14. The Burnout Tipping Point
How do you know when you're headed for burnout?
It's a question I hear from clients—and the one that matters most to those of us who've been there before.
We're the ones who want to catch the warning signs early. We know what's at stake. We know what happens when you miss them.
This episode is about recognizing your burnout tipping point before you go over the edge—and understanding that a tipping point can tip back in your favor if you catch it in time.
In This Episode:
The difference between a bad day and early burnout warnings
Your earliest warning signs that burnout is approaching
Why loss of interest in special interests is a critical red flag
How energy debt compounds from masking, context switching, and operating at capacity
The first step to course-correcting before reaching the point of no return
Connect With Me:
22 CLIENTS IN TWO WEEKS
During a busy contract season, I woke up Friday completely wiped after three back-to-back days of clients. All I could do was lay on the couch all weekend—Friday stretched into Saturday, into Sunday.
At first, I blamed the heat. The hard kombucha from Thursday night. Normal Friday exhaustion.
But then I realized: I'd seen 22 people in two weeks. The previous busy season, I'd handled a similar load beautifully. What was different?
That time, my contract work was the only thing on my plate. I'd paused everything else—my own projects, podcast, private clients—and used all my off time purely for rest.
This time, I was trying to do it all:
Contract clients
Building a new podcast
Private clients
House projects creating mental background load
I was experiencing energy debt from operating at capacity for too long:
Masking energy from back-to-back new-client interactions
Context switching between multiple work streams
No recovery buffer between high-demand periods
The hard kombucha made it worse, but my nervous system had hit the wall
This was my warning. My turnaround point.
RECOGNIZING THE WARNING SIGNS
When I looked back at the days before the crash, the signs were there:
The sleep signal: Falling asleep mid-afternoon after sessions—something that almost never happens since starting ADHD meds. That was my body giving me data.
Loss of joy: I wasn't enjoying client sessions anymore. I'd think "here we go again" when someone asked something I'd answered a hundred times. Clients could sense my depletion even though I was still doing good work.
No interest in special interests: Not even my plants. When that happens, something's seriously wrong.
BAD DAY VS. BURNOUT WARNINGS
A bad day has these characteristics:
You bounce back after rest
Special interests still spark some joy
You can identify a specific trigger (period, lack of sleep, stressful event)
Recovery happens within 24-48 hours
Burnout warning signs compound over days/weeks:
"Flat on the couch" recovery mode extending from hours into days
Loss of joy in work that usually fulfills you
Multiple days in a row of feeling flat or overwhelmed
Needing entire weekends just to recover from the workweek
Quality of your work declining even though you're trying hard
The real question isn't "how do I tell the difference?" It's "how do I take each signal seriously and adjust?"
Warning signs don't have to turn into burnout. It's what we do with them that determines what happens next.
MY LITMUS TEST
1. Loss of excitement about special interests is my litmus test. If I'm not even interested in my plants anymore, something's amiss.
Special interests can help bring us out of burnout—but we often need to stabilize and have lots of rest before we can feel a spark again for them.
2. When I'm truly at a turning point, everything feels overwhelming:
Even small tasks feel impossible
Peopling feels unbearable
Every sensory input escalates to nails-on-a-chalkboard level
I can't stomach the smell of cooking food or feel the seams of my clothes
When filling my water mug feels like too much, when someone asking me a question feels impossible to answer, and when that continues into the next day and the next—that's when I know.
GATHERING DATA
This is a tipping point—which means it can tip back in the other direction.
Your burnouts aren't your fault. They're the fault of a system that pushes us in that direction without giving us the knowledge to course-correct. But recognizing the warning signs puts power back in your hands.
Next episode, we'll talk about what to do with these warning signs. For now, the most important thing is gathering the data.
If you've hit a big burnout before, think back to what preceded it. What led up to it that you can now recognize as a trigger?
A big transition like a move
Putting in long hours and pushing through discomfort
Multiple things happening at once in your life
A breakup, loss, or shift in living situation
Regular life you'd been muscling through until you finally couldn't anymore