Therapy Burnout

“For how many people who are out there knocking themselves out to get good abs, I wish people would put that same effort into developing self-awareness.”

—Ramani Durvasula, clinical psychologist quoted in The Washington Post

I used to run marathons, and, back then, I often heard the phenomenon of overtraining referred to as “exercise burnout.” While my marathon days are likely over, I am currently suffering from a different kind of burnout, which I’ve been calling “therapy burnout.”

Somehow, all of this introspection on my feelings and interactions with others has been making me feel a bit unwell. I’m not depressed, but over the past few weeks, I’ve just been logging more “neutral” and “indifferent” feelings on my Apple Watch.

Not a well understood term

Like many who start to feel some unwellness coming on, I often turn to “Dr. Google” to help me with my symptoms. If I were to be feeling “exercise burnout,” Dr. Google could come straight to my assistance with resources relevant to both explaining and addressing the problem.

These resources explain that relieving exercise burnout involves some very specific “doing” steps, including taking breaks, active recovery to maintain blood flow and prevent stiffness, adding variety to workouts, setting realistic goals which focus on gradual progress and achievable targets, prioritizing sleep, and good nutrition.

Not so with “therapy burnout.” That term seems to refer to therapists burning out from talking to too many patients like me, not patients getting burned out from too much therapy! So, either I couldn’t figure out what to search for, or there was no advice on what I should do to address my “therapy burnout!”

Why did I Google this term?

I think I was feeling “therapy burnout” because of the energy I have been expending in the work I’m doing on myself to improve my close relationships. By reading this Substack, you have all been on at least part of my journey with me, so you’ve gotten a bit of a view into some of this work. Much of this has been becoming more aware of my feelings and needs to foster non-violent communication (NVC). I’ve also appreciated the concepts of building empathy with others using the ATTUNE method from Gottman (graphic pasted below from Gottman’s Facebook page).

Source: Facebook

As silly as it may sound, much of this stuff didn’t come naturally to me. I’m not sure if my historical decisions, attitudes, and behaviors were the result of:

a) the generation in which I was born
b) being raised by immigrant parents
c) some high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD), or 
d) all of the above

No matter the reason, putting NVC, ATTUNE, and other frameworks into practice has also required deliberate touch points to monitor my own progress. Here’s a quick little inventory of the activities I’ve been focused on to work on myself.

• Biweekly individual therapy

• Biweekly couples therapy with Marsha

• Weekly State-of-the-union meetings with Marsha

• Weekly State-of-the-union meetings with Marsha and our younger daughter who is living with us for now!

• Weekly “Storyworth” questions from our older daughter

• Weekly “A-side” Substack articles where I do introspection like this one!

Combined, all of this work has been feeling like a lot!

Over the last couple of weeks, I have shared my feelings of “therapy burnout” with both Marsha and our younger daughter during our State-of-the-Union meetings. They have been very generous and encouraging at the same time.

I also talked to both our couples therapist and my individual therapist about this, too. These conversations helped me sort through these feelings, so I thought I’d share what transpired in case others have or will experience this type of “therapy burnout” as well.

Proposed Actions

Both of the therapists acknowledged that “therapy burnout” wasn’t quite the typical way that other people describe what I’m feeling, but they both acknowledged an underlying challenge. With this kind of work on ourselves, what we are all trying to do is to “rewire” both our innate and learned perspectives and behaviors, developed over the course of our lives. This kind of work can be challenging, much like learning a new skill!

To remedy these feelings of burnout, there were two “doing” types of suggestions that are similar to advice to cope when learning other new skills.

Lightening up

Our couples therapist commented that many of her clients actually curtail or take a break from their individual therapy while they are doing couples therapy. I suppose this is a good thing for a couples therapist to say to people to “shift budget” to couples therapy. 😜

In fairness, our couples therapist also offered to reduce our couples therapy to once a month or to even “pause” it all together, if I was feeling overwhelmed. She noted that Marsha and I are “very well-regulated” in that we have a good ability to talk to each other about our relationship outside of therapy, so she felt that lightening up on couples therapy would be OK.

When presented with both of these options to cut back, I realized the time in therapy itself wasn't the cause of my feeling burned out. I also realized that it wasn’t really the writing in Storyworth or her in Substack that was burning me out either, as the writing actually helps me sort out my feelings and thoughts.

Increase frequency of restorative activities

My individual therapist has been with me longer than our couples therapist and had some more avenues to explore. For background, we’ve talked over time about different kinds of restorative activities I’ve enjoyed, including meditation, exercise, getting together with friends, and even passive entertainment like watching TV.

In reflecting about these restorative activities, I concluded they are probably in the right balance for me right now. For example, I didn’t think meditating more than once per day would be helpful. Exercise recovery has been a bit more challenging for me of-late because of some recent changes in my drug regimen. (My nephrologist recently added yet another blood pressure medication, Amlodipine, because I am already taking the maximum dosage of Losartan). I think we’ve already got a pretty active social calendar with friends. And, I feel a bit guilty watching too much TV. 

So, after some discussion, I realized that increasing the level of restorative activities wasn’t the answer either. The interesting thing here is that, like with other lessons on my self-awareness journey, resolving this feeling of “therapy burnout” might not require me to “do” anything!

Nothing to “do”

I am always reminded that in our capitalist society, we always think we have to “do” something to improve our circumstances. In business, this happens to be one of my favorite expressions:

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

The quotation has wrongly been attributed to Albert Einstein, but a quick Google search reveals this attribution to be wrong.

A favorite of politicians (and pretty much everybody else), this quote has been wrongly attributed to Benjamin Franklin as well as [Albert Einstein] —but there’s no evidence either of them said it.

Source: history.com - “Here Are 6 Things Albert Einstein Never Said”

Moreover, while I do believe the statement applies in capitalist activities, I have grown to understand that when it comes to feelings and relationships, the statement could be nothing further from the truth. Often, to resolve issues with feelings and relationships, we don’t have to “do” anything but rather to just “be” more self-aware and more empathetic. The whole process of Gottman’s “ATTUNE” method doesn’t really require any specific actions or solutions but just adapting one’s perspective.

In fact, in this situation with my “therapy burnout,” my individual therapist suggested perhaps “doing nothing” might be best.

The difference here for me would be to take a different perspective and to be more self-aware. While learning any new skills can be hard for me, I can feel gratitude for the progress I am making. I do believe that with all of this work I am doing on myself, I have been able to make progress with Marsha, with our kids, and with relationships in general. So, just the recognition of why I’m feeling this discomfort and the ability to feel gratitude for the progress can address the “therapy burnout.”

Once taking a step back and taking a different perspective, my feeling of burnout has turned into a feeling of gratitude, I think it is working! All without “doing” anything but just “being” more self-aware! Weird, huh?

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