The Therapist’s Body: How Somatics and Burnout Intersect
What happens when the body that holds others starts to disappear?
There’s something we don’t talk enough about in this field: The toll that holding space takes on the body of the person doing the holding.
As therapists, we’re trained to listen deeply. To attune. To regulate. To make sense of chaos. But we’re rarely taught how to feel our own bodies while doing it. We don’t learn how to notice the slow leak of depletion in our shoulders, our breath, our stomachs. We are taught how to stay present for others, but not how to stay present for ourselves.
We become a container.
And often, we disappear inside it.
When Burnout Starts in the Body
Burnout, for therapists, rarely announces itself dramatically. It’s a slow creeping in, not enough for us to notice, but enough to matter.
Often, it starts in the body:
A clenched jaw that becomes your baseline.
Breaths that never fully reach your ribs.
A subtle flinch in your gut when you see back-to-back trauma clients on your calendar.
The sensation of floating above your body while nodding empathetically, unsure whether you’re actually there.
The dread that creeps in Sunday night; not about your clients, but about your own capacity.
The body is the first to know when we’re over the edge.
But many of us learned to override it.
“If I can ignore it, it must mean that it’s not important enough.”
Because rest is inconvenient (but only when it’s meant for us).
Because we’re taught that showing up for others is sacred, even if it costs us our health.
Because saying “I don’t have capacity” feels like failure in a profession that valorizes self-sacrifice.
The Somatic Disconnect in Clinical Training
Most clinical training lives from the neck up.
We study diagnoses, interventions, frameworks, and ethics. We master active listening and hold space with grace. We think about feelings. We name what’s happening in the room. We do this to support our clients, so that they can begin to access how to move through their feelings.
But somatic attunement?
Body-based self-awareness?
Understanding the nervous system in real time as it relates to our own physical state?
Rarely touched.
And yet, the work is somatic. Always.
We feel our clients' words before we understand them.
We mirror their breath, their tension, their tone.
We track danger, sadness, disconnection—and we carry it home.
Our nervous systems are not neutral.
Our bodies are not blank slates.
We cannot sustainably do this work in disembodied ways.
Where Burnout Meets the Nervous System
Burnout isn’t just “too much work.”
It’s too much unprocessed work.
Too many sessions where we braced.
Too many moments we absorbed what wasn’t ours.
Too many days without shaking, stretching, crying, moving, exhaling.
Burnout happens when we don't get to metabolize what we witness.
Somatic literacy invites us back into relationship with our own body—not just as a maintenance machine, but as a truth-teller.
Our nervous system offers us signals constantly:
That tightness = you’re not breathing.
That exhaustion = you need to be held, not needed.
That irritation = a boundary has been crossed, maybe even by yourself.
The question is: can we learn to listen?
Coming Back Into the Body
Here’s what I’ve been learning, slowly, in this season:
I cannot think my way out of burnout.
I cannot work harder to feel better.
I cannot continue to center everyone else’s nervous system while abandoning my own.
So now, I ask myself:
Have I felt my feet today?
Have I unclenched my jaw?
Have I exhaled fully?
Have I moved my body in a way that feels and not just functions?
Sometimes this looks like laying on the floor for 5 minutes between sessions.
Sometimes it’s saying “no” to another good thing I simply don’t have capacity for.
Sometimes it’s dancing in the yard with my kids, barefoot and chaotic and free.
These moments are medicine.
Not because they fix everything.
But because they remind me that I exist—here, in this body, now. They remind me that I am human, whole and real, and that I deserve care too.
What If This Is the Work?
What if the work isn’t just about being a good therapist?
What if the work is staying in relationship with our own aliveness while doing it?
What if the most ethical thing we can do is not push through?
What if our clients benefit more from a therapist who is embodied, regulated, and honest—than one who is constantly teetering on the edge of depletion?
What if honoring our bodies isn’t a detour from the work, but the foundation of it?
For Therapists Who Are Tired
If you are a therapist, healer or helper reading this who feels exhausted, disconnected, or numb—I want you to know:
You are not weak.
You are not ungrateful.
You are not broken.
You are a body.
A body doing sacred, consuming, often invisible labor.
A body that needs tending, too.
Come home.
Slowly.
Without judgment.
With your hand on your chest, your feet on the floor, and the quiet knowing that you are allowed to feel, to pause, to rest.
This work needs you.
But it needs all of you.
And you, my dear, need yourself most of all.
With tenderness and care,
Sahar