Burnout: Summer Vacation Isn’t the Cure.

Burnout doesn’t go away with time off. Somatic therapy offers a deeper reset—for your nervous system, your mind, and your sense of self.

What is burnout and how does it happen

Maxim Ilyahov—unsplash

Often unrecognized, burnout is the result of long-term stress, overperforming, or being overextended for far too long. Burnout can show up as fatigue, irritability, low mood, imposter syndrome, or a growing sense of helplessness and entrapment, among other things.

Many anxious adults come to therapy having built lifelong survival strategies around pushing through, working harder, neglecting their own needs, and making the seemingly impossible happen again and again. Endlessly. We often live in quiet denial about how unsustainable this way of living and working really is.

Burnout impacts the nervous system

Our bodies weren't designed for our modern, high stress, high speed, go, go, go world. In fact, you could say our bodies don’t belong in this kind of world. While humans are infinitely adaptable, our nervous systems have not caught up to the speed and intensity with which we live life, the constant news stream from around the world, or how quickly technology has changed our day to day lives over the last 100 years, and continues to do so.

We certainly aren't adapted to or thriving in office cubicles and the disconnected experience so many of us have. The lack of real community. Child-rearing in isolation. We were designed to live in small tribal groups, interconnected, supported, known, and valued. We weren't meant to go it alone or to feel we had to.

Victoria Wallace Schlicht

Burnout builds slowly through over-responsibility, emotional suppression, caregiving without support, and constant performance or overperformance. It leaves us worn, exhausted, depressed, and reactive. Burnout undermines our sense of self, our ability to function and think clearly, and it strains even our closest relationships.

Maybe you’ve been counting down to time off

Maybe you’ve just come back and still feel drained. Your summer vacation isn’t going to cure burnout, even if you take it. Here in the States, nearly 55% of workers don’t use all the time they’ve earned. Some are proud to say, they don't use any. We grind away, overstressed and under-resourced, living for weekends, holidays, and short reprieves. We might return from short breaks momentarily refreshed, but not truly restored. Not at all, really. Because burnout doesn’t disappear just because you step away for a week or two. Even if you manage to stay out of your work email box.

Therapy offers something different

Sweet Life—unsplash

Not just a break, but a place to actually process what’s beneath the exhaustion. In our work together, we focus on restoring capacity, strengthening resilience, setting boundaries that hold, and developing somatic body-oriented regulation that outlasts any vacation glow.

If you’re in California and ready for a more lasting kind of reset, I offer online therapy for adults navigating burnout, stress, grief, and life transitions.

I help people who feel bad feel better. Let’s talk.

Learn more about online therapy in California for burnout and stress.

Why Somatic Experiencing—Five Reasons Your Treatment Center Needs a Somatic Therapist

Bring in a somatic therapist to boost engagement, accelerate healing, and embed trauma-informed nervous-system care throughout your treatment center.

1. Talk therapy alone isn’t always enough

Mokhalad Musavi—unsplash

Cutting edge treatment centers have integrated body-oriented therapy into their services for the last ten or twenty years. Why? Because it works. Because it works and because clients respond.

I love talk and insight oriented therapy. It's a beautiful thing. And it's not always adequate by itself. After over a decade of practicing as a somatic therapist, I'll admit it. I'm biased. For some of our clients, talk therapy will never be enough. Not in the long term. We're not just intellectual beings. Or emotional beings. Or mindful beings. Or physical beings. We're all of that and more. The most effective therapeutic approaches recognize and exploit this reality fully. Somatic Experiencing (SE) is one such approach

2. Your clients’ nervous systems have been storing experiences of all kinds in their bodies since they were born—and maybe before

Your addicted, chaotic, eating disordered, and highly traumatized clients have been storing experiences of all kinds in their bodies since the day they were born. Perhaps, since conception. We all have. Layer enough of the right kind of experience into the nervous system and bodies and systems react the way they react--seeking numbing experiences and experiencing high levels of activation and internal chaos. Impulsivity. Destructive relationship patterns. Addictions. Somatic Experiencing can begin to loosen and resolve the issues driving such behavior patterns and do so in a non-retraumatizing and elegant manner. Smooth.

Victoria Wallace Schlicht

3. Your clients need stabilization and the ability to self-regulate and self-soothe in order to benefit from the rest of their treatment program

Deepening the ability to self-soothe, cultivating resiliency, identifying triggers, reducing impulsivity, establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries, getting in touch with a renewed sense of safety, and understanding emotions as they emerge are important skills each of your recovery minded clients needs to have. Somatic Experiencing is a real boon in this way and a perfect pairing with DBT and other approaches you are already employing.

Not every client is stable enough for EMDR. Lovely and powerful as EMDR is, not all your clients have enough resource or ego strength in these early days to navigate EMDR. In addition to being a strong stand alone therapy, Somatic Experiencing is great tool for creating resource and resiliency in your clients' nervous systems and prepare them for entering your EMDR program over times.

4. The desire to numb pain is at the bottom of many client behaviors

Michael Discenza—unsplash

Deepening the ability to self-soothe, cultivating resiliency, identifying triggers, reducing impulsivity, establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries, getting in touch with a renewed sense of safety, and understanding emotions as they emerge are important skills each of your recovery minded clients needs to have. Somatic Experiencing is a real boon in this way and a perfect pairing with DBT and other approaches you are already employing.

Not every client is stable enough for EMDR. Lovely and powerful as EMDR is, not all your clients have enough resource or ego strength in these early days to navigate EMDR. In addition to being a strong stand alone therapy, Somatic Experiencing is great tool for creating resource and resiliency in your clients' nervous systems and prepare them for entering your EMDR program over times.

5. The brain has a natural negative brain bias

Our brains are designed with a negative bias. Not just some human brains. All human brains. We have a big juicy frontal lobe, which has evolved as wonderful problem noticing, problem solving organ. We've spent eons identifying risks, avoiding catastrophe, scanning for danger, noticing and attending to what is wrong in our environment and in our bodies. We need to know when we are in trouble or injured. It's simple survival, really. Apparently, noticing the positive and what was quietly going well wasn't nearly as important to survival of the species as identifying pain and trouble. As I tell my clients every day, the anxious survived and we're the result. Fun stuff.

Overcoming that natural negative bias is one of the tasks of evolving as a person and creating a happier existence in an overstimulating and chaotic world. Somatic Experiencing, with its focus on sensation, can be a wonderful tool for noticing what is going well with the body, what is neutral, or even great, despite the concurrent presence of pain, discomfort, or anxiety. SE can form a huge learning in being able to be with both, hold both, the good and the bad, the positive and the troubling. Learning how to cultivate an awareness of what is actually okay in our bodies and our lives can be a very stabilizing and encouraging support for recovery of all kinds.

Utilizing a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) as part of your treatment plan can increase your clients' overall success.

Ana Curcan—unsplash

Treatment centers are always striving to increase their clients' success rates and satisfaction with services. It's good clinical work. And good business. Increasingly, I see this desire for excellence and a competitive edge includes acknowledging the body-mind connection in a manner that is both accessible and least activating for clients. Somatic Experiencing, which can be provided within the treatment center or as an adjunct individual service or as part of your regular group rotation, can satisfy this need in a safe and titrated way. Learning how to be present to the body, aware of but not overwhelmed by strong emotions or sensations, constitutes a hugely powerful, empowering, and healing experience for our clients. Isn't that the exact thing we are wanting for all our clients?

Interested in hearing how a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner can increase your quality of care? I’d love to speak with you.