Therapist Burnout: When Rest Isn’t Enough
What a breathwork retreat taught me about therapist burnout, performance, and the ways we take up too much—or not nearly enough—space.
I just spent the first 3 days of a 4-day breathwork retreat irritated as fuck.
It did not feel at all like the enlightenment I had hoped for.
For 3 days I felt my irritation grow over the people who took up all the space in the group. There was inappropriate trauma dumping, spiritual bypassing, and a complete lack of self-awareness by a handful of the participants. Every time I felt like I was about to drop in during breathwork, a screaming contest erupted and I felt distracted, and even more irritated.
I doodled and meditated my way through the process portions, only speaking when I absolutely couldn’t resist chiming in the obvious after the facilitator gently went around and around.
Through it all, I understood that the irritation was part of my process and I was open to sitting with it and getting to know it.
What made it difficult for me to actually move through the process was the polarization that was happening inside of me.
The “Evolved Therapist” part of me wanted to be non-judging and compassionate, to see that these people were hurting and have no attachment to my own expectations of the experience.
Meanwhile, the irritated part of me wanted to scream, “Oh my God, shut the fuck up!”
In the fourth breathwork session of the retreat, I realized that I had been trying to override my actual experience with the response that I thought I was “supposed” to have.
So instead of pushing it away, I surrendered to it.
I allowed myself to feel ALL of the irritation. I breathed and let it take over my body and watched as it got bigger and bigger.
When I ran out of space to hold it all in my body, I imagined myself growing bigger and bigger, eventually turning into a giant filled with irritation. Once the irritation had a place to go, my giant self walked around the room and when two of the participants gobbled through their attempts at speaking light language, I watched Giant Alicia put her foot across their necks.
The image made the whole thing feel so ridiculous.
I thought about meowing like a cat to my friend across the room and that sent me into silent but hysterical laughter. I laughed until tears streamed down my face.
After the laughter subsided and breathwork was over, I rolled onto my side and the irritation returned.
Being with it without trying to push it away shifted something for me. It reminded me of a lesson I’ve learned before: irritation is a sign that there’s something within me that I’m not yet ready to acknowledge, because to acknowledge it would require me to change something.
On the final day of the retreat, we had one last breathwork session. At the suggestion of the facilitator, I shifted my breathing pattern. Luckily the screamers had tired out by then, and I was finally able to drop in.
I went back to places I had been in previous breathwork sessions, visiting my ancestors and past lives I’ve lived, which brings me back to my inner-knowing and deep trust in myself.
I received the very clear, direct message:
Rid your life of anything that still feels performative.
I sat with this download for a while and talked about it with my friend on the drive home. I felt like I had done so much shedding of what felt performative over the past 5 years, but my higher self knew there was more.
She also works fast, because a few days later I sat down to write my Very Responsible Therapist Burnout Article™ and immediately hated everything I had planned to say.
What Does Therapist Burnout Actually Look Like?
This was supposed to be a very PC article that answered the common questions therapists ask about burnout:
How do I know if I’m burned out as a therapist?
Why am I still exhausted after taking time off?
What do I do when I don’t want to be a therapist anymore?
My outline went something like:
Explore responsibility, over-functioning, boundaries, and self-worth.
Talk about what happens when rest doesn’t resolve the exhaustion.
It was the end of my workday. I had already had 6 sessions with clients, my blood sugar was low, and I told myself those were the reasons I couldn’t write the article.
But when I sat down the next day, looked at my notes and outline, I knew better.
I was trying to write about why therapists are burnt out while carefully stepping around the reasons they’re exhausted.
And this is where my higher self was drawing the line.
The resistance was about my own burnout from performing the way the systems around me have trained and expected me to, and I’m so done with that.
Therapists are burnt the fuck out.
Why Are So Many Therapists Burned Out?
I see it in every therapist Facebook group I’m in. The desperation to find clients and to claw at anything that even smells like it could be a referral.
Someone will post something like:
“I’m looking for a therapist who does EMDR, also trained in ART, with experience working with veterans. Must be able to slide to $50 or under…”
And the responses all sound something like:
“I don’t do EMDR, but have the other 2 criteria and am willing to slide to $65 if the client is open to being seen online.”
The responses never meet the full criteria because what the OP is asking for is always a fucking unicorn!
And shame on them for even making a request that someone be highly trained but willing to sit with this client for pennies on the dollar when compared to what they need to be earning to make a healthy living.
We’d never ask a surgeon with multiple specialties to lower their rate. Hell, we probably wouldn’t ask a plumber to either.
So what makes us do this?
Why are therapists over-functioning and willing to chronically under-earn?
Why do some therapists feel guilty about charging enough to support their lives when they are professionals with higher education, student loan debt, and more personal obligations than they can handle?
Much like the rest of the failing systems around us, the old way of doing things is over.
The hang-your-shingle, get-on-insurance-panels, and-let-the-good-times-roll approach just does not work.
The writing has been on the wall for the last 15 years I’ve been in the field, and the intensity of the collapse has exponentially increased as the tech bros have taken over our sector, promising sign-on bonuses and a plethora of clients, only to give the old bait-and-switch and put you in bronze handcuffs.
They don’t have the decency to make them gold anymore.
So why do we keep saying yes?
Why are we responsible for making mental healthcare affordable when the larger system refuses to?
Therapists are absorbing the moral responsibility for a broken system into their individual nervous systems and shaming others for not doing so.
It’s obvious that the system is broken, but how much of this do we bring with us into the profession?
When Over-Functioning Becomes Therapist Burnout
When I first started in the field, there was one coach out there named Casey Truffo and she had a book about how to become a millionaire as a therapist. She visited my graduate school and hosted a talk on the topic.
Her words always stuck with me, and when I decided to open my own practice, I was told by every therapist I knew that I needed to take insurance.
When I looked into it, it seemed like an arduous process and ya girl HATES paperwork, so I decided instead that I’d just learn everything about how to market a cash-pay practice.
I’ve managed to earn a steady and comfortable income for the last 13 years.
I want to be the first to admit that I did not arrive at this place because I was above falling into the trap of the system.
I was just lazy, and my flavor of trauma has caused me to rebel and buck this and many of the other capitalist, patriarchal systems in our country.
I definitely feel burnt out at times from the energy it takes to rebel.
Burnout can feel like a constant sense of fatigue that no amount of sleep can fix.
It can come from saying yes when you really mean no.
It can come from pushing down your emotions so intensely and for so long that you don’t even feel your own body anymore. And no amount of caffeine, mindfulness, or cognitive behavioral therapy is going to help you think your way out of it.
It breaks my heart to see therapists contorting themselves and lowering their rates while simultaneously investing more time and money into training after training, hoping that if they just learn more, offer more, or become even more specialized then someone will choose them.
Underneath all that striving are often parts that are driven by fear, scarcity, self-doubt, or the belief that they need to keep proving their worth.
When those parts go unchecked for long enough, therapist burnout inevitably kicks in.
Why Therapy for Therapists Matters
The nature of our work keeps us siloed and isolated. Our capitalist society teaches us to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and to keep striving for more so we can buy more and be more.
Much like in my breathwork retreat experience, I feel the polarization within myself between compassion and anger when I think of where we are in this field.
I get angry when I hear stories from friends or clients about past therapists showing up late to sessions, cancelling on them multiple times, ending sessions early, or not helping them because they didn’t track and focus on appropriate goals or outcomes during their treatment.
Those therapists probably had the best of intentions to do no harm to their clients, but burnout sneaks in and takes over when we don’t do our own work.
It keeps us from nudging our clients to look at something we know needs to be explored because pushing them can feel like too much work.
If you’re afraid to look at your own shadows, then you’ll avoid pushing your clients to look at theirs.
This is one of the reasons I believe so deeply in therapy for therapists.
We need spaces where we don’t have to be the person holding everything together. We need places where we can explore our own parts, patterns, bodies, relationships, wounds, and exhaustion without having to perform the role of therapist.
As a collective, we should all be feeling some level of burnout. The wars, the increases in costs of food, fuel, and housing, the constant barrage of environmental disasters and destruction are all enough to warrant the desire to pull the covers over our heads and hide from it all.
So what do you do when you don’t feel like being a therapist anymore?
What to Do When You Don’t Want to Be a Therapist Anymore
You don’t make a rash decision and quit.
You don’t spend all your waking minutes trying to find a respectable side hustle, and you don’t take another training.
Those might feel like the easiest, most viable solutions, but you know you became a therapist for a reason.
Quitting or finding a side hustle that’s fun and fulfilling might be something to do after you’ve tried a couple other things I’m going to list, but you’re going to want to make those decisions from a grounded, intentional place.
Here are some things you can do if you’re a therapist who’s feeling burnt out. I’m listing them in order of difficulty, starting with the easy ones first.
Create real community with other therapists
Invest your time and energy into creating community. Identify other therapists you find interesting and reach out to them. Ask them to meet up for coffee or on Zoom and if they don’t seem like the right fit, keep looking.
Therapists—and people in our culture generally—are lonely AF. I promise you they’re looking for people to have true connections with. If you don’t want to hang out with other therapists then work on building community elsewhere like church, parent’s groups, or through local meetups.
Join a consultation group
If there aren’t any consultation groups that fit your vibe, start your own.
Use those Facebook groups for what they were originally intended and aura farm connection and support.
(Ok, I don’t actually know what aura farming is, but I told my kids I was helping therapists aura farm so they’d get off my back for working past 4pm.)
Once you find your people, intentionally meet up with them regularly.
It could be weekly, biweekly, or monthly. You get to choose what fits your needs best, but the more you meet, the more opportunity you have to deepen your connections and relationships.
If meeting more frequently seems challenging, consider starting a Marco Polo group chat, email chain, or group chat of some sort to stay connected and share support.
You also don’t need to only talk about therapy. Use your chats to share recipes, ideas, funny memes, and to really get to know them.
Community is one of the most overlooked yet important things we can cultivate to foster healing and aid us through the collapse of this system.
This isn’t just about having people you refer to. It’s about having people who share in your wins and failures. People who will support you when you need it, listen, and provide care through the tough times.
This part takes willingness to be vulnerable and honest.
If that feels scary or hard, then see my next point and use that as a jumping-off point when you get into your own therapy.
Find your own therapy for therapists
Get yourself a therapist. Preferably one who does some sort of bottom-up modality.
As therapists, we’re really good at saying the right things, hiding our burnout, and hiding the other places where we feel stuck.
If you’re already in therapy, revisit your goals and honestly ask yourself—and your therapist—if they are pushing you.
I’m a firm believer that good therapy should feel comfortably uncomfortable.
If you’ve just been shooting the shit and “venting” in your sessions, it’s time to move on.
My favorite modalities are somatic healing, Brainspotting, and IFS, but you choose your own adventure.
Consider deeper therapeutic work
If you’ve been in therapy for a long time and have worked through a significant amount of trauma, you might consider exploring psychedelic-assisted therapy where it is legally and clinically appropriate.
Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy is available in many places. Integration is an important part of the treatment, so if you’re exploring ketamine treatment, consider working with a therapist who specializes in psychedelic integration.
My preference is in-office treatment with trained professionals who can support both the dosing experience and integration, but there are different models of care available.
Other psychedelic-assisted approaches are legally available in limited jurisdictions and regulated settings. If you explore any of these options, understand the legal and clinical context where you live and seek appropriately trained support.
Healing does not come in the form of one dose or one intervention.
Let go of the belief that you will be fixed when…
The goal should not be to arrive at some mystical, enlightened place. You will never ascend as long as you are human.
Healing happens in a spiral, and there will be times when you feel like you’ve already worked through something only to find that the wound gets triggered in a completely different way months or years later.
How Much Space Are You Allowing Yourself to Take Up?
In closing, I have to point out the deeper parallel to my own experience and illustrate why these two things have come together in this way for me.
At the retreat, I was watching people take up what felt like too much space.
In the Facebook groups, I have been noticing therapists take up too little.
And I find it fascinating to be somewhere in the middle asking:
What does the appropriate amount of space look like?
This is a question I’ll be sitting with for a while because I don’t know that there is a correct answer.
But I do know that having an identity as a helper can sometimes make acknowledging our own needs uncomfortable.
I encourage you to sit with this question yourself.
How much space are you allowing yourself to take up—in your practice, your relationships, your finances, and your own healing?
Therapy for Therapists: A Space for the Person Behind the Role
If any part of this resonated with you, I hope you will give yourself permission to get curious about what might be underneath your own exhaustion or burnout.
My work providing therapy for therapists is about creating space for the person underneath this sacred role, and allowing room for the parts of you that have been over-functioning, proving, performing, and taking care of everyone for far too long.
You can explore my therapy intensive services for therapists if you’re ready for deeper individual work. I also intentionally keep one or two pay-what-you-can spots in my caseload for therapists who need support but genuinely can’t afford my full fee.
I don’t want finances to be the reason you continue carrying all of this alone.
And in January, I will be opening a new Healing Circle for Therapists—a sacred space for internal exploration, connection, and coming home to yourself, much like my Becoming circle but created specifically for therapists.
The circle will also be offered with community-supported tuition because I want this kind of support to be accessible to therapists across different financial circumstances.
If you’d like to hear more about the Therapist Healing Circle when enrollment opens, join my therapist mailing list HERE.
