I giggled at that photo above because that represents me at times. I have the most comfy sheets—like blanket sheets. They make me feel relaxed and cozy. And if anyone tries to talk to me, I’m like, “No, can’t you see that my hair is a boundary and prohibiting any conversation right now?”
It may sound silly, but adding little things like blankets has helped me when the burdens I help carry are heavy.
When was the last time you thought about your healing?
- Not your clients’ healing.
- Not the person who slid into your DMs at eleven o’clock last night to share their story.
- Not the survivor you’ve been quietly supporting through their deconstruction.
- Not the church leader you’ve been gently trying to help see the damage they caused.
When is the last time you got to just … be? (Without the need for cozy sheets?)
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you came into this precious work the same way I did—through your own pain. You survived spiritual abuse. You walked through the wreckage of a faith system that used God’s name to harm you. You survived something horrific. And somewhere in your healing process, you looked around and thought: I can’t just walk away and say nothing. I have to help.
And so you did. You became a coach, a counselor, a mentor, a speaker. You started a podcast, a support group, or an Instagram page. You showed up for other people because you knew what it felt like when no one showed up for you.
That is sacred work.
But today I want to talk to you about something that’s happening beneath all of that—something quietly threatening your health, your calling, and maybe even your faith.
It’s called recovery burnout.
And if you are a survivor who became a helper, you need this.
WHAT IS RECOVERY BURNOUT?
I recently came across the work of a researcher and writer named Jaime Simpson, and I want to give her full credit for this framework because she articulates something I have been watching happen in this community for years. (And in myself.)
Jaime Simpson defines recovery burnout this way:
“Recovery burnout happens when the pursuit of healing and/or advocating becomes so consuming that exhaustion quietly replaces restoration.”
Quietly.
Not dramatically. Not with a breakdown or a crisis moment. Quietly. You don’t see it coming. You just slowly stop being restored by the work that used to feel life-giving, and you start being depleted by it—and you keep showing up anyway because the people who need you don’t know your not entirely fulfilled anymore.
Jaime goes on to point out something that I think is especially important for those of us doing this professionally. She says recovery spaces, even well-meaning ones, can unintentionally send the message that survivors must constantly:
- Revisit the trauma
- Analyze every response
- Tell their story repeatedly as a testimony
- Stay immersed in trauma-related content for education
- Endlessly process
- Advocate and speak out for other survivors
That list is your job description.
You revisit the trauma every single session. You analyze the responses because that’s how you help people understand their experience. You tell your story repeatedly because your testimony is part of what makes people trust you. You stay immersed in trauma content because you’re doing research, creating content, and running support groups. You endlessly process it’s the nature of this work. And you advocate because somebody has to.
The very things that are meant to heal people? You are doing them all day, every day. And your nervous system is keeping score.
WHY HELPERS ARE UNIQUELY VULNERABLE
Here’s what Jaime wrote that stood out to me. She said:
“Most survivors and advocates are not trained therapists, yet people often expect survivors to somehow hold the answers, absorb everyone’s pain, provide emotional support, educate others, advocate publicly, and still continue managing their own healing at the same time.”
I got certified as a trauma-informed coach. I train other coaches in the Freedom Framework. Even those of us who are trained, who have our certifications, who have done our own therapy, who have built proper frameworks—we are still survivors first. We didn’t get into this work from a neutral place. We got into it from a wounded place that began to heal, and that history means we are always doing double duty.
We are helping other people carry something we ourselves once had to carry.
And the weight compounds.
If you let it, it will also be the thing that destroys you more than your original trauma.
Jaime uses a phrase that’s important—vicarious trauma. This is what happens when you absorb the trauma of the people you’re trying to help. Their nightmares start to trigger yours. Their stories replay in your mind at 2 a.m., and you call it care. Their pain activates the parts of your own nervous system that never fully got to rest.
She writes that vicarious trauma adds …
“further emotional exhaustion, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, depletion, withdrawal, difficulty concentrating, loss of meaning, cynicism, and reduced emotional capacity.”
You don’t know if you’re reacting to your own wounds or to theirs. You don’t know if you’re in a trigger or in burnout. It all just feels like weight. You intellectually know it’s not yours, but you’re not sure how it came to be.
Does this sound like your life?
- Your inbox becomes full of disclosures.
- Your social media algorithms become saturated with trauma content (that’s mine).
- Your nervous system rarely gets to fully leave the trauma world because people now associate you with pain, survival, and support.
Here is one that has been hard for me: Your friends text. They just want to “catch up.” You set your sights on relief and a conversation without someone needing you. But it ends up they reached out because they need your wisdom and coaching/counseling, so what you thought would be a refreshing peer conversation ends up draining you. You end up feeling guilty because you want to be a good friend, but were caught off guard, and now you need to figure out how to get enough rest before your clients need you again.
Does that sound familiar?
WHAT IT ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
Let me walk you through what recovery burnout actually looks like in practice, because it doesn’t always look like falling apart. Sometimes it looks very competent from the outside.
Jaime identifies six categories of symptoms, and I want to walk through them because I think many of you will recognize yourselves in this list.
Emotionally, you might feel exhausted or numb. Mood swings that you chalk up to stress. Anxiety, guilt, and a persistent sense of powerlessness. Irritability that shows up mostly at home, with the people who are supposed to be safe. Withdrawal from the very relationships that are supposed to sustain you.
Physically, your body starts to tell you what your mind is too busy to notice. Constant fatigue even after you’ve slept. Sleep that doesn’t restore you. Headaches. Muscle tension. The feeling that your body never fully leaves survival mode because in many ways, it hasn’t.
Cognitively, you notice brain fog. You forget things. You have trouble making decisions. Jaime calls out something that I think is particularly sharp: perfectionism around healing. Feeling like you have to constantly monitor yourself, pressure yourself to heal properly, as if healing is a performance you can fail.
Behaviorally, you start avoiding. You stop answering messages—not because you don’t care, but because your nervous system genuinely cannot take on one more emotionally heavy conversation. You doom-scroll trauma content late at night even though you know it’s making things worse. You lose interest in things that used to bring you joy.
Relationally, you start to feel like you have nothing left to give. The people closest to you notice that you’ve gone somewhere they can’t reach. You feel emotionally over-relied upon by others and under-supported. You’re holding everyone else up, and there’s no one holding you.
Existentially, and this one hits hardest for those of us in faith-based spaces, you start to wonder if trauma has become your entire identity. If life is ever about something other than surviving and helping others survive. You feel trapped in what Jaime calls a “recovery loop”—circling the same pain, the same content, the same conversations, unable to imagine a future that isn’t defined by what was done to you.
If you recognized yourself in that list and felt that uncomfortable “oh crap” moment, please don’t turn that recognition into more self-criticism. You are not failing. You are not weak. You are human. And you have been carrying something very heavy for a very long time.
THE PERMISSION YOU HAVEN’T GIVEN YOURSELF
Advocacy, helping, and speaking out can feel empowering. It can feel like reclaiming your voice. It can feel like meaning and purpose. And it is those things. But over time, without boundaries and restoration built in, what once felt like reclaiming your voice can slowly become an obligation you can no longer meet.
And when the exhaustion surfaces? Many survivors turn it inward. They criticize themselves for pulling back. They wonder if they’re failing. They tell themselves they’re not doing enough. They start asking God if they missed their calling because this life course is unsustainable.
Jaime writes something in her article that I think many of us desperately need to hear. She writes: “Compassion should not require self-abandonment.”
You are allowed to have boundaries. You are allowed to protect your nervous system. You are allowed to stop carrying responsibilities that are not yours. You are allowed to ask in a text what they want to catch up on before you talk. And you’re allowed to say no.
God is not asking you to be Jesus for them. Your emotional tank is not limitless. The fact that God brought you through something doesn’t mean you were equipped to carry everyone else’s version of that same thing unexpectedly or indefinitely. It’s understandable to be tired. And you are allowed to set boundaries to protect yourself from self-abandonment.
THE QUESTION THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING
Jaime offers a question in her article that I think is one of the most clarifying questions a helper can ask themselves. She says she regularly asks herself—and encourages her clients to ask:
“What will bring restoration to my nervous system right now?”
Not: What will people think if I step back? Not: What does being a good advocate require of me today? Not: Will my business be hard to pick up again after a break?
But simply: What will restore my nervous system right now?
Right now. Not later.
- What would refresh you?
- What do you want?
- What makes you laugh and feel alive?
And then it’s good to make a schedule to ensure the future is set up for success, too.
WHAT RESTORATION ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
So now what?
I am not telling you to stop helping. This work matters enormously. The people finding their way out of spiritually abusive systems need guides who have been where they are. That is a real and irreplaceable calling.
But they need you to be pouring out from a full cup. Please pause on that statement. Assess where your capacity is right now. Is your cup full? This isn’t a one-time measurement; it’s a daily act of surrender to God—who gave you the calling in the first place. And if your cup isn’t full, ask Him what to do? What needs to change? What needs to go? That may mean canceling a phone call or taking a last-minute trip to relax.
Let’s imagine you are NOT in burnout yet.
Jaime offers a beautiful, practical list of ways to help protect you from recovery burnout, and I want to walk through some of them.
Boundaries that are actually enforced—Things like automatic reply messages that protect certain times of your day. A fee structure for your advocacy work, so that generosity doesn’t become depleted. Learning to say “I don’t have capacity for that right now.”
Reducing trauma exposure—This one is counterintuitive for helpers, but it’s critical. That might mean turning off notifications, stepping back from support groups that keep pulling you into active trauma content, or making deliberate choices about what you allow into your algorithm.
Regular self-assessment—The kind that’s honest, not performative. Checking in with yourself the same way you’d check in with a client. Noticing when you’re triggered, when you’re depleted, when you’re running on fumes. And taking steps to adjust before you’re out of gas.
Grounding and embodiment—Returning to your body. Movement, breath, physical presence. Not as a spiritual discipline you have to achieve, but as a simple act of kindness toward yourself.
Supervision, counseling, or peer support—Let me be frank. If you are doing this work and you don’t have someone who holds you, that is a gap that needs to be closed. You cannot pour from a vessel that no one is ever filling. Yes, the Lord is good to do that, but you need people to connect with and attune with as well. Allow yourself to experience ordinary life again.
A WORD SPECIFICALLY FOR YOU
I’m speaking from experience here … and I did it wrong for years. So I’m giving you the shortcut that avoids high cortisol and loneliness.
The fact that you survived what you survived—and then turned around and offered your hand to the person behind you—that is one of the most Christlike things a person can do.
But here’s something I’ve had to learn in my own journey: Jesus also withdrew. Regularly. Intentionally. Even when there were still crowds who needed him, still people who were sick, still questions that needed answers. He withdrew to quiet places. He rested. He prayed. He protected something in himself that made the work possible.
If Jesus knew that even the most sacred work requires protection and restoration, then we can stop pretending we’re the exception.
I imagine some of you rolling your eyes at me because you know this. In fact, you are some of the wisest people I know. But honestly, you stink at implementing this. (Ask me how I know.)
You are not spiritually advanced enough to skip rest. Neither am I. Neither is anyone in this space.
Recovery burnout is real. It is happening in this community. And the people we serve need us to take it seriously—not just for our own sake, but because a depleted helper cannot offer what a restored helper can.
So let me ask you one more time:
When was the last time you got to just be?
If it’s been a while, that’s your answer. That’s the first thing you can do to help others.
A huge thank you to Jaime Simpson for her research and writing on recovery burnout. Her work is careful, compassionate, and worth your time. She has given survivors and helpers a real gift by naming this so clearly.
“Recovery Fatigue… The exhaustion that comes from constantly trying to recover, by Jaime Simpson (Substack, May 14, 2026). Graphics credit: Jaime Simpson.
