Attuned · Dispatches from the field
You rested. So why are you still this tired?
Maybe you know this one.
You finally take some time off. You sleep in. You read by the water, or you lie on the couch and do nothing at all, and somewhere around day four your shoulders finally come down from your ears.
Then you go back. By Tuesday afternoon your jaw is tight again. By Wednesday there's a familiar weight in your chest when you open your laptop. And a quiet voice asks: what is wrong with me? I just rested.
If that's you, I want to say this gently. There may be nothing wrong with you at all.
I know this one from the inside.
When my mom was nearing the end of her life, I was working in a business development role where I felt I had to keep proving my worth. So I kept going. I kept showing up, kept pushing, kept telling myself I could hold it all.
I couldn't, not really. My body knew long before I was willing to listen. In the end I left the role, and it meant I could spend more time with her. The people we love are with us for a limited time, and I'm so glad I spent that time with her.
What I wish is that I'd listened to my body, and my heart, sooner, instead of pushing myself so far past what I could cope with.
Being kind to myself is something I'm still learning. Maybe that's why I wanted to write to you about this.
We tend to think of burnout like a battery. Run it down, charge it back up. But for a lot of people, the tiredness isn't only about how much they're doing. It comes from living every day with something that doesn't fit.
Maybe it's nodding along in meetings to things you don't believe in. Maybe it's being responsible for outcomes you have no real say over. Maybe you pour yourself into the work and it lands in silence. Or maybe it's that quiet sense that the rules are different for some people than for others.
A holiday can't touch any of that. You come back rested into the same situation, and your body picks up right where it left off.
Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter, who have studied burnout longer than almost anyone, found six places this kind of strain tends to build. I made a little map of them for you.
Here's the part I love, and the reason I do this work. Your body usually knows which one it is before your mind does.
The tightness in your chest is information. So is the knot in your stomach on Sunday night, and the way your breath goes shallow when a certain name appears in your inbox. None of it is weakness. It's your body being loyal to you, trying to tell you something you haven't had the time, or the safety, to hear yet.
I don't want to pretend that listening to your body fixes everything. It won't make an impossible workload reasonable or a stretched team bigger. Those things are real, and they aren't yours to fix alone. But it can help you see more clearly what's actually wearing you down, and give you enough steadiness to say it out loud, ask for something different, or make a choice you've been putting off.
Try this week
A gentle check-in
Find five quiet minutes. Rest a hand somewhere that feels comforting, on your chest or your belly.
Then read the six areas slowly, one at a time, and just notice. Does anything tighten? Does your breath change? Is there one you'd rather skip past?
You don't have to do anything with what you find. Just let yourself know it, as kindly as you would for someone you love.
If you lead a team, you could ask them the same thing: which of these feels heaviest right now? Then listen, without rushing to fix it.
If you'd like some company figuring out what your body is trying to tell you, you can book a free call with me. And if you'd like more letters like this one, Attuned arrives in your inbox from time to time.
Warmly,
Deborah
Coaching is not therapy or medical care.