Ask Your Burnout Bestie: What did your burnout feel like? And what did you do to recover?

I am currently almost half a year into burnout, symptoms are:

• Everything requires a lot of energy.
• Permanent dizzy feeling.
• Even listening to the car radio is too much to handle.
• Inability to cope with stress.
• Cynicism.

Burnout can feel like being trapped in your own life... exhausted, disconnected, and unable to care about the things that once mattered.

It's a full-body, full-system shutdown.

And the symptoms you shared—intense fatigue, physical disorientation, hypersensitivity to sound and light, loss of stress tolerance, and creeping cynicism—are physiological and psychological warning sirens signaling severe dysregulation in your nervous system and a serious misalignment between your energy, your environment, and your expectations.

What you’re experiencing is valid. It’s also incredibly common for high-achievers who’ve internalized the belief that pushing through is noble.

And while you can't recover overnight, you can heal with the right process, structure, and support.

That's why I developed the 6-Step Burnout Recovery System™ to help leaders rebuild from the inside out without having to quit their jobs in a panic or burn everything down to the studs.

Restore Baseline Well-Being

You cannot make clear decisions from a depleted state.

This phase is about nervous system regulation and physiological stability. That means:

• Prioritizing restorative rest (not just sleep but sensory rest, emotional rest, and creative rest, too)
• Creating boundaries around stimulation (yes, that includes turning off the radio)
• Building predictable routines for eating, hydration, and gentle movement

Until you stabilize the system, you can’t strategize your way out of burnout.

Your cognitive and emotional bandwidth is compromised. So we pause the pressure and focus on restoring capacity.

Identify Key Burnout Drivers

Burnout is multi-dimensional. It’s not just “too much work”—it’s too much without support, clarity, alignment, or agency.

That’s why I use my 5 Cs Driving Burnout™ framework to uncover what’s really fueling the problem:

• Conditions: Unsustainable workload, poor systems, lack of boundaries
• Culture: Toxic norms, poor leadership, or environments that reward overwork
• Convictions: Internal narratives like “I have to prove myself” or “Rest is lazy”
• Choices: Patterns that were once adaptive but are now self-sacrificing
• Capacity: The very real limits you’re currently pushing beyond

This step is about understanding what led to burnout—not to assign blame, but to create informed, intentional recovery.

Resolve Values Misalignment

One of the biggest roots of long-term burnout is living and working out of alignment with your core values.

When you're forced to perform in ways that violate your integrity, your identity, or your definition of success, burnout becomes inevitable.

That’s why I created the Aligned Leadership Compass™, which helps leaders:

• Identify their Anchor Values (the foundation of how they want to live).
• Define their Professional Values (how they show up at work—their leadership style, work ethic, and what they expect from their team and peers).
• Challenge their Conditioned Values (what they were told to value, often unconsciously).
• Exploring the friction between Organizational Values (the values their workplace rewards) and their own.

You can’t be well in a system that constantly asks you to compromise who you are.

Redesign Your Work

This doesn't automatically mean quitting (although sometimes, it does). But it does mean evaluating:

• How your role, environment, or industry contributes to burnout.
• Where you can create boundaries, shift responsibilities, or renegotiate expectations.
• Whether the job you're in can truly support your recovery.

If you're in a toxic system that refuses to shift, then yes, leaving may be the healthiest option. But you should never feel forced to jump without a clear, values-aligned plan.

Cultivate Non-Work Passions

This one gets overlooked, especially by high achievers who’ve attached their entire identity to performance.

But burnout recovery requires rediscovering who you are outside of your job title. Not every hour has to be productive. Not everything has to be monetized.

What brings you joy for no reason at all? What lights you up when no one’s watching?

Reconnecting to your non-work self is essential for restoring a full sense of identity.

Build Your Support Squad

One of the strongest protective factors against burnout is relational support.

Burnout is isolating. Often, high performers are the least likely to ask for help because they're used to being the one everyone leans on.

You need people who:

• See you clearly
• Reflect your worth back to you
• Challenge the internalized beliefs keeping you stuck in burnout cycles

This could be a coach, a therapist, or a friend who gets it. Personally, I recommend seeking the following roles to fill out your support squad: Role model, Mentor, Coach, Cheerleader, and Sponsor.

In my coaching programs, we design this support system intentionally. Burnout is too big to navigate alone.

Final Thought from Your Burnout Bestie

Quit trying to "get back to normal." Instead, focus on building a new normal that aligns more with who you are, what you value, and what your body and mind need to thrive.

Burnout is brutal. It disconnects you from your body, your joy, your clarity, and often, your sense of self. But recovery is absolutely possible.

It doesn't happen all at once, and it doesn't happen without effort. But you can build back stronger, wiser, and more aligned.

You are not broken. You are burned out.

And there's a system for coming back from that.

Got a question for your burnout bestie? Drop it in the comments or DM me. I got you.

Tara Kermiet is a burnout prevention specialist with over 15 years of experience in leadership development. As the founder and Chief Balance Officer of Tara Kermiet Consulting, LLC, she helps ambitious professionals and corporate leaders design burnout-resistant careers and workplaces that align with their values and drive sustainable success.

Through her signature frameworks, including the 5 Cs Driving Burnout™ and the RESTORE+ Workplace Design Framework™, Tara combines a strengths-based approach with actionable strategies to empower her clients to align their values with their actions, fostering resilience and well-being.

A passionate advocate for redefining success, Tara's mission is simple: to help high achievers maintain their edge without losing themselves along the way.