Is It Grief or Burnout?
Some women walk into therapy looking like they’ve been carrying a cathedral on their backs.
Not crying. Not falling apart. Just… collapsing inward in a way that’s almost invisible until you know what you’re looking for.
They usually say:
“I think I’m burnt out.”
Burnout is the socially acceptable word for falling apart.
Burnout is the way women apologize for suffering.
But the longer I sit with women—high-achieving, sensitive, perfectionistic, emotionally over-responsible women—the more I see that what they’re calling burnout is actually something older, deeper, and more haunting.
It’s grief.
Not the grief of death.
The grief of absence.
The grief of never.
The grief that hides in the body because it was never safe to name it.
What Burnout in Women Really Looks Like (And Why It’s Often Disguised Grief)
There’s a version of burnout that looks almost exactly like heartbreak.
Not romantic heartbreak—soul heartbreak.
The heartbreak of always being the one who shows up.
The one who keeps the emotional machinery running.
The one who learned to take responsibility for everyone else’s feelings before she even learned how to locate her own.
Women like this aren’t exhausted because they “do too much.”
They’re exhausted because they’ve been asked to be more than human since childhood.
And no yoga class or three-day weekend is going to fix that.
Hidden Grief in High-Achieving Women: The Loss That Never Had a Name
There’s a kind of grief that moves through the body like fog: slow, quiet, unavoidable.
It’s the grief of:
growing up without emotional safety
performing adulthood before childhood ended
being the strong one long before you were strong
wanting to be held but never daring to need it
being loved for your usefulness instead of your being
This grief doesn’t come with a dramatic story.
It comes with dimming.
A light that’s still on but flickering.
Women come to therapy whispering,
“I don’t feel like myself anymore.”
But the self they’re talking about is not the adult.
It’s the child-self, the dream-self, the one who was abandoned so they could survive.
That’s the self that’s burnt out.
That’s the self that’s grieving.
Grief vs Burnout: The Real Difference (And Why Women Confuse Them)
Burnout says: I’ve given too much.
Grief says: I never received enough.
Burnout is overwhelmed.
Grief is empty.
Women confuse the two because our culture makes room for burnout but punishes grief—especially grief without an obvious cause.
So women do what they’ve always done: they stay silent.
They keep functioning.
They assume the problem is their resilience, their boundaries, their schedule.
But beneath the burnout is the deeper truth:
You’re grieving the life, the love, the tenderness you didn’t get.
Why Sensitive, Competent Women Carry the Most Invisible Grief
Here’s the paradox: the women who feel the most deeply are often the ones who hide it best.
They learned early that their sensitivity was “too much.”
So they became extraordinary instead.
Hyper-capable. Emotionally literate. Self-sustaining.
The world praises this.
Meanwhile, their bodies keep the score—exhaustion, insomnia, numbness, migraines, anxiety, or a chronic sense of being flooded and alone.
These women look fine.
They are not fine.
They’re grieving.
They just don’t know that’s what this is.
Depth Psychotherapy for Women Who Are Exhausted in a Way Sleep Can’t Fix
In depth therapy, the real story appears slowly, sideways, without announcement.
After the talk about work and caretaking and being overwhelmed, something tiny slips through:
“I don’t think anyone has ever really cared for me.”
“I’m tired of being the strong one.”
“I never learned how to rest without feeling guilty.”
These aren’t complaints. They are confessions.
They’re the doorway back to the part of you that’s been waiting to be seen.
This is where the work begins: honoring the grief you didn’t know was grief.
Letting your body finally tell the truth.
Letting the strong one inside you crumble in a way that’s safe, held, human.
Healing the Exhaustion: What Happens When Grief Is Finally Allowed to Speak
Healing doesn’t look like “feeling better.”
It looks like:
softening a ribcage that’s been braced for decades
letting your voice tremble instead of staying polite
resting without apology
recognizing the child-self who still lives inside your exhaustion
relearning tenderness as a birthright instead of a risk
It’s not linear.
It’s not pretty.
It’s not optimized.
But it’s real.
Grief metabolized becomes aliveness.
Exhaustion acknowledged becomes capacity.
The self that was abandoned becomes the self that returns.
This is the work women do in depth therapy.
And it is sacred.
If You’re Wondering Whether It’s Burnout or Grief, Here’s the Truth
If your exhaustion feels ancient,
if your sadness doesn’t have a clear reason,
if you’ve been strong for too long,
if the word “burnout” doesn’t quite fit—
You might be grieving something you never got to have.
And you don’t have to untangle it alone.
I offer therapy for women—especially the sensitive, the over-functioning, the ones who feel too much—who are ready to stop performing strength and start telling the truth.
In Oakland or online across California.
One human to another.
No pretending.
You deserve a place to set the cathedral down.