Therapy for Burnout
Burnout feels like running on a treadmill you can't get off, while trying to live a full life, and feeling bad about it.
Even if you're hitting all your work goals, even if you're doing a good job, you feel empty inside. The fatigue is with you on weekends and even on vacations. The Sunday scaries are a regular thing.
You may be asking yourself why you can't just push through the way you always have.
You may be telling yourself you need to be tougher, more organized, even more grateful for what you have. It feels like it's your fault, like you're failing.
I want to offer you a different starting point.
What if your burnout wasn't a personal failing?
There are a lot of layoffs happening out there, and the extra work gets piled on the people who stick around. But the stress is real: the workload is often genuinely too much for any one person.
When the demands get that heavy, your body drops into survival mode. Survival mode turns off the parts of the brain that help you feel grounded, like you know who you are and what’s important. The stress gets demoralizing, and you can fall into open-ended self-blame that loops in your head.
Here's the part most burnout advice misses: survival mode would be hard enough on its own. But what makes it unbearable is when it hits on negative beliefs you've been carrying for years, sometimes since childhood. You may believe that you’re only as good as what your produce, or that resting is failing. The stress only amplifies those old beliefs, so that they do a number on your self-esteem.
So the workload is the burden. And the burden triggers survival mode. And then your older negative beliefs make it all hurt more, raise the stakes. When you're stuck in that, your brain forces you to keep trying to fix yourself instead of seeing the situation clearly.
That's why therapy for burnout has to be about more than stress reduction, mindfulness, and skill building. Yes, those things are helpful! But if we stop there, we leave the beliefs that make the stress feel so high-stakes untouched, and the loop will start again.
How I work with burnout
I wrote a book about coping skills. If getting over burnout was about reading the right book, or following the right Instagram account, or listening to the right podcast, chances are you'd have done it already.
As a trauma therapist with decades of experience, I can help you slow down and look at what's underneath the exhaustion and the high-stakes feeling. We can get clarity on when your workload really is too much for anyone, and when anxiety is amplifying it. There's a part of you stuck in survival mode that can't stop grinding. Underneath it, another part is buckling.
I use approaches like Internal Family Systems, EMDR, and clinical hypnosis to work with the self-criticism and the pit-in-the-stomach anxiety, so we can reach the older experiences that fuel how hard you are on yourself now.
What I won't do is make things worse by lecturing you to take more time off or set better boundaries, and piling more to-do lists on your plate.
At the same time, burnout does come with practical questions and real limits. We can look at those honestly. Therapy can't rewrite your workload. What it can do is help you stop carrying all of this as if it were your fault, so that you're steady enough to take care of yourself and make clear decisions.
This might be a fit for you if you
• Are exhausted in a way that rest doesn't fix
• Keep pushing through and blaming yourself for struggling
• Have tried the usual advice and found it hollow
• Want to understand what's really driving this, not just manage the symptoms
• Are ready for something deeper than coping strategies
A note on my background
I've written for the New York Times on the psychology of work and self-blame. My book, Your Coping Skills Aren't Working, is about exactly this problem: why the standard toolkit falls short, and what actually helps.
Let's talk
Reaching out doesn't commit you to anything. A short consultation is just a conversation, to see whether this is the right kind of help for where you are.
I work with clients in California, New York, Florida, Massachusetts, and Michigan, in person in San Diego and by telehealth across all five states.