The burnout epidemic: why daily living feels exhausting in 2025 || comparison, fatigue, stress

Has anyone ever told you that it's valid to feel burnt out and exhausted just from existing? Just from daily life? It doesn't require a massive traumatic event or having a full schedule to feel like everything is too much. In this new episode of The Things We Say in Therapy Podcast, we explore this underrated feeling in depth. Why, in 2025, hustle culture has been repackaged as "productivity", the overwhelm of constantly having access to traumatic news, comparison culture from social media, and ways to heal and find peace in the chaotic world we live in. Thanks for listening! Links below to support the show and find me on other platforms :)

Transcript

hey everyone. Welcome back to your regularly scheduled self-reflection. I am Tash, and this is things we say in therapy, A place to feel seen, to learn some psychology, and to self-reflect on some hard truths

to help improve your mental health.

Before I get into the main topic, I'd just like to remind you

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so I've always found it difficult to [00:01:00] express the idea that

I feel burnout and exhaustion simply from the daily tasks of living simply from the world we live in, the things that we have to do just to survive in 2025. In this world,

this episode is about existential exhaustion.

This is not just about being tired. This is emotional, physical, spiritual

depletion by the demands of simply existing in this world. I feel that it needs to be normalized to feel this way. I think there's a lot of shame wrapped around feeling exhausted just from daily living.

Many people, including myself, feel this way and just don't have the language to express it. So I feel like this is an important topic to talk about.

Or maybe they feel embarrassed by it

and they think that expressing it makes them look lazy or like they just don't wanna try. I don't believe that that's true at all.

It is not weak to feel this way. You are responding you to overwhelming conditions that are being put on us.

So stay [00:02:00] until the end to hear some cut and clear signs that you're suffering with existential exhaustion, maybe you don't even realize it, and some practical tips to help you find peace.

So why is this so rampant in 2025? Why is it that we feel this overwhelming dread for daily life tasks and burnout from just having to simply exist?

The first idea that I've got is cognitive overload.

Modern life. It absolutely bombards us with more information in a week than previous generations would've had to deal with in a whole year.

Social media, the news plus everything that you have going on in your personal life, which alone is a lot most of the time.

constant notifications, news cycles, world crises. It is chronic mental activation, chronically thinking about a new issue. That has come up in one of these categories.

That alone, the mental exhaustion that comes from that alone [00:03:00] is overwhelming.

Another reason is there is now this cultural pressure to be constantly trying to optimize ourselves, constantly trying to,

to heal, to grow, which I don't condone, by the way.

I think that is a limit to self-development. but something else is hustle culture. So

although a lot more I people in my generation and the generation below me

now, value restful time and. Are aware that resting is productive. Hustle culture never really died. It just got rebranded as being productive and as mental wellness,

but resting is productive.

Doing nothing is productive. It's productive to regenerate your creative instincts, to regenerate your energy. If you push and push and push yourself,

you'll burn out and crash anyway.

So wouldn't you rather stay in control of when you rest

and have your dedicated, [00:04:00] productive rest time

rather than being forced to rest for your health after you've crashed and burnt out.

I also feel like there's this need to prove that you are not lazy all the time,

constantly trying to monetize everything you are. Hobbies and posting things on social media, as well as having your main income job.

I think a lot of society is sick. I think we push ourselves too hard and it's too normalized.

I'm someone that burns out super easily and I. At first, I found that really embarrassing, and I had to keep pushing myself past my breaking point in order to try and prove to everyone else that I was okay and that I could handle it. But who is that serving?

I'm very capable and not lazy at all.

I just have a lower baseline than other people. Maybe I don't. Maybe everyone else is just lying too,

but trying to figure that out is not helping anybody.

There's nothing wrong [00:05:00] with not being able to handle this constant hustle culture.

It took time for me to realize that I just operate differently,

to find a method that works for me and to have optimal rest as well.

I still haven't figured out all the kinks with my routine, and I still feed into that pressure to constantly be doing something

and to make myself look busy all the time, but it doesn't and will never be healthy to force myself into doing that and to being a way that I'm not. I feel like a lot of people need to realize that.

Now I mentioned the pressure to always be trying to optimize yourself and always

having that pressure to monetize your creativity, to turn all your hobbies into something beneficial

aside from obviously your enjoyment of it.

I think there's two reasons for this. Firstly, obviously, because of the financial stress these days is ridiculous. Sorry if you can hear my cat. He's very clingy today.

Secondly, because of [00:06:00] comparison culture on social media. I did my dissertation on this.

You obviously see everyone's highlights on social media, and then you think, oh, if I'm not doing that, then I'm lazy. I'm missing out. I'm not good enough to be doing that. It just, it's not healthy for anybody. It's okay to just do what you like doing and not have to show everyone else that you're doing that.

Only how you feel about your life matters.

Continuing on the topic of financial stress,

this is another reason why people feel existential exhaustion.

There is a lot of economic and societal instability. There's rising living costs,

unstable career paths, housing insecurity. And lots and lots of political tension,

which obviously can affect the financial aid of many people in need.

The uncertainty of all of these things is mentally draining in itself,

even when nothing bad is happening to you directly. Now, [00:07:00] the uncertainty of it is draining in itself self,

unless you come from generational wealth or you have absolute job certainty, There is a lack of security for everybody.

If you aren't constantly being productive and pushing yourself,

it can feel like self-sabotage.

It is easy to think that if you're not constantly being productive, if something goes wrong, it's your fault because you haven't tried hard enough,

or you didn't do X, Y, Z, or you took a rest day.

please don't blame yourself in these circumstances because

these circumstances have been given to us and they are not ideal in the slightest. It is happening to us just because you take a rest day, just because you didn't think of the idea sooner. Just because dah, dah, dah, it doesn't matter. It's not your fault. These circumstances are hard.

Something else I wanted to talk about is emotional labor. The world is very hyperconnected.

We are exposed to [00:08:00] everyone's emotions, needs trauma, and opinions 24 7.

It's so much to take on that we don't even realize, especially if you are younger, gen Z or Gen Alpha. Your whole life has been spent with social media being a lot of your day,

whether that includes watching things. TikTok posting content yourself. It's all that they know. It's difficult to recognize that we're taking on everyone else's emotions every day, all day, taking on horrible, traumatic events that are happening around the world. Natural disasters, worrying about family. If you have family around the world,

there's just an endless list of things that you can be worrying about and worrying about yourself is somewhere mixed up in there.

It is difficult to prioritize your own needs when we are always so exposed to something that's happening to someone else that's "worse." When we're constantly exposed to horrible, [00:09:00] traumatic things happening to other people around the world that objectively are worse than what's happening to us. It's difficult to think that what we need is a priority.

But humans weren't built to have this much emotional bandwidth. We weren't built to be taking on anything outside of what's happening in our immediate environment.

We weren't supposed to be bombarded with these global perceptions of everyone else's lives.

It goes without saying that it's wise to take a step back from social media for a week, a month and see how your life changes.

Watching the news in particular can affect your mindset a lot. I was actually told by my therapist to stop watching the news. I was getting way too invested in what was going on in America at the moment, and

it was genuinely affecting my mental health more than I could see. So I think consider that. I actually, I felt guilty because. I felt a responsibility to keep up to date [00:10:00] on what was going on and to know what was happening because it was so horrible and I felt so much empathy for all the bad things that were happening to everybody around the world.

that I kept consuming it at my own detriment, and I feel like that's quite common these days because it's so accessible.

Another thing is that social media is just predominantly inescapable these days. You use it or need it for your job. To network with people, to connect with family across the world, to grow your business, maybe social media is your job. It's inescapable for a lot of people,

and it can actually feel antisocial to not have social media these days because it is the method that people use to connect.

So here's some in depth psychological reasons why it is valid to feel exhausted just from existing.

Number one, your nervous system is wired [00:11:00] to

respond to perceived danger, not just real danger. So that uncertainty of worrying about money, worrying about housing, worrying about what your next meal is gonna be, worrying how you're gonna put food on the table.

Is your job permanent? Is it even what you wanna be doing? Are you happy at your job? There's constant uncertainty and a requirement to be scared about something. Always. Hypervigilance about these things. It creates fatigue, and all we can do is try and be in the present moment, figure out what we wanna do at that point in time.

The rest will come later. Being a human? A lot of areas of our lives require emotional labor.

You're trying to manage relationships, find a partner, potentially.

You're worrying about expectations of other people. You're worrying about who you are and your identity. Your sexuality, healing childhood wound, if you still wanna be connected with that [00:12:00] family member, self-doubt, daily responsibilities,

and basically just trying to survive.

My generation is healing toxic patterns that have been going on for generations.

We are learning and accepting more and more about mental health every single day. That in itself is a full-time job. Figuring out how you fit in there, what you wanna accept and what you don't. Trying to figure out

dated patterns, dated

habits or opinions that you may have or that the people around you may have that are toxic, that are just built into your life because it's been happening for generations.

Working out who you wanna be in the world. Beauty standards,

other cultural influences like the idealistic Perfect body,

The patriarchy

how it affects women and men,

the desire to fit in, following trends.

It is so difficult to de propagandize yourself and embrace who you actually are. Many, many, many people go through their entire lives [00:13:00] not knowing who they actually are because they just feed into content. I don't, I can't blame you.

We are constantly told that there is something idealistic to strive for as instead of striving to be who you actually are.

Number three, mental labor is real labor, planning, tracking, organizing, monitoring,

worrying, caring, the things that we have to do to survive in the day-to-day life. It's invisible, but it's draining This is the reason I think that it's so hard to understand different mental health struggles when you haven't actually been through them.

If people don't see the external labor, they don't see the toll it's taking on you externally, then people will just assume that it's not there.

It's hard for other people to understand and accept that it's there, so they assume that you are lazy or you're crazy, or you're this, or you're that. This is why people who mask their struggles really well. Have that extra bit [00:14:00] of labor as well because,

well, firstly, there's the effort to actually mask what's really going on inside.

But when you do actually tell people that you struggle, they don't believe you. Like I generally, my whole life, in order to survive, I had to just put on a face and suppress everything that was going on inside to the point where I didn't actually know that I was struggling. I was just a massive trauma response back when I was like in my late teens

and I was actually suffering with pretty bad depression and severe anxiety. And whenever I would tell people that I actually did struggle with my confidence and I had issues with self-worth, people just didn't think that it was true. I've even had therapists that have

been fooled by me masking. I guess I'm just that good. I'm a lot more upfront about [00:15:00] everything now, and I feel my feelings now, but back when I first started, it was crazy to think about, to be honest.

But my point is that's why people are labeled and judged for not being able to get through daily tasks, for

not being able to externally express their struggles, but also. Not being able to complete the norm of their daily tasks and constantly trying to optimize themselves, et cetera, et cetera.

All the labor that they're able to take on is happening internally

and so they can't do it. They can't do anything because the me, the labor that a human being can possibly take is all happening inside their head.

Number four, the idea that you are fine because nothing is wrong, is so outdated. Exhaustion is often invisible. I.

You don't need a massive traumatic event to justify burnout. You don't need to be constantly killing yourself, trying to work hard and complete a multitude of things [00:16:00] every single day in order to justify burnout, to feel like everything's getting on top of you. . It doesn't work that way. I sometimes day-to-day tasks are too much. They're overwhelming. Our capacity to take these things on. It fluctuates.

You don't need to have an excuse to slow down and take care of yourself, and you also don't have to justify that to anyone else but yourself.

Number five, your emotional capacity fluctuates,

hormones, sleep patterns,

trauma, sensory load.

Especially for my neurodivergent baddies out there

and social demands, it can all affect your bandwidth. If you have more social demands. One week something else is probably gonna have to take a backseat. We only have a certain. Amount of stamina, and that's fine. You don't need to push yourself to try and please everybody to try and show everybody that you're capable of doing it all.

Sometimes we're in a space where we can take on more. Sometimes we're in a space where we can't take on much at all.

You are still worthy. You are still [00:17:00] whole. You are still important and capable and wonderful in both those cases.

Sometimes we can't commit to something that we thought we could and you have to disappoint people. Disappoint them. The only person that you need to please, the only person that you truly need to live with

is yourself. So be honest with yourself about what you can take on. I

you are allowed to change your mind and disappoint people

if it means staying loyal to yourself and your own needs.

So here's a bunch of reasons why people judge you for being this way. Why people might judge you for feeling this existential exhaustion. Number one, they're projecting their own discomfort.

Your honesty about feeling this existential exhaustion, it forces them to confront their own feelings. Feelings that they ignore. Being a mirror to other people can be extremely lonely. I will do another mini episode on this.

If you are someone who is authentic, if you're someone who doesn't hide from who they are,

You speak the truth, you [00:18:00] are gonna butt heads with people who can't confront themselves and their own feelings.

People who can't face themselves in their struggles. They're the type of people who are gonna push themselves through burnout. They're the type of people who are gonna deal with it in toxic, unhealthy ways and express unhealthy behaviors and not notice that they're doing that. It's important that you recognize

those people are dealing with their own struggles. It's not your responsibility to fix them.

The fact that you can speak the truth, the fact that you're not hiding from yourself is a flex. It's important, and don't let other people make you feel bad for. Knowing that you need to rest for recognizing that this existential exhaustion is a thing and that you don't constantly need to be pushing yourself.

Another reason why people may judge you for existential exhaustion is the myth of emotional self-sufficiency.

Things like you can push through everyone's tired, just move on. Just get over it.

These [00:19:00] things come from survival mode. They come from a lack of emotional availability. They come from a place of not being able to recognize when you need to take care of yourself. It's self abandonment. It's not wellness to keep being productive through these times. It's not strong to push yourself past your limit just in order to save face with other people just to look like you're being productive, just to look like you're not failing.

It's not worth it.

Number three, people with a lack of emotional literacy may also judge you for this. People who were never taught to recognize these emotional signals. People who were told that it was stupid, that it's silly, that mental health is a propaganda.

They tend to get defensive when others express vulnerability.

If you

exhibit something that touches on an insecurity of theirs because of their lack of emotional [00:20:00] literacy,

if you touch on something that they haven't faced within themselves. It can be taken as a personal attack and they will get defensive.

It is important to recognize who is a safe person for you to talk to about these things. I'm not saying that you should hide the vulnerable part of yourself from people who don't understand it, but just don't invest in their opinion or their advice because I, it's likely just a reaction from their trauma and their experiences.

Number four is. Productivity based self-worth. I know a lot of people deal with this. I've actually spoken to somebody who has realized this about themselves recently, a lot of people define themselves by their output. A lot of people define themselves by their success in certain areas of their life,

and they'll judge anyone who takes productive rest for themselves or knows where their boundaries lie. Who doesn't constantly need to feel productive. They'll label those people as lazy [00:21:00] because they put that pressure on themselves to constantly be making something, doing something, achieving something.

Rest is not romanticized like productivity is, and it really should be.

So now I'm gonna get into the psychological consequences of existential exhaustion, things that go hand in hand with it that you may start to recognize within yourself after listening to this. So the first one is Allostatic Load. I.

This is sort of the cumulative destruction of your

mental wellness through stress and

things going wrong, constantly having to sort something out. When this load is too heavy, it causes irritability, fatigue,

mental fog.

It can cause you to kind of just be floating through life, reacting to the chronic stress. Another one is learned helplessness.

This is when the allostatic load kind of causes you to have an emotional shutdown. feeling like [00:22:00] the effort that you put into things doesn't change outcomes, feels like everything is pointless because you are constantly having to do something to change, something to put effort in just to exist.

Number three is identity fatigue.

The constant trying to figure out who you are, what you wanna be, where you wanna go, or what you wanna do with your life.

This kind of goes hand in hand with the learned helplessness. Is it worth it? Is it worth trying to put effort into doing what I wanna do? Is that even what I wanna do? Constantly wondering whether you're enough, whether you have it to get to the point that you wanna be at. It is possible to overdo self-development, and it takes effort to self-develop.

But even without that self-development, just trying to figure out who you are to get through life on its own can be exhausting.

Sometimes you just need to live.

Another one is decision fatigue. When there's so much [00:23:00] going on in your life, every single day, the micro decisions that you have to make daily food, where you want your money to go, whether you can message people back, whether you have messaged people back, getting the mail, do you have enough food in the fridge,

social commitments, family commitments, people's birthdays.

It can drain your cognitive resources. Having those cumulative mini tasks to do every single day, to remember everything every single day, especially if you are supporting yourself financially, emotionally, physically, all at once, you're doing that all yourself. And if you have depend that can double it.

Triple it,

and trying to get everything right at the same time is a lot. Let yourself fuck up once in a while without beating yourself up.

And number five, emotional suppression.

Having all of this to do every single day just to survive, just to exist. Avoiding your emotions

is easy to do when you're just trying to survive, [00:24:00] when you're just trying to exist. List. Dealing with difficult emotions is so much effort,

but I still think it is important to every single day try to take even just five minutes to sit with yourself and recognize what you are actually feeling. Even just that, doing that every single day, even though it's uncomfortable, it can be uncomfortable.

You are telling yourself that it's okay to feel the way that you're feeling. You're telling yourself that you shouldn't be suppressing your feelings because you shouldn't be. If you keep suppressing emotional discomfort, it will just make everything worse. I know that it is exhausting, and sometimes you do just need to exist,

and if it's too much, it's too much. Only you will know that. Only you can know your limits. I just think that it is so important to teach yourself that it's okay to feel that emotional discomfort because if you just keep trying to suppress it, if you keep trying to tell yourself that that's not the case, [00:25:00] it will just get worse.

Long term suppression leads to existential numbness. You will no longer feel that existential dread, that existential exhaustion. You will just be floating through life, not experiencing anything because you've numbed everything. If you try and numb the uncomfortable emotions, you'll end up also numbing the good emotions.

You can't pick and choose what you feel. It doesn't work that way.

So let's do a little recap of the cut and dry signs that you are experiencing existential exhaustion.

After this, I'll get to some practical tips on how to regain your peace. You wake up tired even after sleeping. Everything feels too much all the time. Emotional flatness and irritability. Difficulty caring about things that you enjoy normally.

Overwhelmed from small tasks, seeking escape or numbing yourself by scrolling, zoning out.

Or addictions substances, or feeling detached from your identity or your [00:26:00] purpose.

So here are some practical tips, lips on how to reduce your mental load. These are all things that I think you should do to try and stay grounded, but they're also things that are doable and they avoid that toxic positivity of always trying to be positive all the time and suppress negative emotions.

the first one is doing a little audit of your daily

tasks or habits. Identify one thing that drains you every day. This could be forcing yourself to reply to people's texts all the time. This could be having to eat a certain amount of

healthy meals, not allowing yourself to rely on fried foods or takeaways.

Something that drains you on the daily that you've created for yourself that you can get rid of. Just one thing,

this might help you notice rules or tasks that you've made up for yourself that you think need to be completed every day, but [00:27:00] they're actually not super necessary for your survival or for your comfortability. They might just be draining your energy. Just one thing.

Number two, lower your baseline expectations. It's okay to just be good enough instead of trying to optimize everything you do.

Sometimes we have the energy to be on top of everything and sometimes we don't. It is not compulsory for you to always be on top form. Try having some gentler standards for yourself. And number three,

build micro rests into your day. If you don't have time to have a full day off or a whole afternoon or a whole morning,

just take a minute or five

to do a reset. Whatever works for you, but just sit and loosen your jaw, relax your shoulders. Do the 4, 7, 8 breathing method. I love that one. It is when you inhale for four seconds, hold it for seven, and then exhale for eight. It makes my brain feel so good. [00:28:00] It I, it's one of my favorite things to do.

But these micro rests could literally be zoning out for a minute, staring out of a window. It could be

breathing methods, it could be stretching, it could be a minute of silence just sitting there with your eyes closed, thinking about your surroundings. Just turn off for a second. These accumulate more than you think, and it doesn't require you to try and be positive. It doesn't require you to think. It just requires you to stop for a second.

As long as it, as long as you're present in the moment. This isn't things like going on your phone for a minute or watching a YouTube video for a minute. Just be with yourself in those ways that I mentioned, or something that you prefer, whatever.

Number four is to reduce your digital noise. Turn off your frigging phone every once in a while. Mute your notifications. It's so easy to do.

Curate your social feeds to fit what makes you feel good about yourself and your life. this could be spirituality stuff, mental health quotes, motivational quotes, witchy [00:29:00] things, um, educational posts, something that you're interested in, manifestation. Fashion for your body type skincare. I don't know, whatever floats your boat.

Just avoid comparison culture at all costs. Block unfollow. Delete anyone that makes you compare yourself to them or to their life. It is not healthy. It does not help with motivation in most cases, it just makes you feel shit about your life

and limit exposure to the world. Turn off the news notifications. Don't watch YouTube videos on the news. Don't keep up with current affairs.

Without feeling guilty, I am learning this too. You can feel a responsibility to know what's going on because you feel like you have to spend your emotional labor on feeling for other people who have it worse than you. It is good to do that. It is good to feel empathy for people who are going through things because it allows actionable change.

But if it is taking a [00:30:00] massive toll on your mental health, please just take a break from it. It can be affecting you more than you think it is, and you're allowed to just focus on yourself. You're allowed to just have time to focus on what is going on in your immediate surroundings.

Those news updates, the those current affairs, they will still be there when you decide to come back to it.

Number five, create a bare minimum routine instead of all or nothing routines. Instead of feeling like you have to be optimized all the time, or crashing and burning out and not being able to do anything, have an in-between list for different aspects of your life. You could have a minimum movement routine.

That could be walking around your garden, walking around your house, walking down the street, minimum nutrition, having a vitamin C supplement

or a minimum connection. It. This could be letting someone in your life know that you're struggling. Don't go through it alone.

Just even just letting them know that you're having a shit day can help with a safe [00:31:00] person.

Minimum hygiene, putting on some deodorant. You know it, it can be in between. It doesn't have to be all or nothing, and these prevent a spiral because you have a plan for it. You don't feel like you have to be doing everything in order to feel like you're being productive like you are taking care of yourself.

Number six, normalize asking for support.

Keep reminding yourself that this bare minimum existential exhaustion is real.

And humans are not built to self-regulate alone. Healing happens in community. If you don't have an immediate person that you feel comfortable opening up to,

sometimes it can be easier to open up to a stranger because they don't know you. They can't judge a situation because they know nothing about your life

and they don't know who you are. I always put resources in my descriptions if you feel like you need to talk to somebody.

But asking for help doesn't make you weak. It actually makes you strong because of the stigma around it. Because people are so afraid of letting people know that they're not having a good time, that they're struggling, that they need [00:32:00] support. Opening up about that and being vulnerable is actually the strongest thing you can do.

Number seven, reconnect with something that feels like you find your hobbies. Again, take 10 minutes out of your day to be creative and let your mind wonder in a way that doesn't

depend on you getting your daily tasks done.

Not something that is productive and required for your existence. Something that's purely creative that you enjoy doing that makes you feel like yourself. it could also be used as a distraction from your mind. Don't scroll, don't numb yourself. But something where you can be present that you enjoy, that feels like you. And number eight, gentle self-inquiry instead of judgment. This is arguably one of the most important things, being kind to yourself,

asking questions to get to the real reasons why you're feeling the way you are.

This could involve asking yourself questions like, what is the real reason that I'm feeling not good today? [00:33:00] What's the real weight that I'm carrying with me today? What expectations of myself can I release? Can I get rid which areas of my life? Am I creating a lot of pressure for myself? Where could I take a bit of stress away from myself?

And ask yourself what you need in that current moment. Don't think about the next minute. Just think about what you need in that current moment.

Finally, I just wanna remind you that you don't owe anyone an explanation

for the way that you feel for your exhaustion. You're not being dramatic. You're not weak and you're not failing.

You are a human being that is living in a time where

the demands for daily life are way higher than our nervous systems were built for.

Resting is not avoidance, it's productive, and it's survival.

Using these small, compassionate steps for yourself can help you rebuild your capacity over time.

I hope that you have found something helpful in this episode. Thank you so [00:34:00] much for listening to episode 12 of Things We Say In Therapy. Again, I am on Instagram and TikTok. Please go and follow me over there, follow what's going on with this podcast. Please leave me a rating if you're listening on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or a different podcast streaming platform.

If you're watching me on YouTube, hi, please subscribe and leave a comment or like if you enjoyed this content, share this with somebody who might be feeling the burden of existential exhaustion and let them know that they're loved.

The links to support the show will be in the description. As always, please be kind to yourself. Please be kind to others, and I'll see you again. Bye.