When I burned out in 2015, I quit my job and slept for three months.
I was exhausted. Physically, emotionally, mentally. I had nothing left to give.
And while those three months of rest were essential, it took another two years before I had the capacity to work full time again.
What I hadn’t fully appreciated was that recovering from burnout wasn’t just about resting enough to feel better. I also needed to change the way I was living and working.
Before burning out, I’d been doing work I was good at, with people I respected. But I was taking responsibility for too much, working at an unsustainable pace, and ignoring what my body was telling me.
I’d become resentful and exhausted, but I didn’t know how to make the changes I needed.
And like many people who burn out, I had a collection of beliefs about how I should work, what I should be responsible for, and what it meant to do a good job.
Those beliefs didn’t disappear when I resigned.
So as I began recovering, I needed more than rest. I needed to develop a different relationship with work, responsibility, productivity and myself.
The five Ss of burnout recovery
A while ago, I interviewed Joanne Kim of OliveMe Counselling, who shared five practices that can help us recover from burnout and develop a more sustainable way of living.
Silence, stillness, solitude, simplicity and space.
I loved this framework because it reflected so much of what had helped me during my own recovery.
And because these practices can be surprisingly difficult.
When we’re accustomed to being busy, useful, productive and responsible for everyone around us, doing less can feel deeply uncomfortable.
We might know we need to rest, but find ourselves filling every available moment with something to do.
So the five Ss aren’t just ways to reduce the demands on our time and energy. They can also help us become aware of the patterns that make slowing down so difficult.
1. Silence: Reducing the noise
When we’re exhausted, noise can become another demand on our already limited capacity.
That might be the physical noise around us, from traffic, colleagues, children or neighbours.
But it can also be the constant noise of notifications, expectations, unfinished tasks and our own busy minds.
Silence gives us an opportunity to reduce some of that stimulation.
You might experiment with turning off notifications, wearing noise-cancelling headphones, spending part of your day without music or podcasts, or finding a quiet place to sit.
But notice what happens when things become quiet.
Do you feel relieved? Restless? Anxious?
Does your mind immediately start planning what you should be doing next?
Sometimes silence reveals just how much internal noise we’ve been carrying.
2. Stillness: Learning to stop
For many of us, being still feels unnatural.
We’ve learned that being productive is good, while doing nothing is lazy, wasteful or irresponsible.
Even our leisure activities can become things to accomplish.
But recovering from burnout requires us to develop a different relationship with rest.
That might mean sitting quietly for a few minutes, moving more slowly, cancelling something we don’t have the energy for, or allowing ourselves to rest without turning it into another task.
And for some people, stillness can be uncomfortable.
We might feel guilty, restless or compelled to get up and do something useful.
Those reactions are worth becoming curious about.
What do we believe will happen if we stop?
And how much of our identity has become connected to being busy?
3. Solitude: Remembering what you need
When we spend much of our lives responding to other people’s needs and expectations, it can become difficult to recognise our own.
We know what our boss wants, what our family needs, and what everyone is expecting from us.
But what do we want?
Solitude gives us an opportunity to reconnect with our own preferences, interests and needs, away from the demands of others.
That might be taking a walk alone, enjoying a quiet morning, spending time in nature, or doing something simply because you enjoy it.
And again, notice what happens.
Do you find it easy to spend time alone? Or do you feel guilty, lonely, or worried that someone might need you?
Solitude isn’t about withdrawing from relationships. We still need connection and support, particularly during burnout recovery.
It’s about creating enough room to remember who we are when we’re not responding to everyone else.
4. Simplicity: Doing less, not doing everything better
One of the traps I see in our productivity-focused culture is the assumption that when we’re overwhelmed, we need to become more efficient.
Better systems. Better routines. Better time management.
And sometimes those things help.
But sometimes we simply need to do less.
We need fewer responsibilities, fewer commitments, fewer decisions and fewer things competing for our attention.
Simplicity might mean removing unnecessary steps from a process, doing one thing at a time, accepting a good-enough result, or deciding that something doesn’t need to happen at all.
For someone who’s accustomed to doing everything perfectly, being indispensable, or keeping every possibility open, that can be quite a stretch.
And that’s where simplicity becomes more than a practical strategy.
It asks us to reconsider what really matters, and what we’re willing to let go of.
5. Space: Making room to breathe
Finally, space.
Sometimes that’s physical space.
Clearing your desk, reducing clutter, spending time outdoors, or finding somewhere you can look towards the horizon rather than another wall.
But it can also mean creating space in your schedule.
Not filling every available hour. Allowing time between meetings. Leaving room for unexpected things to happen without everything falling apart.
I think this is one of the most important lessons in recovering from burnout.
When we organise our lives around using every available bit of energy, there’s no capacity left for the ordinary demands of being human.
Getting sick. Having a difficult conversation. Supporting someone we love. Or simply needing a quieter day.
Space gives us room to respond to life without constantly pushing beyond our limits.
Rest is only part of burnout recovery
One of the things I learned during those two years after burning out was that recovery happens in stages.
At first, my priority was rest and reducing the demands on my body.
Later, as I began working again, I had to understand how much I could realistically do without exhausting myself.
And eventually, I needed to reconsider the habits and beliefs that had contributed to my burnout in the first place.
That included learning to set boundaries, recognise my limits, speak up about what I needed, and stop taking responsibility for things that weren’t mine to carry.
The five Ss helped create the conditions for that work.
But they weren’t a substitute for changing my circumstances.
You can’t meditate your way out of an unsustainable workload, and you can’t create enough inner peace to make an unsafe workplace healthy.
Burnout happens in a wider context. Our workplaces, economic pressures, family responsibilities and cultural expectations all play a role.
And sometimes recovery requires substantial changes to those circumstances, including reducing work, getting professional support, or leaving an environment that can’t meet our needs.
But alongside those external changes, we may also need to examine the expectations we’ve internalised.
Where the Enneagram can help
This is where I find the Enneagram particularly useful.
It helps us recognise the protective patterns that can make practices like silence, stillness and simplicity so difficult.
Perhaps we keep taking responsibility for other people’s problems because we need to feel helpful.
Or we work excessively because our sense of worth is tied to achievement.
Maybe we avoid slowing down because stillness brings us into contact with uncomfortable feelings we’d rather not experience.
As a Seven, I know how easily I can fill my days with interesting projects and possibilities, without recognising that I’ve taken on far more than I have the capacity to complete.
The Enneagram doesn’t explain every cause of burnout, and it certainly doesn’t mean our personality is to blame.
But it can help us understand why we keep returning to familiar ways of working, even when we’ve decided we need something different.
And that awareness gives us an opportunity to practise new skills.
What do you need more of?
Whether you’re recovering from burnout or simply recognising that your current way of living isn’t sustainable, I’d invite you to consider the five Ss.
Which one feels most appealing?
And which one feels most uncomfortable?
Perhaps you need more silence because you’re constantly overstimulated. Or more simplicity because you’ve taken on too many responsibilities.
Maybe solitude would help you reconnect with what you actually want.
Or perhaps the idea of doing nothing makes you so uncomfortable that stillness is exactly where some of your inner work needs to begin.
You don’t have to change everything at once.
Start with one small experiment that fits your current capacity.
And as you do, notice not only how the practice affects your energy, but what it reveals about the beliefs and habits shaping your life.
Because recovering from burnout isn’t simply about finding your way back to how you were before. It’s also an opportunity to create a way of living and working that doesn’t keep asking you to abandon yourself.
This article draws on my conversation with Joanne Kim of OliveMe Counselling. You can watch our interview on YouTube.