I Didn't Realize I Was Burnt Out Until My Body Forced Me to Stop

The first sign was my hands shaking while I poured coffee.

I didn't think much of it. I'd been tired for months—maybe years, honestly—but tired was normal. Everyone I knew was tired. We wore it like a badge of honor, competing over who slept less, who worked later, who was more dedicated. I thought the trembling was just caffeine on an empty stomach.

Then I couldn't remember simple words. I'd be mid-sentence in a meeting and suddenly the word "budget" or "deadline" would just vanish from my brain. I'd stand there, mouth open, grasping for something that should've been automatic. My coworkers laughed it off. "Too much on your plate," they'd say, like it was charming.

It wasn't charming. It was terrifying.

I was 29 and working as a project manager at a marketing agency. Sixty-hour weeks were standard, but I'd pushed myself to seventy, sometimes eighty. I wanted the promotion. I wanted to prove I deserved to be there. Every time my boss emailed at 11 PM, I responded within five minutes. Every time someone needed help on a weekend, I said yes. I couldn't remember the last time I'd taken a full day off without checking my laptop.

"You're so dedicated," people told me. I believed them. I thought dedication was supposed to hurt.

The breaking point came on a Tuesday. Nothing special about the day. I was at my desk, staring at a spreadsheet that might as well have been written in another language. My vision kept blurring. My chest felt tight, like someone was sitting on it. I told myself to push through—I just needed to finish this one report, then I could rest.

I don't remember falling. I just remember waking up on the floor of my office with three coworkers standing over me, one of them on the phone with 911.

At the hospital, they ran every test imaginable. Heart? Fine. Brain? No issues. Blood work? Normal. The doctor, a woman probably in her fifties with kind eyes, sat down next to my bed and asked me a question nobody had asked in years: "When's the last time you felt rested?"

I started crying. Not because I was upset, but because I genuinely couldn't remember. Two years? Three? I'd been running on fumes for so long that exhaustion felt like my default state. I didn't even know what "rested" was supposed to feel like anymore.

"Severe burnout," she said gently. "Your body just shut down because you wouldn't let it rest voluntarily."

I thought burnout was something you could push through. I thought it was just being really tired, and if you were tough enough, disciplined enough, you could work past it. I didn't realize burnout isn't laziness or weakness. It's a medical condition. It's your body's emergency brake when you refuse to slow down.

The doctor signed me off work for three weeks. I panicked. Three weeks? I had deadlines, meetings, projects that depended on me. "They'll survive," she said flatly. "You might not if you go back now."

The first week off, I did nothing but sleep. Fourteen, sixteen hours a day. My body was collecting a debt I'd been accumulating for years. The second week, I started feeling human again, but also crushing guilt. I was letting people down. I was being irresponsible. The voice in my head that pushed me to work was screaming that I was weak, that I was failing.

But I was also starting to notice things I'd forgotten existed. The way morning light looked through my bedroom window. The taste of food when I actually sat down to eat it instead of shoveling it in at my desk. The fact that my hands had stopped shaking.

When I went back to work, I had a conversation I'd been too afraid to have before. I told my boss I couldn't keep working like this. I needed boundaries. Reasonable hours. Actual weekends. I was prepared for pushback, maybe even for losing my job.

She looked surprised. "I didn't realize you were struggling," she said. "You always seemed fine. Why didn't you say something?"

That question haunted me. Why didn't I say something? Because I thought suffering in silence was professionalism. Because I thought if I admitted I was drowning, it meant I wasn't good enough. Because everyone around me seemed to be handling it, so I assumed the problem was me.

I learned later that three other people on my team were also burnt out. We'd all been hiding it, all performing fine-ness while falling apart inside.

I'm 32 now. I work at a different company with sane hours and a boss who asks if I'm okay when I seem off. I take my full lunch breaks. I don't check email after 6 PM. When I'm tired, I rest instead of reaching for another coffee and pretending I'm fine.

Some people think I'm less ambitious now. Maybe I am. But I'm also still here, still functional, still able to remember basic words. That has to count for something.

Here's what nobody tells you about burnout: it doesn't happen all at once. It's a thousand small choices to ignore what your body needs. It's every lunch you skip, every hour of sleep you sacrifice, every weekend you work through. You don't notice you're drowning until you're already underwater.

And your body will only ask nicely for so long. Eventually, it stops asking.

I wish I'd listened to the trembling hands, the forgotten words, the chest tightness. I wish I'd believed that rest wasn't weakness. I wish someone had told me that you can't be dedicated to your work if you're not dedicated to staying alive and healthy enough to do it.

If you're reading this and you're tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix anymore, please stop. Just stop. Whatever you're proving, whoever you're impressing—it's not worth collapsing for.

Your body is trying to tell you something. Mine had to scream before I finally heard it.

Don't wait for the floor.

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