What Does Burnout Look Like for Therapists?

Therapists dedicate their lives to supporting others through their most challenging moments, but in the midst of holding space for others, it’s easy to lose sight of our own well-being.

If you’ve been feeling off lately—emotionally, physically, or even spiritually—it’s worth pausing to check in with yourself. Has the nature of this career started to take a toll on you?

What you’re experiencing might be burnout.

Burnout doesn’t mean that you’re failing or that you’re not good at what you do; it’s a natural response to the emotional demands of this deeply impactful work. It often creeps in gradually, making it hard to recognize until the symptoms and weight of your occupation feel overwhelming.

Here are some common signs of burnout that are specific to therapists. If any of these symptoms ring true to you, remember that noticing these signs is the first step toward recuperation. There are steps you can take to remedy these symptoms and get back into a space where you can flourish.

1. Emotional Exhaustion

If you find yourself struggling to empathize with your clients’ emotions or feel drained after sessions, you might be suffering from emotional exhaustion. Even the clients you previously enjoyed working with can sap your emotional energy.

On the other hand, if you have difficulty leaving work at work and keep ruminating about your clients’ problems throughout the day, this can also be a sign of emotional exhaustion and burnout.

2. Depersonalization

You used to find each of your clients’ lives and challenges to be individually important and worth your time, but lately, perhaps you feel detached and even cynical towards your clients. Their concerns seem overly dramatic or unimportant. Depersonalization can leave you feeling numb or indifferent during sessions and is another sign of burnout.

3. Reduced Professional Efficacy

The burden of burnout can lead to reduced professional efficacy. You might be struggling to stay organized or meet your professional goals. Maybe you’re beginning to doubt your effectiveness as a therapist—are you really making a difference for your clients? These seeds of doubt can grow into quite a heavy load.

4. Compassion Fatigue

No matter how much you feel called to counseling, the weight of your clients’ troubles can wear you down. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by clients' trauma and crises, find yourself experiencing secondary traumatic stress from your clients' narratives, or are avoiding certain types of cases or clients to protect yourself emotionally, you could be experiencing compassion fatigue, another symptom of burnout.

5. Physical Symptoms

As a mental health practitioner, you know that emotional burdens and stress can manifest as physical symptoms, but sometimes it’s hard to spot these in ourselves and know how to respond. Physical symptoms of burnout can include:

• Chronic fatigue or difficulty sleeping
• Headaches, muscle tension, or other stress-related ailments
• Increased susceptibility to illness due to a weakened immune system

6. Cognitive Impairments

The mental strain of burnout can also appear in the form of cognitive impairment. Perhaps you have had difficulty concentrating or staying present during sessions, you forget important details about clients, or you’ve had trouble making decisions or solving problems effectively. These are all symptoms of overload that could be burnout related.

7. Loss of Interest or Passion

Remember when you used to love what you were doing for your clients? When did that change? Burnout can look like a loss of enthusiasm for therapy, dreading client sessions or other aspects of your work, or feeling like this job is just another job instead of something meaningful.

8. Boundary Issues

Helpers like us are inclined to want to help as many people as possible… neglecting our own personal boundaries and needs. If you’ve consistently overextended yourself by taking on too many clients or working excessive hours and struggle to say no to requests for extra time or support, burnout is a possible outcome. These boundary issues can also make you feel resentful toward clients when they need you.

9. Isolation

The day-in and day-out intense demands of our profession can drain our energy for anyone else, even healthy relationships with colleagues, friends, and family members. If you find yourself withdrawing from people, avoiding supervision or consultation out of fear of judgment or criticism, or maybe you just feel alone in your struggles, you could be isolating yourself as a burnout coping mechanism.

10. Increased Use of Coping Mechanisms

Speaking of coping mechanisms! Have you been relying on your coping mechanisms more than usual? If you’ve turned to unhealthy coping mechanisms like overeating, substance use, or excessive screen time to deal with the burdens of your work, this is another sign of burnout.

Strategies to Help You Prevent and Address Burnout

It’s likely that many if not all therapists experience symptoms of burnout during the length of their careers. But that doesn’t mean it’s a side effect of our occupation that we have to live with. To prevent and address burnout, follow these guidelines:

• Self-Care: You know what good self-care looks like for yourself, but how disciplined are you about practicing it? Define and establish a regular self-care practice that is tailored to your personal needs, and then stick to it!
• Peer Support: You aren’t alone. Really. Just ask any one of your colleagues. Engage with others in your profession for supervision or informal support.
• Work-Life Balance: Here’s another one that feels easier said than done. You are the only one who can establish clear boundaries between work and your personal life… and enforce them. Remember that a “yes” to one more client is also a “no” to something or someone else in your life. 
• Continuing Education: If your practice feels too routine and dull, consider refreshing your skills and techniques to reignite passion and confidence.
• Therapy for Therapists: This is challenging work! Consider setting up your own personal therapy sessions to process your stress and emotions.

Make a Change in Your Practice: Try Intensives

Maybe it’s time to make a change beyond these adjustments to your routine and practice. Some therapists have chosen to offer intensives for their clients, which changes the workflow, disrupts the rhythm of traditional counseling, and reduces the number of clients you meet with on a regular basis. 

Intensive therapy allows counselors to go deep with one client for several days of impactful, one-on-one sessions instead of spreading themselves thin, trying to meet the needs of many clients over the course of weeks or months at a time. These longer sessions allow you to concentrate your client hours into fewer days, freeing up the rest of your schedule for personal time, family time, or professional development.

By focusing on a single client or family for an extended session, you can achieve meaningful breakthroughs in a shorter timeframe. Intensives also allow you to charge premium pricing, giving you the opportunity to earn more while working fewer hours.

Are you ready to offer intensives? Access the Intensive Readiness Self-Assessment to gauge whether intensives are the right next step for you.

Whatever you do, take care of yourself. The world needs more big-hearted, compassionate counselors like you!