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Therapy for Burnout
For people who've been running on empty so long you can't remember what full felt like.
What it is
Burnout is not exactly depression, and it's not quite anxiety either — though it can look like both, and sometimes they all show up together. Burnout occurs when the demands on you chronically exceed what you have to give. You lose the ability to care the way you used to. Your actions feel hollow. You're exhausted in a way that sleep doesn't fix.
Moreso than anxiety and depression, burnout often has a structural cause: a role, a relationship, a system, or a set of expectations you've been carrying. Your psychological needs have gone unmet or even thwarted, and your body is trying to get your attention by sending the signal of burnout.
What we work with
- Career & workplace burnout — chronic overextension, under-recognition, meaninglessness, or value misfit
- Parenting burnout — constant giving with little reciprocity or identity outside the role
- Caregiver burnout — exhaustion from attending to others' needs at the expense of your own
- Academic burnout — the carrot and stick world of school has become your life
- Neurodivergent burnout — depleted from years of masking, overcompensating, and operating in systems not built for your brain
- Perfectionism-driven burnout — when the perfect has become the enemy of the good
- Relational burnout — exhaustion from relationships where you give more than you receive, or where you never fully get to be yourself
How we work
Recovery from burnout requires more than rest — though rest matters. It requires understanding what created the conditions for burnout in the first place: what you've been telling yourself about your limits, what you've been unable to say no to and why, what needs have gone unmet so long that you've stopped noticing them.
Self-Determination Based Therapy (SDBT) addresses burnout by exploring how your needs have been neglected. Burnout may be the result of feeling forced to live a life that doesn't feel chosen or forced to meet external obligations that were never negotiated. It could also be the result of grinding so hard for so long that you never get the chance to learn more effective ways of living. Therapy is about helping you get clear on what you actually need and value, and building a life that has more room in it for you.
Our therapists draw on many models, including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Narrative therapy, Satir's model, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and existential approaches to help you navigate the burnout recovery process.
A note on burnout in parents and women
Burnout is common in parents because they are frequently expected to sublimate their own needs to that role. Parenting burnout is real and often carries shame — because admitting that you are depleted by the thing you're supposed to love most can feel like a moral failure rather than an honest accounting of your limits.
This is especially true for women. Women are often expected to manage the mental load of parenting while simultaneously remaining emotionally available, anticipating other's needs, and balancing a career. Society makes it worse, where saying “this is too much” is stigmatized and makes people think less of you.
Burnout doesn't mean you don't love your kids or your life. It means the conditions of your life have not left enough room for you to also exist in it. That's what we work on.
Specializing Therapists
Ready to begin?
Schedule a free 15-minute consultation to discuss how ISDR can support you in building a life that has more room for you in it.
Schedule a ConsultationYou're not weak. You're depleted.
Let's build a life that has more room in it for you.
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