Reframing exhaustion as biology, not failure.
I know burnout well.
For me, it often showed up as a pattern of over-giving and pleasing, saying yes when I had no capacity, smoothing over conflict, carrying too much. On the surface, it may have looked like dedication. Inside, I was slowly coming apart.
Eventually, the cycle became familiar, urgency then over-functioning then collapse. I would push until my system couldn’t keep going, then retreat into exhaustion, fog, or numbness. Often this collapse was timed at the end of a big project or contract, and I found myself off the beaten track in nature reccuperating till the next big, wicked design project.
As Tricia Hersey writes in Rest Is Resistance: “You are not a machine. Stop acting like one.” (Her Rest Deck are excellent by the way.)
For much of my career, I worked with communities at risk — homelessness, disability, mental health. Complex and chronically under-resourced spaces. I cared a lot, and this took its toll. For a long time, I thought this was just “who I was” — or worse, that it was some kind of weakness. Later I came to understand that what I was experiencing was my nervous system doing its job.
Burnout is biology
Burnout is not simply about workload or poor time management. From a nervous system perspective, it’s what happens when we get stuck in cycles of protection.
Urgency (sympathetic fight/flight): running on adrenaline, pushing, striving
Collapse (dorsal shutdown): exhaustion, depletion, withdrawal
Fawn (pleasing): over-accommodating, abandoning yourself to keep the peace
Our nervous system is trying to keep us safe, but the cost is enormous. Creativity shrinks. Relational capacity reduces. We lose access to imagination, presence, and care, the very things most needed in times of complexity.
Why burnout matters for change work
These patterns don’t just play out in individuals, they also ripple through whole teams and organisations.
I’ve seen this play out over and over in teams and organisations. People who care deeply about their work begin to run on empty. Eventually they can’t bring the same imagination, energy, or care to the table. Instead, adaptive survival strategies start to shape culture itself. Urgency is rewarded as commitment. Withdrawal is misread as disengagement. Conflict is framed as personality differences, when at its core it is nervous system survival.
When nervous system survival becomes the culture, the costs ripple far beyond the individual.
The cost is huge:
Collaboration breaks down
Innovation flatlines
Trust erodes
People leave
Burnout isn’t just an individual health issue, it’s a systemic culture issue.
Nervous System Literacy … an antidote?
So what do we do? We start by shifting our lens.
This is where nervous system literacy can change everything.
It can give us a way to:
Recognise early signals before collapse
Build practices of return and repair
Design rhythms and environments that support nervous system health
Create cultures that sustain creativity and collaboration instead of draining them
When we begin to see burnout not as a personal flaw but as a nervous system signal, new possibilities open up. We can respond with care instead of blame. We can design for regulation, not just productivity.
Reflection: Listening for early signals
Take a quiet moment and think about the last time you felt burnout creeping in.
What signals did your body give you first?
Was it tension in your jaw? A racing mind? A sudden urge to withdraw? Fatigue?
What helped you to recover?
What would it look like to notice those signals sooner next time?
Simply listening is a first step. Awareness creates choice.
Coming Up Next
We’ll next explore Co-Regulation, the nervous system between us. Because burnout isn’t just shaped by what’s happening in your body. It’s also shaped by the nervous systems you’re in relationship with every day.
