Burnout Didn’t Break Me. It Quietly Took Me Away From Myself

Mar 4

For a long time, no one knew how close I was to burnout.

Not my colleagues. Not the people who trusted me. Probably not even me.

Because, you see, I was still showing up. Still saying yes. Still delivering. Still reliable, capable, and trusted.

From the outside, nothing looked wrong.

However, inside, my body was exhausted. I wasn’t sleeping. I was running on adrenaline and obligation, pushing past physical and emotional limits because that’s what I had always done. I told myself it was temporary. I told myself I could handle it. I told myself this was just what leadership required.

And no one questioned it. In fact, they praised it. I even received awards for it.

That’s the part that took me the longest to untangle.

The very thing that was harming me was being reinforced as success.

The Strength That Carried Me, and Cost Me

My work ethic has always been one of my strengths. As a #1 Achiever on the Gallup Clifton StrengthsFinder Assessment, I am someone who always follows through. I can carry responsibility. I can hold a lot for other people. I have a high capacity.

But during that season, it became the only strength I allowed myself to use.

I wasn’t resting. I wasn’t reflecting. I wasn’t listening to my body or my inner voice.

I just kept going.

I didn’t fall apart. I didn’t miss deadlines. I didn’t stop performing.

Instead, I slowly disappeared from my own life.

Burnout, for high achievers, often doesn’t look like collapse. It looks like over-functioning for far too long.

When Success Masks Unsustainability

I was shaped in systems, especially in higher education and mission-driven work, where caring deeply is often confused with self-sacrifice.

Where availability is praised more than boundaries. Where productivity matters more than sustainability. Where “handling it” quietly becomes the expectation.

The cost doesn’t show up all at once. It accumulates.

It shows up as exhaustion that rest doesn’t fix. As disconnection from yourself. As the creeping sense that the version of leadership you were taught no longer fits the life you’re living.

Burnout Was an Identity Reckoning

What I didn’t expect was how much burnout would disrupt my sense of who I was.

When leadership has been tied to worth, impact, and contribution, stepping back doesn’t feel neutral, it feels existential.

I found myself asking questions I had avoided for years:

Who am I if I don’t give everything? What does leadership look like now? Can I still be ambitious and well?

Those questions didn’t come with tidy answers. They required space. And honesty. And time.

What Leading Differently Looks Like Now

This season of my life looks quieter from the outside.

More time in the mountains. More intentional pauses. Less urgency for urgency’s sake.

Practically, it looks like working in focused blocks, about 50 minutes at a time, and then taking ten minutes to stretch, breathe, step outside, or simply reset my nervous system before asking it to perform again.

What surprised me most is that my productivity didn’t suffer.

Instead, my focus improved. My thinking became clearer. My leadership became more intentional.

I’m not doing less because I don’t care. I’m doing things differently because I care enough to make this sustainable.

A Different Definition of Leadership

Recovery hasn’t meant leaving leadership behind.

It’s meant letting go of models that required self-abandonment. It’s meant trusting myself again. It’s meant allowing my leadership to evolve alongside my life.

This work is slower. More human. Less performative.

And deeply needed. For me, and for my tiny humans.