Why Highly Sensitive People Can Feel Burned Out Even Doing Work They Love & How to Rediscover the Joy in It

 By the end of this episode, you’ll understand why meaningful work can become emotionally exhausting for highly sensitive people, and why this experience may not mean you’ve chosen the wrong path. In this episode, you’ll discover why highly sensitive people can feel burned out even doing the work that they genuinely love.

What your mind starts doing when work feels deeply meaningful and emotionally important, and how the joy in your work can begin to return when you no longer have to carry it with you everywhere. This is an edition of Strategy Fridays, where we think about specific things you can do to help manage stress as a highly sensitive person.

If you’re like me, you probably love work. Work is combines so many things that are satisfying to highly sensitive people. First of all, it allows you to go deeply in one direction. Secondly, it’s of service to others, which is something that naturally fits with our empathetic nature. It also can be a way of expressing yourself, a way of connecting what is inside with what is outside.

There’s so many facets to work that can make it become something that we become passionate about as highly sensitive people. Of course, there’s all different kinds of work, but over time, you probably have found that there are certain works that really resonate with you and that really feel aligned and that you really wanna put your all into and that you feel are really important.

And so when this happens, when you start finding work that really lights you up, that really makes you excited, this is amazing, and this is the joy of alignment. But what can happen if you work in that field for a long time or you continue in a direction for a good while, you can still, even when doing something you absolutely adore, you can still get stressed, you can still end up in burnout or emotional exhaustion.

That’s what I wanna look at today, and what I wanna start with is why? Why does that happen? Here’s something I love doing. So why would I get burned out doing it? So there can be many reasons, and they kind of circle around some a central idea. But the main one that can start us off is that work, when you’re doing something passionate, can often never end.

And so with anyone who’s excited about something, you put more into it. As a highly sensitive person, you’re more responsible than most people, and so you’re probably gonna put even more. And as a highly sensitive person, you are interested in depth more than the average person. And so the chances are you’re going to just keep going and keep going.

Now, this works for a while, but at some point you run out of gas, and that’s where burnout can start to come in What I mean by work never really ending is that you may continually keep refining ideas. You may continually keep anticipating problems. There’s no end to creativity in work. There’s no end to problems in work.

There’s no end to clients in work. And so as you work through different problems, come up with new ideas, develop new strategies, and do the things that support your clients, you may find yourself on an infinite road, which in a way is a good thing ’cause you want your job to keep on going. But you can find yourself just going and not feeling like you ever get a chance to take a break.

So one of the issues that comes up for HSPs is that we can end up dwelling on something until it’s resolved. And so we may carry unfinished tasks with us mentally into our evening. We don’t always relax when something hasn’t been figured out yet. And so this is something that can just make something that you enjoy turn into something that never gives you a break.

Another place where this shows up is when you’re working with clients and you’re doing something that you feel is important and you’re taking care of those that you serve, then you may put extra pressure on yourself to do a good job. You may start trying to do it perfectly or you may put in 200% effort instead of just 100%.

And so this can become a burden where you’re actually not just serving your clients, but you’re starting to carry them. You’re starting to be there for every step, and you’re starting to anticipate everything, and there may even be some fear of doing anything that would make them be upset. So this can push us to keep going in a way that is not sustainable when we’re working, even working on something that we love Another reason for this is that when we’re doing something meaningful, we tend to wanna do it really well.

And so this can lead us into our per- perfectionistic tendencies, where we have very high internal standards, and we are trying to just make everything a little better, and we’re wanting to give a little more, and we wanna do one more revision. And so this can transform something that is joyful into a kind of pressure.

Because perfectionism, remember, is not the same as doing a good job. It is doing… trying to do something perfectly to avoid any kind of negative repercussions. And so there’s a fear element in there. And when that can happen, when that happens, then you can end up getting stressed very quickly. Fear just zaps energy.

It’s like it pulls the energy out from inside in addition to whatever energy is being used to do the actual work So these are just a few of many kinds of reasons why work that you love can end up still burning you out. You may care deeply, and then you may end up giving more, thinking more, and you may feel because you care so much, you end up feeling like nothing is completely ever finished.

And then that lack of completion never allows you to fully rest and recover. And so that sense of joy can just start to erode over time what does the HSP mind start doing when work feels meaningful? When we’re really into something, then we can end up treating it like it’s an ongoing responsibility.

We want to do this super well. And so what happens is the boundaries start to get h- blurry, and it becomes unclear as to when am I actually done because I’m doing something important here, right? If something’s important, it’s gonna float to the top of our priorities. And one of the things we tend to do when we’re stressed as HSPs is we tend to put ourselves last.

We tend to put the work, in this case, first, and our personal life can just start to erode and disappear and get covered up. And that can include our rest, that can include our downtime, our relationships, anything that recharges us ’cause it feels like, “Oh that’s a waste of time. I’ve got something important I have to do.”

And then, of course, we always are looking for ways to do things better and better, and so this can naturally keep our mind active even when time is up for work. And I think this is something that takes time and discipline in a way and some, some inner work to loosen. I had this quite strongly for many years and was trying always to figure out how to do my work better, and I would find myself working at all different times, and I would find myself thinking about it at all different times.

And so over time, as I became clearer about what I’m doing and what I don’t, what actually isn’t my job, I don’t have to go farther or further than I actually am going, then I could start to relax and have a doable job that was completable within the hours that I was working So let’s think about this.

Like in a way, We’re seeing the symptoms here. But how can you actually begin to help that joy return to work, even if you’re maybe doing the same job? The first level, of course, is boundaries and transitions and recovery and hobbies and time off. All of those things are super important, and it’s something that is worth spending time to delineate what is work time, what is not work time.

And for me, what worked is setting a clear start and a stop day to my day and containing all of my work within that time, and then knowing that I’m gonna have to slow down and that getting projects done is gonna take me longer than if I push, but that it’s gonna be sustainable. It also included me letting go of some of the things that I thought I needed to do and just simplifying my work.

So these are a whole area of strategy that is worth exploring, worth sitting in and seeing if you can find ways of making your life or your work more sustainable. But there’s also something deeper as well because joy doesn’t necessarily return just because you rest more. It returns because work becomes work again.

And right now, for many HSPs, meaningful work isn’t just work. It has become a responsibility. It has become something bigger, something you have to carry. It has become a measure of who they are. And so it can become something that you must continuously think about, something that you feel responsible to protect.

And when all that gets attached to work, then joy slowly gets squeezed out. So joy requires completion. “I did it. I’m– I’ve completed that.” And one thing that can be hard in a way to experience that feeling of real enjoyment and excitement can be hard to have when your nervous system feels like something important is still unfinished.

Imagine reading a great novel and then halfway through someone says “Don’t stop thinking about this book all week.” Now, suddenly this book is now homework, so instead of something you enjoy and you’re just gonna get back to when you can, it’s like, no, you have to keep doing this and keep doing it at all times.

And, yeah, that’s the difference between homework and recreation So work is not recreation, it is work. But it can be held in a lighter way. It can be held in a way that it’s because I want to do it, not because I’m forced to or not because I have to do it endlessly And also one thing that I find is helpful is to joy requires a certain kind of trust.

Like trust that if I stop thinking about this, then I’m not gonna miss something or, that, that fear can be there that I’m gonna disappoint someone, I’m gonna lose my edge, or I’m just not caring enough if I’m not thinking about this all the time. Trust, on the other hand, is discovering that you can still care deeply while not always being mentally attached to it.

So it’s a different kind of relationship. Now, under this, how do you actually get there? Under this are beliefs, and beliefs are what keep us engaged in this kind of relationship with work, and beliefs can be questioned. When you question a thought like, “I have to finish this in order to relax,” then you may start to see that it’s not true.

You may start to see that your life could start to open up. You may question thoughts about what you think you’re supposed to accomplish with your work. Maybe your thoughts or beliefs are so grand that you are caught in this almost impossible game of trying to be great, trying to be amazing, trying to be the best, instead of just doing a job that you love.

Just doing a simple job that feels right to do without having to bring this kind of push, societal push for success and being amazing and being the best in the world and all that crap. Like just coming back to, “Hey, I love surfing in this way.” So these are the ways when you question the thoughts that are supporting this kind of burnout, the thoughts that keep pushing you, the thoughts that you have to prove something.

I remember questioning a thought once that I need my mom to approve and be happy with what I’m doing. I need her to think I’m successful. Oh my God, you bring that into something, even if it’s something you love, you’re gonna get burned out in no time because that’s a pushing kind of thought. So what I wanna leave you with here is that oftentimes, and it’s probably obvious in a way, the job itself is not the problem.

You’ve found something you love. The, the problem is when you start getting caught and without thinking in letting that job take over in all the different ways that it can take over. And there’s many ways that we can fall into this quite easily as highly sensitive people. So being aware of that, creating a little structure around your work, but then also questioning the beliefs that would push you beyond what is normal, what is natural, what is something that would really be a balanced way of working.

I love now where I’ve found a balance point where my work fits comfortably within my day, and I’m doing less than I used to do, but I feel like it’s enough. I feel like I’m doing enough that I can relax in the evening, that my mind goes off of work. And that’s when I come back in the morning, I’m like, “What do I get to do today?”

And my excitement comes because I love doing what I do So the feeling I’m left with today is that finding an aligned purpose alone is not enough to ensure that you experience joy in your work. How you hold your work makes all the difference. In this episode, we looked at why highly sensitive people can feel burned out even doing work that they genuinely love.

And we saw many different ways that the work can start to creep, the responsibility can start to creep, and we can try to do almost too good of a job and can end up never having a chance to really let go and rest. We also looked at what your mind starts doing when work feels deeply meaningful and emotionally important, and that is you can start to pressure yourself.

You can start to almost unconsciously do this, where you want to do a good job or you really don’t want to not do a good job, and you can end up adding this kind of psychological pressure that can make even something you enjoy turn into something that is not so joyful. And finally, we looked at how the joy in your work can begin to return when you no longer have to carry it with you everywhere.

This is something that has to be done on two levels. One, just physically, like having time for work and time for not work. And secondly, on an internal level, where you let work rest, where you call it complete for now, where you know that, okay, I… the whole job isn’t done, but it’s done enough for today. And so questioning the thoughts that prevent you from doing that can leave space for allowing you to have a life besides just the work, even when you love it So thanks for listening.

It’s always great to explore with you. This program comes out three times a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Join me next time for Breakthrough Mondays, where I share success stories and helpful insights for highly sensitive people on the path towards inner freedom.