From Exhausted to Empowered: Recovering from Burnout

She had been an emergency room nurse for over two decades. She had spent years juggling double shifts, managing other people’s pain, and trying to be everything to everyone. At work, she was seen as the reliable one, and at home, she was caring for her father and raising two teenagers. Sleep? What even was that?

From the outside, it looked like she was coping. Inside, she was a different story.

“I don’t even feel tired anymore,” she said. “I just feel gone.”

This scenario is not uncommon, and it’s how burnout often shows up. Not as some dramatic collapse, but as a slow shift. A kind of quiet disconnection that builds over time. You stop laughing. You forget what used to bring you joy. You wake up more tired than when you went to sleep. And when you finally pause, all you feel is the weight of everything you’ve been holding.

At Centres for Health & Healing, we see this more often than you might think. Burnout has nothing to do with how strong or weak someone is. Most of the time, it means they’ve been strong for too long without enough support. Recovery is possible, but it starts with understanding what burnout really is—and why rest alone isn’t enough.

What is burnout?

Burnout is much more than just being tired. It’s a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress and overexertion. The World Health Organization recognises it as an occupational phenomenon, describing it as a result of “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”

But in practice, burnout often extends far beyond the workplace. It touches caregivers, parents, students, teachers, healthcare workers, and anyone who finds themselves stretched too thin for too long.

Common signs of burnout can include:

• Ongoing fatigue that doesn’t improve with rest
• Feeling detached from work, relationships, or life in general
• Difficulty focusing or making decisions
• Physical symptoms such as headaches, stomach issues, or muscle tension
• A persistent sense of inadequacy, even while overworking

It’s not uncommon for burnout to overlap with anxiety or depression. A 2019 meta-analysis published in Frontiers in Psychology found a significant correlation between burnout, anxiety, and depression, especially among people in caregiving. The review found that prolonged burnout can increase the risk of developing more serious mental health issues if left unaddressed (Koutsimani et al., 2019).

How burnout develops

Burnout rarely comes out of nowhere. It builds sneakily over time. It tends to show up in people who are deeply committed to what they do but don’t have support systems in place to recharge.

Sometimes, it’s a toxic work culture. Sometimes, it’s a personal belief that rest is lazy or that your worth is tied to how much you accomplish. For others, it starts with a trauma history. 

People who grew up in environments where they had to stay alert or emotionally attuned to others often carry those habits into adulthood. Their nervous system never fully comes off high alert.

Dr. Gabor Maté, a physician and expert on trauma and chronic stress, has written extensively about the way early emotional wounds shape our stress responses. In When the Body Says No, he explains that people who ignore their own needs to meet the demands of others are often more vulnerable to burnout and illness.

At Centres for Health & Healing, we take these patterns seriously. Burnout isn’t just about the “crash.” It’s about everything that came before it, too.

Why rest isn’t enough

Most people try to fix burnout with time off, and at face value, that makes sense. A long weekend. A vacation. A few extra hours of sleep. While those things often help, they don’t address the root problem.

That’s because burnout doesn’t only live in your schedule. It lives in your nervous system. When your body has been stuck in a prolonged stress response, it forgets what rest feels like. Even when you stop, you don’t feel settled. You may feel anxious doing nothing. You may feel guilty saying no. The system that was wired for survival doesn’t know how to feel safe anymore.

True recovery from burnout involves more than rest. It involves complete rewiring.

What recovery can look like

At Centres for Health & Healing, we support clients in making that shift, from surviving to actually living again. While no two recovery paths are exactly alike, most include a few essential parts:

1. Creating room to slow down

The first step is often the hardest: stop pushing. We create a structured, supportive environment where clients can step away from external pressures and turn inward. This is about learning to be with yourself in a way that feels safe. That kind of slowing down creates space for healing.

2. Individual therapy

In therapy, many clients describe feelings of guilt, failure, or shame they can’t quite shake, which are often tied to the belief that they should have been able to “handle it.” These emotional layers are part of the healing process.

In individual counselling, we help clients unpack their beliefs and begin to shift their inner dialogue. We use approaches such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) to help challenge harsh thinking patterns.

CBT is especially useful in addressing perfectionism and black-and-white thinking, while DBT offers practical tools for managing stress and emotions.

3. Nervous system regulation

But burnout doesn’t just affect the mind. It lives in the nervous system. Years of chronic stress can train the body to stay in a constant state of alert. You might feel restless even when nothing’s wrong, or find it hard to relax without guilt. That’s where body-based practices become helpful.

Therapies such as yoga and mindfulness help calm the nervous system and ease it out of fight-or-flight mode. Over time, these practices make it easier to access a sense of inner steadiness, even when life is unpredictable. A 2018 study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology supports this, showing that mindfulness-based approaches significantly reduce stress and burnout symptoms, especially in helping professionals and those exposed to emotional strain (Lomas et al., 2018).

4. Boundary patterns

One pattern we often see is a history of people-pleasing. Many clients arrive with a long trail of saying yes when they meant no, not because they didn’t know better, but because they were afraid they’d lose connection, love, or safety if they didn’t. Recovery includes learning that boundaries are not rejection—they’re protection. They make space for relationships that honour who you are, not just what you do for others.

5. Joy and purpose

Burnout leaves you disconnected from what matters. As healing begins, we often see clients slowly re-engage with things they had forgotten they loved. A morning walk. A song they used to play on repeat. Painting, dancing, cooking, journaling—simple things that help them feel like themselves again.

These joys are evidence that healing is happening.

Our approach at Centres for Health & Healing

We take burnout seriously because we’ve seen what happens when it’s ignored. Our team offers a holistic, evidence-based programme that addresses the full scope of each client’s experience: physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual.

Some of what we offer includes:

• Individual therapy using CBT, DBT, and trauma-informed models
• Breathwork, yoga, and guided movement
• Nutrition to restore physical energy
• Group therapy to reduce isolation and build new connections
• Mindfulness and meditation for daily nervous system regulation

We also support people who are facing burnout alongside other issues like anxiety, depression, substance use, or chronic physical pain. These problems are often interconnected, and we approach each person with that full picture in mind.

A way back to yourself

If you’re feeling stretched thin, running on autopilot, or unsure what it would even look like to feel good again, first, know that you’re not alone. Burnout can make the world feel dim, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.

You don’t need to go back to who you were before. Recovery is about learning to live in a way that honours where you are now. A way of being that allows for rest, asks for help, and recognises that your worth is not defined by how much you carry.

At Centres for Health & Healing, we help people reconnect with themselves in ways that feel safe, sustainable, and real. If you’re ready to begin that process, we’re here to walk beside you.

You can come back to yourself.

We can help you get there.

References:

• World Health Organization. (2019). Burn-out an “occupational phenomenon”.
• Maté, G. (2003). When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection.
• Koutsimani, P., Montgomery, A., & Georganta, K. (2019). The relationship between burnout, depression, and anxiety: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 284. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00284
• Lomas, T., Medina, J. C., Ivtzan, I., Rupprecht, S., & Eiroa-Orosa, F. J. (2018). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the impact of mindfulness-based interventions on the well-being of healthcare professionals. Journal of Clinical Psychology, Mar;74(3):319-355. doi: 10.1002/jclp.22515. Epub 2017 Jul 28. PMID: 28752554.