Burn Out
You're exhausted from being the sandwich generation - managing aging parents who still don't understand email while raising kids who think WiFi is a basic human right. Truth be told, I've been there with my own 2 am 'Am I failing everyone?' spiral sessions; I get it. As a fellow Gen X’er and your therapist, I won't give you some basic self-care checklist involving bubble baths and green smoothies because we both know you're too tired to even remember to eat lunch most days. We'll dig into why you feel guilty for wanting five minutes to yourself and why saying 'no' feels like a foreign language, all while acknowledging that our generation was raised to just push through everything like we're invincible flannel and Tims-wearing Avengers. I'll help you reclaim your energy without the toxic positivity BS - think of it as debugging your life's operating system so you can actually enjoy the download."
Let me guess - you're running on fumes, coffee, and the faint hope that if you just work a little harder, everything will magically fall into place, but instead you feel like you're starring in your own personal episode of Grey's Anatomy.
You're exhausted by the constant mental load of managing everyone else's lives. You've become a Jedi master at smiling through the overwhelm.
You're simultaneously googling "how much does college cost now?" and your mom's newest symptoms. You find yourself wishing you had someone just like you, to be for you, what you are for others.
Your faith in your psychic astrologer has dwindled, and you are over the self-help section at the local bookstore. Your previously tried and true method of spa days and adult-only vacations isn’t even touching your burnout.
Alleviating burnout feels like that first sip of coffee on a Saturday morning when you have absolutely nowhere to be—pure, unscheduled bliss. It's the deep exhale when you finally close your laptop at the end of a brutal work week.
You were taught you could sleep when you're dead; alleviating burnout feels like rebellion. You want to go where nobody knows your name. Like you're stealing back pieces of yourself that got lost somewhere.
You remember when Sunday nights meant the anticipation of Monday Night Football, not the Sunday Scaries; it’s like slipping into your favorite worn jeans from ‘96 that fit just right. It's that rare moment when you're not catering to anyone, when you can just be the person who once stayed up all night talking about everything and nothing. It’s feeling your authentic self emerge from beneath layers of adult obligations.
We are the generation that perfected "work hard, play hard," but alleviating burnout has that nagging whisper like you forgot to get permission (peace and happiness). (you forgot you needed)—Alleviating burnout is the luxury of an uninterrupted hot shower that lasts longer than five minutes.
It's rediscovering what your body feels like when it's not running on fumes and caffeine, when your mind finally stops its endless loop of productivity anxiety and settles into the quiet satisfaction of simply being enough, exactly as you are.
It’s stolen moments when you're wrapped in your softest hoodie at dawn, watching steam rise from your favorite coffee mug while the world is still quiet and undemanding. It's that first relaxing breath when you realize your shoulders aren’t hunched and your jaws are unclenched, like your body is remembering how to exist without armor.
Generation X, part of alleviating burnout is being unstuck. You will finally be running on a full tank, instead of functioning on fumes. Monday mornings won't require a pep talk, a quatro espresso, or a gummy. It's the joy of working late on a project because you're genuinely engaged, not because you're trapped in the hamster wheel of proving your worth. Alleviating burnout can allow you the joy of languishing in intimacy with your favorite person, or picking up your guitar without guilt, and reading fiction for fun. It's the freedom of saying "yes" to dinner plans because you actually want to go, not because you need to network.
I get it because I've lived it too - that exhaustion that comes from carrying everyone else's baggage while pretending to have it all figured out because that's what Gen X does.
We'll work together to help you stop treating burnout like a badge of honor and start recognizing that you're not lazy for needing rest - you're human, and humans aren't supposed to run like Windows 95 with too many programs open. Think of our sessions as your personal IT support for life - we'll close some of those background applications and get your system running smoothly again.
When you log on and say you're 'fine, just tired,' I immediately know we're talking about the Gen X, burnout that comes from decades of being the reliable one.
As soon as you mention feeling guilty about being burned out because 'other people have it worse,' I know we're dealing with classic Gen X conditioning that taught us to minimize our struggles and push through everything. I lived through the same cultural messaging that taught us rest had to be earned and boundaries are selfish.
My approach doesn't just treat your symptoms—it helps you redesign your relationship with productivity and success so you can finally stop running on fumes and start living from a place of sustainable energy. We’ll see the relief wash over your face when we validate that yes, you can be grateful for your life AND completely exhausted by the relentless pace you've maintained since your childhood. In our work together, we'll explore how your inability to say no isn't a character flaw—it's a survival strategy that served you well until it didn't.
I get that you've been functioning at maximum capacity for so long that exhaustion became your baseline. I don't waste time asking why you can't just "slow down"—instead, I help you understand how being raised as a member of the self-reliant generation with people-pleasing habits are literally burning you out from the inside.
We will honor your deep-rooted work ethic while helping you distinguish between productive effort and compulsive overgiving. You deserve the equilibrium because you can’t give water when your well is dry.