The Silent Burnout: Why Most People Miss the Warning Signs During Life Upheavals

The Transition Trap: Why Smart, Capable People Burn Out Without Realising It

What this is: An honest look at why silent burnout sneaks up during life’s earthquakes, when you’re too busy surviving to notice you’re running on fumes.

What this isn’t: Another “practice self-care” listicle or suggestion to take a bubble bath whilst your life implodes. No platitudes, no one-size-fits-all advice.

Read this if: You’re going through something massive (divorce, illness, loss, career upheaval) and you’re functioning but suspect you’re one bad day away from completely falling apart. Or you’ve already fallen apart and want to understand why.

5 Key Takeaways

1. Burnout during transitions can look like competence – you’re getting things done, which is precisely why no one (including you) sees you’re drowning.
2. Your nervous system doesn’t distinguish between “good” and “bad” stress – even positive changes like a new relationship or career pivot deplete the same reserves as grief and loss.
3. The signs are there, but they masquerade as transition symptoms – insomnia “because of the stress,” irritability “because of everything going on,” and brain fog “because there’s so much to think about.”
4. Recovery requires more than rest – it demands a fundamental recalibration of how you’re moving through this chapter, not just a weekend off.
5. Catching burnout early in a transition can transform the entire experience – instead of limping into your new chapter depleted, you can actually build something sustainable and meaningful.

Introduction: The Exhaustion No One Names

During major life transitions, you may not realise that whilst you’re busy being brave, capable, and “handling it,” your body is quietly keeping score.

You think you’re just tired because of the divorce paperwork. You assume you can’t focus because grief is disorienting. You believe the insomnia is temporary, the irritability justified, and the constant low-level anxiety simply part of navigating something hard.

What if I told you it’s burnout, and you’ve been running on an empty tank for months without realising it?

I’ve spent 20 years as a physician with a particular interest in stress management, another 15 hosting transformational retreats along the Camino de Santiago, and I’ve written eight books on navigating life’s hardest moments. The pattern I see most often isn’t dramatic collapse, it’s this: intelligent, resourceful people grinding themselves down to nothing whilst calling it “coping.”

This article will help you recognise the burnout hiding in plain sight, understand why life upheavals create perfect conditions for it, and give you actual strategies to address it before you lose yourself entirely in the chaos of change.

The Woman Who Mistook Burnout for Strength

Sarah Mitchell’s Unravelling

Sarah Mitchell had always been the reliable one. The strong one. The “Don’t worry, I’ve got this” one. So when her 22-year marriage ended, she naturally decided she would handle it the same way she handled everything else in life: efficiently, methodically, pragmatically, and without any unnecessary emotional spillage.

Falling apart, after all, was for other people.

The first three months dissolved into a beige haze of solicitors’ offices that smelled of stale coffee and old carpet, the kind that makes your shoes stick slightly as you walk. Estate agents with aggressively cheerful smiles swept through her house, flinging open curtains she hadn’t touched in months, letting in light that felt less “uplifting” and more “blinding bright.” Her teenage daughter’s bedroom door stayed firmly shut. Music leaked out in tinny bursts—bass-heavy, clearly curated to say, Please do not attempt conversation.

Sarah did what she did best.

She made lists.

LISTS.

Her desk gradually disappeared under Post-it notes, each one a bright yellow badge of competence.
“Ring pension advisor.”
“Research flats near Sophie’s school.”
“Update will.”
“Cancel joint account.”

The coffee flowed freely—too freely. Her mouth permanently tasted faintly revolting. She woke at 4 a.m. every morning, heart already sprinting ahead of her brain, and reached for her phone to add more tasks to the ever-expanding catalogue titled How to Dismantle a Life in Manageable Steps.

“I’m fine,” became her standard reply. At the school gates. In the Tesco queue. When her sister rang and used that careful voice—the one that pretends it’s just calling for a chat but is absolutely calling to check if you’re still vertical.

And to be fair, Sarah looked fine. She showed up. She got Sophie to counselling appointments. She dealt with the house sale. She started a new job—because nothing says emotional stability like proving you’re still useful. She even joined a gym. Because that’s what you do, isn’t it? Reinvent yourself. Sweat out the grief. Become a shinier, better-toned version of whoever you were before everything fell apart.

What she couldn’t remember was the last time she’d finished a proper meal. Food had become something you grabbed in the car between appointments, or inhaled standing at the kitchen counter at midnight. Sitting down felt dangerously close to admitting defeat. Her clothes hung differently now. Her wedding ring—removed, but still leaving a pale ghost on her finger—had once fit perfectly. Now, when she wore it on her right hand (for reasons involving sentiment and confusion), it slid around like it no longer quite belonged to her.

Six months in, during a completely ordinary Tuesday meeting about utterly forgettable budget reports, Sarah’s vision narrowed. The fluorescent lights went from too bright to too dim in the space of a heartbeat. Her colleague’s voice slowed and stretched, like a cassette being eaten by a tape player. She excused herself, made it to the toilets, and sat on the closed lid shaking so violently her teeth rattled—utterly unable to explain, even to herself, what on earth was happening.

The GP called it a panic attack. Prescribed pills. Suggested “stress management.”

But it wasn’t just stress.

Sarah had been stress-monitoring herself for months, bulldozing through every warning sign her body sent her way. Exhaustion was weakness. Insomnia was normal. That growing sense of being slightly detached from her own life? Oh, that was “just part of the divorce.”

She’d burned out so slowly, so quietly, so competently, that she mistook the flames for warmth.

The Takeaway

Sarah’s story illustrates the central problem: during massive life upheavals, burnout doesn’t announce itself with a bang. It whispers through symptoms you attribute to the situation itself, whilst you keep performing competence until your nervous system simply refuses to cooperate anymore. The very strength that helps you survive the initial shock becomes the thing that prevents you from recognising you’re running yourself into the ground.

Why Life Transitions Can Perfectly Disguise Silent Burnout’s

When “Normal” Stress Becomes Incidious Exhaustion

Major life transitions, whether it’s divorce, bereavement, serious illness, career upheaval, or even positive changes like relocation or remarriage, create a unique environment where burnout thrives undetected. Here’s why:

Your baseline shifts. When everything in your life is changing, you lose the reference point for “normal.” You can’t tell if you’re more exhausted than usual because everything is unusual. That persistent tiredness? You attribute it to the emotional weight of what you’re going through, not recognising it as your body’s distress signal.

The stakes feel too high to stop. During a crisis or major transition, there’s often a sense that if you pause, everything will fall apart. Court dates don’t reschedule themselves. Ill parents need care regardless of how you feel. House sales march forward on their own timeline. The pressure to keep functioning overrides your body’s attempts to slow you down.

Everyone expects you to be struggling, so they miss the signs too. Your support system sees your exhaustion and thinks, “Well, of course she’s tired, she’s going through a divorce.” Nobody questions whether you’re beyond normal stress and into dangerous depletion because the context seems to explain everything.

You’re running on adrenaline disguised as strength. In survival mode, your body pumps out stress hormones that keep you moving. You feel like you’re coping, maybe even thriving under pressure. This can last weeks or months. Then the system crashes, often at the most inconvenient moment, and you’re bewildered because you thought you were doing so well.

The Ripple Effect: Beyond Personal Collapse

Understanding burnout during transitions isn’t just about individual survival, it’s about recognising how your state affects everything and everyone around you.

When you burn out during a major life change, the impact cascades. Your children don’t just deal with divorce; they deal with a depleted parent who’s physically present but emotionally absent. Your colleagues don’t just cover your workload; they absorb your irritability and disengagement. Your friends don’t just support you through crisis; they eventually step back because your capacity for reciprocity has vanished.

But here’s the transformative truth: catching burnout early, acknowledging it, and addressing it properly can shift the entire trajectory. Instead of limping through your transition in survival mode, barely making it to the other side depleted and diminished, you can navigate change whilst building resilience. You can model for your children that it’s possible to face hard things without destroying yourself. You can maintain the relationships that matter because you’re not running on fumes.

In my 15 years of hosting retreats along the Camino de Santiago, I’ve watched dozens of people arrive burnt out from major transitions, unable to see it themselves until they’re removed from the machinery of their daily lives. The transformation isn’t dramatic; it’s subtle. They start sleeping properly. They notice they can focus on a conversation again. They realise they haven’t felt genuine joy in months, maybe years. And in that recognition, they find the space to rebuild differently.

This isn’t just personal recovery. When one person in a family system, workplace, or community stops operating from depletion and starts functioning from a place of sustainable energy, it changes the entire dynamic. It gives others permission to do the same. It breaks the cycle of glorified exhaustion that so many of us have normalised.

Five Mistakes That Intensify Silent Burnout During Transitions

Mistake 1: Treating Symptoms Instead of Addressing Depletion

You take sleeping tablets for the insomnia but don’t question why you can’t switch off. You drink more coffee to power through the fatigue rather than asking why you’re so consistently exhausted. You pop paracetamol for the tension headaches without recognising they’re your body screaming for respite. Burnout isn’t a collection of inconvenient symptoms to manage; it’s a systemic breakdown that requires systemic change.

Mistake 2: Believing You Can “Push Through” Until Things Settle

There’s a pervasive myth that if you just hold on a bit longer, get through this court date, this house move, this treatment cycle, then you can rest. But transitions don’t have clean endings. One phase bleeds into the next. If you’re waiting for permission to stop depleting yourself, you’ll wait forever. The time to address burnout is now, messy middle and all.

Mistake 3: Comparing Your Capacity to Your Pre-Crisis Self

“I used to manage fine on six hours’ sleep.” “I used to be able to juggle work and family without falling apart.” “I used to enjoy seeing friends.” Your previous capacity is irrelevant. You’re operating under entirely different conditions with a nervous system in chronic activation. Stop measuring yourself against who you were and start working with who you are right now.

Mistake 4: Isolating Because You’re “Too Much” for Others

When you’re burnt out, you often withdraw because you feel you have nothing to offer, or you’re afraid of burdening people, or you’re simply too exhausted for social performance. But isolation worsens burnout exponentially. You lose perspective, support, and the reality checks that help you recognise when you’ve normalised the abnormal. Connection, even an imperfect connection, is protective.

Mistake 5: Waiting for External Validation Before Taking Action

You tell yourself you’ll rest when the divorce is final, when you’ve recovered from surgery, when you’ve secured the new job. Or you wait for someone, a doctor, a friend, a partner, to give you permission to stop grinding. But burnout doesn’t respect external timelines, and waiting for validation means you’re prioritising everyone else’s assessment of your needs over your own internal knowing. Trust yourself. You don’t need permission to stop running yourself into the ground.

Intention Setting Exercise: The Energy Audit

This isn’t about adding another task to your list. It’s about clarity.

Step 1: Get a piece of paper. Draw a line down the middle.

Step 2: On the left, list everything currently requiring your energy. Include the obvious (work, childcare, legal proceedings) and the invisible (worrying about your daughter, managing other people’s emotions, maintaining the illusion that you’re fine).

Step 3: On the right, note which items are truly non-negotiable right now versus which you’re doing out of habit, obligation, or fear of judgment.

Step 4: Circle three things you could reduce, delegate, or eliminate in the next seven days.

Step 5: Write this at the bottom: “I am allowed to function at reduced capacity during this transition. Survival is enough. Everything else is optional.”

Step 6: Put it somewhere visible. Read it when guilt creeps in.

The power of this exercise isn’t in perfect execution; it’s in the permission it grants you to assess honestly what’s actually necessary versus what you’re forcing yourself to do because you believe you should.

Further Reading: Five Books on Burnout and Transition

1. Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski

I chose this because the Nagoski sisters brilliantly explain why “just relax” doesn’t work. They detail the physiological reality of stress and offer practical strategies for completing the stress cycle, not just managing symptoms. Essential for understanding why you can’t think your way out of burnout.

2. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

This transformative book explains how trauma and chronic stress live in the body, not just the mind. During major transitions, understanding this connection is crucial. Van der Kolk’s research illuminates why burnout during crisis feels so all,consuming and why traditional talk therapy often isn’t enough.

3. Lost & Found: A Memoir of Grief, Love, and the Brain by Jules Montague

A neuroscientist’s exploration of how the brain processes loss and identity shifts. Particularly valuable for understanding why major transitions scramble your sense of self and deplete cognitive resources in ways that look and feel like burnout.

4. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell

Odell makes a compelling case for reclaiming attention and energy in a culture that demands constant productivity. When you’re in transition, the pressure to “use this time productively” can accelerate burnout. This book offers philosophical and practical permission to simply be.

5. Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey

Hersey frames rest as a radical act, especially for those conditioned to prove their worth through productivity. During transitions, when you feel you must earn your place in your new life, this book challenges the entire paradigm and offers liberation from the grind.

P.S. My book, Embracing Change, in 10 Minutes a Day, offers daily practices specifically designed for people navigating major transitions. It acknowledges the reality that you don’t have hours for self-care routines whilst your life is in upheaval, but you can find 10 minutes to anchor yourself.

The Role of Structured Support: Purpose Pivot Protocol

During a recent storytelling circle, part of my Purpose Pivot Protocol online course, a woman shared that she’d been “coping brilliantly” with her husband’s terminal diagnosis until she found herself unable to remember her daughter’s phone number. Not because of grief, but because her cognitive resources were completely depleted.

The Purpose Pivot Protocol creates structured space for exactly this kind of recognition. It’s not therapy, and it’s not life coaching in the conventional sense. It’s a framework for people in major transition to identify what’s actually happening (including hidden burnout), understand the patterns keeping them stuck, and build a sustainable path forward.

The protocol addresses the reality that during upheaval, you need both practical strategies and deeper work on meaning and direction. You need to understand why you’re burning out (the practical) and who you’re becoming through this transition (the existential). Most approaches offer one or the other. This integrates both.

Five FAQs: What People Are Really Asking About Burnout and Transitions

How do I know if it’s burnout or just normal stress from what I’m going through?

Normal stress ebbs and flows. You have hard days and better days. Burnout is relentless. The key indicators: you can’t remember the last time you felt rested despite sleeping, you’re increasingly cynical or detached from things that used to matter, and you’re getting things done but feel completely disconnected from your own life. If rest doesn’t restore you, it’s likely burnout.

Can I recover from burnout whilst still in the middle of a major transition, or do I need to wait until things settle?

You must address it now. Waiting for circumstances to improve before taking care of yourself is like waiting for the storm to pass before fixing the hole in your roof. You’ll be standing in water up to your knees by the time conditions are “right.” Recovery during transition looks different, it’s about sustainable coping rather than thriving, but it’s absolutely necessary and possible.

Is it selfish to prioritise my burnout recovery when other people need me?

This question itself is a symptom of burnout. You’ve been conditioned to believe your needs are less important than everyone else’s. But here’s the reality: you cannot support others from depletion. You’re not choosing between yourself and them; you’re ensuring you can actually be present and helpful rather than collapsing entirely. It’s not selfish. It’s structural integrity.

What’s the difference between burnout and depression during a major life change?

They often overlap and can trigger each other. Burnout is typically tied to chronic stress and overextension, your body’s response to doing too much for too long. Depression is a mood disorder that affects how you think, feel, and function, often with feelings of hopelessness and loss of interest in everything. You can have both simultaneously. If you’re unsure, see a GP, but don’t dismiss burnout just because you think you’re “just depressed.”

How long does it take to recover from burnout during a life transition?

Frustratingly, there’s no standard timeline. Mild burnout might shift in weeks with proper rest and boundary,setting. Severe burnout can take months or longer, and recovery isn’t linear during ongoing stress. The goal during transition isn’t full recovery to your previous state; it’s building sustainable practices that prevent further deterioration whilst gradually increasing your capacity. Think of it as stabilising rather than curing.

Conclusion: The Wisdom in the Warning

Burnout during major life transitions isn’t a personal failing. It’s information.

It tells you that you’ve been operating beyond your capacity, that the strategies you’ve relied on aren’t sustainable in this new reality, and that something fundamental needs to shift. Not in your circumstances, those might not be within your control, but in how you’re moving through them.

The people who emerge from major transitions truly transformed, rather than just traumatised, are those who learn to listen to their exhaustion instead of overriding it. They recognise that rest isn’t weakness; it’s the foundation for everything else. They understand that you can’t think your way out of a body that’s shutting down, and they give themselves permission to function at reduced capacity without shame.

As author and psychologist Mary Pipher writes: “We don’t heal in isolation, but in community.” Your burnout isn’t something to hide until you’ve solved it privately. It’s part of your transition story, and acknowledging it honestly is often the first step towards genuine transformation.

Your next chapter can be built from rest, recognition, and radical honesty about what you actually need right now, not what you think you should need.

Take the Next Step: The Crossroads Camino Retreat

Sometimes, the only way to truly step out of burnout is to physically remove yourself from the machinery that created it.

My seven-day Crossroads Camino de Santiago hiking retreats in southwest France are designed specifically for people at major life junctures who need space to catch their breath before building what comes next.

You’ll walk ancient paths that slow you down to human pace. We gather in storytelling circles with my Friesian horses, whose presence invites a quality of honesty you might not access elsewhere. We create space for you to rest properly, perhaps for the first time in months, and to begin discerning what your next chapter actually needs to look like.

This isn’t a holiday. It’s not a wellness retreat with spa treatments and affirmations. It’s serious work in a beautiful setting, with someone who understands that rebuilding a life requires first acknowledging how depleted you’ve become. The combination of movement, nature, community, and structured reflection creates conditions for genuine insight, not just temporary relief.

If you’re reading this and recognising yourself, if you’ve been “handling it” whilst quietly falling apart, if you suspect you need more than a weekend off to address what’s happening, this retreat might be exactly what your nervous system needs.