I’ve called it burnout for years. The exhaustion, the brain fog, the days I’d just stare at my screen wondering what was wrong with me. But after eighteen-plus years in business and a lot of counseling, I’ve learned that “burnout” is often the wrong word, and finding the right one is what actually lets you fix what’s going on.
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Burnout Became My Catch-All Word, and It Wasn’t Helping
For years, when I got tired, unmotivated, or worn down by my business, I called it burnout. It became the umbrella for everything, the exhaustion, the lack of drive, the days I couldn’t focus.
What I’ve learned is that when we file everything under “I’m burned out,” it becomes a generic stand-in for a feeling we don’t have better words for yet. And without the words, we can’t actually address what’s happening. We just keep pushing, half convinced we’re being lazy, half hoping it passes on its own.
The Night I Finally Found the Words: “I Feel Back On Call”
A few months ago, I was working on a project that had me unusually stressed, and I couldn’t figure out why. It came up in counseling more than once and we talked about my need to name what was going on.
The night before my next session, the word came to me, I felt back on call.
I felt like I was being asked to stay constantly available, ready to drop everything, the exact posture I lived in for years while caregiving for my mom, especially in her final year. My nervous system didn’t want to be there again.
The relief of naming it was immediate. I wasn’t imagining it, and I wasn’t overreacting. There was a real reason for the stress. And once I had the words, I could act. I set better boundaries on the project and made sure that if it repeated, it wouldn’t repeat the same way.
None of that happens if you stay inside the word “burnout.” What I had was something with a shape and a source, and naming it is what let me deal with it.
What I Believe Now: It’s Often Misalignment, Not Burnout
Three Ways Misalignment Shows Up
- Depletion. Chronic health issues, caregiving, or toxic hustle, which is hustle that’s become the norm instead of the exception. It drains your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual reserves faster than you can refill them. Sometimes it’s self-inflicted, sometimes it’s a season you didn’t choose. Either way, it’s not a character flaw.
- Disconnection. Losing touch with your own voice, your business, your sense of purpose. It feels like wandering. Less motivation, less direction, more distraction, because you don’t have a clear sense of where you’re headed.
- Growth. Your business staying built for a version of you that doesn’t exist anymore. Think of a kid in a growth spurt, exhausted, achy, not sure what’s happening. This is the one I catch myself in most. When I haven’t named what’s going on, my brain jumps to “my business isn’t working, I need to rebuild it.” But that’s a knee-jerk reaction to an unnamed feeling, not an actual answer.
So, Now What Do I Do?
Start with rest, not as a reward for finishing everything, but as the actual starting point. Create margin, find your pace, put yourself in a situation where slowing down feels safe enough to hear yourself think again, and hear that still, small voice you’ve been too busy to listen to.
From there, it’s worth actually diagnosing what’s underneath the exhaustion instead of guessing.
If you want a clear-eyed look at where that mismatch actually lives instead of guessing, that’s exactly what the Alignment Audit walks you through.
Digging Deeper: Burnout vs. Misalignment at a Glance
This section goes beyond what we covered in the episode, for anyone who wants to dig further into the difference.
| Burnout | Misalignment | |
| What it feels like? | Exhaustion, cynicism, reduced effectiveness | Exhaustion tied to a specific gap or mismatch |
| What’s usually driving it. | Chronic, unmanaged stress over time | Depletion, disconnection, or unaccounted-for growth |
| What helps? | Extended, structured recovery | Naming the gap, then realigning around it |
| Recovery timeline | Often slow, sometimes months | Can shift quickly once named |
The World Health Organization added burnout to its official disease classification in 2019, though it’s careful to say it’s not a medical condition. It describes burnout as a syndrome from chronic workplace stress that hasn’t been successfully managed, showing up in three ways: exhaustion, increased mental distance or cynicism about your work, and reduced professional efficacy. All three, together, over time, not just one bad week.
You’re not imagining that this is common. A 2026 survey of 1,000 small business owners found that 84% had sacrificed their health, sleep, or relationships for their business, and only about a fifth described their mental health as thriving.
You could genuinely be experiencing burnout. That’s real, and it can take a long time to recover from. But before you settle on that word, it’s worth asking whether what you’re carrying actually has a more specific name.
Questions people ask:
Is burnout the same thing as being tired?
No, tired usually clears up with a good night’s sleep. Burnout is different. The World Health Organization defines it as exhaustion, mental distance or cynicism about your work, and reduced effectiveness, all three together, over time. If a weekend off doesn’t touch it, that’s a sign you’re looking at something bigger than tired.
How do I know if I’m burned out or just misaligned?
Look at what’s underneath the exhaustion. Chronic, unrelenting stress with no clear cause points to burnout. Something specific, caregiving, a business that’s outgrown who you’ve become, a lost sense of your own voice, points to misalignment instead. Misalignment tends to respond faster once you can actually name it.
Can misalignment turn into burnout if I ignore it?
Yes, it can. Unaddressed misalignment is exactly the kind of chronic, unmanaged stress that eventually turns into full burnout. The gap doesn’t close on its own, it just keeps costing you energy until something gives.
What’s the first step if I think it’s misalignment?
Start with rest, even a small amount, so you have the margin to think clearly again. Then look honestly at where the mismatch actually lives: your time, your energy, the things you keep saying yes to that you should be saying no to. The Alignment Audit is built to walk you through exactly that.
Related Listening
This episode follows our series on rest and the entrepreneur. If you missed the panel replay that closed it out, Permission to Rest for the Chronically Capable Entrepreneur is worth going back for. And if you want the fuller case for why rest comes first, Rest Isn’t a Luxury, It’s a Business Strategy lays out the five types of rest this whole series is built on.
Where to Go From Here
If you’re tired, if you’ve lost your mojo, if you’re wondering whether you can keep doing this work, it may not be burnout. It may be something bubbling beneath the surface that hasn’t had a name yet, and naming it is what lets you actually address it.
If you want help finding that name, the Alignment Audit is where I’d start. It won’t take long, and it might save you from rebuilding something that was never actually broken.
Transcript for Episode 115
Marta Goertzen: [00:00:00] we recently wrapped up a series on rest and the entrepreneur. We talked about the different types of rest that you need, and we went through and discussed the different types from mental rest, emotional rest, physical rest, spiritual re- rest, rest from work. And at the very end, there was a great conversation with a panel that I invited on to speak about their perspective on rest and how it’s impacted them in their life and especially in their business.
That was in the last episode. I’ll make sure that’s linked to in the show notes here below. I highly encourage you to go listen to that because there’s so many different ways we can rest, and there’s so many different ways we can incorporate resting into our business schedule, into our lives. And I think that will give you a really good insight into what we’ll be talking about today and the question of are you experiencing burnout? Are you feeling like you’re burned out, or is it really something else?[00:01:00]
And this is a challenging question because I know I’ve said it for years. There were times when, times when I would just get so busy, and I’d get so tired in my business, tired of everything, and I would feel a lack of motivation. I would feel my, uh, ability to do work or do life sometimes come under this umbrella of total exhaustion to the point where I started calling it burned out and I, “I feel so burned out,” or, “I just feel like I’m in a season of burnout.”
What I have learned over the years is that when you kind of put everything under this umbrella of, “I’m feeling burned out,” it really is that. It’s just a generic we-don’t-know-what-else-to-call-it phrase to, to describe how we’re feeling. And so what we call it is burnout, but we’re not taking the time to really give ourselves a specific diagnosis of what is this feeling of burning out coming from? [00:02:00] Because when we dig a little bit deeper below the surface of this umbrella feeling of I’m feeling burned out, we find different answers that are very intriguing to me, and they’re things that as I talk to women about why they’re tired and where the tiredness is coming from, burnout is the sense, and we just don’t have the language or the words to figure out what’s going on, so we call it burnout, or I’m just overwhelmed, I’m tired, I’m exhausted.
We are often too tired or too busy or too whatever to take the time to ask a few deeper questions and help us dig below the surface and ask ourselves, “Is what we’re experiencing burnout, or is it something else?”
And it’s frustrating to not be able to find the words really and truly to explain what we’re experiencing so we can communicate it with others, so we can talk about it with ourselves. ‘Cause if we can name it, [00:03:00] a lot of times we’re more willing to address it. But if we’re just feeling ugh or blah or I’m just so tired, I can’t focus, and that’s all we can describe it, a lot of times we are s- self-programmed to keep pushing through because we feel like we can’t give attention to it, or unfortunately, a lot of times we feel like we’re being lazy, or I should be able to do this, and so we keep pushing through. But instead, what we need to do when we get to that point, we do need to take that step back. We do need to dig a little bit underneath the surface and ask ourselves, “What’s really going on here?
Is this burnout, or is something else in the way here? Is, is something else happening that’s causing me to feel burned out?” So that’s what I want to talk about today, is diving beneath the surface today of this sense of burnout and figure out is that what it is, or is something else going on? So as we jump [00:04:00] into this, I would like to define burnout, and there’s a lot of different versions of the definition.
The one that I like is from Psychology Today, and it describes a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress. Other definitions will say it also comes with a decreased motivation and performance. I often feel like I have brain fog when I feel like I’m burning out or listlessness, or I find myself just staring at my computer for a while and wondering, “What in the world is going on? This must be burnout.”
What I have learned over the years, however, is that it’s not always burnout. Often burnout is used to describe something else. And I’m not a psychologist. I’m not an expert on this. I’m just sharing with you what I have learned through my personal experience through 18 years of [00:05:00] entrepreneurship and now having worked with a counselor for over a year and a half because of my high levels of stress that often made me think that I was burning out.
So could you be burned out? Yes. But that’s discouraging to hear because burnout can take a long time to recover from. So what I’d like to do here is share with you a few thoughts about what else might be going on and might be explaining what you’re experiencing.
Because when we find it hard to give language to our experience and how we feel- is doing a disservice in many ways of really acknowledging what’s happening below the surface.
And here’s the big one. I believe that burnout is often used to describe what we’re experiencing, but often what it is is misalignment.
And that misalignment can come in so many [00:06:00] different shapes or forms. It can come from how you’re spending your energy, how you’re spending your time, what you’re saying yes to, what you’re saying no to But I would like to look at three specific ways that misalignment can show up in our business that does feel like burnout.
But when you can get to the specifics, when you can find specific words to understand what you’re going through, what you’re experiencing, when you can name it, you can address it, and a lot of times you give yourself more grace to figure it out when you can put words to it.
I had this happen to me recently. I was experiencing a work project, and I could not figure out why I was getting so stressed about it, and this was, this was just within the last couple months. And I couldn’t put a name to it. I knew something was off. I couldn’t put a name to it, so I just kept pushing through ’cause I thought, “Oh, this is ridiculous. I should be able to do this, and why is this bothering me? I’m [00:07:00] overreacting.”
And it’s apparently it’s something I brought up in my counseling sessions more than once ’cause my counselor finally said, “You know, this has come up several times now, um, so we need to kind of figure out what’s going on.” And I came to one session, and the night before my next counseling session, I actually had the word, and I had words to describe what was going on, and I realized, I feel like I’m back on call. I feel like I am being asked to constantly be available and ready. And let me tell you, after the last couple years, I can’t do that much anymore. I have no desire to do that. I was in that state of on call, waiting for the other shoe to drop, drop everything and run over to go help my mom, and my nervous system and my brain does not like to be put in that situation right now because it brings back so many memories of what I went through with my mom over the last several years and especially the last year of her life.
And so when I [00:08:00] found the words to describe what was going on, one, there’s an immediate relief. I’m not imagining this. I’m not overreacting. There is a reason I am feeling this way, and I’m feeling this extra stress. And you know what happened? I got honest with the project. I put better boundaries in place and to the point where as soon as the project ends, it probably won’t be repeated, or at least if it’s repeated, it’s gonna be repeated in a much different way, format, so that I am not getting myself triggered and feeling like I am back in that situation where I was advocating and caregiving for my mom and replicating that situation in my business.
But it wasn’t until I found the words for what was going on that I could finally take action and positive action steps that actually made a difference. And so it’s very interesting, as we go through these three ways that, misalignment can show up in our business, I, I was feeling this [00:09:00] during this project, trying to figure this out.
And the first way is depletion. This can be from chronic health issues, it can be from caregiving, it can be from our efforts of striving all the time. It can come from toxic hustle. And toxic hustle I just define as hustle is okay, but when hustle becomes the norm, that becomes toxic hustle, and that increases stress.
It can cause health issues. It also can cause us to keep striving in our own strength. And so all of this can lead to depleting our energy, our physical, our mental, our emotional energy, our spiritual energy. And we don’t give ourselves times to refill the resources, refill those buckets. And sometimes, I’ll be the first one to admit this, sometimes we do this to ourselves, but there are other times when we’re depleting our resources and not giving ourselves enough time to refill those resources [00:10:00] because of what’s going on in our lives.
If you have been in intense caregiving season, you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve been through an intense chronic health season, you know what I’m talking about. There are times when things are external to us that we cannot control, and when you get the call from the assisted living or the memory care or the hospital that you need to come now, you drop everything and go.
And that can be multiple ER visits in a day. I have a friend who’s going through this right now with her mom. She spent 24 hours basically with between two ER visits. Been there, done that. There are times you cannot refill the reserves on a regular basis like you normally do, but that is usually for a season.
But when you’re doing that on a regular basis, that’s increasing your stress, giving you repeated stress, and that can, again, feel like burnout. But when you are able to step back, evaluate [00:11:00] what’s going on, understanding this is a specific season or something specific going on, and that you will get to the other side, then that depletion comes at you at a different perspective because you know that you can take little moments here and there when you can to refill those reserves.
And when this particular season or this particular emergency is over, you can go back to a more regular schedule of making sure that you are refilling your reserves, preserving your energy and your focus and your performance, so that when you are in your chair working on your business, you are there working on your business.
Another way this comes up is disconnection, disconnection from your voice, your business, your purpose, and you can feel a little lost, which can l- lead you to wandering. It can lead to extra distractions, and you’re wondering where you’re going because you don’t feel like you have a direction. And a lot of times when we get to that point, we feel [00:12:00] like we have less motivation, we have less purpose, we have less direction, we have reduced performance, and that can feel like burnout.
But when you realize it’s actually disconnection, we talk about it differently. We understand what’s going on, and we can give words to what we’re experiencing, and there’s some very specific steps you can take to reconnect with your voice, reconnect with your business, reconnect with your purpose, and give yourself some direction so you don’t feel lost.
And the third one, I think, comes from growth.
When you think of kids who are going through a growth spurt, a lot of times they are exhausted, they’re in pain, and they don’t understand always what’s going on. That same thing can happen in our business. You grow, but your business doesn’t grow with you so that you end up operating your business that was built for a previous version of you.
That can lead to feelings of burnout. It can feel like you’re disconnected, [00:13:00] and you can feel depleted. But really what’s going on is that you have grown, but you haven’t taken the time to analyze and understand how you’ve grown. So your business is lagging behind you, and it’s not growing with you.
And that can lead to resentment. It can lead to discouragement. It can lead to bright, shiny objects grabbing your attention and distracting you from what you need to do in your business.
I wanna share one quick example from my business, that when I am having that sense of burnout, and I haven’t quite taken the time to find the right language to describe what’s going on, I haven’t stepped back to ask these questions about depletion, about disconnection, and about growth. When I don’t have those words, immediately my brain goes, “My business isn’t working, so I need to go rebuild it,” or, “I need to go work on my products and services,” or, “I need to go work on my [00:14:00] website,” or, “I need to get a better understanding of my coaching process so I can describe it better to people who are talking with me.”
Are all of these bad things? No, but they are a knee-jerk reaction to what it feels to me like burnout, and, but as soon as I find the words to describe what’s really going on in that moment, that urge and that sudden need to figure out why my business, quote-unquote, “isn’t working” fades away. It is a strange phenomenon that I have discovered in my life, in the life of my clients, and I’m starting to be able to see that for what it is.
It, it’s not it’s not burnout. It is misalignment, and then you need to dig deeper to figure out where that misalignment is coming from so that you’re not making those knee-jerk reactions, so that you’re not making sudden changes to your website, or you’re redefining all your products and services.[00:15:00]
So we’re gonna be diving into this further, because I think it’s important that we have this conversation. I think it’s important that we dig below the surface to figure out what’s going on And so are you experiencing burnout? Possibly. But again, most likely it is something going on beneath the surface, and it’s important that we take the time to figure out what’s really going on and give you the language to describe what’s going on so that you can address it.
The question is then, so now what do I do? Where, where do I start? I understand that maybe it’s not burnout, that possibly it is something more a line of misalignment. What do I do? Well, if you listen to the last series, we start with rest, because rest is what makes it possible to build a simple and sustainable business that makes an impact.
And how do we start with rest? We do that by starting to create margin. We do [00:16:00] that by finding our pace, by putting ourselves in a situation where resting feels safe, where we feel safe enough to slow down. We can hear ourselves think again. We can actually hear that still, small voice that’s been trying to get our attention, and that we actually listen to it.
And that’s where we start. In future episodes, we’re gonna be talking about the pillars of designing a gentle business that helps us identify what is going on in our business and where some of this misalignment is coming from.
We always start with rest. Then we question the assumptions and reframe expectations, self-imposed limitations, the noise that’s coming at us, and then we reclaim alignment.
We identify what season of life we’re in, and what that season needs of us now, and what our business needs to do to support us, and how we need to work in our business. And then we learn [00:17:00] to take sustainable action. We’ll be diving into these other pillars in future episodes, but I wanted to start with this particular thought.
If you are tired, if you’re exhausted, if you are asking, “Have I lost my mojo? Can I do this work anymore? I’m just burned out,” I wanna encourage you that it may not be burnout. It just may be that something is bubbling beneath the surface, and now we need to figure out what’s going on so that you can identify it, so that you can actually take the steps to fix it, so that you can continue to be in your business, not resent it, not dread it, but actually learn to love your business again, and learn how to design and build a gentle business that fits you in this season.
In the next few episodes, we’re gonna be taking a look at what these pillars are of designing a gentle business, and we’re gonna do a deeper dive into them. And I’m gonna be sharing you about w- why [00:18:00] I’ve redefined my pillars this year. I’ve learned so much through the experience of going through caregiving and advocating for my mother, and how that impacted me personally, and how that it’s impacted my business.
And so that I have redefined a bit of how I do my coaching, or at least how I describe my coaching, and what it comes … What, what, what are the foundational pieces of building a gentle business?
If you’ve been with the podcast for a while, some of these you will have heard before. Some you’re gonna hear them explained in a different way that I hope will give you the encouragement you need to understand how to build a gentle business that works for you, because there’s no one way to build a business that fits you.
And so in future episodes, we are gonna be looking at these pillars. We’re gonna be looking at the clarity cycle. We’re gonna be looking at what does it take to get the help you need to figure out how to build that business that you, that you love again. So join me in the next few episodes as we talk about the foundational pillars [00:19:00] of building a gentle business that works for you.
Marta Goertzen is a Gentle Business Coach and founder of Selah Studios, host of the Doing Business Gently podcast. She helps Christian women entrepreneurs over 50 rediscover who they’ve become, realign their business to match, and fall in love with their work again, gently, at their pace, without starting over. As an avid photographer and lover of the outdoors, she daily explores the trails and beaches of the South Central Oregon Coast with her dog Mochi in tow. Take the free Business Alignment Audit as your gentle first step, a way to pause, get honest, and see clearly where you and your business are right now: https://SelahStudios.co/alignmentaudit