My Burnout Journey: from Warning Signs to Recovery Process

“I forgive you.”

All of a sudden they’re there. The words I knew I needed but had not expected to hear during a breathwork exercise at a tantra retreat.

“I forgive you.”
I forgive me.
Younger me.

But what for, exactly?

Let’s take a step back in time.

Crashing in Safety

“Keep it together. Keep it together.”

It’s the first weekend of November 2022. I’m at a friend’s place with two other friends for a catch-up and takeaway dinner. They’re all talking. I’m not. My anxiety is through the roof.

“And how are things with you?” one of them asks.
The question is directed at me.

I burst into tears.

For the next few hours, they listen and hold space while I cry and talk.
And they gently make me see that I’m not merely going through a rough patch, that I’m unmistakably burned out, and that I’ll need to do more than simply rest for a few days.

It’s the start of the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through.

Defining the Thing

The common image of burnout is one of someone who worked too hard at a job they didn’t like. That wasn’t me, and for a long time, I felt reluctant to say I burned out because that term didn’t feel sufficient for what I was going through. That term didn’t seem to encapsulate the severe nervous system crash that impacted every area of my life, every part of my being.

When I was at my worst, here’s what burnout looked like for me:

Extreme sensitivity to sensory input. Merely walking along a busy street or going to the supermarket was overwhelming to the point I started crying as soon as I got back home.

Severe headaches.
Incredible sadness.
Crippling anxiety.
Highly reduced capacity for just about anything. There was very little I could do in a day. Conversations with friends were limited to a maximum of one hour with one person at a time. I was unable to eat indoors at restaurants for many months and I still avoid doing so when I can.
Panic attacks.
Constant fatigue.
Muscle spasms.
Brain fog.
Tingling hands and feet.
Wondering if I’d ever get out of this and “What’s the point of it all?” too many times.

And, on top of that, the existential crisis that follows when you realize you can’t keep living your life the way you used to, when you need to learn to ask for help, and when you discover who you thought you were and where your value came from were nothing more than years of built-up unhealthy patterns and limiting beliefs.

The Build-up

So, what got me there?

Some things are too private to share in detail, but I want to give you an idea of some of the factors that I believe led to my burnout. Hopefully, it will provide food for thought for those possibly heading in the same direction and it will show how everything may seem to be going great – even to you – but turn out to be unsustainable.

Never truly resting

Until September 2019, I’d been in a 13-year relationship with a man who reminded me when I’d worked enough, who’d invite me on the sofa with him, and who made sure we traveled just for fun.

When I ended that relationship, I lost that “Guardian of Rest” and I didn’t even realize it. So I just kept going. I started traveling in search of a new base, launched a new business in the middle of the first lockdown, moved countries, built a new community, worked with a coach, started dating again, started therapy, worked out a lot, learned new dance styles, …

All without truly resting.

If my body wasn’t busy, then my mind was.

Wanting to do everything well and at the same time

Not only was I highly active in many different areas of my life, I also wasn’t very gentle with myself. I wouldn’t say I was a perfectionist (although some might disagree), but I showed very little compassion and patience for myself.

Instead of focusing on the huge life changes that I’d made – and quite successfully so – I was focused on all the things I hadn’t done, achieved, or experienced yet and how I was “less” than others.

What I failed to see was that the people who were amazing at something tended to focus hardcore on that one thing and not, as I was trying to do, on everything from being an entrepreneur to being a friend, a highly self-aware someone, a fit person, an expat who was integrating into a new culture, and so on.

The pandemic

I think I still don’t fully comprehend the effect the pandemic had on me. Once I’d moved to Portugal, I was able to leave the house a lot and see people (even though in a highly restricted ways) so I thought it wasn’t that bad.

But let’s face it: not being able to move freely and connect with others in the way you’re used to, while the rules around social contact are constantly changing, puts stress on a person.

On top of that, The Big C:

messed with my plans to move abroad in multiple ways.
close to annihilated my income (I was running a travel blog full-time when C hit in 2020).
led to me launching a new business and working 12-hour days for three months straight while spending lockdown on the sofa at my parents’ house (It’s a long story).
made frightingly sick, keeping me stuck at home for close to three weeks.

We all have our own stories and while I don’t think the pandemic played a major role in my crash, I do think it added drops to a bucket that was filling up an increasing speed.

The Perfect Storm

Fast forward to October 2022. I’ve been working longer and longer days, I’m spending more hours at dance, my social life is blooming,… and I increasingly struggle with anxiety.

I’ve also fallen ill, but I’m not resting enough as I’m about to leave for Thailand for three weeks: one week at a conference in Bangkok where I’ll co-host a workshop, and two weeks in Chiang Mai where I’ll hang out with other entrepreneurs.

I know that I shouldn’t go.
I feel it in my body.
Yet I am not yet the person who is able to listen.
I’m still the person who pushes through, who doesn’t want to miss out.
And so I go.

What follows are three weeks I never hope to experience again.

Three weeks of panic attacks, so bad I can’t even lie down to sleep as I’m unable to breathe if I do.
A doctor who misdiagnoses my combination of a severe cold and anxiety as an asthma attack and gives me steroids, making everything worse.
Becoming so unwell I as good as completely lose my voice.
Missing 90% of the conference.
Spending a night at the hospital in Chiang Mai because I can’t breathe and am lightheaded.
Catching COVID for the second time, which means I spend most of my two weeks in Chiang Mai anxious, drugged, barely sleeping, sick, and alone in an Airbnb.

There were people I knew in town who supported me, checked in on me, and showed me I wasn’t alone. I am so so grateful for those people. And still, it was one of the scariest times of my life, and writing this down still brings tears to my eyes.

I am not sharing this to solicit a “Poor you!”
I am sharing this to show you how far I pushed myself. How far I pushed my body until it forced me to stop and re-evaluate… everything.

But I’ll get back to that later.

I am also sharing this for those who might recognize themselves in parts of what led to my nervous system crash, so they (you?) can make a change before it’s too late.

Surviving

The first weeks after my crash were all about surviving while I paused client projects and let some clients go. I don’t remember much about those first few weeks which I’m pretty sure is a trauma response.
I do remember how my friends and family needed to keep reminding me that I needed a real break and simply diminishing my workload wasn’t enough.

First, I decided not to work until the end of the year. I later extended that to the end of January – three months in total.

For my health, it would have been better if I’d taken a longer break, but I wasn’t yet in the mental and emotional space where I could do that. Financially, I had enough savings to not work for over a year but mentally and emotionally, there was a lot of programming I had to uncover and shift before I could become someone who was comfortable with slowing down.

Taking a break: the practical side of things

As a solopreneur who was only working with a team of freelancers, it was fairly easy for me – practically speaking – to take a break. I let my team know what had happened and gave them their notice.

As for my clients, I let some of them go as I knew I wouldn’t be able to go back to working as many hours as I had been working, and asked others to pause our contracts. I’m grateful that all of them were understanding.

I had enough savings to not work for over a year if needed and at the time, I still had my travel blog bringing in passive income every month through display advertising and affiliate marketing.

The need to save has been instilled in me from a very early age and I’m grateful I had that money in the bank so I didn’t need to stress about paying the rent as I was recovering. I believe having an emergency fund is crucial, regardless of whether you’re an entrepreneur or an employee.

You might think “I don’t need that much savings. If needed, I’ll be able to make money,” and I’m sure that you will, but there will be times when that will go at the expense of your health when your health is already in the red.

And if you crash before you have any savings to sustain you, please ask for help. Outsource work, shut down some services, … Go live with family or friends if you must. Your health comes first. You don’t want to learn that the hard way.

What my days looked like

Those first three months, my days were filled with anxiety, headaches, and trying to figure out the best ways to help myself.

I disconnected from my entrepreneur community and stopped consuming any type of content related to work. This was extremely hard as I work in digital marketing and managed to crash right when AI truly started to boom.

My mom came to stay with me for a week, which helped so much, and the friends who’d witnessed my crash were there when I needed them.

I am grateful that I didn’t have the type of burnout that meant I couldn’t get out of bed anymore. I was highly anxious most of the time, but I did my best to keep doing things that were good for me:

I implemented nervous system regulation practices.
I went back to therapy.
I kept going out for groceries and to run errands.
I kept eating healthily.
I went to the nearby park.
I met up with and reached out to close friends, even if it was to cry, be held, or have the short type of conversation I was still able to have.
I kept going to dance classes and socials whenever possible.

Those few close friends (and one in particular), the understanding of my parents, and dance have been crucial in my recovery.

If anyone from my dance community reads this:
It might be surprising to find out I’ve gone through and am still making my way out of such a rough period. Dance has always been my happy place, and over the past two years, you’ve probably seen me at my best more than anyone else. It’s rare that I leave dance feeling less joyful than when I arrived.

And yet, there were many times I was at a party and kept dancing just so I wouldn’t start crying.

Dealing with uncertainty

When I read or listened to stories of other entrepreneurs who needed to take a break from work for health reasons, I often felt that taking that break sounded so easy for them. They would talk about the practical side of things like I did, but there’s so much more to it.

Or at least, for me there was.

As a solopreneur, pausing things doesn’t really feel like pausing. It feels like stopping something you don’t know will still be there when you’re ready to work again. Your clients may leave while you’re taking your break. Referrals might stop coming in. You can’t network or market yourself.

This uncertainty made it so that I never 100% mentally logged off.

And even though I was financially ok, the idea of potentially not making any money for multiple months felt highly uncomfortable.

I can see now that all of these insecurities were tied to at least some of the beliefs that had caused my burnout in the first place:
the belief that my value depended on my performance and productivity.
not trusting that I’d be ok and able to handle it, whatever “it” might be.

People have called me brave for quitting my job, launching my own businesses, ending a very comfortable relationship, and moving abroad, but the truth is all of those decisions were easy to make a plan for.

And most of all: they were my decisions.

Being thrown into a state where you need to re-invent your modus operandi and where you have no idea of what your mental, emotional, and physical capacity will look like that day, and this for months at an end, requires quite a different level of dealing with uncertainty.

Evolving

It wasn’t so that I spent the first three months of my nervous system crash in survival mode and then started to think of what my life would look like going forward. I started therapy almost immediately and spent more time on the nervous system regulation and brain retraining program I was already a part of.

After the first few weeks, I switched from working with a “talk therapist” to working with a brainspotting therapist and later a somatic practitioner. All these people helped me in different ways, but one of the most valuable things I learned over the past two years is that true healing comes from within.

I owe my thanks to Cathleen King’s Primal Trust program for this realization. It’s one that requires continuous practice to live by.

We so often look outside of ourselves for help. For a drug, a protocol, a treatment, a workshop that might help us make progress but all that does is keep us in a “fix-it” state where we jump from one potential solution to the next.

I’m a huge believer in seeking support and it was key for me to learn that not much will help me if I don’t help me. If I don’t learn to trust my intuition, to uncover and shift my limiting beliefs, to elevate my mood, and to repattern my behaviors.

I have changed more in the past two years than I ever have, and I have said many times that I believe we spend the first 30+ years of our lives building survival mechanisms, adopting false beliefs, and gathering trauma responses. Then there comes a point – if you’re lucky and do the work – that you start unpacking it all to return to your essence.

To get better, I needed to figure out who I was at my core. Not “Productive Sofie” or “Achieving Sofie” but simply Sofie whose value lies in who she is and not in what she does or doesn’t do.

I have long been appreciative of the little things in life but now I focus even more on figuring out what brings me joy and what drains my energy. It’s an ongoing process of trying to do more of the former and expose myself less to the latter.

And just as important as avoiding the things that drain you, is learning to spot the difference between something that is “bad for you” and therefor should be minimized, versus something that is triggering. The latter is a lesson in disguise. It’s shows you what to work on so you can neutralize that trigger instead of having to avoid it.

I also needed to get honest with myself about what my priorities are – Trust me, they shift when your health is in the gutter. And I needed to acknowledge how I was and wasn’t working toward them.

So much more shifted in me over the last two years, but one final thing that I can’t leave out is that I needed to re-learn how to rest.

Not to lie on the sofa and read a self-development book.
Not to go for a walk while listening to a podcast.
But to lie in the park and look up at the sky.
To lie on the sofa listening to jazz music.
To do yoga nidra every day and stay in bed for just a little longer after the recording has finished.

To simply be and have that be enough.

Creating a New Reality

As I’m writing this, it’s been almost exactly two years since I crashed at my friend’s place. I’d say I’m at 80% now and still getting better. I underestimated how long this would take, but I know now that you can’t expect to heal from something that was years in the making in just a few months.

I’m positive about my progress and at the same time, I think I’ll always remain a bit more tender.

This isn’t just a feeling. It seems like a common experience among the people I’ve talked to who’ve gone through something similar. I like to think that it’s my nervous system trying to protect me from ever crashing like that again.

Because while I know that it’s crucial to work toward something rather than to avoid something, I also know that I don’t ever want to burnout again. I’m grateful for all I’ve learned, and I’m confident I’ll continue learning without my body needing to halt me in such a drastic way again.

I spend at least an hour a day on structured nervous system regulation practices and rewiring my patterns, beliefs, and reactions is a continuous effort. I regularly check in with myself to feel where I’m at and what I need. Sometimes, I still go a little bit too long without taking a break, but I’ve gotten so much better.

So, what’s next?

I’m slowly figuring out what I want my new daily life to look like. This has been an ongoing challenge as my capacity still differs from day to day and a very productive or social day is often followed by a day on which I can’t focus and just want to cocoon.

I’m tackling multiple chronic health issues but I’m doing so step-by-step. Instead of trying every possible approach at once, I’m taking the time to implement something, see whether it works, and drop the things that feel too stressful right now.

I’m starting to work on the traumatic experience that the Thailand trip was. After only having traveled abroad to go see my family since it happened, I went to Berlin this past summer and let’s just say it made me realize that there is a lot that still needs to be processed.

I’ve started writing just for me again. No optimized blog articles. No marketing metrics to track. First, on Instagram. Then here, on this website, and now also in my monthly newsletter. I’m trying to allow myself to experiment. To follow joy, inspiration, curiosity, and a sense of purpose without needing to turn this into a business.

Business. This area of my life is probably the blurriest right now. I still offer content strategy and SEO writing services. I’m good at it and I enjoy it. But I want to have multiple streams of income again, and I don’t want my income to fully depend on how much time I spend working.

What that will look like, I don’t know yet.

The obvious options (creating a course, scaling into an agency) don’t excite me and I feel that there is something else out there waiting to be uncovered.

I feel pulled to do more. To give more. To open up.

That’s incredibly scary to write, but I’m doing it anyway because you might be going through something similar and wondering whether you should just pick things up where you left them.

I don’t know where this little personal project will lead – if anywhere, but I hope it can offer people some support. I hope my writing resonates and makes someone feel less alone. I hope it can inspire them to keep an eye out for little moments of joy in their lives and make them aware of how burnout can sneak up on you when you think life is going great.

Which brings me to…

The Warning Signs

The following is a list of symptoms I’ve defined as warning signs my body imposed to show me something needed to be adjusted.

For me, the warning signs were:

years of accumulating chronic health issues, including tension headaches, gut issues, and hair loss.
being increasingly susceptible to colds and needing multiple weeks to heal from them.
increasing anxiety and sensory sensitivity the months before the crash. I was and still am especially sensitive to noise.
kind of knowing I was ignoring the signs my body was giving me… and ignoring them anyway.
losing the ability to rest and relax.
being tired but ignoring it.

Some signs others have shared but that I didn’t experience were:

nightmares.
irritability.
destructive behavior.
general feelings of negativity. (I did experience a lot of dark thinking once I had crashed.)

I also did not have a loss of motivation as many people do, though I see now that part of that motivation was driven by a fear of missing out, “falling behind”, and thinking my value was dependent on how much I achieved.

What if Someone You Know Is Approaching or Experiencing a Crash?

When someone is approaching burnout

If someone you know is presenting signs of approaching a burnout, ask them to read this article. Not because I want more readers, but because when you are used to pushing yourself, it’s so easy to think “Just a little longer”, or “Just a little more.”

Be open with the person. Tell them you’re worried. Share the things you’ve noticed. Ask them to check in and be honest with themselves. Let them know you’re there for them (if you are) and make specific suggestions for how you can help them take things off their plate (if that’s something you’re open to doing), or how they could start doing less.

Don’t overwhelm them even more by asking “Is there anything I can do to help?” as it gives them yet another thing to think and make a decision about.

Also don’t suggest they do x, y, and z as what they need is to do less, in a calmer way. Not more. Not at this stage.

When someone is experiencing burnout

If someone you know is experiencing burnout, read this.

I can’t speak for everyone with burnout, but for me, the most important thing was knowing that people were there for me and still appreciated me even if I couldn’t do a lot or be as present in their lives as I used to be.

If you have the capacity and desire to help in a practical way, here are a few ideas of things you can offer to do:

Instead of going out for coffee, suggest to come over and help fold their laundry/clean/do the dishes/meal prep while you both have a cup of tea.
Offer to run errands or do groceries for them.
If they have kids, suggest to look after them for a bit.

And if you want to be there for them emotionally and give them mental support, you can:

reassure them of their worth and what they mean to you.
let them cry when they need to without trying to make them stop.
hug and caress them. Physical coregulation does wonders for the nervous system.
snuggle up on the sofa with them to watch a movie.
remind them of the tools they have to help themselves and keep them accountable for using them, if they’re open to that.
nudge them to go outside and move their body.
accept that they might change as they work on themselves throughout their healing process.
remind them that healing isn’t linear and that experiencing a dip doesn’t mean they haven’t made progress.

It Happens so Often. Don’t Let It Happen to You

As I started talking about my experience, other felt comfortable enough to open up about theirs. It is astonishing how many entrepreneurs have gone through burnout. But even worse was realizing how many of them go through it more than once.

I don’t want to be one of them.

And I don’t want you to be either.

This is the hardest thing I’ve done so far and while I’m happier than ever with the person I’m becoming and confident about my progress, it still requires a lot of conscious effort every single day.

For a bit more information about the resources I mentioned in this article and my daily regulation practice, please check these burnout resources.

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