For the exhaustion a holiday doesn't fix. Clinically validated techniques for chronic stress, professional burnout and a nervous system that won't switch off.
Who it's for
The sign that brings most people here is simple: you came back from holiday and by the third day you were exactly where you'd left. Rest no longer repairs anything, because the problem isn't lack of sleep — it's an alarm system left switched on.
Burnout has three components described consistently in the literature: exhaustion (the tank is empty), cynicism (distancing from work and people, as a protective mechanism) and reduced sense of efficacy (the feeling that nothing you do counts). Cynicism is the one that surprises people — many are frightened that they've become cold, without knowing it's a symptom rather than a change of character.
The second large group: people without professional burnout but with chronic stress from elsewhere — a sick parent, an unstable financial situation, a year in which too much accumulated.
Signs it's time
A holiday no longer repairs anything
You wake up tired after 8 hours of sleep
Cynicism or distancing from work and colleagues
Disproportionate irritability at home
Physical symptoms with no medical cause — tension, digestion, headaches
How it works
You start with an honest map of the load: what drains, what restores, and where the balance broke. It's a less pleasant stage than it sounds, because it often shows the problem isn't "time management" but the volume itself.
Then you work on two levels at once. Physiological — regulating the nervous system through concrete techniques: breathing out longer than in, sleep hygiene, movement, real breaks between tasks. These aren't wellness tips; they're interventions on a system stuck in alarm mode.
Behavioural and cognitive — the missing boundaries, the impossible standards, the identity fused with performance. Here, much of the real work is learning a "no" you have never said.
When burnout is tied to a toxic work context, therapy doesn't repair that — but it helps you see clearly and decide.
The first session
The first session takes inventory: your real schedule (not the ideal one), your sleep, what you've given up doing over the past year. The therapist will also check whether it's burnout or depression — they overlap heavily, and the difference changes the treatment. You'll usually leave with one or two regulation techniques to use straight away, because in burnout a small fast win matters: most people arrive here after months of trying to push through.
When it is NOT the right service
If the symptoms point to clinical depression — persistent anhedonia, thoughts of death, an inability to function — that needs psychiatric assessment, not stress-management techniques. Therapy also cannot repair an abusive work context: if the source is a manager who humiliates or a workload impossible for anyone, the work here helps you decide, not endure better. And if the exhaustion has a medical cause — thyroid, anaemia, sleep apnoea — a medical check comes first.
The rough rule: burnout is context-bound. If on holiday, with friends or on a work-free weekend you feel yourself returning a little, burnout is more likely. If the state is identical wherever you are and whoever you're with, and nothing gives pleasure any more, depression is more likely. They overlap often, and a specialist makes the assessment — but the difference changes the treatment.
Do I have to quit my job?
Not necessarily, and it isn't a decision to make at peak exhaustion — at that point every option looks equally impossible. Many cases resolve by changing boundaries, workload or role rather than employer. When the context genuinely is toxic and unchangeable, leaving becomes the healthy option — but you prepare it, you don't do it impulsively.