Are you so used to pushing through discomfort that you’ve stopped noticing your body’s warning signs altogether?
Burnout doesn’t just wear down your mind — it can quietly erode basic self-care habits, including ones as simple as responding to your body’s signal that it’s time to empty your bladder.
This might sound like an odd place to start a conversation about burnout, but in my experience, it’s often one of the clearest, most measurable signs of how deeply someone has learned to override their own needs.
I work with clients who push themselves too hard, and part of that work draws on an interdisciplinary approach — learning from physicians and physiotherapists whose expertise intersects with mine. One pattern I see often is that clients prone to burnout regularly delay emptying their bladder for as long as possible so they can keep working, treating the urge to urinate as an interruption rather than a need they should respond to.
Signs of Physical Neglect During Burnout
There’s a direct correlation between people who are prone to burnout — meaning that they push themselves too hard — and personal physical neglect. When the body signals that it’s time to empty the bladder, people who are not prone to burnout respond, because they listen to their bodies. But people who are prone to burnout have ignored their body’s needs for so long that they no longer register the signal when it’s time to urinate.
The pattern often looks like this: the body signals a need, the signal is dismissed, and then dismissed again a few minutes later. This exchange between body and mind can repeat for hours.
How to Notice Your Body’s Warning Signs
During session one day, a client told me she needed to use the bathroom because she was experiencing what she referred to as “the pee quivers,” a level of urgency she had learned she could not push through. When I asked her to time how long it actually took her to empty her bladder, she reported back that she had urinated for 62 seconds. The term “pee quivers” was new to me, but it captured something important. Her body had been sending clear signals of distress for some time, but she had grown so used to overriding them that she no longer noticed them until her need to empty her bladder became urgent.
This kind of neglect is common in people who have never been taught to prioritize their own physical needs. The neglect often shows up in small, easily overlooked ways, like ignoring the body’s signal that it’s time to urinate until the feeling becomes impossible to ignore.
How to Stop Ignoring Your Body’s Signals
The suggestions I share with my clients on this topic are simple. Don’t allow large volumes of urine to accumulate in your bladder during the day. A physiotherapist taught me never to hold more than 10 seconds worth of urine in my bladder, because doing so repeatedly stretches the bladder over time, which leads to problems with urinary incontinence.
I take this kind of guidance seriously and work in a multidisciplinary way, drawing on information that physicians, physiotherapists, and other professionals have taught me whenever it serves a client’s needs. Recovering from burnout means addressing the whole person, which includes both the mind and the body.
What if you feel the urge to urinate at night? Should you get up and respond to it? One physiotherapist I spoke with about this told me you must get up and empty your bladder when your body signals you to. She said, “Don’t hold your urine in, or you’ll develop a leaky bladder.”
Already have a leaky bladder? You don’t have to put up with it. You can work with a pelvic floor physiotherapist. They can teach you what you can do to recover — which is substantial — regardless of whether you are male or female.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can ignoring physical needs like bathroom breaks really mean that I am more prone to burnout?
Yes. Ignoring basic physical signals, like delaying taking a bathroom break, is a sign that you’ve become disconnected from your body’s needs more broadly. This pattern is common in people who push themselves too hard, and it rarely resolves on its own. Working with a psychologist can help you understand why you override these signals in the first place, and address the underlying burnout driving it.
Related Articles and Videos
- This article looks at why creating time for regular physical activity matters to help stave off burnout.
- This post focuses on pacing yourself at roughly 65% of your capacity so that you retain energy in reserve, rather than pushing through at full intensity in the same fashion that you might override a physical signal like the urge to urinate.
- Burnout Recovery: Prioritize Your Physical and Mental Health is Part 14 in the From Burnout to Recovery video series. It discusses why physical health concerns like frozen shoulder, digestive problems, and postponed medical care often go unaddressed during burnout, and why medical leave is a good time to deal with them.
Considering Next Steps
If you recognize this pattern in yourself, start paying closer attention to your body. Notice the signals you have learned to override—whether it’s the urge to empty your bladder or hunger, thirst, fatigue, or pain.
When you notice one of these signals, respond to it rather than pushing it aside. You may be surprised by how thoroughly you have trained yourself to ignore what your body is telling you because you are doing something else you believe is more important.
Recovering from burnout involves more than changing the way you think or manage your workload. It also means rebuilding the connection between your mind and your body. Your physical needs are not interruptions that you have to work around. They are signals worth listening to.
If you have become disconnected from your physical needs and have difficulty recognizing or responding to them, working with a psychologist can help you understand and address the pattern.