Early Burnout Signals: How to Rest Before You Hit the Wall

Listen to Episode 44: Early Burnout Signals: How to Rest Before You Hit the Wall

Most of us don't wake up one day completely burned out. But to prevent that, we need to notice subtle signals: normal routines feel harder, patience wears thin, and we start procrastinating on things we usually handle well. In this episode, Blaze dives deep into the early warning signs of burnout that we're taught to dismiss, normalize, or smooth over until it's too late.

She explores why we compare our struggles to "worse" scenarios to convince ourselves we're fine, and how the stigma against rest keeps us pushing until our bodies force us to stop. Blaze offers a compassionate framework for recognizing these signals not as failures, but as information that you need more support. Learn how to build support earlier in the burnout trajectory, reduce inputs without guilt, and practice the "muscle" of rest before you're completely depleted. If you feel like you're on the precipice of a crisis, this conversation is your guide to stepping in with care.

🌿 In this episode we explore:

• The subtle, cumulative signals of burnout that most of us dismiss until it's too late.
• Why normal routines start feeling harder and why patience wears thin when we're depleted.
• How to distinguish between normal fatigue and nervous system depletion.
• Why we compare our struggles to "worse" scenarios to convince ourselves we're fine.
• The stigma against rest and how it keeps us pushing until our bodies force us to stop.
• Practical strategies for building support earlier in the burnout trajectory (not at crisis point).
• How to reduce inputs without guilt and "turn down the dial" on what you're consuming.
• Why rest is a practice that needs to be learned—not just a reward for exhaustion.
• How to recognize when resistance is about overstimulation vs. misalignment.
• The freedom of accepting that you need input to balance output—it's a fact, not a judgment.

Hello friends! This week we're going to talk about rest and about the early signals of burnout because I think most of the time, they're subtle and they're easy to dismiss because they're cumulative.

So what it can look like when you're starting to build up towards these crises, and I definitely have had a few in my life, is that you have these quiet signals such as,

You get up and you're going through your routine and it's a normal routine that you do every day. But things just feel harder than they should. Like you're used to this being pretty easy, but for some reason it just feels like you have resistance at every single aspect of the things that you're doing.

And you may find that you're less patient with others and with yourself. I find that when I'm on the precipice of snapping, it's like I want to yell at my kid for every interruption, like every thought she has.

I'm like, "Why are you speaking so slowly? Why are you here interrupting me playing a game?" Like, I'm not even doing anything important. And I have to question myself, like, why am I so irritated about anything at all coming into my space?

And why do I interpret it as it making my life harder? I think that's the unifying event for me, is realizing that no matter what happens, whether it's someone coming to share their joy or do a phone call with me,

My initial instinct when I'm starting to burn out and I'm feeling tired is that it feels like they're doing it to give me more work to do. And I'm already anticipating that I'll have to give something of myself that I just don't have.

So even if it's a friend calling, I'm like, "Oh God," I don't really want to answer because then I'll have to turn myself on and be more vibrant and awake and positive and whatever it is that I think I need to be for that person in that moment.

And I also want to be clear that this has nothing to do with them and nothing to do with relationships at all.

It really is just like the emotional reaction that happens within me. And I want to kind of normalize it because I think

We are taught to interpret that as like, "Oh, what a terrible thing if you think your friends are calling to bother you or you feel like you need to... be someone different to be with them." And I think that all of us experience that to varying degrees in any interaction and it's normal. So let's not demonize wanting to be there for our friends.

What I am pointing out is when you feel like anything approaching you;

Any request, work, just stuff happening, going on a drive and noticing the traffic is a little bit heavier than usual and that feels like a personal affront to you.

That's usually a sign that we're really just getting depleted. It can also look like procrastinating on things that you normally handle really well.

So if there's a way that you normally get through all of your routines and you're like, "Oh, I have the way that I do stuff and I know that I get all my phone calls done on Monday and it's no big deal," and you find that you've put it off until Tuesday and Wednesday and now it's next week and now it's the week after that and you still haven't replied to those emails and now you have a hundred emails and now it seems even worse.

This is also symptomatic feedback in your life, letting you know that you're starting to run out of energy and you don't have the energy to handle all these things as much anymore.

Also, I want to say that it expresses a lot as avoidance. Like for me, it is like this desire to find the simplest thing to fill my time that requires very little of me so I'm way more likely to actually like pull up Instagram and scroll through it all the time or just pick movies that I don't even care about and have them on and stare at them and do nothing.

I just like want to numb up and check out. And all of that is pointing you to something not being in balance in your life and that needs attention earlier rather than later.

We miss all of these signals because we're taught to say. "I'm fine."

We're taught to be like, "Ah, you know, I'm frustrated by this traffic, but you know what? I'm fine."

Or, you know, "I have put off like doing all this stuff that I needed to do this week but it's not that bad. I'll catch up later." And we also are really prone to comparing what is not a great situation for ourselves with worse burnout scenarios.

We're like, "Well, it's not as bad as that time where I got sick and couldn't go to work," or "I'm not as bad as so-and-so who had a nervous breakdown."

Like we just really love to have that buffer for ourselves and say, "It's not as bad as it could be, so it's fine." Rather than acknowledging that maybe it is a little bad and maybe we could put some attention toward it.

We like to smooth it down, push it down, and normalize everything in effort to continue to be productive or be seen as fully functional, I guess. Like, there's a big stigma against not having enough energy in our society.

Like I think there's a huge stigma against taking as much rest as we want. It's gotten better I think in terms of people allowing themselves to take vacations, but I know that in the early parts of my career,

Nobody took their vacation time. Like it was a sign of you sucking as a human being if you actually were the person who said that they were going to go on vacation more than once, take all of their sick days... my God, who were you? Like, what, do you think you're special?

And that culture has changed, thank goodness. And people are like, no, I deserve to have time to myself and you don't own me as a company. But I think some of that remains.

And we do still feel like when we're here and showing up, we're supposed to show up at our full capacity 100% every single day all the time and if we can't, then it's a problem, so we'll lie about it and pretend that we are able to show up that much or that whatever happened today was an anomaly.

And then it happens again the next day. And then it happens again the next day. And that really sucks.

So let's talk about how we can build in some support earlier in the trajectory of burnout so that it doesn't really have to happen like that.

Because nobody wants to hit the point where your body just shuts down and is like, you know what, I'm tired and I'm not doing it anymore.

Or we have like a mental, emotional, physical breakdown. And we're like, mentally I'm broken and I can't show up without crying anymore so I need a break.

No one wants to get there. I don't want that for you. You don't want that for you. So let's normalize stepping in way earlier at the first signs of distress in the way that we would care for like a tiny infant or like a little tiny seedling that you're planting, like you want to come in and make their life easier.

So we want to come in and make our lives easier too.

So early support when you start realizing that you're avoiding things that you like or you're not doing anything that you want to do anymore.

For me, it looks like saying, "Okay, I recognize that something's going on here, so either I have resistance because the thing that I'm being asked to do is in some way not aligned with who I believe I am or where I want to go."

But if it's actually about just normal everyday routines, I'm like, no, those routines are actually pretty good and about where I want to go. So this must be about actual
overstimulation or physical exhaustion or whatever it is.

So I can kind of identify more easily now, like where is the pushback coming from? Am I resisting something that I like, am I resisting something that's normally easy for me, or am I resisting something that's new and novel and scary?

And those I think require two different answers, and one of them might not point to burn out at all, it might point out stories that we tell ourselves about what we're capable of or what's going to happen. So that's a whole separate topic.

But if you notice that the resistance that you're feeling is just around having to deal with your normal life and having to interact with people in normal ways and you're just wanting to numb out and be left alone.

This is a signal for more rest. And this is a signal that you need more support and more nurturing and not, not more excuses for why it is the way it is or how it's going to get better later, because later isn't going to help you. It's right now that's going to help you.

So this is where you need to start looking at, do I have anything set up in my life that helps me to offload my stress?

Do I have a really supportive evening routine? Do I like how that's going? Could I use more of it right now?

So at this stage in my life, I'm pretty, I know what I like, I know how I like my night time routine to go and how I want to wind down. So I look at it and go, have I been adhering to that really well or do I just need to like really focus on that a little bit more and maybe shift my focus from producing things or having like extra business interactions or extra socializing actions right now and move that energy over to quieter times?

Like, "Ah, maybe what I'm really craving is to have an extra hour before bed to just sit with the lights dimmed and have a really nice cup of tea and read a book." Or maybe I actually want to just still sit out on the porch because it's still really nice out and warm and that feels really nourishing.

So I can look at what is available to me that would allow me to take some time to physically let myself know that I'm turning it down.

And I also think of it in my head too, like how can I turn down the dial on what it is that I think that I'm consuming?

So, so much of burnout feels like everything is overstimulating, like everything coming at you is too much. Even people you love trying to give you attention and be like, "What do you need?" It seems like too much of a demand because you're like, "Stop asking me what I need!" It's like, "I just need less. I need less input. I want you to care, but care a little less loudly." So, when that happens,

Sometimes I'll say to my husband or say to my kid, like, "I just feel like everything has been really loud and I've been doing a lot of things and I know you probably are too. So I honor that and I could really use a very quiet evening. I don't want to participate on the outing this weekend. I hope you guys have a great time. Take some photos." And then I'll stay back and be like, "Oh, what I really needed was a nice long shower."

I wanted to go swimming at the lake or take a walk at the beach, but I'm going to go when I know no one's there. So it's about reducing the inputs.

I think so much of this ties back and forth, like everything is this interrelated web. So your nervous system is getting feedback everywhere. But the good news about that is that when you give your nervous system feedback that you are getting the message and that you do care.

It then kind of journeys back out and lets you interface with everything in a much more positive way. So if I decide I need a break but I need more nature time and I think it would be nice to be out in nature, I think about that and go, "All right, well, where is the least populated zone I could go to where I might actually get what I'm looking for out of it?"

Rrather than another overwhelming event where I'm facing masses of people. So for me, I'm like, well, I gotta go out basically before the sun rises and get my feet in the sand before anyone gets there.

And then I can remind myself, so I actually speak to myself in my head a lot when I'm doing things like this, is to say as soon as I realize that people are arriving and I don't want to be there anymore.

I actively say the sentences in my head, "Hey, Blaze, look at this, we're leaving now. Like, I heard you. We didn't want people and we're leaving the people." Ha ha!

And I'll make it really fun and juicy and swear and have fun and whatever in my head. Have a great time getting away from all the people, because it makes me laugh, because it makes me feel like I'm liberating myself and it makes it more of a game.

I think bringing some levity and humor and lightness is something that's so needed when we're getting overstimulated and often when we're burning out or we've realized that we are and we haven't really dealt with that before.

There's like these questions that we have of Why is this happening to me? I thought I would be able to do more than this. How can I fix it? How can I make it better?

Instead of going, "Well, anyone burns out when they have too much feedback. Anyone eventually can't keep giving away more energy than they've received.

So if you can just accept the fact that all living beings expend energy, but they also take energy. And if you're a caretaker and someone who's always giving energy out, you definitely need to put some back in in order for you to just even continue to work as a functioning system. That's just a fact.

It's not a judgment on how much capacity you have. It's not a judgment on the things that you do. It's just saying, hey, you need more input now that helps you fill back up.

You can't keep putting out energy or having things come at you that you have to interface with and deal with because you just need a break.

So just like when you're thinking of a computer system that's too busy, you need to buffer that down and say, "Okay, I just need a nice hard reboot." Take a rest.

And that's okay. And something else that comes out of these kinds of breaks, rests, taking the time to feel into what's going on

Is that you may find that after taking a break, you're not really sure what to do. And I want to say like that's not wrong.

Some of it is just like your brain truly needs to power down. Your nervous system needs to power down. Your body needs to just power down. And you might not know what you want for a while and that's okay.

I know that when I was ending my tattoo career and I had my health crisis at the end of that, I had to take a really long break and do basically nothing when I had been used to doing everything forever.

I felt so lost and confused and like I didn't know if it was okay that I had no idea what my purpose was or what to even try at that point. And I remember once that the naturopath that I worked with.

She wrote me a prescription. She's like, "You need to take a bath and just sit there for an hour a day." And I was like, "I don't think I can do that." And she's like, "Well, you're gonna have to learn how to do that because you don't know how to stop. You don't know how to rest, and you need to teach your body how to rest."

So I want to offer that to you, too. If you're truly in overwhelm and you're feeling overstimulated and the idea of taking a break also feels overwhelming,

That's okay, it's normal. It will feel better with practice.

And I guess that's what I'm getting at, is that sometimes rest takes just as much practice as doing things all the time. And most of us have spent an entire lifetime learning to do things all the time and be busy all the time and be there for everyone but ourselves all the time.

And so we haven't really practiced the muscle of how to relax and how to tend to ourselves and how to take a break.

But with practice it becomes okay and your comfort level with that goes up.

And finding meaning in it actually goes up as well, even if it's more difficult to articulate because our language is the language of doing and not of being.

But I would love to see us creating more language for that over time.

Yes. So here's where we're at.

So here's what I want to say about all of this is that you definitely don't have to wait until you're depleted or completely exhausted to start taking care of yourself. Even if you're just choosing here and there to give yourself a little bit more time, give yourself a little bit more care and space.

Do something kind for yourself or turn your attention more towards things that are really bringing energy to you. And it can be anything. It could be a creative project, but it could also honestly be, I just want to read the same book I've read 15 times because it's comforting to me. If that's where you're at, go for it, enjoy it, don't feel guilty for it.

It's so important because when we give that back to ourselves, we regain the capacity to be there everywhere else in our lives in the way that we were wanting to be.

And I also want to say that it's okay that this time of year is a slowing down time.

Don't believe the hype, don't believe the ramp up that's about to happen when we're like "woo-hoo, Labor Day, let's all party and do all the things" and also change your wardrobe and all that other stuff.

You'll hear that, but don't take it in as like a capital T truth. It's just kind of happening around you, but your lived reality can be one of like, great, you know, the season is changing and, you know, the activities around us are changing. And for me, I still want to read a book. I still want to put my feet in the dirt. I still want to go for a walk and I want to get together with my friends and enjoy my life. And that's okay.

And it doesn't have to be big and grand and crazy and it doesn't have to be on a scale that makes you want to crawl out of your skin. All of that is okay.

I am sending you so much love and care, and if you're looking for more support in how to be with your emotions and start building back from burnout,

Please come on over to the website or check out the free download for the toolkit which will help you identify what you're feeling and what's going on and give you some first steps to help you feel better.

Have an awesome week and I'll see you next time.

Related Episodes

Series: Burnout Prevention and Rest as Practice Burnout doesn't happen overnight—it builds through subtle signals we often ignore. These episodes explore how to recognize early warning signs, practice rest before depletion, and build support systems that prevent crisis before it hits.

• Ep 43: Decision Fatigue & Nervous System Saturation: How to Restore Before Fall – Understanding how months of novelty deplete capacity and how to simplify before the fall rush.
• Ep 42: When the World Gets Loud: How Sensitive People Can Find Quiet in Summer Chaos – Strategies for managing sensory overload and creating a "quiet oasis."
• Ep 10: Wintering — The Power of Rest and Retreat – Why retreating and slowing down is essential before you can sustainably move forward.
• Ep 05: What if You're Not Broken - Just Tired? – A compassionate look at holiday burnout and the human urge to push through limits.
  

🌿 Want help identifying where you are and finding the support that already exists?

The Living in Rhythm Starter Kit offers grounded tools to help you recognize your current emotional state, understand your nervous system's signals, and uncover the support systems already present in your life. It's a gentle guide to finding clarity and connection when you feel saturated.

Download it here.

🌿 Looking for a deeper, live experience this season?

I'll be hosting an Autumn Equinox gathering on September 23rd — a space to slow down, reflect, and work with the energy of harvest and release in real time. We'll be exploring how to let go of what no longer serves us and prepare for the quiet wisdom of winter.

You can learn more and save your spot here.