What Does Burnout Feel Like for Former Athletes Who Push Through Everything
You get home from work, change into workout clothes, and then sit on the edge of the bed for ten minutes completely exhausted, wondering what is wrong with you. Nothing about your day or week feels unusually different, hard or physically taxing. But you’re tired in a way that doesn’t go away with sleep, you’ve been snapping at your partner over small things and the usual motivation you have for working out or getting things done is completely gone. The voice, often shaped by sport culture, shows up to tell you that this is just a lack of discipline and willpower and you need to just get it together and push through. I think many former college athletes can relate to this. What they also relate to is that more often than not, even though they’re tapped out mentally, physically and emotionally, they still find a way to push through and override their system.
As a therapist who works with former athletes across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, I hear a version of this experience almost every week. The term burnout doesn’t even cross your mind. It makes sense that a body trained for years to override fatigue and bodily signals would eventually stop being able to. It also makes sense that the first conclusion we jump to is that it must be a personal failure rather than a physiological one. Burnout in former athletes tends to look different from the version in most articles, because the body carrying it was trained to keep performing no matter what.
Key Takeaways for Former Athletes, From a Former Athlete and Therapist
Burnout is a full mind-body experience and highly physiological, not a sign that you are lazy, undisciplined, or lacking willpower. For former college athletes, years of being rewarded for productivity, pushing through, perfectionism, and overriding your body can make it harder to recognize when you have reached your limits. Those patterns often continue long after sport ends and can contribute to burnout even when you are no longer an athlete. Shame and guilt can then compound the experience when you interpret burnout as a personal failure. Recovering from burnout is not simply about taking a few days off and getting back to the same pace. It often requires looking at what is happening within you, around you, and in the larger systems and circumstances impacting your life. Recovery can include rebuilding your relationship with rest, listening to your body, setting boundaries, adjusting how you are doing life, and creating more space for support, regulation, and joy.
What Does Burnout Feel Like for Former College Athletes?
The experience of burnout will be unique and individual to each person but the impact goes beyond the physical. Burnout affects you mentally, emotionally, and physically. For many former college athletes, burnout feels like being completely exhausted but still feeling like you should be able to push through. No amount of sleep, rest or recovery helps you feel rested or get back to baseline. Cognitively many people experience brain fog, challenges with memory or even the ability to cohesively organize day to day information. Many former college athletes experience apathy or a complete loss of motivation for even the little things like showering, brushing your teeth or getting dressed. You may also experience changes in appetite, GI challenges and slower digestion.
Emotionally, you often have very limited capacity. You may experience more irritability, anxiety or intense responses to little things that normally wouldn't bother you. You may experience more depressive symptoms, numbness or a sense of hopelessness. A common experience in burnout is also feeling both exhausted and wired or anxious at the same time. This can classically feel like “I have so much to do, I have so much going on but I mentally and physically can’t do it.” You might feel like you swing back and forth between lower mood and energy and anxiety and urgency. Socially many people experience withdrawal and very limited social bandwidth. Its hard to interact, communicate and engage with others when you have little to give.
In sport psychology, Raedeke (1997) described athlete burnout as three things happening together, physical and emotional exhaustion, a reduced sense of accomplishment, and a growing detachment from the sport itself. What I see in my office is that those same three pieces often carry over into life after sport, only now the detachment is from the job, the training, or the relationship that used to feel meaningful. Goodger, Wolfenden, and Lavallee (2007) interviewed burned out junior tennis players and found that in the more severe cases, the consequences continued after the players left the sport and impacted areas of life that had nothing to do with tennis at all. This makes sense when you consider that burnout is not just about how you feel while you are training or working. It can affect your body, brain, emotions, relationships, motivation, and ability to function in everyday life.
Burnout isn't a laziness problem
“I'm just being lazy” is what I hear all the time from former college athletes. When you hit burnout, exhaustion, or feel completely tapped out, it can be very easy to turn it into a “me” problem. You may start telling yourself that you aren’t motivated or disciplined enough, you aren’t trying hard enough, or that you’re just being lazy. But burnout is not laziness, a lack of discipline, or a lack of willpower. Burnout is a full mind-body experience and highly physiological.
So what’s actually happening in burnout? Our stress response is a protective response designed to help us respond to stress or threat in order to survive and take care of ourselves. This was designed for the short term and when a stressor or threat is our system can return to a more regulated state.The problem is when the system spends too much time in stress and protection without enough recovery, resources, regulation, or support.
Over time, spending too much time in stress and protection depletes the system. You may initially be able to keep pushing through, but your mind and body can only take so much. And this is where the “I’m just being lazy” narrative becomes so problematic. You are interpreting a physiological response as a character flaw and judging yourself for something that makes perfect sense.
Why Former College Athletes Can Be Especially Vulnerable to Burnout
Former college athletes can be particularly vulnerable to burnout for several reasons. We need to look at the impact of sport culture and how it influences the way former athletes do life, even after sport ends. Several factors come into play here:
1. Productivity and grind culture is celebrated : Sport culture often celebrates productivity, the go-go-go mentality, grinding, hustling, and constantly doing more. We learn that more is better and that being able to handle more is a sign of strength. Many of us carry these messages into life after sport, where staying busy and constantly doing can become our default.
2. Rest is often framed as secondary or weak: Rest can be viewed as something you earn after you have done enough, rather than something you actually need. Rest is often framed as laziness or a weakness and not needing much rest and being able to push through can become a badge of honor.
3. We are often conditioned to override ourselves in the name of performance: Sport can teach us to override our bodies, needs, boundaries, and emotions in order to perform. We learn to push through fatigue and discomfort, ignore signs of stress, and keep going regardless of how we feel. These skills can help us perform in sport, but continuing to override ourselves long after sport ends can come at a cost.
4. Constant perfectionism is often the standard: For many athletes, there is always something to improve, another goal to reach, or another way we could be doing more. We can become highly self-critical and learn to focus on what we did wrong or what still needs to be better rather than what is already enough. The constant striving for perfection often works hand in hand with productivity to keep you constantly doing, achieving and reaching for more. If you want to read more on perfectionism read my blog HERE.
All of these factors influence and impact each other and contribute to why former college athletes are particularly vulnerable to burnout. We have spent years learning how to push through, do more, strive for more, and override ourselves in the name of performance. Those patterns don’t automatically disappear when sport ends.
There’s an added layer that often compounds and adds to the vulnerability of burnout for former college athletes.The shame and guilt that can come with burnout. Many former athletes will feel like there is something wrong with them because they can’t keep up and maintain the same level of high functioning they always have as athletes. You’re exhausted, depleted, and tapped out, but then you spend added energy judging yourself for it. Shame and guilt tend to compound the experience of burnout and keep you stuck in it even longer.
Can you fully recover from burnout after years of pushing through?
Yes, but recovering from burnout after years of pushing through is not as simple as taking a few days off and getting back to the same pace. Burnout recovery is not just about resting enough to return to the life that exhausted you. The work is often in rebuilding a life that your mind, body, and nervous system can actually sustain.
And this is important: burnout is not solely an individual problem. There are macro-level factors, including larger systems and circumstances, and mezzo-level factors, including the environments and relationships we are operating within, that then impact micro-level factors within the individual.All three levels matter.
You can’t always change your environment or the systems you are operating within. But you can begin to understand what is contributing to burnout, identify what you do have agency over, and learn how to care for yourself within the environment you are in.
So what does recovery actually look like?
It can mean learning to recognize the signs that you are reaching your limits before your system completely shuts down. It can mean rebuilding your relationship with rest, listening to your body instead of overriding it, setting boundaries, getting enough sleep and nourishment, adjusting how you move your body, building consistent regulation practices, and getting support when you need it. It can also mean making changes to the way you are doing life. Sometimes recovery requires changing your workload, your expectations, your relationships, your environment, or the way you define what it means to be productive and successful.
And recovery is not all fixing, regulating, recovering, and doing less. Joy matters too. Small moments of ease, connection, and things that light your soul on fire are part of recovery because burnout recovery is also about bringing something back into you. This is a big part of the work I do with former athletes. I help you understand what is happening underneath the burnout, reconnect with your body and your needs, rebuild your capacity, and develop a way of living that allows you to stay connected to yourself without constantly pushing through, overriding yourself, or proving how much you can handle.
If this blog has resonated with you, you can book a free 15-minute consultation, which is a conversation to figure out whether this feels like a fit rather than a sales call. If it helps to know who you would be talking to first, you can read more about my background. I offer telehealth therapy for former athletes in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.
What are signs your body is shutting down from stress?
Burnout is a full mind-body experience, so your body may show signs that you are reaching your limits before you fully recognize what is happening. You may experience exhaustion that does not improve with sleep or rest, changes in appetite, GI challenges, slower digestion, changes in energy, or feeling completely tapped out physically and emotionally. You may also find yourself swinging between feeling exhausted and wired or anxious. For former athletes, these signs can be especially easy to override because you may be used to pushing through fatigue and bodily signals rather than listening to them.
How do you know if you're mentally burnt out?
Mental burnout can show up as brain fog, difficulty concentrating or organizing information, loss of motivation, apathy, irritability, anxiety, or feeling like you have very little emotional or social capacity. You may feel exhausted but still wired, with a sense that you have so much to do but mentally and physically cannot do it. For former college athletes, it can also come with a lot of self-criticism and guilt because you may interpret your inability to keep up as a lack of motivation, discipline, or willpower.
How long should a burnout break be?
There is no set length for a burnout break, and for many former athletes a break alone does not resolve burnout because the body has learned to treat rest as unsafe and stays activated even during time off. What tends to matter more than the length of the break is whether the person learns to notice and respond to their body's signals during it. A licensed therapist can help figure out what kind of rest and support is actually needed.
What therapy approaches are effective for former athletes experiencing burnout?
Therapy approaches that tend to help former athletes with burnout are ones that work with the body and nervous system alongside the thoughts, including somatic and mindfulness-based practices, polyvagal-informed work, and parts work, because burnout in former athletes is usually held in the body rather than only in mindset. Different approaches help different people, and no single method works for everyone. In my practice, I combine these approaches in a trauma-informed, body-centered way for former athletes who want to understand why pushing through stopped working.
References
Goodger, K., Wolfenden, L., & Lavallee, D. (2007). Symptoms and consequences associated with three dimensions of burnout in junior tennis players. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 38(4), 342–364.
Raedeke, T. D. (1997). Is athlete burnout more than just stress? A sport commitment perspective. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 19(4), 396–417.