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.

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

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

Anxiety Station Break

Step out of the anxiety spiral. Discover how mindful pauses—and creative expression—can restore presence, soothe your system, and support self-care.

It’s not all about work and striving

It's really not at all about work and striving. It's not all about work and progress, even in regards to personal growth. Especially in regards to personal growth and your healing journey. You're not going to be able to will yourself into the next iteration of your life or yourself. Or push past anxiety in any meaningful and helpful way. Your anxious experience is here as your teacher, in my opinion, and it is a very patient task masker. Anxiety will wait for you to catch on to the changes that need to be made.

When we’re mired in stress, anxiety, and overproducing, we lose track of ourselves

A lot of us anxious folks have forgotten who we are. We've forgotten what gives us pleasure beyond the pleasure of finishing the job or making the next deadline. We've forgotten our old passions, forgotten what gives us joy, lost track of our playfulness, and mistaken productivity for the source of our happiness. Instead, we work. And work. We manage ourselves and others. We worry and problem solve. We create problems to solve. We dive into our To-Do lists with fervor and grab our dopamine hits there.

Creativity and pleasure can be your greatest tools in reducing overwhelming anxiety

Building time for creativity into your day can help you dig out of your anxious rut. Actually doing creative activities such as journaling, doodling, gardening, painting, or cooking can create a lot of ease in the nervous system. Here's the thing, though, that creative moment can also include daydreaming, dancing, mindful attention to beauty and the quality of light around you, singing, humming, and whistling. In fact, drumming is excellent for altering your sense of time and awareness of self.

Bit by bit, life can become more vibrant

Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

Allowing your mind to wander creates a sense of spaciousness and ease. Creates a sense of possibility and potentiality. Creates a sense of optimism. It allows the nervous system to settle. Makes room for something other than worry and busyness. Increases our resiliency. Allows the mind to empty and makes room for a renewed sense of energy and vitality. Slipping into the zone while engaged in creativity, creative thought, movement, music, the contemplation of beauty and nature, is a form of mindfulness and brings with it rewards. We can learn to create more space in our lives for ourselves and in so doing, anxiety can start to slip away. In it's place, we find more energy is available with which to explore life more fully. To live. And that is, after all, the point.

I help people who feel bad feel better. Let’s talk. Learn about online anxiety therapy in California.

Notice Where You’re Okay—Somatic Anxiety Tip

A Four-Step Somatic Reset for High-Functioning Anxiety—Perfect for Daily Life and Online Therapy Sessions

Victoria Wallace Schlicht

Key Takeaway: Struggling with anxiety symptoms? Pause, notice what feels OK, and calm your nervous system with this Somatic Experiencing® practice. Online therapy available anywhere in California.

“Take a deep breath”—helpful or hype for anxiety relief?

I hear a lot about deep breathing from my clients in individual sessions and in the therapy groups and Brown Bag meetings I have facilitated. Everywhere my anxious clients turn, they are being told by well-meaning people, self-help books, friends, media, and the mental health field, to take a deep breath. To follow better self-care. To chillax! As if. As if it were actually that simple.

Only it's not. Is it?

You, me, and everyone you know who is still currently inhabiting the planet and is not on life support is managing to breathe. And do it on their own. They're managing to breathe. It doesn't mean they are managing their anxiety.

So, I don't teach breathing as a first place to start when working with anxiety. The whole world wants to talk to you about that and up to the point you hit my online office, it has not been the magic key. The time will come when we will talk about breathing, but we will start elsewhere.

And yet there is something to be found in this simple reminder

Victoria Wallace Schlicht

"Breathe. All we have is now. Relax. You are okay." As a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and depth therapist specializing in anxiety reduction, I love this. It is a perfect brief format for somatic self care in the face of anxiety. Or just day-to-day stressed out living. Remembering to stop and take a breath, to take a pause, is a great way to address the onset of anxiety. The trick is in noticing you are starting to feel tense, stopping, and remembering to address it in a positive, proactive, compassionate manner.

Victoria Wallace Schlicht

All we have is now: using present-moment focus to soothe anxiety

All we have is now. Our bright, busy, anxious mind runs off into catastrophic thoughts about an uncertain future or ruminates about the past. It can be a challenge to stay in the present moment. "All we have is now" is a perfect reminder to stay present and engaged with yourself and life in the here and now.

This is the perfect time to allow yourself to pause and notice where you are. Notice your surroundings. Notice what you see, and hear, and smell. Notice the sensation of the air on your skin. Notice where, despite the discomfort of anxiety, you feel better in your body. Where do you feel the most calm and neutral? Notice that. As you do so, you will move more freely and clearly towards the present moment.

Train your nervous system to relax—Somatic Experiencing® basics

Relax. When I work with clients to reduce their high anxiety and panic, I do so through a variety of means. You can learn to be more in touch with your nervous system and soothe your anxious body out. When you support your body, you are on your way to reducing your anxiety, becoming more self-regulated, less irritable, and increasing your resiliency and well-being.

Victoria Wallace Schlicht

Notice what’s OK: rewiring the brain away from catastrophic thinking

You are okay. Noticing this, reminding yourself of this is gentle mantra or affirmation, can be an important skill to cultivate in your day-to-day life. Notice what is okay in your body—or merely neutral. Notice what is okay in your circumstance. Despite it all, some things are okay. You are already talking to yourself all day, every day, but the kind of anxious, negative, self-critical statements most of us employ are not helpful. We can teach the brain over time, to begin to let go of some of our habitual negative and catastrophic thoughts. As we do so, things begin to change. Life looks different. We feel different.

A four-line mantra for daily grounding (online or anywhere)

Victoria Wallace Schlicht

"Breathe. All we have is now. Relax. You are okay." is not a solution or a destination. It is a tool, a reminder, and it can take you to the threshold of feeling better. Somatic Experiencing and insight oriented therapy can lead you through the door. It is possible to feel better. To feel less stress. To start to address burnout and over-producing. To notice and support your nervous system. To begin to increase your sense of ease.

Ready to turn this awareness into a lifestyle?
Book a complimentary 15-minute consult and learn how online Somatic Experiencing® therapy across California can calm anxiety—no commute required.

I help people who feel bad feel better. Let’s talk. Learn about online anxiety therapy in California.

Irritability—a Symptom of Anxiety

Analise Benevides-unsplash

Discover how irritability can be a hidden sign of anxiety. Learn how Somatic Experiencing supports nervous system regulation and emotional resilience.

What anxiety is really for

Honestly, your anxiety isn't going anywhere. It is here to stay. The thing is, like it or not, you need it. Anxiety is hard-wired into your nervous system. Not just your nervous system, but everyone's nervous system. It is part of the original equipment. It's there for a reason. Anxiety is part of the oldest survival systems in the body. It is there to save you. It's there to save your ass every day. Every Single Day. Oh, boy!

Survival wiring: why the most anxious survived

Shannon Vandenheuvel -unsplash

When I talk about the healthy function of anxiety with clients, I talk about survival. Literally. In our earliest days as a species we had to determine what was safe and what wasn't. Which plants were  safe to eat. Which people were safe to interact with. Which snakes and insects were poisonous. What water was safe to drink. We needed  to be alert to our environment. Constantly. Ready to run. Fight. Flee. Freeze. Hide. Our survival depended on it.

Vigilance  was key to surviving in a dangerous, rugged, inherently violent world. Anxiety, manifesting as fear in our bodies, alerted us to danger, fueled our bodies with adrenaline, and sped us on our way, out of danger. Believe me, the most anxious among us were the most likely to succeed at the Survival Game, most likely to live long enough to breed, most likely to rear their children into sexual maturity, most likely to foster the next generation. The Anxious Survived. The anxious survived and we are the happy result. Are you feeling it?

When anxiety overruns its job description

Ben White-unsplash

So, your anxious experience is a function of your survival systems and it's there to keep you safe. Fine. Good. But anxiety was never designed to run your life. When anxiety is doing a lot more than keeping you aware of your environment and thoughtful about your decisions and actions, chances are it is getting out of hand. If your anxious responses within your mind and body are  now running your life, running you into the ground, keeping you in a state of high anxiety, stress, rumination, and fear, then it is no longer in service to you. It's time to bring your anxiety to heel.

Irritability—the anxiety symptom nobody talks about

Most of us are generally familiar with the symptoms of over-functioning anxiety. Racing thoughts. Racing heart beat, sweaty palms, non-stop worry or rumination, negative thinking, over-functioning, nervousness, agitation, panic, social anxiety, sleep disruption, demanding and very uncomfortable physical sensations. Life disruption.

We are typically less familiar with the other ways anxiety comes on board to run the show. Controlling behaviors, all or nothing black and white thinking, disruptions in our ability to form healthy attachments and be present and emotionally intimate with those we value most. Overextending ourselves across multiple areas of life. Lack of boundaries with ourselves and others. Feeling taken for granted. Feeling martyred, exhausted, angry, and misunderstood. Sometimes we can become demanding, requiring others accommodate our anxious needs. As that rigid self-control some of us value so highly, starts to flag, we can become irritable and edgy. Needing space to recenter, and perhaps even not realizing it, we move into irritability. Quick to react. Quick to snarl. Quick to lash out.

Arif Riyanto-unsplash

Chronic worry can make us demanding, reactive, and exhausted

Those of us suffering with over-active anxiety (and imaginations), are some of the brightest, nicest, most helpful and capable people you can meet. And some of the most persistent, irritating, irrational people on the planet. Sorry. True story. When we are out of balance in coping with our well-meaning anxious selves, we can become demanding, reactive, and irritable. When things have finally gotten on our last nerve, we brim over and we can get snappish. All of us Anxious Folk can go there, particularly teens and men. Irritable. Dysregulated.

Why teens and men often mask anxiety with anger

Karina Tess—unsplash

While all of us, male and female, who are working through our anxious experience may move into irritability at times, irritability can be a pronounced symptom for some men and teens. Why does this make sense to me? For one thing, our teens are less able to cope with their overwhelming sensations of anxiety and the many concerns they hold. Your teen may not be moved to or able to confide in you, particularly your sons. They may place a high value on the important developmental tasks of individuating and taking life on on their own, they keep it to themselves. "I'll figure it out!" In so doing, their resulting irritability may voice what they are not able or willing to give words to. In the case of teens, those monosyllabic responses can be concealing all kinds of unrecognized and unvoiced worries and concerns, as well as their general hormonal moodiness.

The fact is, our teens don't have enough life experience yet to  always be able to know what they need from us or the world around them. The transition from child to teen to adult is an arduous and demanding task to negotiate. And it is constantly changing. Your teen is navigating a world that didn't exist for you. There's a lot going on in their lives and you are a safe enough whipping post when they are overwhelmed and anxious.

Boys need emotional tools, not “toughen-up” lessons

Marina Hanna—unsplash

Although things are changing in our culture, there is still not enough support for men and boys to notice and express what is going on for them. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we parent boys, from infancy forward, differently than girls. Requiring them to toughen up, responding to them more slowly than we respond to the needs of baby girls. Telling ourselves, "He's such a boy!"
I still run into young men who have been told as children not
to cry, to suck it up.

Recent studies have suggested baby boys actually arrive more sensitive to their environments, more easily negatively impacted by experiences in the early months of life than girls. They need more support, not less. All children need support in learning how to appropriately self-soothe and self-regulate. All children require emotionally present and responsive care givers. All children need encouragement to identify and express their feelings in a healthy, fluid fashion. All children need the opportunity and modeling that allows them to identify their own needs and desires and to ask for support. All children need support and nurturing such as this. All children. Yet, historically, boys have received less of these specific relational and emotional supports. We often default, even unconsciously, to socializing and nurturing boys into silence and stoicism. A false expression of strength. And here in the West, we socialize children, and especially boys, towards individualism. Independence. Autonomy. There's not always much room to learn how to ask for help when needed, how to sort through our feelings, even the sad and bad ones, how to draw on community.

Disconnection fuels anxiety—connection is the antidote

Justin Follis-unsplash

I find men in my practice are anxious to connect. Longing for deeper connections with each other and the people they love. Working to learn. Often, my male clients are working hard to overcome their own beliefs about what it means to be a man in our culture, what it means to feel connected to oneself, what it means to reevaluate what strength truly is. We are working on shame. Guilt. Grief. Loneliness. Allowing sadness to come through and resolve. They are figuring out that disconnection, overriding and stuffing their feelings has led to isolation, anxiety, depression, and a loss of the connection they are so hungry for. This is true for everyone. In many ways, though, men have been largely left on their own to figure this out. Back in the day, and still in some circles, it is counter cultural for men to long for more connection and expression in life.

Modern life overloads an ancient nervous system

We are built for connection. We were designed to be with one another, even the more introverted of us. We were designed to sleep in a puppy pile and have each other's backs. It's part of our innate wiring. We've talked about how healthy, adaptive, appropriate anxious survival responses within our bodies were and are an essential aspect of our ability to survive and thrive on the planet. Yes, this was required. But our sense of connection to one another has always been primary. We developed in family groups of 500 to 1500 where everyone knew everyone. We survived because of these connections, because we were not left to manage on our own, because survival required a group effort and many helpers, many hands, many eyes on the horizon, many people to shoulder the work. Many hearts. We survived together. To be left on your own was a literal death sentence.

Somatic Experiencing and online therapy can calm irritability

Allison Shaw-unsplash

Our nervous systems were not designed for modern life. Life, today, is alien to our actual way of being. You were not designed to hurtle down the road at 65 mph, plugged into a 24/7 world wide crisis-oriented news cycle, largely divorced from the restorative practices of our ancestral communities (deep connection, communal meals, dancing, music, singing, story telling, mentoring, working together, multi-generational and communal child-rearing networks). And yet, here we are. Adrift in the over-stimulating sea of modernit and chaos.

We can't change the world. We can change our personal habits, practices, and ways of being. We can focus on reconnecting to ourselves, reconnecting to our family systems, learning how to be more vulnerable and trusting of each other. We can work through our anxious habits and responses and create deeper levels of satisfaction, ease, and connectedness in our lives. We can know ourselves and one another better, on a deeper level. We can stop working so hard to hold it all in. We can create and learn healthy, productive ways for expressing our emotions and needs. Communicating better. Feeling better. And, yes, feeling less irritable. It's a process. And one worth learning.

I help people who feel bad feel better. Let’s talk. Learn about online anxiety therapy in California.