Sage Holistic Counseling was featured in VoyageDallas’ Inspiring Stories series, highlighting Aubrey Richardson’s work providing burnout therapy for therapists, helpers, and caregivers in Texas. The interview explores perfectionism, people-pleasing, and why burnout is a systemic issue—not a personal failure.

Carrying the emotional load means you are responsible not only for your own emotions but also for managing, anticipating, and buffering your partner’s emotional experience. An emotional load can also entail the invisible mental work of remembering, planning, and reminding. This load often looks subtle from the outside, and if you identify as an overachiever or perfectionist, you may make it look easy. It often looks like being “good at relationships.” It is frequently praised; however, it is deeply unsustainable.

Below is a checklist of the most common signs I see in therapy with helpers, caregivers, therapists, and over-functioning partners.

Every once in a while, a song captures a pattern so precisely that it feels like a case study set to music.

When I first listened to People Pleaser, I didn’t hear a breakup anthem or a catchy pop song. I heard a familiar clinical narrative — one I see every week in my therapy office. A person who learned early that being easy, agreeable, and low-maintenance was the safest way to stay connected. Someone who became “the good one” by anticipating needs, managing emotions, and keeping the peace.

That is the lens I bring to this video.

This year, my professional life was shaped by community involvement, clinical consistency, hard conversations, and a deepening commitment to therapy that is honest, relational, and actually effective. This is a reflection on what 2025 looked like from the inside.

Being a therapist in your thirties is a specific experience. You are no longer bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as an associate, but you are not jaded enough to stop dreaming bigger. You have clinical competence, but you are also deeply aware of your own humanity and flaws. You can regulate a room full of emotions while forgetting to eat lunch.

The following are not lessons from a textbook; rather, these are the lessons you learn by sitting with clients all day, managing your own nervous system, running a practice and being self-employed, paying taxes, navigating burnout, and realizing that being good at holding space does not automatically mean you know how to hold yourself.

So here are 32 lessons from a 32-year-old therapist, for my fellow therapists.

The holiday season is supposed to be a time of joy, connection, and celebration. But for many therapists, healers, helpers, caregivers, and high achieving people pleasers, it can feel more like a season long stress test for your nervous system. The pressure to get everything just right, choose the perfect gifts, keep the family peace, and create meaningful memories for everyone else can turn December into a month of overwhelm, exhaustion, and self doubt.

If you recognize yourself in this description, you are not alone. Perfectionism, people pleasing, and overachieving tendencies show up loudly during the holidays, especially around gift giving and hosting. The desire to be the perfect gift giver or the warm and welcoming host can push you past your limits. But what if the holidays could feel different this year? What if you could give in a way that honors your needs, your capacity, and your wellbeing?

Let us explore why these patterns intensify during the holiday season and how you can navigate them with intention, compassion, and healthier boundaries.

The holiday season is supposed to be joyful, yet for so many helpers, caregivers, perfectionists, and people pleasers, it feels more like a pressure cooker. Instead of peace, you may feel guilt. Instead of connection, you feel stretched thin. Instead of rest, you feel responsible for holding everyone else together. As a therapist specializing in people pleasing, perfectionism, overachieving, and burnout, I see the same themes every year, and none of this is happening by accident.

Below is a quick guide to understanding why the holidays feel so hard and what you can do to reclaim your energy, boundaries, and joy this season.

The holidays are marketed as a time of joy, connection, and giving. But for people pleasers, perfectionists, overfunctioners, and helping professionals who are already stretched thin, the holidays can feel like stepping into a seasonal pressure cooker.

Maybe you find yourself agreeing to host the neighborhood cookie exchange, take the lead on your family’s group text thread, buy teacher gifts for every kid in the extended family, wrap all the presents, and of course, let your cousin’s friend’s dog stay with you because “it is really no trouble at all.”

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. Many therapists, nurses, teachers, first responders, and caregivers feel the holiday stress more intensely because they spend all year caring for others. December simply amplifies it.

This dynamic is hilariously captured in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Clark Griswold enthusiastically invites every relative he has ever known to stay at his house. He commits to the perfect holiday, only to slowly crumble under the weight of endless expectations. Unfortunately, many people pleasers do the same thing. You keep saying yes, hoping to make the season magical for everyone else. But at what cost to your emotional health, your relationships, and your nervous system?

On November 1st, I participated in the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) Out of the Darkness Walk with hundreds of other people from Collin and Denton counties. It wasn’t just any Saturday; it was a day of remembrance, community, and a kind of healing that only happens when we show up and walk side by side. Previously, I had participated in this event as a therapist, but this would be my first walk as a survivor of suicide loss. I walked with my mother as part of a team called In Robin’s Honor, named for my aunt who completed suicide in 2023. That loss still lives in the air between us, in the silence, the laughter, the shared looks when words don’t quite reach far enough. Walking that morning wasn’t about answers. It was about connection. About letting our grief take shape alongside hundreds of others carrying names, photos, and memories of people they love. Each step was a reminder that while grief is deeply personal, it’s also profoundly collective.

f you’ve ever sat in your car after a session wondering how you’re supposed to care for one more person, this is for you.

Therapist burnout doesn’t usually announce itself with flashing lights or dramatic breakdowns. It creeps in quietly. It looks like compassion fatigue disguised as “just being tired.” It feels like the Sunday scaries with a therapy-specific twist: dreading your full caseload, feeling disconnected from your clients, and wondering if you’ve lost the version of yourself who used to love this work.

Here’s the truth: burnout isn’t a personal failure or a lack of self care. It’s a signal that your nervous system, your boundaries, and your community are asking for something different.

You don’t need another list of bubble baths and mindfulness apps. You need tools that actually work for therapists — tools that help you stay in the work without losing yourself to it.

There’s a quiet irony in being a therapist who needs therapy.
We’re supposed to know better. We teach coping skills, we model boundaries, and we guide others through their darkest moments. But behind the scenes, so many of us are hanging on by a thread, holding space for others all day long while quietly running out of space ourselves.

And yet, finding a therapist who truly understands that reality? That’s not as simple as logging into a telehealth platform and hoping for the best. Because the pain points we carry as therapists aren’t the same as everyone else’s. The pain points are deeper, messier, and tied directly to the systems we work inside.

So, let’s name what makes being a helper so uniquely hard and why working with a therapist who specializes in treating other therapists matters more than most people realize.

The next time someone tells you to “just take a vacation,” remember: real self-care doesn’t have to look impressive on Instagram to be effective. Instead, it’s often boring, unphotogenic, and deeply restorative. It’s meal prepping instead of skipping dinner. It’s going outside between sessions. It’s asking for help before the crash instead of after. And it’s knowing that self-care is only one piece of the puzzle. We need aftercare. We need community care. We need systems that care for the people who care for everyone else.

As November rolls around and we are surrounded by messages of gratitude, familiar phrases start to show up in therapy sessions: “I should be grateful,” “I shouldn’t feel this way,” and other variations of self-dismissal that subtly encourage us to ignore our struggles. And to be honest, it’s such bullshit.

Society’s push toward gratitude can be uplifting, yes, but for many of us, it can also feel invalidating and like a form of self-gaslighting. We absorb cultural messages that say, “You have it good, so don’t complain,” and we end up talking ourselves out of our own reality. This is especially true when gratitude becomes a way to suppress real, complex feelings.

Let’s explore why statements like “I should be grateful” can become a kind of emotional gaslighting and how we can redefine gratitude in a way that honors the full truth of our experience.

Burnout is not always easy to describe. For many therapists, nurses, teachers, social workers, and caregivers, the experience is less about one clear symptom and more about a messy mix of exhaustion, resentment, and emotional depletion. That is why I created the Burnout Feelings Sort Worksheet, a visual and interactive tool designed to help helpers identify and name what burnout feels like in the moment with a little bit of levity to make the conversation easier to approach. By giving language and imagery to the lived experience of burnout, this worksheet makes it easier to check in with yourself, reduce shame, and recognize when it is time to reach for support.

Burnout is everywhere in helping professions. Therapists, nurses, teachers, social workers, and caregivers are praised for being resilient and selfless, yet many quietly feel exhausted, resentful, and stretched beyond their limits. And in exchange for your hard work, you are rewarded with more hard work. The problem is not that you are weak, lazy, or failing. The problem is that the system is broken, and you are underresourced to deal with a broken system.  Too often, helpers internalize harmful myths about burnout that keep them stuck in survival mode. Below are the top 10 lies burned-out helpers believe, and the truths that can set you free.

Burnout has long been misunderstood as a personal weakness. Helping professionals are advised to meditate more, take time off for vacations, and develop their resilience skills. In reality, that will never fix their burnout. Burnout is the result of impossible workloads, underfunded systems, and cultural expectations that demand constant giving without replenishment. If individuals are the cause and hold the solution for the burnout, then the exploiting and broken systems get to continue without having to change. For therapists and helping professionals, this narrative compounds guilt and makes recovery harder. When falsely placing the locus of control on the helping professional’s shoulders, narratives around ‘not being enough’ can trigger old, dysfunctional relationship patterns.

Women in helping professions—such as therapists, nurses, social workers, teachers, and caregivers—are often applauded for their compassion, emotional resilience, and selflessness. These female-dominated professions are typically centered around caring for others, providing emotional labor, and nurturing growth. But what is often overlooked is the profound impact of the f’ing patriarchy, in both the personal and professional areas, in making these women more susceptible to domestic violence.

What yoga taught me about boundaries, therapy confirmed: listening to your body is not indulgent in any way, it’s necessary in every way. Respecting your limits is not weakness; it’s a strength. And choosing to care for yourself, even when it’s inconvenient, is the most important boundary you can ever set.

If you’ve been pushing yourself past your edges in yoga, in work, or in relationships, consider this your invitation to pause. To modify. To breathe. To say yes to yourself. Because boundaries aren’t barriers. They’re bridges.

Yoga is more than movement. It’s a practice of connection to self, to others, and to the present moment. For therapists and caregiving professionals, it is one of the most accessible ways to regulate the nervous system, practice boundaries, and honor the truth that your well-being matters. So this National Yoga Month, may you step onto your mat not just to stretch your body, but to expand your capacity for care, starting with yourself.

When you’re in crisis, knowing where to turn can feel overwhelming. Whether you’re experiencing suicidal thoughts, navigating domestic violence, coping with grief, or supporting a loved one in need, resources in Dallas and across Texas are available right now to connect you with care and safety.

As a therapist in Dallas-Fort Worth, I know how vital it is to have a clear list of trusted crisis resources. This guide brings together local hotlines, national lifelines, and community-based support so you or someone you love can find immediate help.