160: Burnout 101: What To Watch For + How To Reset Before It’s Too Late

Welcome back to the Shoot at Straight podcast, my friends. It’s that time of year we are heading into fall, and for many of you listening, that means that busy season is upon you. This is when I want to lovingly remind you and prepare you for the possibility of burnout, or rather prepare you so that you don’t end up burned out at the end of this year.

I know I always talk about burnout from the position of busy season, and that’s definitely when many photographers find themselves in this position, but that’s not the only time it can happen. Burnout is kind of always on the table. Anytime we are nearing or over our capacity and more gets dumped onto our plate, this more, this is what causes us to crash.

That’s when you find yourself burned out, and I actually found myself in this position. A little over a year ago, last summer, I found myself hitting burnout and I did not see it coming, which is pretty shocking for somebody who has been around the block a few times, coaches women on this, and I always put things in place to not find myself in this position, but it happens sometimes.

I found myself in this situation where. All of a sudden I was over capacity and more and more was getting dumped onto my plate and my nervous system could not handle, and I found myself in that paralyzation, that freeze of burnout where I was just miserable. And so I’m gonna share today. What I did to heal from it and to pull myself out of it, and that’s where we’re going today.

I’m sharing it from the perspective of learn from what happened to me so that you don’t end up in the same place. Right. In general, the earlier we can catch ourselves in burnout, the easier it is to reset and. Honestly, the even better scenario is to prepare ourselves so that we can avoid it altogether, right?

Staying out of burnout is what we really want. Nobody wants to end up there. If you do end up there, I want you to have the tools to pull out of it, but let’s try not to end up there at all. Okay. Busy season is coming. It’s time to start thinking about what you can do now to set yourself up for a burnout free fall.

Welcome to the Shoot at Straight podcast, where honesty meets heart and real talk actually means something. I’m your host, Sabrina Gehart, and each week we get vulnerable, practical, and just a little bit bold so you can feel seen, supported, and ready to take the next step in your photography journey.

Let’s go. In case you’re new to this podcast, welcome. If you haven’t heard me teach on this before, I’m gonna start at the beginning just to make sure everybody’s in the same place. Okay. Let’s start with this. What are some early warning signs of burnout? How do you know when you’re almost there? So if you are lucky enough to never have been in this, this position, I’m so happy for you.

Uh, but here’s some warning signs so that you can kind of read between the lines with what you’re feeling and the funk that you find yourself in. So you’ll start to feel dread, dread about going to work, dread about working with clients, dread about sitting down at your computer, dread about waking up and going to your day to day.

There’s just a lot of dread in how you feel and going from task to task, things that you don’t normally mind. You also have a lot of resentment, a lot of resentment for having to edit the photos, having to go shoot another session, having to stop what you’re doing to go help your kids with homework, having to have time with your spouse, having to send another invoice or reply to another client question.

There’s just, there’s resentment in kind of everything that you’re doing. You’re just in this perpetual like negative Nancy frustrated glass half empty situation. It’s also really common that you will be really detached. Okay, so really detached. Like maybe you’re past the point of dread and resentment and you just don’t care about anything anymore.

You just don’t care about anything anymore. You don’t wanna do anything good or bad. You don’t care what happens. You don’t care if your deadlines are late, you don’t care if you respond to emails. You don’t care if you’re running late to this thing. You don’t care if you back out from this to other thing.

You just don’t care. You’re just attached from everything. It’s also really common to be super irritable, irritable with people asking more of you, irritable for people, not noticing that you need support. Irritable, uh, with your kids, with your partner, with your loved ones. Just your, your kind of new normal is that you will be irritated with everything that’s going on, irritated with all the things you have to do, all that’s being asked of you, and it doesn’t feel good, right?

Because that’s not your normal. It’s also really, really common, and this is where I find it. The most. This is where, this is kind of my wake up call. When I feel this way, I stop and think, oh man, uh, I think I’m burned out, or I’m real close. And that’s paralyzation. It’s that, you know, the, it’s, you’ve heard fight, flight, or freeze.

It’s the freeze. It’s the, I don’t wanna do anything. I don’t wanna get off the couch. I don’t care if things get done. I don’t care that I’m supposed to be somewhere. I don’t wanna get dressed. I don’t wanna get ready. I don’t wanna go to this session. I’m just going to lay here. I’m not gonna call. I’m not gonna edit.

I’m not gonna open my email. I’m not gonna get on social media. I’m just going to do nothing. I am paralyzed. I can’t think about my to-do list. I’m literally doing the bare minimum to stay alive and keep my people alive. And that’s it. And then the last super common thing that can be a sign that you’re almost there or maybe you are there, is that everything feels super blah, super met, if you will.

Things that used to get you really happy and excited. Don’t do it. Things that used to get you super, super angry, don’t do it. You are just so gray. Nothing matters. You don’t care. You’re not excited, you don’t have joy. You’re just, you’re over it. You are just over your business. You are over your life, you’re over all the things you have to do.

You just don’t wanna do it anymore. Everything is just super blah. So those are some of the signs. Okay. So that if you are maybe feeling that way now or uh, in the future, those are some of the signs. So what about the common behaviors? What are the things that most commonly can lead us to being burned out?

You may have heard me talk on the podcast how there are different types of burnout. Okay. There’s business burnout, mothering burnout, situational burnout, life burnout. There’s a, there’s a lot of things. Okay. But for today’s episode, talking about photographers in busy season, or maybe you’re not a photographer, but you have another creative business.

Okay. And you’re heading into the busy time of year for this episode’s sake. What are the common things that I see when I’m coaching women in burnout? People pleasing. People pleasing, especially in the overcommitment department, leads to burnout real fast. It’s the saying yes to things without stopping and thinking about if you have the capacity for it, if you want to do that, if it is going to be a good choice for you to do So many women struggle with this.

So many women, they’re, they’re people pleasers. They’re yes people. They want to. Help out. They want to support. They want to lend a hand. They want to do that volunteer thing. They want to squeeze that last minute session in. They want to want to want to, because we love to make people happy. And that’s a great thing.

That’s a great thing. It may means you’re a great human, but there comes a point where your needs and your family’s needs have got to become higher than everyone else’s. They have to be the priority. Because at a point you get to a position where you are doing so much over commitment because of people pleasing that you are now saying, well, I’m going to watch my friend’s kids after school and not get to do my workout today, or I’m gonna squeeze in that last minute session and not get to go to my, you know, son’s.

Basketball game, or I’m going to stay up late for this rush turnaround client request and not get to watch my show with my husband than I normally do. And you start to put other people’s needs and requests over what’s keeping you sane and healthy. So people pleasing and overcommitment are one of the most common things that can lead to burnout.

Another thing is avoidance. If you are one of those people that tends to let things build up, this could be you. So this is the ignoring that you need to schedule appointments. Ignoring that, you know, a plumber needs to come out, ignoring that. You need to, uh, reinstall that program to do that thing. It’s putting off, putting off, putting off, okay?

It could also be avoiding going to the doctor because you’ve been having a health issue and you’re just going to ignore it because you don’t want to deal with it. Or avoiding a relational issue in your house or with your kids, because again, you just would rather put your head in the sand and avoid it than deal with it.

If you tend to lead towards avoidance, there can be seasons where we’ve avoided so much and so much has built up that it feels insurmountable and we land in burnout. And the third thing, and this is the most common, and this is where we’re really going today, is over work. This is where fall busy season comes into play.

We overcommit to our work. We take on too much. We don’t allow enough time to reset and rest and take care of ourself, and it tips the bucket. It tips over into burnout, and we are all of a sudden miserable. And we’re feeling those emotions and those feelings that come with burnout, the dread, resentment, detachment, irritability, paralyzation, all of those things.

Now that you know what to look for and what some of the common causes are for today’s episode for Busy Season Women, how can we stay out of it? What are some kind of burnout, protection habits that we can build into place to keep us out of the space? I’m gonna give you three. One is boundaries. This is where you have to stick to your guns.

No, you’re not available for that. Rush turnaround, edit. Or for shooting for an additional 30 minutes because that client showed up late to their session, or you’re not available to just quote unquote take a couple headshots while your family’s all dressed and ready and made up at their session. It’s sticking to your boundaries in your business and also in your personal life with your friends and family, and especially with yourself.

Sticking to boundaries with yourself is something that is the hardest of all to do. We can draw a line with our clients, we can draw a line, we can set expectations, we can put systems in place to stick to our boundaries with our clients. Okay? We can also do that relatively easily with our friends and family.

But when you talk about holding a boundary with yourself. You’re the only one that can hold that boundary, and so it’s very easy to break. So think about it. If you promised yourself that this fall, you’re gonna protect yourself by not ever editing in the evening. You are not editing in the evening, a single day this entire fall, because you’re gonna have family time, my friend.

You’re the only one on the hook to hold that boundary in place. You’re the only one. You’re the only one that is going to come mid-October when you are drowning in a stack of editing and feel like you need to catch up and your kids go to bed early and your husband wants to do something else, you’re the only one that can say, you know what, guys?

This is family time. I’m not gonna edit. You guys can go to bed early. Dad and I are gonna watch a show or have a glass of wine, or stay up and catch up on things. Because it would be so easy to say, okay, honey, you go do that thing. I’ll put the kids to bed early. I’m just gonna catch up on editing. And you know what happens when that, when that happens, it’s a slippery slope.

You do it once and then you say, okay, well instead of never editing at night in the fall, I’m just gonna do it like on Mondays because my husband is watching football or whatever. It’s a slippery slope. And then before you know it, you have ignored the boundary. You’re now editing multiple nights a week.

You’re taking away from family time. You’re not getting the reset. You’re in front of your computer even more. Do you see what I mean here? So sticking to boundaries is a huge way to keep yourself out of burnout, both with your clients. Your family and friends, but most importantly with yourself. And if you’re thinking, I don’t have any of these boundaries, or maybe you have client boundaries, but you don’t have personal boundaries, my friend, now is the time to make those decisions.

What are you not willing to do this fall? What are you making sure that you will do this fall? What are the boundaries that you wanna put in place for yourself to protect you? And how are you going to stick to them? Number two, another thing that you can do to protect yourself from burnout is white space.

This is absolutely crucial and I will sing it from the mountaintops forever and ever. Amen. If you do not have this irregularly baked into your schedule, you will become burned out, period. End of story. I could just end this podcast right now. When we are in intense seasons, we need more of it. It helps our nervous system.

You know what those days feel like and those seasons feel like when it is go, go, go, go, go. The to-do list is full. The kids need a lot. The days are early mornings, late nights, you feel like you have every single minute scheduled and you’re bouncing from one thing to another. Those days, it’s like you can barely catch a breath.

You are like, you don’t even need caffeine because you’re like racing with adrenaline and anxiety. Okay. And when multiple days lead into multiple weeks, lead into months of that, can you see what that’s doing to your nervous system? You’re not sleeping well, you’re not able to rest or reset. This is when your relationships start to get ugly because you start to have those symptoms, the resentment, the irritability, right?

Do you see where I’m going with this? How can you solve this problem? Give yourself a chunk of white space every single week. Every single week. This time is for you, not on the computer, not to run errands, not to catch up on laundry, not to even play with your children. It is for you to be alone and do whatever you want that is not business or household or.

Task list based. Go for a walk, go to a coffee shop and read a book. Go see a friend, get a mani-pedi, get a massage, go on a hike, go paddle boarding. Whatever it is, keeping that white space on your calendar every single week is how your nervous system will reset. It is how you will come down from that anxiety.

And my friend, if you’ve heard me teach on this before, you know this is a hard habit to protect. It sounds so good when I talk about it. It sounds so great. On paper. In practice is real tough. It’s real tough when we are super busy and leading, leading super full lives, to not instantly push things into that spot, right?

If we have this open chunk of time every single week, it’s real easy to say, oh, you know what? I’m falling behind on editing. I’ll catch up on Friday morning during my whitespace time. Or, you know what? I have a bunch of errands. I didn’t get run this week. I’ll do that during my white space time. It’s so easy to shift things that way, but again, this is a boundary that you must protect.

You have to block this off and keep this appointment with yourself. The first few times you do it are going to feel super frivolous and your brain is going to like kind of beat you up a little bit over. Why are you not being productive? You have so many things to do. This is so ridiculous. How could you be taking time out to do these things when you should be doing these other things?

Right? This is a men a game of mental fortitude, but what happens is after you’ve done it a couple times. You feel the physical, emotional, and mental release and reset that comes on the other side of it, you will start to crave it and you will be able to stick to it more often. That’s a promise. So white space, this is absolutely crucial, and when you are in a busier season, you need more of it.

So during fall, busy season, once a week, once a week, when things are slower in the winter months or in the summer months or whatever your slow season is, you could probably get away with twice a month. But commit to this, this, this alone. If you do nothing else, white space alone can save you. It absolutely can save you.

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Number three. Uh, another way that you can protect yourself from burnout is routines. This is not new news. My friend routines, especially the ones around self-care and things that support your boundaries, will be a game changer in the fall. We get so busy with sessions and clients and editing that we tend to let all of the quote unquote extra things slide.

We stop getting up early to exercise because we’re exhausted. We start skipping our morning routine because we need to upload client galleries. We stay up past our bedtime to edit just a few more images. You get the picture. We start to forsake our health and wellness for the pressure of busy season and keeping clients happy.

But what about your family? What about your partner? What about your kids? When you let all of your healthy routines go in order to just work, work, work, everything else starts to crumble. And that’s when you not only find yourself in burnout, but also with relationships that are suffering. You’ve got to stick to your routines.

Now, if you have some beautiful, long drawn out morning routine and workout routine and all this, I’m not saying that you have to keep everything exactly the same, but don’t you dare get rid of everything. Let yourself have a shorter, more abbreviated routine. When you’re in a busier work season, that’s fine, but you’ve got to continue with those routines that keep you sane and healthy.

Because once you let them all slide, especially when you let them all slide so that you can squeeze in more work, it just makes it worse. It seems like it’s gonna make you feel better. It seems like, oh, well if I just skip my workout and spend that hour doing this other thing and getting quote unquote caught up, or if I just stay up late and get quote unquote caught up, hint, you’re never gonna be caught up.

It seems like it’s gonna make us feel better, but it actually makes us feel worse because then we’re exhausted and we’re not moving our body and we’re not supporting ourselves. Right. Those are the three things that can help kind of protect you from burnout when you implement them and stick to them boundaries, white space and routines.

I wanna finish by kind of moving past all the Debbie Downer stuff. Let’s say that you do find yourself in a season of burnout and you’re struggling. What are some of those tools that can help you reset? What are some things that can help pull you out of it and recover? And these are all things that I did last summer when I found myself in this position.

These are tools I have in my toolbox because I have been down this road before. I coach women through this. I know what to look for. I know what to expect. I know how to get myself out of it. And so I’m sharing those with you today. Number one, rest similarly to white space. This is going to feel. Like the absolute wrong thing to do, but this is an example of listen to your body and follow it’s lead.

Like I said, when you find yourself in burnout, we have that paralyzation, that detachment. Listen to your body. Let yourself step away from as much as you can. Let yourself have a day or two or a week where you’re putting pause on everything. And you’re sleeping in, or you’re napping, or you’re laying on the couch reading a book, or you’re not doing hard workouts anymore, you’re just, you know, going on light, gentle walks.

Let yourself take it easy. Treat yourself like you’re recovering from the flu. Let your body rest because when your body is resting, your brain will eventually catch up and rest too. And that’s what we need. We need time to stop spinning over client drama and staring at a computer screen with images and worrying about, you know, how the next session’s gonna go.

And just step away. Let yourself rest. Every single thing we do can be moved. And pushed. None of it is life and death. I’ve said that so many times on the podcast. None of it’s life and death. Everything can get pushed if it needs to. Okay, so allow yourself to rest. Another thing that you can do is to delegate, and I really mean this for the personal stuff too.

If you have an assistant or a VA or somebody that helps you with your business from time to time, yes, absolutely. But what I really mean is at home, delegate everything you can. Can you have somebody watch your kids after school or pick them up from school? Can you tell your partner that you’re struggling and you need help on the weekend to get caught up with things?

Can you not have to deal with making dinner for a week? What can you get off of your plate? Because even those little day to day tasks and stressors will support you through this, okay? Because remember, we’re not only burned out from a heavy work season. We’re burned out because of all of the things. All of the pressure put on us, all of the things we have to do and take care of and the responsibilities we have.

So being able to delegate in your personal life so that you can, like I just said, rest more and have less on your plate, all of that is going to help. Another thing that you can do is take, uh, like a clarity break. What is this? It’s kind of like extended white space or like maybe even a mini sabbatical.

Can you step away from everything and just say, you know what? I’m really struggling. I’m gonna take this entire week off. I’m not working. If you’ve got sessions, maybe you photograph the sessions, but that’s it. You’re not marketing. You are not culling, you are not editing, you are. You turn an autoresponder on for your email.

You are literally just stepping aside. You’re just stepping aside and that’s okay. That’s what we have a website for. That’s what we have an email list for. That’s what we have. SEO working. You can step aside for a week and just give yourself a breather. Give yourself a clarity break. Okay. To just stop.

And I know that seems crazy in fall, busy season. It’s possible. It is absolutely possible. So if you need this, it’s possible. And I personally love to do this and also move all of my personal commitments. So if I’m gonna lean into taking a week off, I’m also gonna reschedule everything else I had. Did I have a coaching call?

Did I have a coffee date or a lunch date? Do I have a doctor’s appointment, a hair appointment? I’m literally moving everything that, that I can possibly move. Some things are not movable, I understand, but I’m moving as much as possible so that I can take every stressor off my plate. Another thing that will help you reset is movement.

Again, this is not new news. Go do something that moves your body. If you don’t feel like doing something, you know that you normally would like Pilates or lifting weights or yoga or whatever, just walk. Just walk. Maybe you commit to walking, you know, 30 minutes, twice a day, and that’s it. Moving your body helps.

That’s why every health guru, that’s why every doctor, there’s literally no one that says that moving does not help you. Everybody says it for a reason, and it’s true. And sometimes when we are, you know, in that, in that detached paralyzation phase where we’re leaning into rest and we’re allowing ourselves downtime, we kind of get into that.

Like, ugh, I don’t wanna get up and go for a walk. Ugh, I don’t wanna go to yoga, whatever. But it’s one of those things where if you do it, you always feel better afterwards. And that’s the case with this too. Just tell yourself, you know what, I don’t wanna walk, but I’m going to, anyways, set a timer for 15 minutes and if you really still don’t want to, at the end of 15 minutes, let yourself go home, but move your body.

It will help. And then the last thing is therapy or coaching, or both? I utilize both. And most of my clients utilize both. And I recommend this for almost everybody. If you don’t have a therapist and if you don’t have a coach, it’s probably time for one or both of those people to be in your corner.

Therapy is beautiful and every single person needs it. No matter how good or bad things are, no matter what your upbringing was, no matter what your current life situation is, everybody needs one. Everybody needs one. And I believe the same with coaching. Everybody needs somebody who’s ahead of them on the journey, who can talk them off the ledge, who can help support them in different seasons.

Who can answer the questions they feel too dumb to ask Who can, who they can lean on, okay? In a business capacity, that’s what a coach is. It’s a therapist is helping you in a personal capacity. A coach is helping you in a business capacity. And so if you don’t have one or both of those people, maybe it’s time to look.

Look into that. The last thing I want to remind you about this process is that when you start healing after a period of burnout. Sometimes we kind of lean too far into the healing phase where it’s like we’re, we wanna be on perpetual vacation, you know what I mean? Like you’re so relaxed and you’ve loved stepping away from your business and you’re feeling so much better, but it’s time to get back to work.

It’s time to get back to that business that you love. So how can you rebuild your capacity to work without immediately becoming overwhelmed? Again, the simple answer is really slowly, gently. This takes time. This takes time, grace with yourself. Um, knowing that you’re not going to be able to dive back in full throttle and that honestly, you probably shouldn’t because that landed you in burnout in the first place.

And then also getting support. This is again, where a coach can come in and helping you figure out what to add back in and win, uh, so that you don’t find yourself immediately overwhelmed and heading straight back into burnout. Okay. In closing my friend. This is just your gentle reminder that business does not have to break you in order to be successful.

You do not have to be the most booked out photographer to be successful. You don’t have to forsake your health, your wellbeing to be successful. You can have a wildly thriving and successful business that makes you really great money and still has you loving your life. I know that can seem like such a shock, especially if you are one of the many, many, many photographers who finds themselves burned out at the end of every single year.

It is possible to not feel that way. It is possible to have your highest revenue year ever working with the best clients ever, and not being burned out at the end. It’s possible, I promise. I, I would be remiss if I did not end this episode, uh, without mentioning Root to Rise. This is my five month mastermind for female photographers and the number of women who have joined this program over the years, specifically because they wanted that elusive success without burnout, the number is staggering.

The vast majority of women join because of that reason every single fall. Many women join this program because they’re tired of ending their year burned out, and they don’t wanna run their business that way anymore. And if this is you, enrollment for the 2026 program is opening soon, and you can get on the wait list at sabrina gab hart.com/mastermind-waitlist.

That’s it for today, my friend. I’ll see you next time. Thanks so much for listening to the Shoot at Straight podcast. You can find all the full show notes and details from today’s episode@sabrinagehart.com slash podcast. Come find me and connect over on the gram at Sabrina Gehart Photography. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be honored if you hit that subscribe button and leave me a review.

Until next time, my friends shoot it straight.