Something I hear increasingly among my client population is the experience of burnout after divorce. And this is the thing that very few people prepare you for.

You’ve made it through the hardest decision of your life. You survived the chaos of the initial separation. You got through the legal process. And then you get to the other side, expecting to feel magically better, clear, and free.

Instead, you feel exhausted.

So in this week’s solo episode, I am going to shine a light on what is actually happening in your body and your nervous system after divorce. Why it’s so much more than just being tired, what burnout after divorce actually looks like and why it’s so disorienting, and what regulated rebuilding actually looks like so you don’t end up right back in depletion.

What you’ll hear about in this episode:

• Why burnout after divorce is about way more than just being tired
• How burnout actually shows up and why it catches so many women completely off guard
• What regulated rebuilding really looks like after years of survival mode
• How tiny micro-steps of noticing, honoring, and following through rebuild self-trust over time
• Why powering through burnout is the one thing that will set you back the most

✨ If you’d like to watch the video version of this episode, you can find it here.

Resources & Links:

Focused Strategy Sessions with Kate
The Divorce Survival Guide Resource Bundle
Phoenix Rising: A Divorce Empowerment Collective
Kate on Instagram
Kate on Facebook
Kate’s Substack Newsletter: Divorce Coaching Dispatch
The Divorce Survival Guide Podcast Episodes are also available YouTube!
Seven Step Mindset Reset for Divorce 

Co-dependents Anonymous
Al-Anon

Show Transcript:

Kate Anthony [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome back. So today I wanna talk about something that I don’t think we’ve ever covered before, but I see increasingly in my client population, which is burnout after. Divorce because this is the thing I think that very few people, probably, myself included, don’t really prepare you for, which is like you have made it through so much already, right?

You make you go through the making the hardest decision that you’ve ever had to make. You have survived the chaos of the initial separation and all that entails. You get through the legal process. And your divorce is final. You’re on the other side, and then you expect to feel better because isn’t that the point, right?

You expect to feel relieved and clear and free, [00:01:00] but instead you might actually feel exhausted. Flat, unmotivated, sometimes even worse than you did before, sometimes depressed, right? And then you think, what the fuck is wrong with me? So I wanna say this right at the top, that there is nothing. Wrong with you.

What you are experiencing is something very real and actually quite predictable because burnout after divorce isn’t just about being tired. It’s not just oh, you need a nap, or you need a massage, or, get into some self-care routines, all of which are extremely helpful. But also what you’re experiencing is nervous system depletion.

And this happens when your body has been in prolonged stress often for years. And then finally the intensity shifts, [00:02:00] right? Not even disappears completely. It just shifts just enough. Mental health research talks about this as post stress fatigue. It’s the collapse that happens after chronic activation.

So when you really look at what you’ve been through. Sense that this would happen chronic. Emotional stress, hyper vigilance, walking on eggshells, legal battles. Financial fear, parenting stress. Constant, relentless decision making. Jesus Christ. Talk about decision fatigue and your brain. I know your body have been in survival mode.

All this time and survival mode is not meant to last forever. So when things calm down, even just a little bit, your system doesn’t immediately go, woo-hoo. Yes, we’re free. It goes, okay, we can finally stop. And then everything [00:03:00] you’ve been holding together drops, and that’s the crash. This is the part that really fucks with people because during divorce you were functioning, a lot of, you were high functioning and you were getting things done.

You were making decisions. You were showing up for your kids, you were managing your attorneys, you were handling logistics like a machine, but you were. In what I call functional survival mode, a survival mode that is fueled by adrenaline and cortisol. It keeps you sharp, it keeps you moving. It helps push you through things that you shouldn’t even have to push through, but it’s not sustainable.

So when the crisis ends or even just becomes less intense, your body goes, okay, we’re done now, and everything. You didn’t have space to feel starts to surface. This is also, by the way, what your children experience when they come back to your house. If they’ve [00:04:00] been holding it together at their other parents’ house and they come back to you and their nervous system goes, whew, cool.

And that’s when they start having temper tantrums and like letting everything out because it feels safe to do so this is also when you might be saying, when your nervous system says, we’re done. We’re done holding it together. You might start wondering what the hell’s wrong with you? And you think I should feel better by now?

Why am I so tired all the time? I can’t focus what is wrong with me? I don’t even know what I want anymore. And that’s not. Failure, it’s decompression. That’s your system coming out of survival. The way it shows up isn’t always obvious, which is why it is so disorienting. So yes, there’s the exhaustion, right?

You can’t sleep enough like it doesn’t sleep, doesn’t fix the problem. There’s also [00:05:00] brain fog. There’s difficulty making even simple decisions. There’s a lack of motivation that feels really unfamiliar. Like you can’t get off the couch, you can’t function to make breakfast. There’s emotional flatness, right?

You’re not even feeling maybe, or you’re irritable in ways that seem to come out of nowhere. And another one that I see really often is that sense of oh. What now? And it’s not like an exciting woo, what now? I got my whole life in front of me. No, it’s paralyzing because for so long your identity has been tied to this relationship, to the conflict, to the survival strategy.

You’ve been orienting your whole life around managing something, and then when that changes, there’s space, but that space doesn’t just suddenly fill with clarity. [00:06:00] Sometimes it just fills with silence, nothingness, and that can feel really terrifying because now it’s if I am not managing him, if I’m not n navigating this divorce, if I’m not in survival mode, who am I?

What do I even want? And this is where a lot of well-meaning advice completely misses the mark, right? Because people say oh, you just need to rest. And yes. Rest matters. But telling a woman coming out of high conflict or emotionally abusive relationships to just rest isn’t actually helpful because your nervous system might not even know how to rest.

Rest might feel like a free fall. It can feel really unsafe. On top of that, most of you’re not really in a position where life just stops and you like have all this time to rest, right? You’re still co-parenting, you’re dealing with legal stuff, you’re managing finances, rebuilding your life. So you try to rest and instead of [00:07:00] feeling better, you feel more anxious, more disconnected, more lost and confused.

Because what you really need is not just rest. I think you need rest. But it’s a certain type of rest. It’s regulated Rebuilding. Rebuilding after divorce is not about jumping into a new life. It’s not about reinventing yourself overnight. It’s not about finding your purpose immediately. It’s about recalibrating your system, and that starts with much smaller than most people think.

It starts with stabilization, consistency. Not intensity, like simple routines, predictability, not like what do I wanna do with my life, but what might help me make 5% of a difference today? What might help me feel 5% more grounded? Because what your system needs right now is safety. And one of the biggest things that [00:08:00] keeps burnout going and going is intense decision fatigue, right?

So if you’re putting yourself in a situation where you’re like, I have to reinvent myself today, oh my god. It’s more decisions and you have been making high stakes decisions for months or years, and your brain is done. So instead of asking yourself these massive existential questions, we’re gonna scale it way down.

What do I actually need today? I’m actually gonna pull it back. First. You’re gonna ask yourself, how do I feel? And you might not even know, I feel lost. I feel empty. I feel unmotivated. I feel vacant. And once you’ve identified maybe what the feeling is, then you can ask yourself what the need might be.

What do I need? What can weight, what decisions can I take off my plate today? Asking yourself the question. Just two questions, right? How do I feel and what do I [00:10:00] need?

Burnout gets worse. When you keep demanding clarity from a system that doesn’t have any capacity for it yet, so this is where self-trust can come in, but not necessarily the way that people usually talk about it. You don’t build self-trust by suddenly trusting yourself completely. You rebuild it slowly.

You notice your feelings, and then you notice what feels off and you honor small preferences. When you say, I feel. Annoyed. And what do I need? I need my mother to pick up some of the slack. Or I need someone to help with the laundry. You honor that preference. I need someone to help with my laundry. Okay?

And then you actually follow through on these little commitments to yourself. You notice how you [00:11:00] feel, you honor what you need and you follow through consistently over time. And that’s how you build self-trust. It’s built through evidence over time. And so as you build that self-trust, you start to expand your capacity.

You actually expand your ability to feel safe. ’cause now you’re starting to feel safe in your self yourself, because for years, something felt off. You might not have done anything about it yet, or you were gaslit into disbelieving yourself and your feelings and your experiences, and at every time that happened, self-trust was diminished.

So now we need to rebuild the self-trust through tiny micro steps. I notice how I feel. I identify what I need, and then I honor it. And then I [00:13:00] notice how that made me feel. Oh, that actually made me feel better. Oh, okay. Now I trust myself to take care of myself, to honor myself, and we need to be able to do that before we can ever start to trust others again.

Not because if I don’t trust myself, I don’t love myself. I can’t love another, no, because I don’t even know what the fuck it looks like. A lot of people think I need clarity about my future, and yeah, maybe you do. But clarity doesn’t come first. Capacity does because clarity requires energy. It requires decisions, it requires regulation and cognitive bandwidth, and burnout, strips, all of that.

So instead of chasing clarity, the question becomes, how do I increase my capacity? Even slightly, how do I support my system so that clarity can emerge later? There’s a trap [00:14:00] in this that I wanna highlight for you right now. I’m gonna plant that red flag, which is trying to rush out of burnout, trying to fix it, trying to get back to feeling strong and empowered and clear as quickly as possible, and I get that right.

Of course you want that. I want that for you. You’ve already been through so much. Burnout is not something you power through because when you try to rush it, what happens? You overcommit, you over-function, you override your own signals. You don’t honor yourself. You destroy whatever self-trust you may have built up and you end up right back in depletion.

So this is gonna be slower work for you, intentional work, and it’s also really hard. To do alone because when you’re in burnout, your perspective is limited. Your decision making is compromised. Everything feels heavier than it actually is. [00:15:00] And this is where support really matters. Not just now, but not just any support.

Because therapy can help you process what happened. Yes, absolutely. But most therapists are not trained in this. Most therapists are not trained. In healing from abuse in rebuilding after divorce. Certainly not that, right? But they’re not even trained in like recognizing the signs of narcissistic abuse, which is more common as we know, than almost anything else at this point.

Marital issues, like it’s a big one. And so therapy can help you maybe process your feelings, but then what? There isn’t, there is no container in a therapeutic process with somebody who’s not trained in this. And legal support helps you navigate the case. Amazing, and that is scaffolding that you need.

But neither of those therapy or your attorney are designed to [00:16:00] help you rebuild your capacity, make strategic decisions, and then move forward in a way that doesn’t put you right back into burnout. So that’s a different kind of support. And if you’re in this space right now, if you’re listening to this and you’re like, oh my God, this is me, I totally get it.

Or I know this is gonna be me. I’m in the midst of this and I 100% know that this is where I’m headed. So I want you to hear this. You are coming out of something that has required an enormous amount of you both the relationship and the divorce, and your system is recalibrating. And that takes time and it takes intention and it really does take support.

So if you do want help navigating what comes next, not just the logistics, but the actual rebuilding of your life in a way that you can sustain, that is something exactly what we do inside of Phoenix Rising, but also, any other. I’m of [00:18:00] course gonna tout my program to you. That’s my job.

But any other place that you can find support within a group of people who actually understand what you are going through specifically? I happen to run Phoenix Rising, and I think it’s one of the best out there if it’s out of your price range or if online doesn’t work for you and you wanna seek in-person support.

Yes, that’s okay. Do it. Find it. Codependence Anonymous. Al-Anon free. Not specific necessarily to divorce, but certainly full of people who have gone through it or have you know are going through it. I can tell you that this is the work that we do in Phoenix Rising. At the end of the day, the goal isn’t just to get through the divorce, it is to build a life.

That you actually have the full capacity to live vibrantly fully with all of [00:19:00] yourself. I want that for you. So badly. So badly. And I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it over and over again with my clients, with members of Phoenix Rising. I’ve seen them step into that, and it is fucking glorious. And if you’re listening to this right now and you’re like.

That sounds great, but totally unattainable. I promise it’s not, and I promise we can get you there. That’s all I’ve got for you today. And by the way, if you’re just listening to this and you feel heard and you feel like, oh my God, yes, I totally get that, and you’re not ready to do anything about it now, that’s fine too.

I just want you to know that what you’re going through is 100%. Normal. It has a name and there is a process to get through it. I will see you next time. I love and adore you. Just keep coming back. That’s all you need to do. Bye.

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DISCLAIMER:  THE COMMENTARY AND OPINIONS AVAILABLE ON THIS PODCAST ARE FOR INFORMATIONAL AND ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY AND NOT FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING LEGAL OR PSYCHOLOGICAL ADVICE.  YOU SHOULD CONTACT AN ATTORNEY, COACH, OR THERAPIST IN YOUR STATE TO OBTAIN ADVICE WITH RESPECT TO ANY PARTICULAR ISSUE OR PROBLEM.

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