Anxiety and Burnout: When Pushing Through Stops Working
You haven't failed. Your system has been running without enough fuel for too long.
There's a particular kind of tiredness that doesn't go away with sleep. That doesn't lift after a vacation. That sits underneath everything you do, making even simple tasks feel heavy.
If you've been pushing through for months or years and you're starting to feel like the engine is giving out, this page is for you. Not to tell you to try harder. Not to hand you a list of self-care tips you've already tried. But to help you understand what's actually happening and what real recovery looks like.
How anxiety and burnout feed each other
Anxiety and burnout are not the same thing, but they are deeply entangled. And understanding how they interact is often the first step toward finding a way out.
For many people, anxiety is the engine that drives the overwork. The high-functioning anxiety that keeps you productive, prepared, and always a step ahead. It's what gets you out of bed when you're exhausted. It's what keeps you saying yes when your body is saying no. It runs on fear, not on fuel. And for a while, it works.
But anxiety can't sustain a body forever. Eventually, the system that has been running on adrenaline and vigilance starts to deplete. The motivation fades. The sharpness dulls. The things you used to power through now feel impossible. That's burnout.
And here's where the cycle tightens. When burnout sets in, anxiety often increases. Because now you're not performing the way you used to, and that gap between where you are and where you think you should be triggers more fear. More pressure. More pushing. Which deepens the depletion.
Anxiety drives the pace. Burnout is what happens when the pace is no longer sustainable. And recovery requires addressing both, not just the symptoms of one.
Signs your anxiety might actually be burnout
Burnout doesn't always announce itself clearly. Sometimes it hides behind anxiety. Sometimes it looks like anxiety that has shifted shape.
You might notice that the things you used to care about feel flat. Not upsetting. Just empty. You go through the motions, but the meaning has drained out of them.
You might feel more irritable than anxious. Shorter with people. Less patient with yourself. Less able to tolerate the small inconveniences that used to roll off your back.
You might notice difficulty concentrating, not because your mind is racing with worry, but because it feels foggy. Slow. Like thinking through gauze.
You might feel disconnected from people you love. Not angry. Not sad. Just distant. Like there's a pane of glass between you and everyone else.
You might be sleeping more and feeling worse. Or lying awake at night, not with the buzzing of anxiety, but with a heavy, formless dread.
Some people describe it as feeling numb. Others say it's like running on empty but not being allowed to stop. If the stress you've been carrying has shifted from sharp and activated to dull and heavy, burnout may be part of the picture.
Anxiety drives the pace. Burnout is what happens when the pace is no longer sustainable.
What is happening in your nervous system
Your nervous system is designed to handle stress in bursts. Something challenging happens, your system activates, you respond, and then it settles back down. That cycle of activation and recovery is healthy. It's how the system is supposed to work.
Burnout happens when the activation never stops. When the demands keep coming and the recovery never arrives. Your nervous system stays in a state of chronic activation until, eventually, it can't sustain it anymore. And instead of staying revved, it starts to shut down.
This is sometimes called nervous system depletion. It's not just being tired. It's a deeper kind of exhaustion that affects your mood, your memory, your digestion, your sleep, and your ability to feel connected to the people and things that matter to you.
Think of it like a phone battery. Anxiety keeps the screen on, all the apps running, the brightness at max. Burnout is what happens when the battery hits zero and the phone can't be brought back with a quick charge. It needs to be plugged in for a long time. And some of the apps need to be closed.
That's why rest alone doesn't fix burnout. Rest helps, but if the same patterns and pressures resume as soon as the rest is over, the depletion returns. Recovery requires something deeper than a pause.
Why self-care tips are not enough
You've probably already tried the things people suggest. A bath. A walk. A weekend away. A meditation app. And maybe those things felt good in the moment, but they didn't change the underlying pattern.
That's because most self-care advice treats burnout as a surface-level problem. As though the issue is that you forgot to relax, and if you just remembered to do it more often, everything would balance out.
But burnout isn't caused by a lack of bubble baths. It's caused by a sustained mismatch between what your system needs and what your life demands. And that mismatch often has deep roots. Perfectionism that won't let you stop. A belief that your worth depends on your productivity. A nervous system that learned early on that rest is not safe.
Self-care can support recovery. But it can't replace the deeper work of understanding why your system got here in the first place. And it can't restructure the patterns that will send you right back if nothing changes.
Workplace factors and the systems around you
Burnout isn't only a personal problem. It's also a systemic one.
The culture you work in matters. If your workplace rewards overwork, penalizes boundary-setting, or operates with chronic understaffing, burnout isn't a failure of your coping skills. It's a predictable outcome of the environment.
Caregiving roles carry their own form of depletion. Whether you're a healthcare worker, a parent managing more than your share, or someone supporting a family member through illness, compassion fatigue is real. And it doesn't mean you care too much. It means you've been giving more than any one person can sustain.
Naming the external factors isn't about blame. It's about accuracy. Because if you're telling yourself that you should be able to handle this, and the truth is that the demands are unreasonable, then the shame you're carrying on top of the exhaustion is doing real harm.
Therapy can help you see the full picture. Not just what's happening inside you, but what's happening around you. And from there, you can start to make choices that are honest about both.
The recovery arc (and why it is not linear)
One of the most important things to know about burnout recovery is that it doesn't follow a straight line. You won't feel a little better each day until one morning you wake up fine. That's not how it works.
Recovery tends to move in waves. You might have a good week and then a hard day. You might feel a surge of energy and then crash. You might start to feel like yourself again and then hit a stretch where everything feels heavy.
This is normal. It's not a sign that recovery isn't working. It's a sign that your system is recalibrating after a long period of depletion. Healing happens in layers, not in straight lines.
Some people feel worse before they feel better, because slowing down can bring to the surface all the things they were outrunning. Grief. Anger. Sadness. The full weight of what they've been carrying.
Therapy provides a space to hold all of that. Not to rush through it. Not to fix it. But to be with it at a pace that your system can handle, so that what comes next is built on something more solid than willpower.
How therapy supports sustainable recovery
Therapy for burnout isn't about getting you back to where you were. Because where you were is what created the burnout.
In individual therapy, we look at the whole picture. The anxiety that drove the pace. The beliefs that made it feel impossible to stop. The nervous system patterns that have been running for longer than you realize.
We work with the body. Burnout lives in the body as much as it lives in the mind. The heaviness. The tension. The numbness. Somatic approaches help you reconnect with what your body has been trying to tell you, often for a long time, and to begin responding to those signals instead of overriding them.
We also look at what sustainable actually means for you. Not a generic version of balance. Not someone else's idea of self-care. But a way of living and working that accounts for who you are, what you need, and what you've been through.
This work takes time. But the shifts are real. People often describe it as slowly coming back to themselves. Not the version of themselves that was performing and producing. The version that can rest without guilt, feel without numbing, and choose without fear.
Somatic, relational, and trauma-informed
Leanne works with anxiety and burnout from a somatic, relational, and trauma-informed perspective. What that means in practice is that therapy isn't just about talking through your stress. It's about understanding what's happening in your nervous system, in your body, and in the relational patterns that have been shaping how you move through the world.
Many of Leanne's clients are high-functioning adults who have been praised for their resilience and reliability, and who have internalized the message that stopping means failing. Therapy becomes a place to gently challenge that belief. Not with arguments, but with experience. The experience of being met, of slowing down, and of discovering that the world doesn't collapse when you stop holding it up.
Leanne offers both in-person sessions in Kitchener-Waterloo and virtual therapy across Ontario. If burnout has made it difficult to leave the house or add one more thing to your schedule, virtual sessions can be a good way to begin.
Frequently Asked Questions
It is completely normal to have questions before reaching out.
They can look similar. Both involve fatigue, loss of motivation, difficulty concentrating, and emotional flatness. But burnout is typically tied to a specific source of chronic stress (work, caregiving, sustained pressure), while depression can occur without an identifiable external cause. That said, untreated burnout can develop into depression over time. A therapist can help you sort through the overlap.
There's no fixed timeline. Some people begin to feel shifts within a few weeks of starting therapy. Others need several months, especially if the burnout has been building for years. Recovery depends on how long the depletion has been happening, what support is available, and whether the conditions that caused it can be changed.
That guilt is one of the most common features of burnout, especially for people who are used to being the strong one, the capable one, the person everyone else leans on. Needing help isn't a sign of weakness. It's a sign that you've been giving more than any one person should have to sustain.
Honestly, the goal isn't to go back. The goal is to move forward into something more sustainable. Therapy helps you understand what drove the depletion so you can build a life that doesn't require constant pushing to maintain.
Yes. Virtual therapy is available across Ontario. Many people experiencing burnout find that online sessions reduce the logistical burden of getting to an appointment, which can make it easier to begin. In-person sessions are also available in Kitchener-Waterloo.
You've been running long enough
You don't need to earn the right to rest. You don't need to crash harder before you're allowed to stop. You don't need to prove that it's bad enough.
If you're tired in a way that doesn't go away, if pushing through has stopped working, if you're reading this and thinking "this is me," that's enough.
You can book a free consultation whenever you're ready. No pressure. No expectations. Just a conversation about where you are and what might help.