Healing Burnout Requires More Than Rest
It’s September, and hopefully, you had a summer filled with outdoor adventures and restorative time away from work. But do you feel rested? Do you feel like you’re returning to work restored? If you still feel tired, if they thought returning to work brings nothing but a heavy exhale, you’re not alone.
Most of us have been there: the vacation you thought would fix everything, the weekend you blocked off just to “rest,” the night of sleep you hoped would finally leave you feeling like yourself again. But if you’re caught in chronic burnout, you probably already know the truth: rest alone isn’t enough.
Burnout is much more than exhaustion. It’s a pattern that lives in your body, your nervous system, and your habits of survival. Healing it requires more than time off. It asks us to meet ourselves at a deeper level, to understand the somatic patterns that drive our depletion, and to create new, embodied ways of being. Furthermore, burnout is systemic, and recovery requires that we change the conditions in our lives and workplaces that lead to burnout.
Burnout Beyond Fatigue
According to the World Health Organization, burnout is an occupational phenomenon that is characterized by three dimensions:
Emotional exhaustion: Feelings of depletion, exhaustion, and lack of energy.
Cynicism: Detachment from one's work, feelings of negativity, and a sense of disillusionment.
Reduced professional efficacy: A decline in one's sense of competence and accomplishment at work.
But underneath these symptoms lies something more fundamental: a nervous system stuck in survival mode.
When we over-give, people-please, or push ourselves to perfection, we are often reenacting strategies that once kept us safe. These patterns are intelligent adaptations that may feel necessary for our survival. But over time, they cost us dearly.
Think of the nonprofit leader who keeps saying “yes” to everyone until their body says “no” in the form of migraines, chronic digestive issues, or panic attacks. Or the creative professional who feels guilty for resting because they’ve tied their worth to productivity. Burnout is so much more than a busy month or the fruitless promise that things will slow down eventually; it’s a body that has forgotten how to downshift into safety and ease.
Your Nervous System in Burnout
Our nervous systems move through different states depending on how safe or threatened we feel. The polyvagal ladder, developed by Deb Dana, LCSW, helps us map these states:
Ventral vagal: connection, calm, and rest
Sympathetic: fight or flight—overdrive, urgency, over-functioning
Dorsal vagal: collapse, shutdown, exhaustion, numbness
Many of us are stuck in a burnout cycle between sympathetic overdrive (“push through the day, keep going”) and dorsal collapse (“crash on the couch, numb out”). We spend little time in ventral vagal, the state where we can truly rest, connect, and feel joy. The good news is that we can’t get to the ventral vagal state without going through the sympathetic state. The activation we experience in the sympathetic overdrive is the first step toward reaching safety and relational connection, so you’re closer to restoration than you may feel.
Imagine the teacher who runs on adrenaline through the school day (sympathetic) and comes home too drained to cook dinner or talk to loved ones (dorsal) so they scroll social media until collapsing into a fitful sleep. This cycle repeats, leaving them depleted even when they technically “rest.”
Somatic Patterns That Keep Us Stuck
Burnout often shows up through recurring somatic patterns:
Over-giving and collapsed boundaries. Saying yes when your body is screaming no.
Perfectionism. Believing your worth is tied to flawless performance.
Disconnection from joy. Avoiding pleasure because it feels indulgent or because your system is too taxed to tolerate it.
These patterns may be invisible to the mind but are deeply embodied. Until we bring awareness to them, no amount of rest will undo the cycle.
Why Rest Alone Isn’t Enough
Rest gives temporary relief, but it doesn’t rewire the patterns that drive us into burnout. Without addressing the nervous system and the stories stored in our bodies, we risk repeating the cycle again and again.
Healing requires a deeper arc of change:
Awareness – noticing sensations without judgement.
Sensing/Feeling – allowing ourselves to experience the fullness of those sensations with curiosity.
Expressing – giving voice and/or movement to what we’re feeling in our bodies.
Insight – making meaning, connecting the dots, and claiming new possibilities.
Action – taking small, embodied steps rooted in self-trust in the direction of change.
This is the process we follow in Soma Reclaimed, my six-month somatic coaching program, and it’s also something you can begin right now through simple practices.
Somatic Practices to Recover from Burnout
Here are five accessible practices to begin shifting out of burnout patterns:
Daily Body Scan
Close your eyes and gently notice sensations from head to toe. Where do you feel tension, collapse, or ease?
Journal Prompt: “What sensations do you feel? What words or images arise?”
Polyvagal Mapping
Identify your personal signals of activation (sympathetic) and collapse (dorsal). For example, racing thoughts might signal activation, while heavy eyelids might indicate collapse.
Embodied Boundaries
Practice saying “yes” and “no” aloud, while noticing how your body responds. Do your shoulders tighten? Does your breath expand?
Journal Prompt: “Describe a Moments I honored or betrayed my truth.”
Enoughness Practice
Place a hand on your heart. Breathe deeply and ask: “What does enoughness feel like in my body right now?”
Journal about what arises, even if the answer is unclear at first.
While these practices don’t replace rest, they do help make rest restorative by teaching your nervous system how to return to safety and connection.
A Resource for Your Journey
If you’re curious to go deeper, I created the Enoughness Journal as a companion for this kind of work. It offers guided somatic writing prompts that help you track sensations, uncover survival patterns, and begin embodying a new story of enoughness.
It’s a gentle but powerful way to start healing burnout from the inside out.
👉 Download the Enoughness Journal here.
Healing burnout requires more than a nap or a vacation. It requires learning how to listen to your body, befriend your nervous system, and rewrite the patterns that keep you in overdrive.
When you practice somatic awareness, embodied boundaries, and enoughness, you create the conditions for lasting recovery one breath, one sensation, one moment of self-trust at a time.
Your body holds the wisdom. The journey is about learning how to listen.