Burnout In High Achievers

As a skilled Calgary psychologist who works with high achievers, I can help you feel less tired and worn out.

Did you wake up one day and realize that you were burned out?

Or, perhaps you feel you’re headed that way.

Maybe it’s difficult to balance your work with your home life.

You dream about the life you want but don’t know how to get there.

You feel stressed and overwhelmed. You don’t know where to begin to make your life better.

Maybe you’ve tried and tried, but you’re so burned out that you can’t think straight let alone find the energy to turn your life around. This is not the way you thought your life would be.

Why high achievers are vulnerable to burnout

It’s easy to become burned out when you combine the demands of an intense workload with family and other commitments.

You’re normally a high achiever with a high degree of energy. You may be an idealist or a perfectionist. You feel driven to succeed, and you’re committed to doing everything well.

You’ve focused a lot of time and energy on your external life, but not enough on your emotional and physical needs.

Signs of burnout

Signs of burnout you may experience:

You find it hard to concentrate to complete tasks.
You feel drained at the thought of yet one more responsibility.
You’re tired all the time but can’t get enough sleep.
You feel like you can’t slow down, even though you know you need to.
You believe there is always more you need to do.
You’ve disengaged from friends and family.
You feel depressed.

Burnout is a continuum

Burnout exists on a continuum. In the early stages, you can still function, but everything takes more effort.

As burnout progresses, the impact on your energy and ability to think clearly becomes harder to ignore.

You have difficulty tracking conversations in meetings.
You read the same page several times but retain very little.
You rely on lists and calendars for things you used to manage easily in your head.
Your sleep is no longer restorative.
Exercise drops off because you don’t have the energy.
Grocery shopping and cooking feel like too much.
You take a vacation and come back just as exhausted as when you left.

The strategies that used to work — pushing through, working harder, staying organized — no longer work.

You realize that this time is different.

When burnout becomes severe

At the more severe end of the continuum:

Your energy is depleted.
You’ve lost your focus.
Your cognitive functioning is compromised.
You are no longer able to work safely.
You have to look carefully at taking medical leave.

Professional experiencing burnout at work

Why burnout happens

The gas tank analogy

Being burned out is like running out of gas in your car.

Except the car is you, and the level of gas in your tank is the amount of energy you have.

When you reach complete burnout, you have only fumes left and no energy reserves to draw from.

You’d like some counselling to help fill your tank.

Concerns that often accompany burnout

Some additional problems might be weighing on you, such as:

Sometimes what looks like burnout can overlap with other conditions. For example, burnout symptoms can be mistaken for ADHD.

My personal experience with burnout

I’m a Calgary psychologist who specializes in providing therapy to people who are high achievers in demanding jobs.

I understand the pressure first-hand.

As a former engineer and manager in a corporate setting, I understand high performance jobs and how demanding they can be.

I spent several years running a software project with a team of up to twenty. The deadlines were impossible and could not be challenged, so we all kept pushing. Key people became exhausted, but the pace never changed.

At an international conference, I delivered one presentation after another, every hour for four straight days, to organizations evaluating our software. I heard the energy and expression disappear from my voice. I had trouble remembering who I had already met with and what I had said. The day after the conference ended, I didn’t know what city I was in.

I had a similar experience years later while completing my doctoral dissertation. For four months, I worked at the absolute limit of my capability. I kept an air mattress in my office and slept there every day so I could keep going. Ten days after my final defence, I started my residency with no break to recover.

How I work with burnout

These experiences taught me that there are times when the demands are structurally impossible and no amount of effort will allow you to come out on top — and times when putting your head down and working toward a goal makes sense.

High achievers are very good at pushing through. The necessary skill is learning to evaluate whether the push is worth the cost.

How therapy helps with burnout

Therapy can help you overcome exhaustion and burnout. I can help you learn to put the brakes on so you can take better care of yourself and achieve better balance.

Father enjoying playing with his daughters

Recovery from burnout

How long recovery takes

Recovery from burnout is different for everyone. If you are able to step away from work and focus fully on restoring your energy, the process can be much faster. If you need to remain in your role, recovery is still very possible, but it requires meaningful changes to how your time, responsibilities, and expectations are structured.

What improvement looks like

In the early stages, we focus on stabilizing your energy and helping your system settle. As your capacity returns, your thinking becomes clearer, your efficiency improves, and you can begin to feel like yourself again. Most people are surprised by how much progress they make once they stop pushing in ways that keep them depleted. Recovery is about learning how to use your abilities and effort in a way that is sustainable over the long term.

Who I can help

Some of the people I help include:

Lawyers and Investment Bankers
Accountants and Engineers
Senior Managers and Directors
Executives and Partners
Business Owners and Entrepreneurs

They come to therapy because the way they are working is no longer sustainable.

Professional walking through a green park in morning sunlight, looking refreshed

Benefits of counselling

Establish reasonable limits at work.
Wake up feeling more refreshed and energized.
Savour more regularly scheduled unstructured downtime.
Eat better and maintain a healthy exercise routine.
Enjoy your professional life more. Be productive with less stress.
Engage more with friends and family.

Get started

You know that you can benefit from some help, so let’s get started.