Burnout is Not Just About Work

The Pause No. 5

I didn’t realise I was burning out until my body forced me to stop.

Not in a dramatic, movie-style collapse, but in the quiet ways that build slowly over time. The tears that wouldn’t stop. The exhaustion that sleep couldn’t fix. The moment I found myself drifting off at the wheel with my children in the back seat. The sense that I was holding up a life that had become too heavy to carry.

For a long time, I believed burnout belonged in the workplace, something that happened when the pressure became too much, when the job was too demanding.

But when burnout arrived in my life, it didn’t show up neatly in one place. It seeped into everything.

Burnout, I came to understand, was never just about work. It was about the weight of a life carried all at once.

This understanding became the beginning of what I now call The Pause — a practice of slowing down and returning to what’s essential.

It was the accumulation of work, motherhood, caregiving, expectation, and the invisible load that underpins all of it.

None of these roles were unmanageable on their own.
But together, they created a life I could no longer sustain.

The Mental Load That Never Switches Off

There is a kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from what we do, but from what we carry.

If you’re a parent, especially a mother, you will likely know it well. The constant background hum. The invisible and never-ending to do list that runs quietly behind everything else.

For me, it sounded like this:

We’re out of bread.
Do the kids have enough nappies?
What’s for dinner?
Did I reply to that invitation?
I need to book a doctor’s appointment.
I must get onto that work presentation.
I should praise the kids more.
I forgot to message my friend back.

After having children, this mental noise didn’t just increase, it multiplied.

And beneath the list was everything I didn’t say out loud.

The guilt of not being the mother I wanted to be.
The quiet heartache of being at work when I felt I should be at home caring for my children.
The pressure to hold it all together.
The fear that I was falling short, in every aspect of my life.

I thought this was just part of life.
That everyone felt this way.
That this is what it coping with the juggle looked like.

The mental load is real, even when it’s unseen it shapes more of our capacity than we often realise.

This is something I explore further in my writing on everyday anchors and nervous system support.

“Burnout was not just about work.
It was the weight of a life carried all at once.”

My First Burnout: The Moment Everything Stopped

My first burnout came after returning to work with my second child.

At the time, my children were one and three. Sleep was scarce. Illness was constant. I often started the workday already exhausted, before anything had even begun.

After twelve months of maternity leave, I felt an unrelenting need to prove myself at work.
To show I could still perform. Still keep up. Still be the woman who could juggle it all.

So, I said yes to everything.
I took on more responsibility.
I pushed through Covid lockdowns, remote work, and caring for young children at home.

Success, at that time, meant holding it all together.

But slowly, something began to unravel.

My confidence at work began to slip.
Anxiety crept in.
Joy gave way to dread and exhaustion.

I felt like I was failing - as a mother, as a partner, as an employee.

And then one day, a piece of criticism from a senior engineer, valid, but poorly timed, broke something in me.

I cried for four days.

Not because of the criticism itself, but because there was nothing left in me to hold it.

Looking back, the signs had been there long before.

Falling asleep at the wheel.
Tears that wouldn’t stop.
Exhaustion that sleep couldn’t fix.
A body that was no longer coping.

My body had been speaking to me for a long time.
I just hadn’t been listening.

When Life Changes, But the Pattern Remains

Two weeks off work became eight. Eight became a resignation.

I had nothing left to give.
And what little I did have; I needed to reserve for my family.

It took time, months, before I felt ready to return to work again.

This time, I chose something different.
A role with less responsibility.
Less pressure.
Something I could leave at the door at the end of the day.

For a while, it worked.

Life felt more manageable.
More contained.

I believed I had found the answer.

But life outside of work doesn’t pause just because we are trying to recover.

The Second Burnout: A Deeper Understanding

In the space of a year, life shifted again.

A neurodivergence diagnosis for my eldest.
A traumatic event with my youngest.
My mother’s open-heart surgery.
My father-in-law’s heart attack.

Each one manageable on its own.
But together, overwhelming.

And again, burnout arrived.

This time, it was different.

The first burnout had shown me that something about work needed to change.
The second showed me that work was never the whole story.

Reducing work wasn’t enough, because my capacity wasn’t shaped by work alone.

It was shaped by my life as a whole.

This was the beginning of a different kind of understanding.

That we do not live in compartments.

That we do not leave parts of ourselves behind when we move between roles.

We carry it all with us.

“Reducing work wasn’t enough.
Because my capacity wasn’t shaped by work alone.”

Learning to Pause

Stopping did not come easily to me.

I was used to full days. Constant movement. Pushing through.

Even in rest, I found ways to stay busy. Filling my days with chores, projects, caregiving, until my days looked much the same as they did before.

Rest felt uncomfortable.
It felt unproductive.
And at times, it felt like failure.

It took time and support to understand that rest was not something to earn.

It was something I needed. It was essential.

At first, I wasn’t really listening to my body.
I was reacting to it. Forced into stopping.

Listening, truly listening, came later.

And when it did, it was quieter. Slower. More honest.

Rest began to look different.

A nap instead of cleaning the house.
Letting go of projects.
Walking. Swimming. Creating.
Writing. Reading.
Asking for help. Allowing support.

But more than that, something deeper began to shift.

I began to question what I had believed about success.
About productivity.
About what it meant to be “enough.”

What Burnout Revealed

 I once believed burnout was simply exhaustion, something that could be fixed with rest so that I could return to life as it was.

Now I understand it differently.

Burnout is not just about work.

It is about the life we are living as a whole.

It is about the roles we carry, the expectations we hold, the parts of ourselves we override in order to keep going.

It is about a capacity, across work, home, relationships, and self, that has been stretched beyond what is sustainable.

This became the foundation for my capacity framework — a way of understanding the full weight we carry across life.

And recovery is not just about rest.

It is about reflection.
Reconstruction.
A return to self.

It is about recognising that the life we were living may no longer fit and allowing something new to take its place.

 Burnout, for me, was not the end of something.

It was a pause.

A practice I now return to and gently participate in.

Not one I chose at the time,
but one that, over time, I began to understand.

A pause that asked me to stop.
To listen.
To soften.

And to begin again,
not by returning to who I was before,
but by becoming someone new,
with a different understanding of what it means to live,
and what it means to be well.

Someone with greater care, love and compassion for myself.
Someone who listens to what is needed in the moment.
Someone who knows it is okay to pause.

“It was a pause.
Not one I chose - but one I came to understand.”

If you’re here, you might be in your own version of this moment.

You’re welcome to begin gently here → [Find Your Anchors Guide]

- Michelle Valerie

This essay is part of The Pause.

You can explore more writing from The Pause here