I had a fascinating conversation on my podcast a few weeks ago, and I wanted to write about it here today. And the topic is burnout!

Interestingly, burnout is often treated as a personal shortcoming of sorts. When someone says they have gone through burnout or are burned out, a first thought might be, “How could this person be so out of touch with themselves?”

Frighteningly, the idea may bring up judgmental thoughts, like it’s a sign that you couldn’t keep up, didn’t manage your time well, or somehow failed to be resilient.

But what if burnout is not a breakdown at all? What if it’s a message?

In a recent episode of Her New Lens, I sat down with burnout recovery coach and facilitator Jennifer Bassman to explore burnout from a very different perspective. Her personal experience with burnout led to an awakening and a deeper knowing of herself.  This fueled her personal growth and a new passion for helping others overcome (or, better yet, prevent!) their experience of burnout, too.

This conversation was not about hustle culture solutions or surface-level self‑care. It was about understanding why burnout happens, how it shows up long before we notice it, and how learning to see through a new lens can change everything.

Burnout Doesn’t Arrive All at Once

One of the most important things Jennifer shared is that burnout rarely has a single moment of arrival. It builds quietly.

You know that feeling where you think it’s always just one thing? It reminds me of the iceberg analogy. We see only the tip of the iceberg, but we cannot visualize the enormous ice formation just below sea level. This is how I was visualizing burnout during our conversation.

Stress accumulates beneath the surface while our coping mechanisms keep us functioning — until they don’t. Many women don’t recognize burnout until something breaks: their energy, their relationships, their health, or their sense of joy.

Jennifer described her own burnout as a slow erosion rather than a dramatic collapse (although she does share a story about her collapse too, on the show):

• Constant exhaustion
• Cynicism replacing humor
• Creativity drying up
• Relationships becoming strained or disintegrating
• Fear and irritability becoming the norm

What made it even harder was that, at the time, burnout wasn’t widely discussed. The message she received was familiar to many women: This is just how it is. Push through.

Side note: We don’t have enough support for women and people to understand themselves and support themselves as they navigate truly insurmountable workloads.

Common Warning Signs Women Often Dismiss

I have to say this was probably the most enlightening part of our conversation. Together, we discussed that burnout is not just about work. It spills into every area of life — mood, personality, relationships, and identity. Jennifer highlighted several early warning signs that are often overlooked or minimized, especially by women:

• Personality changes — less laughter, less playfulness, more reactivity
• Irritability and mood swings that feel out of character
• Loss of passion for things you once enjoyed
• Social withdrawal from people who used to refill your energy
• Heightened emotional reactivity and zero patience

Many women explain these away as hormones, stress, or “just a bad phase,” missing the deeper message their system is sending.

The Deeper Roots of Burnout

A powerful moment in Jennifer’s recovery came when she realized that burnout wasn’t caused solely by her workload. It was driven by the lens through which she had been living.

She discovered that people‑pleasing and perfectionism were quietly shaping her choices, expectations, and self‑worth. These patterns created impossible internal standards and constant self‑pressure, even when things looked successful on the outside.

While talking to her, I could see how we can get so identified and caught up in our endless external demands that we can just lose contact with our true selves and the essence of who we are. This disconnect makes us feel even worse.

Burnout, in this way, wasn’t about doing too much.  It was about being in constant self‑override, but she didn’t even understand at the time.

This is where burnout stops being a productivity problem and becomes a relationship issue: a relationship with yourself.

Why Rest Alone Isn’t Enough

One of the biggest myths about burnout is that rest alone will fix it.

While rest is important, Jennifer emphasized that burnout recovery requires addressing root causes,  not just symptoms. Vacations, sleep, and time off help temporarily, but if the underlying patterns remain, burnout returns.

True recovery begins with awareness:

• What specifically triggers your stress response?
• Where do you override your own needs?
• Which expectations are silently draining you?

This kind of insight allows you to interrupt burnout before it fully takes hold.

The Role of Support and Connection

This was another heartfelt part of our conversation. The feeling of being disconnected and alone played a major role in Jennifer’s burnout. Another crucial piece of Jennifer’s journey was realizing how isolated she had become.

Burnout often shrinks our world. We withdraw, feel misunderstood, and stop reaching for support — even when connection is exactly what we need.

Rebuilding support networks, asking for help, and allowing ourselves to be seen are not signs of weakness. They are acts of strength.

Burnout thrives in isolation. Healing happens in connection.

A Lens Shift: Mental Strength vs. Mental Toughness

Toward the end of our conversation, Jennifer offered a powerful lens shift: one that reframes how many women approach stress.

Jennifer’s recommended lens for us: The lens of mental strength. Mental strength isn’t about pushing harder — it’s about seeing more clearly.

She distinguishes between mental toughness and mental strength:

• Mental toughness is about pushing through at all costs. It suppresses emotion and relies on endurance. While sometimes necessary, it is not sustainable.
• Mental strength is about self‑trust, emotional regulation, and solution‑focused awareness. It allows you to know when to soften and when to stand steady. Based on her description, there is greater adaptability in terms of mental strength. She describes it more as a superpower and an ability to work through things with an integrated approach.

Mental strength doesn’t demand constant resilience. It honors the full human experience.

According to Tess Kilwein, Ph.D., “Mental strength encompasses cognitive and emotional skills that enable individuals to function effectively, even in stressful situations. Unlike mental toughness, which focuses on perseverance at any cost and has its place in particularly high-performance scenarios, mental strength emphasizes long-term coping skills and prioritizes overall well-being. Mental strength is also closely linked with mental resilience, which refers to the ability to recover and return to a pre-crisis state while recognizing the need for rest and recuperation.”

Burnout as an Invitation

When viewed through a new lens, burnout is not a failure or flaw. It is a signal.

It invites us to examine:

• The standards we’ve been living by
• The expectations we carry
• The ways we relate to ourselves under pressure

Small awareness shifts can change everything. When you listen instead of override, burnout becomes a doorway — not an endpoint.

If this conversation resonated with you, I invite you to sit with what stood out to you. Journal about it. Notice where it shows up in your own life. And if you’re navigating a season of transition and would like support in exploring your own lens, you’re always welcome to connect.

Burnout is not asking you to become tougher.

It’s asking you to see yourself more clearly.

From her site:

Jennifer Bassman is a small-business owner, keynote speaker, best-selling author, and expert in burnout recovery and stress management.

She is also obsessed with dogs. Yours, hers… all of them!

Jennifer battled her burnout for more than three years. She spent the next decade researching effective burnout recovery and stress management options that specifically address the physical and emotional conflicts that women face.

Jennifer has coached hundreds of women through burnout recovery using her trademarked formulas for burnout recovery and boundary creation, written two books – Stop Being A Doormat and Unstuck & Unstressed, as well as given thousands of women that initial glimmer of hope that kickstarts the courage to unlock their fullest potential.

Learn more about Jennifer Bassman here.

You can also watch or listen to our conversation here.