The Silent Struggle: What Burnout Feels Like for Women — and How to Heal

Burnout isn’t just about being tired. It’s a state of chronic emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion that can drain your joy, motivation, and really cause an impact to your health and wellness.

Burnout develops gradually. You don’t “catch” it overnight; it’s the cumulative effect of constantly pushing past your limits without replenishing yourself. This then leads to a spiral of fatigue, guilt and disconnection that can affect your body, mind and spirit. And as someone who has experienced this first hand, I know just how scary it can be.
Understanding the signs, causes, and solutions for burnout is the first step toward reclaiming your energy and peace.

The Signs and Symptoms of Burnout

Burnout doesn’t always look the same in everyone, it can manifest through a variety of physical, emotional and psychological symptoms. Here’s how to recognise it in yourself or someone you care about:

• Feeling constantly tired and lacking motivation, but not being able to rest or sleep even when you’re exhausted

• Feeling guilty when you do rest

• The things you usually enjoy doing have started to feel like obligations, and you feel disconnected or wanting to withdraw from friends and loved ones

• Overcommitting to tasks just to feel like you’re being productive - but you’re less present when you’re doing them

• Avoiding your to-do lists entirely, and procrastinating because it all just feels too hard, and end up scrolling on social media for hours even if unintended.

• You’re making mistakes more often, and you're second guessing your decisions - even ones that usually wouldnt require a further thought

• You’re feeling cynical and as though what you’re doing doesnt matter, and you’re struggling to celebrate any wins

• Chronic body tension or aches, headaches, low energy, digestive issues, and as though you’re always getting sick or rundown

• Feeling helpless, trapped and you’re dreaming of running away from it all

• Relying on caffeine, alcohol or food to cope through the days

• Giving up on exercise, nutrition or your hobbies

• Overexercising and feeling like you have to push through hard workouts

• Feeling on the verge of crying all the time, or constantly irritable and experiencing emotional outbursts including snapping at people you love

If this list is resonating with you, and you catch yourself nodding away as you read through these symptoms, your body is sending you a message: it’s time to slow down and care for yourself.

What Happens to Your Body when its Burning Out

Its the story you may have heard before - that good old fight or flight response that would kick in to help save our ancestors when they were needing to run from a wild animal, or defending themselves from another tribe attack - would flood the body with adrenalin to give the energy it needed to response effectively.

The modern day version of that situation includes the mountain of emails you come back to after a week on holiday, a hectic schedule across work and home, financial pressure, relationship issues, and even a high intensity exercise session.

Our nervous system is a key piece to understand here - within our autonomic nervous sytem we have both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system drives that fight-or-flight response, and our parasympathetic system is responsible for the rest-and-digest processes, as well as our immune system. When you're stressed, the sympathetic nervous system is very much in charge, and tells the body to turn off its digestive processes and its immune system, until its sure that you’re “safe” again.

Short term stress our bodies can generally manage, but longer term (chronic) stress means our bodies are producing excessive amounts of cortisol. Over time, this hormonal overdrive exhausts our endocrine systems (which produces and distributes our hormones, manages our metabolism, reproduction, growth and development) as well as our digestion and our immunity - leading to a myriad different issues throughout our entire body, that need more than just a weekend off to recover.

How to Prevent Burnout

We know we can’t eliminate stress from our lives (that’d be nice!), but we can build resilience and protect our energy through intentional self-care and implementing fundamental systems within our daily routine, including:

Set Healthy Boundaries

These are powerful acts of self-respect. Feel empowered to say “no” without guilt, stop checking work emails outside of working hours, and limit the time you spend with people who you know drain your energy. Reflect and ask yourself: “What would happen if i just… didn’t?” and "What boundaries have I been ignoring?”

Make Rest Non-Negotiable

Its not lazy, its necessary maintenance - that old cliche about not being able to pour from an empty cup is a cliche for a reason. Prioritise quality sleep and a relaxing bedtime routine, take short breaks throughout the day to get some fresh air and sunlight, and focus on a few deep breaths between meetings.

Manage Your Energy, Not Just Your Time

Your energy fluctuates throughout the day and it will also fluctuate throughout the month with your cycle. Pay attention to when you have more energy, for some it may be first thing in the morning, for others it may be the afternoon. Align demanding tasks with your high-energy hours and schedule recovery moments between them.

Nourish Your Body with Intention

Eat quality protein, carbohydrates and good fats with every meal, and ensure you’re eating enough food. By restricting your food intake too much, you're telling your body that it needs to prepare for a famine and this will create havoc including holding on tighter to any body fat. Stay hydrated with plenty of water or herbal teas, and limit caffeine after lunchtime. Give your body a break from alcohol, perhaps avoid drinking it during the week and keep to a couple of drinks over the weekend. Include magnesium-rich foods (leafy greens, nuts, dark chocolate) each day which is a key mineral through times of stress and is actually used by the body in over 300+ different functions.

Know when you need to take it easy

Pay attention to how you're feeling during and after your workouts, especially if they’re high intensity - do you find yourself having to push through even though you feel exhausted? Or do you feel energised but relaxed? Listen to your body and understand that a slower, lower intensity workout still absolutely counts, and allow yourself plenty of rest between workouts to recover effectively.

Practice Mindfulness or Nervous System Regulation

Grounding practices such as meditation, deep breathing, journaling, or time in nature reduce cortisol and help you feel centred again. Diaphramatic breathing can be one of the most powerful things you can do to help regulate your nervous system, so incorporate this into your daily routine. I like to spend a few minutes each morning and evening doing some deep, slow breathing to help me feel more centred.

How to Recover from Burnout

If you’re already there, then please know that recognising burnout - and acknowledging where you’re at - is not weakness, its awareness.

Recovery is absolutely possible, with patience and self-compassion, and you've just taken the courageous first step.

Be kind to yourself through this phase and know that you deserve to feel amazing again.

Key areas to focus on in your recovery include:

Rest Without Guilt, and Prioritise Sleep

True rest goes beyond just physical relaxation — it includes emotional and mental stillness as well. First and foremost focus on your sleep hygiene: avoid bright lights and phone screens etc at least an hour before lights out (pick up a book instead), sip chamomile tea to unwind and avoid eating for a couple of hours before bed. In addition, create a quiet time and space to simply be still and focus on some slow deeps breaths, try taking a digital detox day or weekend, and decline any new commitments for a while.

Support your mind and body with the right foods

What you eat and drink plays a HUGE role in how you feel, and in your recovery from burnout. Our critical feel-good hormone is serotonin, and more than 70% of it is made in our gut, so providing our gut microbiome with the right foods can have a significant impact - plenty of good fats, quality carbohydrates and protein, and fruit and vegetables. A health coach or nutritionist will be able to guide you in more detail on what foods to incorporate, and create a meal plan to make it easier to follow. This is something I’m able to help you with, so please reach out if you’re interested.

Move Gently and Consistently

Exercise helps your body process stress hormones, but when you’re burnt out, its important to go slow and easy otherwise you end up producing even more cortisol and keep sending the wrong message to your body. Try walking, restorative yoga, pilates, or even just stretching — movement that soothes and relaxes rather than strains.

Reconnect with Joy

Burnout numbs pleasure, but the flipside is that joy is an antidote to exhaustion. Start small — listen to a happy playlist on Spotify, watch a funny movie (laughter is the best medicine!), read a novel, or go for a walk outside in nature. You could also look at signing up for a creative class like painting, pottery or cooking.

Seek Support

Please don’t try and heal in isolation. Talk with a trusted friend or family member, a counsellor, or health coach. Even as an introvert who generally prefers to work through things in solitude, I've learned how valuable it can be to have an outside perspective to help reset and rebuild healthier patterns.

Rebuild with Intention

Once your energy returns, reflect on what habits or expectations led to your burnout, what truly matters to you now, and what tasks or obligations can you let go of, or delegate. Recovery isnt about going back to your old routine, its about creating one that truly supports your wellbeing.

Redefine Success

Possibly the hardest one - let go of perfectionism. Define what success looks like for you and ignore anything that doesnt fit this. Let your new definition include balance, fulfilment, energy and joy, not constant productivity. You deserve a life that feels as good as it looks.

When to Seek Professional Help

If burnout is accompanied by symptoms such as persistent sadness or hopelessness, severe anxiety or panic attacks, an inability to function in daily life, or ongoing fatigue despite rest, then please seek professional help. A mental health provider or medical professional can help you navigate through possible depression, anxiety, or hormonal issues and guide you toward recovery.

From Burnout to Balance

Healing from burnout isn’t about pushing harder or fighting through — it’s about slowing down, listening inward, and rewriting the story of how you care for yourself.

Please know that your worth isn’t defined by how much you accomplish. It’s reflected in how lovingly you nurture your body, your boundaries, and your joy. You are absolutely worthy of rest, balance and joy, not because you've earned it but simply because you exist.

If any of this information has resonated with you, and you’d like support to work through your burnout, including a tailored recovery plan, then please get in touch - I’d love to help you through this time and get you back to thriving!