Work Burnout Recovery in Brighton and Hove

What is work burnout?

Work burnout is what happens when ongoing demand consistently exceeds your ability to recover from stress.

Over time, this changes:

• how you think and appraise situations

• the meaning and purpose you derive from your work

• how your nervous system responds under pressure

• how well you sleep and restore energy

• your enjoyment in life

• how reliably you can perform without it costing you increasing amounts

Burnout is both psychological and physiological, so recovery needs to be integrated.

Signs of burnout at work

Work burnout doesn’t always look dramatic. Often, it’s a gradual narrowing of capacity until your usual coping strategies stop working.

You may recognise yourself in some of these:

• You can’t switch off after work, even when you’re exhausted

• Sleep feels lighter, broken, or unrefreshing

• Your patience is thinner; irritability or reactivity shows up more easily

• Brain fog, reduced focus, or slower decision-making

• Energy crashes, fatigue or a sense of “getting through the day”

• Work feels heavier than it used to, even when the workload hasn’t changed

• You feel wired, anxious and pressured internally, while appearing “fine” externally

• Recovery takes longer—weekends don’t reset you in the way they once did

If this is familiar, the issue is rarely a lack of insight or motivation. It is often that your stress–recovery system has been overdrawn for too long.

What does work burnout feel like?

People often describe:

• being unable to switch off

• diminishing capacity to keep up in all areas of life

• a loss of emotional  or mental bandwidth

• reduced enjoyment, even when life is objectively good

• effort becoming more costly, mentally and physically

• a growing sense that something has to change, but not knowing what

This is why most advice (“rest more,” “take a holiday,” “do mindfulness”) often doesn’t touch the deeper pattern. Recovery is not just about stopping. It’s about helping your body relearn safety, restore capacity, and become more adaptable again.

Can work burnout make you sick?

Prolonged stress can affect sleep, mood, digestion, immunity, pain, blood pressure, and energy regulation. If you have symptoms that concern you, you should always speak to your GP to rule out medical causes.

In my work, the focus is on supporting the stress-response system and rebuilding recovery capacity, so your body is no longer stuck in a prolonged “high demand” state, and so that psychologically, you can feel steady and back to yourself.

How to deal with burnout at work

Recovery starts with two practical shifts:

1) Reduce load where you realistically can

Not “quit your job” (unless that’s truly necessary), but identify:

• what is non-negotiable vs self-imposed

• where you are carrying responsibility that could be shared

• the hidden pressures you place on yourself 

2) Restore recovery capacity (not just rest)

Many high performers rest, but they don’t truly recover. Recovery means your system can:

• downshift reliably

• return to baseline after stress

• produce energy more consistently

• tolerate pressure without tipping into reactivity or collapse

This is where integrated work helps because we are not relying on psychological insight alone.

How BodyMindBrain Helps you Recover From Burnout

Burnout is both psychological and physiological, so recovery must be integrated.

It lives in:

• The stories you tell yourself

• The habits and roles you’ve learned to occupy

• The way your brain regulates your stress response and allocates attention

• The way your nervous system, mitochondria, and muscles manage energy in response to stress and recovery

That’s why BodyMindBrain offers support in all these areas.

• Understanding the patterns and behaviours that unintentionally feed into and maintain burnout.

• Supporting the body and brain to return to stasis and out of a prolonged stress response.

Burnout recovery treatment: why integrated work matters

Understanding why you feel the way you do is important. But insight alone rarely changes physiology that has been running on high alert for prolonged periods.

The BodyMindBrain difference is a clear, integrated process where:

• you build a full picture of how you got here and how to get back to being yourself

• psychological patterns and physiological states are addressed together

• there is a structured process to create change

• a track record of helping people like you

This is why I do not offer one-off “quick fixes” for burnout. This work requires repetition and consistency.

How to start your Burnout Recovery

Everything starts with an initial session

You don’t need to know exactly what you need yet. We start by meeting 1:1, understanding what’s been happening for you, and beginning the work in session.

Important: Ongoing work is weekly. This weekly rhythm is the minimum effective dose for real adaptation in recovery, regulation, and performance.