It's Not Just You: WHY SO MANY OF US FEEL BURNED OUT RIGHT NOW

You're exhausted. You're anxious. You can't remember the last time you did something that wasn't productive. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice keeps asking: what's wrong with me?

It might not be you.

A couple of years ago, I came across an essay by journalist Kirsten Powers titled The Way We Live in the United States Is Not Normal — and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. In it, she describes a realization formed over years of traveling in Italy and elsewhere in Europe: so much of what Americans accept as inevitable simply isn't.

She writes about how we've normalized GoFundMe campaigns for life-saving medical care. That college can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. That "self-care" has become a billion-dollar industry designed to patch us up just enough to keep functioning inside a system that's grinding us down.

As a therapist, I read that and thought: this is what I see every day in my office.

The system is the problem. Not you.

So much of what brings people to therapy — chronic anxiety, burnout, the sense that no matter how hard you work you're still falling behind — isn't a personal failing. It's often a rational response to an irrational system.

When you're working two jobs to afford basic healthcare, your nervous system will likely become dysregulated. When you haven't taken a real vacation in years because you're afraid of falling behind, your body starts to pay the price. When your entire sense of worth has been tied to productivity since childhood, untangling that takes real work. This isn't weakness. This is what happens to humans under sustained pressure with insufficient support.

So what do we do with that?

We can’t all move to Italy or stop working. But naming the source of the pressure matters — enormously. There's something quietly radical about a person sitting across from me and saying, oh, maybe I'm not broken. Maybe the system is broken and I've been trying to survive it.

That shift doesn't fix your 60-hour work week or your student loans. But it does change how you relate to yourself. It loosens the grip of shame. It creates just enough space to start asking different questions — not "how do I optimize myself to keep up?" but "what would it actually look like to live well inside this?"

That's where therapy comes in. Not as another self-improvement project, not as a productivity hack for your mental health — but as a place to slow down, get honest, and figure out what you actually need. To work with your nervous system rather than against it. To start building a life that feels like yours.

You're not failing at life. You're feeling the weight of a culture that asks too much and gives back too little.

And you deserve support as you navigate that.

If this resonates, I'd love to connect. I'm a licensed therapist in Pasadena, CA, specializing in anxiety, burnout, and life transitions.

Learn more about burnout therapy or schedule a free consultation to talk about what you're experiencing.