Tired, but You Can’t Stop

We live in a culture that doesn’t so much demand as it does seduce - coaxing us into endless self-improvement, making it feel as though every next achievement, every better habit, every small optimisation might finally bring peace.

Often it’s not the lash of an external whip that drives us, but the quiet demands of an inner voice — carried as if it were our own — urging us to do better, be better, do more.

And when exhaustion hits, it’s not just from doing too much — it’s from being the one who’s supposed to be able to do it all. The self as a project. A constant act of production. Even rest becomes a goal.

Burnout isn’t just overwork. It’s a collapse of meaning. It’s the loneliness of being endlessly available, hyperconnected, yet unseen.

Therapy doesn’t ask you to fix yourself. It invites you to pause. To feel your limits. To question what you’ve internalised. To stop performing and start being.

It's one of the few places you can show up undone, unrehearsed, as you are. You don’t have to do more. You don’t have to be more.

And that can be the beginning of something more real.

For more on the themes behind this reflection, see 'The Burnout Society' by Byung-Chul Han