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You're Burned Out Because Nobody Taught You to Stop.
- Carolon Donnally
- Jun 14, 2023
- 5 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
You're Not Burned Out Because You're Weak.
You're Burned Out Because Nobody Taught You to Stop.
A conversation with Sarah Noll Wilson on catching burnout before it catches you — the signs we miss, the rest we resist, and what it actually takes to build a life that doesn't quietly consume you.
I first experienced burnout in my 20s — and I didn't recognize it. I was a top performer, climbing the ladder, joking that I wished they'd put cots in the basement so I could sleep between shifts. That wasn't dedication. That was a warning sign I had no language for.
When Sarah Noll Wilson invited me onto Conversations on Conversations to talk about burnout prevention, we ended up covering far more than either of us expected — because burnout rarely announces itself clearly. It whispers first. In body symptoms, in fractured focus, in the quiet question: is this really all there is?
Here are the ideas from that conversation that I keep coming back to.
When Everyone Around You Is Burning Out Too
One of the most consistent barriers to recognizing burnout is this: when you are a high achiever surrounded by other high achievers, exhaustion starts to look like the baseline.
You look around and everyone is doing the same thing. Working the same hours, skipping the same meals, joking about the same impossible workloads. It becomes normal — not because it is, but because you're all swimming in the same water.
This is why outside perspective matters so much. Being in circles where people are doing great work and also living well — where rest isn't treated as a reward — can be genuinely disorienting at first. And then clarifying in a way that nothing else is.
The Signs We Keep Rushing Past
High achievers tend to treat body symptoms as inconveniences — something to manage around, not something to listen to. But those symptoms are the conversation your body is trying to have with you before things get serious.
Chronic fatigue that sleep doesn't fix — waking up tired no matter how many hours you got
Difficulty concentrating on work that used to come easily — a brain that won't land
Physical symptoms — high blood pressure, IBS, heart palpitations, insomnia — that doctors attribute to stress and send you home with a prescription instead of a conversation about root causes
Emotional flatness — the absence of the engagement and drive that used to define you
Increasing irritability with things that wouldn't have bothered you before
The sense that something is wrong — even when you're achieving — that you can't quite name
The question that matters isn't whether any of these are happening. It's whether you are stopping long enough to let them mean something.
A quote worth holding onto
Sarah Noll Wilson shared something a therapist colleague of Farah Harris said that I haven't been able to put down since: "Delayed self-care becomes self-rescue." Not a gentle nudge. A full reckoning. The difference between those two things is everything.
What the Pandemic Uncovered — and Why We're Not "Back to Normal"
The pandemic didn't create the burnout crisis. It unearthed what was already there — the isolation, the blurred lines, the absence of the community and boundaries that had been quietly eroding for years. And now many organizations are trying to pivot back to how things were, without doing the work of acknowledging what the last several years actually did to people.
What I've seen consistently is that the acknowledgement piece gets skipped. Organizations are trying to move forward without naming what they've been through — the grief, the exhaustion, the collective trauma of sustained uncertainty. And you cannot move through what you haven't named.
The most important thing leaders can do right now isn't to optimize performance. It's to create the space to say: that was hard, and it changed us, and we need to figure out what we want to carry forward and what we want to leave behind.
Our Relationship with Rest Is Broken.
Here's How to Fix It.
In Western American culture, rest is treated as something you earn — a reward for productivity, not a basic human need. And the result is what I'd call work withdrawal: the agitation and restlessness that happens when you finally stop, because your body has been calibrated to constant motion for so long that stillness feels wrong.
This is not a character flaw. It's a physiological response to a culture that has rewarded nonstop doing for decades.
01
Practice rest regularly — not just on vacation
The way to move through work withdrawal faster is to give your body more experience of rest. One full day a week where the phone goes off and the agenda is empty. Not as a treat — as a practice. The more your body knows what rest feels like, the faster it transitions into it.
02
Notice the "should-ing"
The internal voice that says you should be doing something, should be more productive, should not be resting right now — that voice is the water you're swimming in, not the truth. Learning to hear it and not follow it is one of the most important skills a high achiever can build.
03
Change the question
We ask "what are you doing this weekend?" as though doing is the only way to account for time. What would shift if we asked "how are you going to be this weekend?" instead? It sounds small. It isn't.
04
Externalize what's happening internally
When I started saying out loud "I'm going home" in social situations instead of milling around for an hour past when I wanted to leave, something shifted. People were surprised. Then relieved. Naming what's true for you gives other people permission to do the same.
The Conversation That Changes Things
One of the most important things I took from my graduate work at Pepperdine wasn't a framework or a theory. It was this question: what conversations am I having with myself — and how are those conversations shaping how I show up?
Most of us have spent years having conversations with ourselves that we wouldn't say to a friend. That we're not doing enough, not being enough, not moving fast enough. And those conversations — invisible, constant, taken as true — are one of the most powerful drivers of the exhaustion we carry.
The conversations you have with yourself about what's happening are shaping how you show up in every other conversation you have. That recognition — and the willingness to change it — can transform your entire life.
— Carolon Donnally on Conversations on Conversations
Burnout doesn't only happen in the body. It happens in the story we keep telling ourselves about why we can't stop, why we can't ask for help, why our worth depends on what we produce. And changing that story is not a passive process — it is work, done intentionally, usually alongside people who help you see what you can't see alone.
Meet the Host
Sarah Noll Wilson
Sarah Noll Wilson is the host of Conversations on Conversations, a podcast exploring how we can have more powerful conversations with ourselves and others. She is an author, speaker, and leadership consultant whose work focuses on helping leaders build more human, honest, and effective organizations.
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Resources mentioned in this episode
Connectable: How Leaders Can Move Teams from Isolated to All In — the book Carolon referenced on building connection in hybrid and remote teams.
The Color of Emotional Intelligence by Farah Harris — including the quote "delayed self-care becomes self-rescue."
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Carolon Donnally, MSOD, PCC
Burnout Resistance Coach · Trainer · Strategic Organization Consultant
Carolon helps high-achieving leaders and mission-driven organizations do great work without burning themselves or others out. She is a former Head of Leadership Coaching at the IRS, holds an MSOD from Pepperdine University, and is an ICF PCC credentialed coach. Her work is grounded in 20+ years of real-world experience — and her own experience on the other side of burnout.
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