Burnout is more than just feeling tired. It’s a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress—often linked to work, caregiving, or overwhelming back-to-back life demands. Burnout doesn’t happen overnight and its effects can creep into every aspect of your life, impacting your productivity, relationships, physical and mental health.

If you’re feeling disconnected, overwhelmed, or stuck in a cycle of exhaustion, know that recovery is possible. Therapy, especially Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), offers effective tools to address burnout and rebuild your mental health. In this article, we’ll explore what burnout is, how CBT can help you see the light at the end of the tunnel and offer practical, no BS strategies to regain your balance in good time.

What is burnout?

Burnout is a response to chronic stress, often characterized by:

• Emotional exhaustion: Feeling drained and unable to cope.

• Cynicism or detachment: Developing a negative attitude toward work or other responsibilities.

• Reduced performance: Struggling to concentrate, problem-solve, or complete tasks effectively.

Burnout is not the same as ‘ordinary stress’. While stress might motivate you temporarily, burnout feels like a dead end—where even rest or time off doesn’t seem to help. Left unaddressed, burnout can lead to physical symptoms (like headaches or fatigue) and mental health issues such as depression or an unexplained increase in anxiety.

How therapy (especially CBT) can help

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a widely-used, evidence-based approach to mental health that focuses on the connection between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. For burnout, CBT can help you:

1. Identify Cognitive Distortions: Burnout will often come with a dose of unhelpful thought patterns like “I have to be perfect” or “I’ll fail if I don’t work harder.” CBT helps you challenge and reframe these beliefs from unrealistic to objective and realistic.

2. Address Behavioral Patterns: Many people experiencing burnout fall into cycles of overworking or avoiding responsibilities entirely and things can get overwhelming fast. CBT can help create healthier routines that is sustainable.

3. Build Emotional Resilience: CBT equips you with healthy coping strategies to manage stress, reduce emotional overwhelm, and prevent future burnout.

By working with a therapist, you can tailor CBT techniques to your unique situation, making recovery both effective and sustainable.

Cognitive behavioral strategies for burnout

If you’re ready to start addressing burnout and reclaim your mental health, here are the proven CBT-inspired strategies I use to help clients swim not sink.

1. Recognize and Reframe Negative Thoughts

Chronic stress is bad for your mind and burnout often amplifies self-critical or pessimistic thoughts, like:

“I’m not good enough.”

“I’ll never get everything done.”

“If I stop overworking, I’ll lose the respect of my boss.”

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) teaches you to identify these cognitive distortions; aka our biased way of seeing things which is often negative, and replace them with more balanced, constructive thoughts.

How to Practice Thought Reframing:

• Start noticing how stressful situations make you think and feel

• Write down the most recent stressful situation that happened to you. Be specific!

• List the thoughts it triggered (e.g., “I’m failing at work” ").

• Challenge these thoughts: Is this absolutely true? Is there evidence to suggest otherwise?

• Replace them with affirming alternatives that focus on the facts of the situation and try to see it through the eyes of self-compassion: “I’m doing my best under these tough circumstances.”

You’ll probably feel like a fraud the first time you try to reframe the negative thought and that’s okay. Practice will make you better and better at it. Reframing negative thoughts won’t just ease your burnout, but it will also help you reshape how you approach future challenges.

Remember, we cannot control the thoughts we think, but we can control what we choose to do or not do with them.

2. Set Realistic Expectations

Unrealistic expectations—of yourself, others, or your workload—are a major culprit of burnout. Think about a lot of expectations you’ve had in the past, how many of them actually played out exactly like you imagined it? I bet your answer is 'very few' because things often turn out better or worse than we hope. CBT helps you stop trying to predict the future (another cognitive distortion), evaluate your expectations and adjust them to be more attainable – with less focus on a perfect outcome.

How to Adjust Expectations:

• Identify perfectionistic or rigid beliefs, like “I must succeed at everything.”

• Ask yourself: What would I say to a friend in my position?

• Break large tasks into smaller, itsy bitsy manageable steps that are within your control to reduce overwhelm.

By redefining success and allowing yourself flexibility, you’ll ease the internal pressure that fuels burnout.

3. Set Healthy Boundaries

Burnout often stems from saying “yes” to way more than we can handle—whether it’s at work, with friends, or in family roles. While we may think we’re showing independence and strength by 'doing it all', this approach can quickly become a situation where you start to feel like you’re carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. In my CBT Sessions, I emphasize the importance of boundary-setting to protect your time and energy.

Steps to Set Boundaries:

• Recognize your limits: Reflect on situations where you feel drained and overwhelmed.

• Communicate clearly: Use “I” statements to express your needs, like: “I need to focus on this project, so I can’t take on additional tasks right now.”

• Stick to your boundaries: Ditch the guilt and start practicing saying “no”. Remind yourself that self-care is not selfish—it’s essential for your sanity.

Healthy boundaries can reduce resentment and help you maintain balance, preventing you from falling deeper down the rabbit hole of burnout.

My eBook Boundaries 101 will teach you the basics of healthy boundary setting.

4. Focus on What You Can Control

Uncertainty and stress go hand in hand. When you don’t know if you’ll get the job offer for the job you applied for and you spend your mental energy focusing on the outcome, you can start to feel powerless. CBT encourages you to differentiate between what you can and cannot control, so you can focus your limited energy more effectively.

The Circle of Control Exercise:

• Draw two circles: one for things you can control (e.g. your effort, how you spend your time) and one for things you cannot (e.g. others’ opinions, company policies, outcomes).

• Shift your energy toward actionable steps within your control and practice letting go of what’s outside it.

This mindset reduces frustration and helps you make meaningful progress in areas that truly matter.

5. Make Self-Care and Recovery Top on your Priority list

Burnout recovery isn’t just about doing less; it’s about doing more of what restores you. Therapy, particularly CBT, encourages intentional self-care to rebuild your mental health.

Self-Care Tips for Tackling Burnout:

• Physical Care: Ditch your phone and go to sleep at a godly hour, exercise even if it’s 10mins everyday, and eat balanced meals to recharge your body.

• Mental Care: Practice mindfulness or relaxation techniques, like deep breathing to calm your mind or progressive muscle relaxation.

• Joyful Activities: Put your airpods on full blast and dance, journal, do some drawing or pottery. Whatever floats your boat, rediscover hobbies or activities that bring you joy, even the smallest doses will be worth it.

Remember, you need self-care recover from burnout, it’s non-negotiable.

6. Learn to Manage Stress Proactively

In my practice, I’ve realized that stress comes on strong when we lack clarity. We worry, we complain in our mind, we replay our problems over and over again and all it does is drain our mental energy.

The antidote to getting clarity is to start thinking in solutions. Ask yourself; What can I do today to solve this problem or at least move in that direction? We thrive in the doing and when we have clarity on next steps within our control, it eases our stress.

The whole point is to help you develop proactive strategies to handle stress before it becomes overwhelming, so you can move on to the next challenge, because problems will always come.

Stress Management Techniques:

• Write down all your main sources of stress (e.g your toxic boss, sleepless nights from being a new mom etc)

• Use a planner or app to organize the small but mighty tasks you can do daily to limit or eliminate the stress in these areas. Don’t overcommit, start small and scale up!

• Practice grounding exercises, like the 5-4-3-2-1 method, to stay present during high-stress moments.

• Schedule “buffer time” between commitments to prevent exhaustion.

By building these habits, you create a mental safety net to catch stress before it escalates.

7. Seek Support Through Therapy

While self-help strategies can be powerful, therapy provides personalized guidance to address burnout at its root. A CBT therapist can help you:

- Navigate specific challenges related to your burnout.

- Develop a sustainable plan for recovery.

- Build emotional resilience for future stressors.

Therapy offers a supportive, judgment-free space to explore your thoughts and feelings, empowering you to regain balance and purpose while holding you accountable.

Preventing burnout in the future

Once you’ve recovered, it’s easy to slide back into old patterns of behavior thinking you're now cured for life; big mistake! It's important to establish/maintain the habits that protect you against future burnout like;

• Regular Check-Ins: Reflect on your stress levels weekly and adjust your workload or commitments as needed.

• Ongoing Therapy: Even when things feel manageable, therapy can help you see the bigger picture, reinforce healthy habits and prevent relapse.

• Celebrate Small Wins: Acknowledge and reward yourself for progress to stay motivated and balanced.

Final thoughts

If you’re burnt out, the great news is that while this is a challenging condition, you can recover with conscious effort on your part. By using CBT strategies like reframing thoughts, setting boundaries, and prioritizing self-care, you can break free from exhaustion and rebuild your mental health. Therapy is an invaluable resource in this process, offering tools and support tailored to your needs.

Remember, recovery takes time and effort, but every step you take toward healing is a step toward a healthier, happier you. If you’re ready to start your journey, reach out to a therapist today—because you deserve to thrive, not just survive.

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