Therapy for Burnout in Pennsylvania
Slow down & notice where you are.
You’re on the edge of collapse.
You’re unable to turn your brain off once you’re off the clock. Your weekends aren’t restful or enjoyable the way they used to be.
You feel guilty for not making the most of the time that you have to yourself. You struggle to fully savor time you do have with your loved ones because there’s a part of you that can’t allow yourself to be unproductive, that has to get the next thing checked off the to-do list, that has to refresh your to-do list, that has to take this call...
You’ve felt overwhelmed and anxious for so long that, physically, you feel horrible. Maybe you’ve found yourself seriously doubting you’ll ever be free from the anxious-overachieving-burnout cycle.
Worst of all, you feel dangerously close to crashing and burning and you don’t have a place to do that — maybe you never have.
Whether you work in mental health, medicine, advocacy, education, or even if you’re still a student, separating yourself from your work is essential. You may be facing:
Feeling like you have no identity outside of your professional role
Vicarious or secondary trauma (read more)
Compassion fatigue (read more)
A toxic workplace
Moral injury (read more)
Work-related stress dreams
A schedule that makes you feel like a machine
Disconnection from family and friends
Because behind the role you play for the public, you are a person, too.
Imagine learning to embrace your successful side…
and to let yourself just be.
Overcoming burnout isn’t just about doing the right breathing techniques or exercising enough. It’s not just about changing your mindset and saying the right affirmations to yourself. It’s not all about your neurotransmitters or your dysregulated nervous system either.
It’s multifaceted. I’m sure you’ve tried one or many of the above solutions — to your short-term benefit.
I won’t give you simple or quick fixes that will fail you long-term. Instead, I help you look at the roots of where you get hooked into this cycle. I listen past all the noise that guilt, perfectionism, people-pleasing, caretaking, and hustle culture whisper into your ear and move straight towards the complex tangle of strong body sensations, emotions, experiences, and beliefs — personal and systemic — that grip you from within. And I will face it with you.
I use an integration of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, mindfulness, Somatic Internal Family Systems, Psychodynamic Therapy, relational approaches, and EMDR to help people break through the persistent dysfunctional beliefs and behaviors that fuel their burnout.
In session with me…
You won’t have to hold it all together.
You won’t have to take care of anyone or anything else — just yourself.
You’ll receive understanding and nonjudgment for the things that you struggle with so persistently.
And I’ll challenge you to face things you’ve been avoiding — in a more loving and gentle way than you might expect.
We will dig deeply into the logic of your burnout, find and feel into the parts you get stuck on, and
repattern them together.
Therapy for burnout can help you:
Unchain yourself mentally and physically from what you “should” be doing or what others want you to do
Experience quiet and deliberateness in your thoughts
Finally believe that you matter apart from what you have accomplished or not accomplished
Actually embody what you truly love — slowness, rest, play, patience, and repetition
Spend “unproductive” time making the best memories with your loved ones guilt-free
Experience creativity again
If you feel you’re at your wit’s end, here’s what I really want you to know:
Burnout isn’t just a collapse. It’s an initiation.
FAQs about Therapy for Burnout
-
If you’re sensing that you need consistency over time to build the awareness, momentum, and trust in the process that is necessary to break through the patterns that sustain your burnout, I recommend meeting weekly or biweekly.
If you have the motivation, the awareness of your negative cycles with work, and the trust in your own readiness to break through burnout, I recommend meeting for an intensive to make significant progress fast. Read more about EMDR Intensives and Somatic IFS Intensives here.
-
If working through burnout with a previous therapist came to no benefit, it might have been the wrong therapist or approach. Your readiness for transformation might have been limited due to the fit with your provider being not quite right.
You can certainly try again with another therapist – with three key considerations.
First, the therapeutic fit between you and your mental health provider is the personal foundation for you truly benefitting from therapy. If you feel that we’re a good fit, follow that feeling. And throughout therapy, if there are fluctuations in that feeling, voice that — I want to hear it and work through it with you!
The therapeutic approach for burnout treatment is your technical foundation for improving depression. I use relational, humanistic, body-based, and bottom-up approaches in depression treatment. These are different from behavioral or cognitive approaches. Read more about EMDR and Somatic Internal Family Systems here.
It takes your honest effort. It gets easier to invest your honest effort into therapy when you feel solid in both of the above factors.
-
There is no universal timeline for when you will no longer need therapy for burnout.
People experiencing burnout carry psychological, physical, and emotional processes that have them bypassing so many fundamental processes.
Committing to the process, having patience for the fine details in your process, and targeting the smallest details that influence everything in your daily life IS the therapy.
If slowing down or sounds impossible, you might be exactly who I’m talking to.
And, paradoxically — slowing down can happen faster than you imagine.
-
Email or call me to schedule a consultation to discuss your current goals with me. If we’re a good fit, we’ll set up a first session.