware.
Aware of patterns.
Aware of emotional needs.
Aware of capacity.
Aware of what depletes you and what restores you.
Aware of the stories you’ve inherited about success, worth, ambition, rest, and productivity.
Liana talked about spending more time in her body rather than only in her rational mind, slowly learning the difference between intuition, perfectionism, and people pleasing.
Hiroko found herself reconnecting with the world again through tiny moments of attention to nature, ritual, and spirituality after profound grief.
Toni’s story explored what happens when we stop avoiding ourselves long enough to really ask how we are living and whether it’s sustainable.
None of these conversations offered a perfect formula for how to manage burnout, and honestly I think that’s part of why they’ve stayed with me. Because burnout recovery is rarely linear. It is often messy, cyclical, emotional, and deeply personal. But listening to these guests has reminded me that healing doesn’t always begin with dramatic transformation. Sometimes it begins with finally paying attention.
If this piece resonated, you might want to listen to our special playlist, The Thoughts I Kept… About Burnout, a collection of episodes from A Thought I Kept exploring burnout, emotional exhaustion, grief, perfectionism, people pleasing, identity, overwhelm, and the complicated process of finding your way back to yourself again.
And if you’re feeling emotionally exhausted, overwhelmed, disconnected, or unsure where to begin, you can also explore our coaching sessions through If Lost Start Here.
Our work is not about helping you become endlessly productive again. It’s about understanding what’s happening underneath the exhaustion, reconnecting with yourself more honestly, and building a version of wellbeing that actually fits your real life.
More ways to explore burnout
Living on the Edge of Burnout: How to Recognise the Signs and Find Your Way Back
Exploring burnout, emotional numbness, and the pressure to keep going. Plus some gentle ideas for reconnecting with yourself before you reach breaking point.
Emily goes quiet about twenty minutes into the session.
Up until then she’s been talking quickly, trying to explain why she booked the call in the first place. Work is busy. Home is busy. Life is busy. She keeps saying things like “It’s fine” and “I know everyone feels like this,” while also admitting she can’t remember the last time she felt properly rested. Then she stops talking altogether.
“I just don’t understand why I can’t handle all of this better,” she says eventually. “Other people seem to manage.”
I hear versions of this almost every week.
People arrive carrying so much for so long that they barely recognise the weight of it anymore. They apologise for being emotional. Or overwhelmed. Or tired. They laugh while describing how close to the edge they feel, as though softening it somehow makes it easier to hold.
And usually beneath everything else is the same hope: if I can just keep going, somehow, maybe things will sort themselves out.
I know that place well. When I think back on periods of burnout in my own life, there’s a real sense that I wasn’t fully there at all. I was moving through my days on autopilot. Showing up at work. Meeting deadlines. Replying to emails. Getting through. But I remember so little joy in those years and so little connection with myself or the people around me.
In my twenties, I was so stressed in a gallery job that the highlight of my week became buying myself a Starbucks on a Wednesday lunchtime — a surprising novelty then — because it marked the hump of the week and meant I was inching towards the weekend.
Things got so bad at one point that I remember being wheeled out of work after my body simply stopped cooperating. I had started shaking at my desk. I felt nauseous. Everything hurt. A colleague put me in a taxi and took me home, and I remember lying on the sofa in confusion and shame, wondering whether he’d noticed the awful purple Habitat throw draped across it and how I had somehow let things get this bad.
My boss’s mantra was “Suck it up.” So we did. Until people started burning out completely.
Looking back now, what strikes me is how normal it all felt at the time. The exhaustion. The emotional numbness. The belief that the problem was somehow us. That we weren’t coping well enough. That if we could just work harder, be stronger, manage ourselves better, everything would steady again.
But burnout has a way of hollowing things out quietly. It disconnects us not only from rest, but from ourselves. From joy. From clarity. From the small inner signals trying to tell us something isn’t right anymore.
And increasingly, I see people arriving in sessions already living right on that edge. They tell me they can’t switch off anymore. That they feel strangely flat. That they don’t know what they even enjoy these days. They say things like: “I should be grateful.” “Other people have it harder.” “I don’t have time to fall apart.” Sometimes they’ve become so used to overriding themselves that they barely notice they’re doing it.
There’s often a fog to burnout too. A sense that you can’t properly see yourself or your life anymore because everything is happening at full volume all at once. You’re so busy surviving the week that you lose sight of what’s actually happening to you inside it.
And because so many of our ideas about worth are tangled up with productivity, achievement and being dependable, stopping can feel almost impossible. Rest feels irresponsible. Slowing down feels like failure. Particularly in environments that quietly reward people for overriding themselves.
So where do you start when you realise you can’t keep living like this?
Honestly, I think it often starts smaller than we expect.
Not with a complete reinvention of your life. Not with a perfect morning routine or a dramatic breakthrough. But with acknowledgement.
This is hard.
I’m not coping as well as I want to admit.
Something about the way I’m living right now isn’t sustainable.
There’s something powerful about finally telling yourself the truth.
And then, gradually, there’s the process of returning to yourself by degrees.
A recent guest on my podcast, Hiroko Yoda, spoke about how she came back to the world slowly after an incredibly difficult period in her life. Through walking. Looking up. Noticing trees and skies again. Paying attention to tiny things. In Japanese culture there’s the idea of kami — spirits existing in everything — and I loved that thought of reconnecting first with the small and then with something larger than ourselves.
I think burnout recovery can sometimes look a little like that. Noticing tiny things again. Dr. MaryCatherine McDonald calls them “tiny moments of joy.” Not huge life-changing experiences, but fleeting moments that remind us we are still here somewhere underneath all the pressure. The warmth of tea in your hands. A voice note from a friend. Light through the curtains. A song in the car that briefly returns you to yourself.
And then there’s rest — which sounds obvious until you realise how morally loaded rest has become for so many of us. I’ve had to learn, slowly, that resting isn’t the same as failing. That stopping before collapse is not weakness. That backing away from burnout often involves much smaller, quieter choices than the world tends to celebrate.
Living on the edge of burnout is complicated. There’s never one single reason we arrive there and no universal way back out again. Every person I speak to carries a different story into the room with them. But perhaps this is a place to start:
To notice that burnout is here.
To stop pretending you’re fine when you’re not.
To make eye contact with yourself again instead of endlessly pushing past what you feel.
Not to fix yourself overnight. Just to begin the conversation.
*The story of Emily is not one client’s story, but a weaving together of many experiences I’ve encountered in coaching and in my own life.
If this feels familiar, or if you recognise something of yourself in it, my coaching sessions offer a space to pause before you reach breaking point.
Together, we can gently untangle what’s going on beneath the overwhelm, make sense of what you’re feeling, and explore what support, rest, boundaries or change might look like for you — without judgement, pressure, or needing to have it all figured out already.
You don’t have to keep pushing through alone. Explore emotions coaching sessions at If Lost, Start Here.
More ways to explore burnout
Burnout and Neurodiversity: When the World Wasn’t Made for You
How neurodiversity helps explain burnout, overwhelm, and why common wellbeing advice doesn’t work for everyone.
There’s a particular sense of being absolutely and utterly lost that doesn’t come from not trying hard enough.
It comes from doing all the things you’re meant to do — reading the books, following the advice, showing up, pushing through — and still feeling as though something isn’t quite lining up. As if you’re working hard to fit into a life that doesn’t seem to hold you in the way you hoped it would.
For many people, this shows up as overwhelming exhaustion. Or confusion. Or a sense of being slightly out of step with the world around you. You might tell yourself you need more confidence, more clarity, more discipline. Or you might wonder why change seems to come more easily to other people.
This is often the moment people arrive here — not because they want to reinvent themselves, but because they’re looking for something steadier to stand on and anchor themselves in.
One of the things we keep returning to through the podcast A Thought I Kept is the idea that sometimes it’s not a new plan we need, but a new way of seeing. A thought that doesn’t tell us what to do, but helps us understand what’s already happening.
In a recent conversation, Matthew Bellringer shared one such idea. Their “thought kept” was:
“ neurodiversity — and more specifically, the understanding that people experience the world in fundamentally different ways.”
Not just think differently. Not just behave differently. But experience differently: how information lands, how emotions move through the body, how energy rises and falls, how environments feel, how much effort it takes just to get through the day.
Matthew spoke about how this understanding helped them make sense of years of feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, or misunderstood — not as personal failure, but as a mismatch between their nervous system and the systems they were trying to survive within. Burnout, in this light, wasn’t a sign of weakness or poor resilience. It was a signal. A body doing its best under sustained conditions that didn’t meet its needs.
This matters because burnout is often framed as something to “recover from” so we can return to how things were before. But if you’ve reached burnout — whether suddenly or slowly — it’s often because how things were before was never truly sustainable for you in the first place.
For people who are neurodivergent — diagnosed or not — this can be especially true. Many learn early on how to mask, adapt, and perform in ways that keep them functioning, even when it costs them deeply. They may appear capable, creative, competent, even successful — while quietly running on empty.
And for those who love, work with, or manage neurodivergent people, this idea opens something too. It invites a pause before judgement. A moment of curiosity instead of assumption. A chance to ask not “why isn’t this working?” but “what might be happening here that I can’t see?”
What’s important is that this idea doesn’t demand that you identify in any particular way. You don’t need a label for it to be useful. You don’t need to decide whether it “applies” to you. You can simply notice what happens when you hold the possibility that your experience of the world is valid, even if it’s not the dominant one.
Used as a lens, this thought can soften old stories. It can help explain why certain wellbeing advice has never quite landed. Why rest that looks like stillness feels agitating rather than restoring. Why structure can feel comforting for one person and constricting for another. Why what helps your friend recover leaves you feeling worse.
It can also return you to yourself.
Instead of asking how to fix what feels wrong, you might start asking gentler questions. What environments help me feel more like myself? Where does my energy actually go? What does my nervous system need to feel safe enough to rest, curious enough to engage?
This isn’t about optimisation or self-improvement. It’s about orientation. About finding a framework that helps you trust your own signals again, rather than overriding them in the hope of becoming someone else.
At If Lost Start Here, we believe that change doesn’t begin with pressure. It begins with understanding. With recognising that you’re not behind, broken, or failing — you’re responding, with more awareness, to the life you’re living.
Sometimes, one idea can hold that understanding for you when everything else feels wobbly. A thought you can return to when things don’t make sense. A lens that helps you see yourself, and others, with a little more compassion.
If this idea resonates, listen to the full conversation with Matthew Bellringer on A Thought I Kept.
And if you’re finding yourself at a point where you want support, explore the coaching and resources we offer here.
What to Do When You Feel Creatively Empty
How to Reclaim Your Energy, One Small Practice at a Time
You know the feeling. That bone-deep tiredness that no nap or green juice will touch. The ideas that once came freely now feel flat. The excitement that used to buzz in your chest has turned to static.
If you’ve been feeling creatively empty — like your spark has left the room — you’re not broken. You’re burnt out, or as entrepreneur and founder Liana Fricker calls it, maybe you’re just in a “burndown.”
When Liana hit burnout — again — in 2023, she realised that it wasn’t a one-off collapse. It was part of a repeating pattern. She’d push hard, build momentum, connect dots, gather people, spark ideas — and then, suddenly, the tank was empty. She had to start “by designing my work life and just my general life in such a way that creates that space so I can stay open.”
Liana calls herself an “idea-laying machine.” But even machines need power sources — and her old ways of working (and marketing herself online) weren’t sustainable anymore.
So she began to experiment. To unlearn. To ask a different set of questions:
What if I stopped performing consistency and started trusting my energy instead?
What would work look like if it was slower, tactile, real-world?
What if connection — not content — was my strategy?
These are some of the wellbeing practices and mind shifts that helped Liana rebuild creative energy — not by working harder, but by reimagining what “working” means.
Each one is a quiet act of resistance against burnout culture, and a reminder that creative energy is not infinite but it is renewable.
1. Stop Performing Consistency — Start Practising Self-Trust
The advice we’re given online — “be consistent!” — often misses the truth that not all brains or energy cycles work in straight lines. For Liana, the key was designing routines that flowed with her energy, not against it.
She now plans her month in cycles: high-energy weeks first, slow restoration later. Some weeks are for ideas, others are for Antiques Roadshow and weighted blankets.
“If all I could do was meditate in a sauna and watch Antiques Roadshow with my weighted blanket at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday, I can do that. Because that might be what the burndown needs, right?”
Try this: Instead of scheduling every day equally, design your calendar like a tide chart. Plan creative work during your high-energy phases, and build in restorative “ebb” weeks.
2. Redefine Burnout — and Learn Your ‘Burndown’ Pattern
Liana differentiates between burnout (the big collapse) and burndown (the mini energy crashes that happen every few weeks).
When you start to recognise these smaller cycles, you can respond before the full crash.
Notice:
Do you have predictable weeks of high motivation followed by emotional flatness?
Do you overcommit when your energy peaks?
Can you give yourself permission to pause before you’re forced to stop?
Reframing burnout as cyclical rather than catastrophic helps turn it from a crisis into data — something you can observe, not judge.
3. Design for Energy, Not Productivity
“I think if you're someone who suffers from quite big burnouts or you've had a few in your life and you're over the age of 40, you may want to take a step back and ask yourself, what is this internal engine that keeps making me run at full speed, ultimately off a cliff?”
So she began to design her days not for output, but for energy flow. She created conditions that help her stay open — like attending real-world gatherings, limiting context-switching, and making space for brainfood conversations.
“I absolutely came home buzzing with energy, being in a room, in a curated space. It didn't feel too overwhelming, but just with so many interesting people telling me interesting things, that kind of cup is very full.”
Try this: Once a week, replace a Zoom call with a walk, a museum visit, or a local event. Think of it as refuelling, not slacking. Creative energy is relational.
4. Feed Your Brain (and Body) With Connection
Liana describes herself as “best with a spark” — someone whose creativity ignites in conversation.
That spark doesn’t come from scrolling; it comes from connection. The quick chat with a stranger, the serendipity of a room, the awkward but alive feeling of being seen.
“Whereas if you're on your phone or on your laptop, it's like the closest you'll ever get to an invisibility cloak, right? You can choose whether to engage or not.”
For those feeling creatively apathetic, connection might be the antidote — not to produce something, but to remember what it feels like to be moved.
5. Reframe ‘Anxiety’ as Excitement
A subtle but powerful reframe:
When your heart races before a new project or social event, what if it’s not anxiety — but excitement?
“The moment when I realized that what I would have described as anxiety was excitement was huge for me. Because even calling it anxiety changes the relationship with it. It's something to stop doing.”
Reinterpreting physical sensations as energy — rather than threat — can turn overwhelm into motion.
6. Build a Creative Ecosystem
Liana also began thinking about wellbeing like professional athletes do: as a team effort.
“There's no athlete that goes to the Olympics that does not have a sports psychologist and a physio and a chef and because the machine is this integration it needs specialists.”
That might mean therapy, coaching, accountability partners, or simply the people who remind you to rest.
7. Let Rest Be an Act of Mastery
Creativity needs stillness. For Liana, that looked like allowing emptiness — even boredom — without guilt.
“I was absolutely an empty vessel. There was no guilt because there was no energy for guilt. There was no shame because there was no energy for shame. Like, right. I was just empty.”
This is her glass of water philosophy:
“You know no one's gonna say how dare you have a glass of water. Why are you getting up to get a glass of water? What? You are gonna fail. Sometimes my glass of water is antiques roadshow.”
Creative fatigue, burnout, apathy — these aren’t signs of weakness. They’re signals. Your body is trying to tell you something.
When you stop trying to perform consistency and start listening to those signals, you create space for something far more powerful than productivity: self-trust.
And maybe, what looks like burnout is actually your creativity asking for a different kind of rhythm — one that includes silence and conversation, slow design and sparks of engagement.
If you want to explore these ideas further, listen to my conversation with Liana on the podcast A Thought I Kept.
Need some support as you navigate life’s ups and downs, explore our 1:1 coaching sessions.
How Heiter Moments Can Help Us Recover from Burnout
What if burnout recovery didn’t require a life overhaul, but a return to the smallest joys? Katharina Geissler-Evans, founder of lifestyle brand heiter, shares how small daily rituals helped her reclaim her sense of self.
When Katharina Geissler-Evans first hit burnout, she was in her twenties, commuting long hours, studying full-time, and working alongside it all. “I was constantly on the go and never thought about myself,” she says. “That’s when I crashed.”
“ “I couldn’t work anymore from one day to the next. There was a chance I would fail my course. And all I did was cry.””
In the depth of it, Katharina hoped someone else might help her out of it. But one evening — collapsed on the bathroom floor — something shifted when she realized that she was the only one who could look after herself.
Katharina didn’t know the full shape of her recovery yet. But she started with seeking out the things that she used to enjoy prior to driving herself into a hole of work and study.
What Burnout Can Teach Us
Burnout so often comes when we’ve overextended ourselves. When we’ve said yes to too much. When the doing has crowded out the being.
Katharina realised she needed to get back in touch with the version of herself before it all became too much.
“I had to find Kiki again. The version of me before the stress.”
That meant reconnecting with the person who liked sitting in a café with a book, or going for a walk, or making something with her hands. Katharina began with those tiny gestures: coffee, walks, candlelight, creativity. Just really small things that she knew she was capable of at that point. And from those small things, she built something beautiful — not just for herself, but for others too.
Heiter: Small Joys We Can Return To
The German word heiter translates to light-hearted, cheerful, serene — but Katharina has reimagined it as something deeper. Something more intentional.
For Katharina, heiter isn’t about perfection. It’s not the glossy kind of joy. It’s about the joy found in everyday life — the quiet, steady kind. The kind you can build a life around.
It was through this lens that her lifestyle brand and independent magazine heiter was born. And even now, 10 years in, that original spark — the idea that we can choose to create joy, even in hard times — is still at the heart of her work.
There’s something radical about choosing joy when we’re overwhelmed. About stepping away from the pressure to keep going, and instead choosing to pause.
Katharina still grounds herself in everyday practices, her non-negotiables whether that’s a gratitude ritual with her children at bedtime or a morning cup of coffee, fully savoured. Things that already make a massive difference in her life. Because burnout recovery doesn’t always look like doing less. Sometimes it looks like doing differently.
The Invitation of Heiter
As we head into darker months, many of us feel that familiar sense of depletion. But what if, like Katharina, we could meet it with softness?
“Figure out what you love at this time of year,” she suggests. “For me, it’s pumpkin soup, lighting candles, making comfort food my granny used to make. These moments matter.”
Heiter isn’t a prescription — it’s a permission. A permission to reconnect with your own joys. To remember what restores you. And to begin, again, from there.
Take one small heiter moment this week — a walk, a warm drink, a candle, a laugh with someone you love. Could that help slowly bring you back to yourself.
And if this conversation resonates, listen to the full podcast episode with Katharina Geissler-Evans wherever you get your podcasts.
Or read the extended conversation over on our Substack at More Good Days.
When Change Feels Like Too Much (or Not Enough)
A note for anyone feeling a little lost, a little tired, or quietly done with being told to “just push through.”
Change has become a bit of a cultural obsession. We’re told to embrace it, manifest it, optimize it, and if nothing else, get ahead of it. But what if you’re not ready for change?
What if you don’t even know where to begin — or worse, you’re so tired that even thinking about beginning feels like too much?
What if your to-do list is buried under feelings you can’t quite name, and change feels like another thing you're supposed to “achieve”?
Change can be powerful, but a lot of the time, it just feels hard.
It can feel like you’re supposed to reinvent your life, quit your job, start journaling, meditate, heal your nervous system, launch something meaningful, and find inner peace… all before breakfast.
In this week’s episode of A Thought I Kept, I spoke with Eleanor Tweddell — author of Another Door Opens and someone who has spent years thinking about how we navigate the murky middle of change.
Not the TED Talk version. The real version. The one where you feel uncertain, messy, and nothing is falling neatly into place.
And we kept circling back to one idea that feels worth offering here:
You don’t have to make change happen.
Sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is make space for it.
So what do you do when you feel…lost?
When you’re feeling lost, it’s tempting to look for a map. A mentor. A checklist.
But when you’ve lost your sense of direction, what you often need most is stillness, not movement.
Try this:
Sit with the question: “What do I know to be true about me today?” Even if the answer is small. Even if it’s “I’m tired,” or “I love my morning coffee.”
Take the pressure off needing big answers. Instead, track what gives you a spark of energy or a softening in your body. These are breadcrumbs that you can tentatively start to follow.
We don’t often start with clarity. Sometimes we arrive with better questions — and that’s enough.
What to do when you feel…burned out
When you’re burned out, everything feels like another task — even things that are meant to help you.
But change doesn’t have to be action. Sometimes, the bravest, most radical thing you can do is nothing.
Instead of asking: “What should I do next?”
Try asking: “What would it look like to stop trying so hard today?”
Then let yourself off the hook — completely.
Ideas to try:
Take a tech-free walk with no goal.
Cancel something that doesn’t matter as much as your wellbeing.
Let your brain idle — yes, even with a box set or a nap.
As Eleanor shared, the most productive thing she did on the launch day of her book was make coffee and sit in the sun. That was enough.
What to do when you feel…overwhelmed
Overwhelm is often less about how much we have to do, and more about how much we’re holding in our heads and hearts without release.
Your nervous system doesn’t need another productivity hack.
It needs a moment of exhale.
Try this 3-step reset:
Name it: “I feel overwhelmed because…”
List it: Brain-dump everything that’s buzzing in your mind. No filtering.
Choose ONE: What’s one thing you could do today that would make you feel 5% more in control?
And if even that’s too much?
You’re allowed to press pause. You’re allowed to say “not today” to change.
Sometimes, the most generous act is letting go of urgency.
What to do when you feel… disconnected
When we’re disconnected, it can feel like we’re moving through life on autopilot.
We say yes when we want to say no. We scroll instead of feeling. We forget what brings us joy.
This is where a values check-in can bring you back to yourself.
Ask: What actually matters to me right now — not what used to, not what “should”? Where in my life am I living out of alignment with that?
You don’t need to overhaul everything. Just start by noticing.
If you’re a Wellery Member, you’ll find our full Values Check-In exercise here
And if that’s too much today?
Do one small thing that feels like you — not your “best” self, not your productive self, just your real self.
Maybe that’s:
Cooking a meal you love, just for you
Putting on music and dancing in the kitchen
Saying no to something you don’t want to do
The first step doesn’t have to bring clarity. Sometimes it’s more about connection. And that often starts with listening inward again.
You’re not doing it wrong. You’re just in it.
Navigating change isn’t about always knowing the next step.
Sometimes, it’s about standing still long enough to hear yourself think.
And in this week’s episode, Eleanor Tweddell makes the case for something both radical and restorative:
“Always hold space for magic. ”
Even when you’re tired. Even when you’re uncertain. Even when you don’t believe in it yet.
Because sometimes, what’s next arrives when you stop trying so hard to find it.
Listen to the full episode:
If you’ve ever felt like the idea of change is just too much, you’re not alone.
In our 1:1 sessions and The Wellery community, we see this again and again:
Some people are stuck in jobs that no longer feel right, but can’t imagine where else to go.
Some are depleted from caring for others and don’t know how to care for themselves.
Others are done with self-development and just want to feel like themselves again.
So instead of forcing clarity or making a five-year plan, here’s a better question:
What if you’re not utterly lost — just in a moment of in-between?
And what if that space could be a beginning, not a failure?
Want more thoughtful support that fits with your real-life?
Join The Wellery for deeper reflections, journaling prompts, and tools to help you stay connected to yourself while navigating change.
When You're Caught Between Seasons and Burnout
How to let yourself slow down, even when everything says speed up. This conversation with Lyndsay Kaldor will help if you’re feeling burnout or disconnected from yourself right now.
It’s the last stretch of August. The air feels heavier. There’s a nudge toward routine, productivity, “back to it” energy — even if your soul’s not quite ready.
There’s that quiet panic that says I’m not ready to go again.
That creeping guilt because you’re not full of plans or energy or goals for the season ahead.
That lingering hold of summer you don’t yet want to shake off.
If you feel this way right now, this week's episode of A Thought I Kept where I interview Lyndsay Kaldor is for you.
Lyndsay is a writer, mother and creative whose life changed when her yoga teacher shared something simple but radical:
““Flowers don’t bloom all year round.””
It landed at a time in her twenties when she was living what she calls a “summer existence” — always outwards, productive, performing, never pausing. That line became a turning point — an invitation into rest, seasonality, and a whole new way of living.
In this week’s episode, Lyndsay and I talk about:
Why burnout often looks like numbness, sameness, or disconnection
How to tell when it’s time to stop pushing and start tending
What seasonal living actually means (no picture-perfect routines required)
How to mother, work, create or just exist without being always “on”
The quiet power of letting growth be unseen, slow, and small
Maybe your life doesn't look seasonal.
Maybe you’re in a job that doesn’t change pace, or a home that feels full of noise and needs.
Maybe you're tired of trying to change things — and just need to know you're not doing it wrong.
This conversation won't tell you to quit it all and start over.
But it will remind you that it’s OK to rest. To reset slowly. To resist the pressure of the algorithm, the to-do list, the inner critic who tells you to keep up.
This episode is for the part of you that needs permission.
To be quiet. To not know. To not be blooming right now.
We are not machines. We are living things. We shift. We fade. We return.
And just like the natural world, we’re allowed to move in cycles.
Burnout isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s just the weariness of being endlessly outward when what you need is inward.
So if you’re in that messy, in-between moment — not quite summer, not quite autumn, not quite ready — this is for you.
Are you feeling a shift right now?
What season are you in — internally — even if the world’s moving on?
Listen to this episode of A Thought I Kept on Substack or wherever you get your podcasts.
“The Quiet Rebellion of Honouring Your Inner Seasons” with Lyndsay Kaldor.
Subscribe on your favourite podcast app so you don’t miss future episodes.
You’re Not Anti-Social. You’re Burnt Out
Struggling with connection? You’re not anti-social — you might just be overwhelmed. Here’s how burnout impacts relationships, and what to do about it.
You might be wondering why connection feels harder than it used to. Why even replying to a message takes energy you don’t seem to have. Why the idea of making plans, or keeping them, feels less like joy and more like effort. Maybe you’ve told yourself you’re becoming anti-social. Or that something’s wrong with you.
But have you thought that you might just be burnt out?
And when we're burnt out, overwhelmed, or overstimulated, it's not that we don’t want connection — it’s that we don’t have the capacity for it in the ways we used to.
Let’s take a gentler look at what’s really going on and how you can find your way back to the people in your world, slowly and on your terms.
1. It’s Not You. It’s Your Nervous System
When you’re overwhelmed, your body isn't just stressed; it enters a primal survival mode. From a neuroscience perspective, this triggers your sympathetic nervous system, flooding your system with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, preparing you for 'fight, flight, or freeze.'
In this state, your brain shifts activity away from the logical prefrontal cortex towards more reactive areas like the amygdala. This deprioritises connection because it perceives it as 'extra' or even a vulnerability.
Even if your conscious self longs for company, your autonomic nervous system might be screaming: 'too much!' – interpreting social interaction as additional cognitive load or sensory input when resources are already depleted.
Ultimately, this isn't a rejection of other people; it's a powerful, often unconscious, form of self-protection, as your system attempts to conserve vital energy and reduce stimulation until it can recalibrate.
2. We’ve Normalised Overstimulation
Constant scrolling. The news cycle. Notifications. Everyone needing something from you. It’s no wonder that community starts to feel like another demand.
You’re not avoiding people because you don’t care. You’re avoiding people because you haven’t had a moment to care for yourself.
We’ve got so used to being “on” all the time, that we can start to judge ourselves when we want to, or need to, switch off.
3. Social Exhaustion Looks Like Disinterest
Here’s the trick: burnout mimics disconnection.
You cancel plans. You ghost the group chat. You forget to reply. You assume it means you’re withdrawing.
But what if it’s just that your tank is empty?
You still love your friends and value your community, but there’s so little left in you to attest to this.
4. Connection Heals Burnout But It Has to Feel Safe
Meaningful connection can help regulate your nervous system. But forced connection, with people who drain you or settings that overstimulate you, only adds to the fatigue.
Start where it feels safe:
Someone who gets you, no performance needed
A place that feels calm and familiar
Time limits: 15-minute walk, one cup of tea, one reply
Slow, steady, in the relationships you value most.
5. Choose Micro-Connection, Not Big Energy
You don’t need a group. You don’t need to “make new friends.” Try one of these instead:
Chat to your barista
Smile at the person on your usual dog walk
Send a funny reel to someone you love
Sit near others in a shared space (library, coworking space, café)
These “small things” are not small to your brain. They restore trust. They regulate stress. They count.
You are in the world connecting in a way that fits your capacity right now. You’re restoring a sense of self-confidence, even self-trust.
6. Community Doesn’t Have to Be Loud
You’re allowed to build a quiet community. One that fits your energy and rhythm.
Your version of community might be:
An email thread with one friend
A book club where you just listen
A garden you share with neighbours
A quiet nod from someone who recognises you in the queue
Going to the same cafe each week
Showing up to an exercise class where you know the name of one other person
If it feels good and welcoming to you, that might be enough right now.
7. Connection Isn’t a Fix. It’s a Practice
The point isn’t to solve your overwhelm with people. The point is to slowly remind your system that you’re supported.
That people can be kind.
That you don’t always have to do it alone.
That you’re still part of something, even if you’ve been quiet for a while.
Find ways to remind yourself of how good, even restorative, connection can feel.
You're Still Social. You're Also Just Tired
Could that idea and acknowledgment shift something in you? Lowering the pressure. Becoming the reason you reach out, even just a little.
Not to prove you’re okay. But because connection might be part of what helps you feel more okay again.
If you’re looking for something that fits your pace
Join our email community for encouragement, kind reminders, and gentle guidance
Book a wellbeing coaching session if you’re not sure where to begin. We cover all aspects of life including social connection and we’ll help you explore what this needs to look like for you to feel happier.
Join our community The Wellery on Substack where we figure out how to do life together.
More ways to understand burnout
The Lost Art of Reaching Out (Especially When You Don’t Feel Like It)
Feeling disconnected but too overwhelmed to socialise? Here’s how to gently rebuild your sense of community and connection — even when it feels like too much.
Sometimes, connection feels like a beautiful idea that belongs to someone else’s life.
You want it — the warmth, the welcome, the sense of being seen — but everything in your body says not now.
You're burnt out. Anxious. Tired from holding too much for too long.
And instead of reaching out, you slowly slip back. Into silence. Into solitude.
You tell yourself that it’s just for now. But now has been a while.
If that’s you? You’re not failing. You’re human. And you’re not alone.
Many of us are here right now, wanting to connect but not quite knowing how to.
Why We Pull Back When We Most Need People
When life overwhelms us, our nervous systems do something wise: they protect.
They shut things down to help us survive. Socialising — even with people we love — can feel like one demand too many.
The problem is: we still need people. We are hardwired for connection.
It’s a core human need — not a nice-to-have.
But the modern world hasn’t made that easy.
Loneliness is rising, even as we become more digitally connected. According to the Mental Health Foundation, 1 in 4 adults in the UK feel lonely some or all of the time. And among those dealing with burnout, that number climbs even higher.
And yet, when we do connect — even briefly — we feel the shift.
Tiny interactions can co-regulate our nervous systems. A nod from a neighbour. A friendly moment with a stranger in a queue. A text back from someone we haven’t heard from in a while.
The secret is this: connection doesn’t need to be big to be meaningful.
What If We Started Small?
The invitation here is not to “join a group” or “go to more things.”
It’s to experiment with connection that fits you now.
Maybe that looks like:
Sitting in a café instead of scrolling at home — just being in proximity to others.
Texting one person to say: thinking of you, no need to reply.
Wandering a local bookshop or museum, where other quiet people gather.
Volunteering, not for the social aspect, but because doing something small that matters feels grounding.
Attending a gentle yoga or movement class where connection is built through shared breath, not small talk.
Let the moment be enough. You don’t need to stay long.
Just notice how your body feels before and after. Maybe a little lighter?
Rebuilding Trust in People
Reconnection isn’t just about other people. It’s about learning to trust that it’s safe to be seen again. To believe that the right people will meet you where you are.
You don’t need to fix your burnout first. Or wait until you’re “back to your old self.”
The act of connecting — even in the smallest of ways — is part of the healing.
And connection doesn’t mean constant availability.
You can have boundaries. You can take breaks. You can be someone who dips in and out, without explanation.
Because community isn’t a performance. Its presence that you can choose.
What If You Tried One Tiny Reach?
What would your version of a gentle reach look like?
A walk with someone you enjoy talking to?
A visit to a familiar café?
A class where no one expects anything from you except that you try?
Try just one. Let it be small. Let it be enough.
When you’re ready, here are 3 ways we can help you:
1. Join us on Substack – Become a paying member and we’ll gift you our Spring Everyday Retreat right now so you can focus on how you like to connect even when life does its thing.
2. Book a wellbeing coaching session – If you want company while figuring out your next steps, let’s chat. Book a free consultation to see how we can help you connect in ways that feel good to you.
3. Sign up for our newsletter – Receive real-life tools, everyday insights and tiny reminders that you’re not alone in this. We’re all yearning to connect while also finding it easier to binge-watch Netflix.
The Weight You’re Carrying Isn’t Just Yours
Navigating the emotional labour, burnout and midlife overwhelm — and understanding why the load you’re carrying might not be all yours to hold.
There’s a kind of tiredness that doesn’t go away with rest.
You can sleep, hydrate, do your yoga, take your magnesium, go for a walk.
And still, it lingers — that low, heavy weight that sits behind your eyes or beneath your ribs. The kind that doesn’t show up in test results, but feels like it’s etched into your bones.
It’s not just physical. It’s not just emotional.
It’s a kind of invisible load — one that builds quietly over time.
And so many of us are carrying it.
Especially in midlife, especially as women, especially in lives that look “fine” on the outside.
We carry the decisions. The dynamics. The moods. The mental load. The silent remembering. The keeping-track-of-everything-and-everyone.
We carry the birthdays and the groceries and the dentist appointments.
We carry the emotional climate of our homes.
We carry what’s going on with the kids, what might be going on with our partners, what we’re starting to see happening with our parents.
We carry our friends, when they’re falling apart. We carry their fears, gently, quietly, alongside our own.
We hold it all. And then we wonder why we’re tired.
For a long time, I didn’t realise I was carrying anything extra.
I thought I was just tired because I wasn’t getting enough done.
I thought I needed to be more organised, more balanced, more productive.
I thought maybe I was weak. Even lazy. Possibly undisciplined.
But I wasn’t. I was just human. I was just heavy with things no one could see.
It wasn’t until I stopped — properly stopped — that I realised just how much I’d been holding. How much space it had taken up inside me. How much I’d quietly internalised as mine to carry.
The emotional labour. The mental noise. The weight of trying to be all the things to all the people, all of the time.
And the truth is: it wasn’t all mine.
It never was.
Some of it belonged to expectations I didn’t set.
Some to roles I inherited, but did not choose.
Some to a culture that praises women for being tireless, generous, and self-sacrificing — but never asks what it costs them to keep showing up that way.
And some of it, most painfully, was weight I carried simply because no one else thought to hold it for me.
If any of this feels familiar, I want you to know this:
You’re not imagining it.
The weight is real.
And you don’t have to keep carrying it all.
You are allowed to lay something down.
You are allowed to ask for help.
You are allowed to stop trying to be the steady one, the good one, the one who always has it together.
You don’t need to earn rest.
You don’t need to justify your tiredness.
You don’t need to explain why it feels so hard — even when your life looks okay.
Sometimes the most radical act of care is simply to say: This is too much for me.
And let that be reason enough.
There’s no perfect solution. No five-step fix.
But there is a beginning.
And it starts with naming what you’ve been holding — gently, kindly, without judgment.
Because once you can name it, you don’t have to carry it alone anymore.
Our Midlife Coaching Sessions
If this resonates, learn more about our coaching sessions for midlife and beyond. Explore everything from emotional labour to midlife burnout, and discover small ways to feel more connected again.
If you’re in midlife, these sessions will help you have a better relationship with this time. You’ll identify your needs and desires, bridge any gaps between where you are and where you want to be, and cultivate strategies for making it all that much better.
You’ll discover how to navigate midlife and beyond in ways that feel more intentional and even positive.
Need more guidance as you navigate midlife? Subscribe to our newsletter about the messy bits in the middle.
How to Manage Holiday Burnout and Embrace Seasonal Self-Care
Feeling stressed or overwhelmed this holiday season? Discover practical self-care habits, ways to connect positively, and tips to manage emotions and end-of-year burnout.
Last December, I found myself sitting in my car outside a crowded shopping centre, utterly drained. I had just spent hours rushing from one errand to the next, trying to make everything perfect for the holidays.
Instead of feeling festive, I felt a deep sense of resentment—toward the season, the expectations, and even myself for not being able to keep up.
It wasn’t until I stopped and asked, “What do I actually need right now?” that I realised I wasn’t failing; I was simply running on empty. That moment shifted how I approached the rest of the holidays.
The holidays bring a mix of joy and chaos— it’s a season to celebrate, yet one that can also push us to our limits. Between endless to-do lists, more complicated family dynamics, and the pressure to make everything perfect, it’s easy to feel stretched thin. Add in the emotional weight of year-end reflections, and burnout can quickly take hold.
But what if we could shift the focus this season, embracing a gentler, maybe even messier, approach that prioritizes your well-being? Here are some ideas for avoiding, or navigating, holiday burnout.
First, How to Identify Holiday Burnout
Holiday burnout can creep up on us, often disguised as everyday stress. It might feel like constant exhaustion, even after a full night’s sleep, or irritability over small things that wouldn’t normally bother you.
Physically, it can show up as tension headaches, a racing mind, or a sense of being on edge. Emotionally, you may notice feelings of detachment, overwhelm, or resentment toward tasks and traditions you once enjoyed.
Pay attention to the signals: are you losing your patience more easily, withdrawing from loved ones, or struggling to keep up with your usual energy levels? Recognizing these signs early is the first step in addressing burnout and finding ways to restore your capacity during the season.
Just know that burnout during the holidays doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong; it means you’re human. And if holiday burnout does show up use it as a reminder to pause and reconnect with what truly matters.
Second, What to Do If You’re Feeling Burned Out This Holiday Season
Here’s how to manage holiday burnout while embracing seasonal self-care and meaningful connection:
1. Pause and Identify Your Emotions
When emotions feel overwhelming, we often want to avoid them at all costs, but paying attention to them could be the key to feeling better. Take a moment just to name your emotions. Saying (to yourself perhaps) “I feel anxious” or “I feel overwhelmed” helps reduce the intensity of an emotion and gives you clarity on what you need.
2.Incorporate Seasonal Self-Care
Self-care doesn’t have to be elaborate. Embrace small habits like enjoying a quiet cup of tea, stepping outside for fresh air, or saying no to an unnecessary task.
We often think this is the part that’s “indulgent” or that can be pushed back to later, but it’s often these small practices that can create the breathing room we most need amidst the chaos.
3. Build Positive Connections
Instead of focusing on what’s expected, look for authentic ways to connect. Share a meal, have a heartfelt conversation, or take a moment to thank someone you appreciate. Small, genuine interactions can uplift your mood and theirs.
This might mean that you don’t make three stuffings, or that you don’t pack in multiple events in one day, or that you buy one less perfect gift. Sometimes paring back or even shifting our expectations, can give us what we most need: time with the people we love and value the most.
Shifting the focus from perfection to presence can help transform the season into something meaningful, even amidst the busyness.
4. Set Boundaries for Your Emotional Capacity
When you feel your mental and emotional reserves depleting, give yourself permission to step back. Decline obligations that don’t serve you and focus on what truly restores your energy.
You don’t need to be “on” the whole Holiday Season: you can still honor your energy and it’s still ok to rest. It’s winter after all, a season that demands something quieter of us and invites us to retreat into cozy.
5. Reframe Your Perspective
Challenge the holiday “shoulds” and ask yourself, “What do I truly need right now?” Maybe it’s a moment of solitude, a conversation with a loved one, or just letting go of perfection.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that holidays are only successful if they’re flawless. But the truth is, the most meaningful moments often come when we let go of the pressure to do everything and focus instead on what we truly value.
When you start to feel burned out, try to connect back in with yourself and discover what you really need from this season so it can stay joyful and magical to you.
This Holiday Season give yourself permission to rewrite the rules. Focus on what feels good to you, whether it’s embracing rest, creating space for joy, or finding new ways to connect with others. Start small, and remember: it’s okay to prioritise yourself in the midst of everything else.
What emotions are showing up for you this holiday season? How are you balancing connection and self-care?
Feeling stressed, overwhelmed or a little burned out this Holiday Season?
Here’s how we can help:
1. Book a personalized Emotions Coaching session.
2. Join our Bath Workshop on Navigating Holiday Emotions.
3. Subscribe to our newsletter for our Well-ish Guide to the Holiday Season
Avoidance isn't always laziness. Explore why we avoid difficult tasks, conversations and decisions, how emotions shape procrastination, and what our desires can teach us about what matters most.