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A friend asked me what I liked to do as a kid. I looked at her like she’d lost her mind. That was the beginning.
It came out of nowhere, the way that most useful questions do. I was venting to her — the kind of venting that passes as conversation when you’re too depleted for actual conversation — about my brain fog, dread, exhaustion, and mild hostility toward everyone.
She listened, and then, instead of presenting a solution, she asked her question.
I stared at her.
“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked.
“Just think about it,” she said.
I didn’t have an answer. I couldn’t think of one thing. I’d spent so long moving at a pace that allowed no space for remembering that I’d genuinely forgotten.
Her question began my actual recovery. Rather than a new morning routine or therapist-approved action plan, I began to retrieve the version of myself I’d misplaced somewhere between inbox zero and the pandemic.
The recovery advice nobody talks about
When you’re burned out and finally ready to do something about it, the world hands you a very specific script: exercise, set boundaries, and build a support system. Oh, and while you’re doing all that, find your purpose.
All the advice is well-intentioned, and most has merit, but none address the deeper problem: burnout doesn’t just exhaust you; it erases you.
It doesn’t happen all at once. Rather than a spontaneous shift, it’s a gradual. The person you were before (the one who had actual opinions about things, who got excited about something, who knew what she liked) gets buried under the pressure of responsibility, chronic stress, and the unrelenting pressure to be functional above all else.
By the time most people recognize burnout, they’re exhausted and a little lost. They’ve been so busy performing their many roles that they’ve forgotten there was ever a self underneath them.
When recovery advice tells you to “invest in yourself” or “reconnect with your values,” it sounds right in theory. However, if you’ve been running on empty, you might look inward and find only static. You don’t know what you value or what you enjoy anymore. You only know what you produce.
The work isn’t becoming a new, better version of yourself. It’s excavating the version that’s always been there.
The piano in the corner
When I finally sat down to think about my friend’s question, it came back slowly: bikes, books, and the piano.
I’d spent my life savings on my piano in my twenties. But once burnout took hold, it sat in the corner of my living room, silent and faintly accusatory. I still loved music, but loving something enough to spend time doing it requires a kind of presence that burnout systematically dismantles. You stop doing the things that are just for you, the things with no deliverables, and eventually you forget they were ever yours to begin with.
Eventually I slid back the cover and sat on the bench. I found a piece I used to love, a Debussy solo, La fille aux cheveux de lin, and played it badly. I stumbled and cursed my way through. A few minutes in, I shoved myself away from the keyboard in frustration.
Then I tried again. Something changed. My breathing slowed and my shoulders dropped. By the time I played the final notes, there was something I hadn’t felt in a long time: recognition. I was still here.
That’s what recovery actually looks like. You’re not becoming a new person but remembering an old one. You’re not building something from scratch, but returning to something that was always yours.
3 prompts to help you find your way back
You don’t have to have a piano, and you certainly don’t have to have a ready answer. You just need a question and enough quiet to sit with it. Rather than trying to solve something, you’re just remembering.
These prompts are a starting place for dusting off the parts of yourself that burnout sidelined. I suggest letting one sit for a few days before moving to the next.
1. The childhood inventory: What you loved before the world told you what to love
-What was something you loved to do as a kid? It doesn’t need to be something that you were good at, but what made you happy.
-What did you spend hours doing without anyone having to ask you to? What made time disappear?
-What did you want to be when you grew up? Don’t choose the practical version. Think about the first answer, before you learned to edit yourself.
-Was there a book, a show, a song, or a place that felt like yours and made you feel like yourself in a way that was hard to explain?
-What did you make, build, create, or imagine, just because you could?
Look over what you wrote. Is there a thread?
2. The abandoned hobby: The things you stopped doing
-What’s something you used to do regularly that you’ve quietly stopped because life crowded it out?
-When did you last do something that had no outcome, no audience, and no productivity metric attached to it?
-Is there something you’ve thought about starting again but talked yourself out of? What was the reason you gave?
-What’s one thing a past version of you would be surprised to hear you no longer do?
The things we stop doing are rarely things we stopped wanting. They’re usually things we stopped making room for.
3. The thing you miss: Longing is data; learn to translate it
-Is there something you see other people doing that makes you think, I used to love that?
-Have you rewatched a movie, listened to an old album, or revisited a place recently and felt something stir? What was it awakening?
-What’s something you’d do more of if you weren’t worried about whether it was productive, impressive, or worth the time?
-If you had a completely free Saturday with no obligations, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? (Not the responsible answer.)
Nostalgia is often dismissed as sentimentality. But research consistently shows it’s a calming element. It strengthens identity, roots us in a feeling of continuity, and reminds us that the self we’re trying to find has a long history of existing.
You don’t have to be good at it
I played that Debussy piece badly for weeks. My fingers stumbled, but somewhere in the stumbling something was happening that had nothing to do with performance. I was showing up for something that was purely mine. There was no outcome other than the sound of notes in a quiet room.
Recovery starts with a willingness to return to something that was always there and reclaiming the person you were before everything became too much.
The question my friend asked helped me realize that the fastest route back to yourself is backward. It’s through the things that were already yours before the world had time to convince you they weren’t worth keeping.
Try this before next week
Pick one prompt from above and sit with it for several minutes. Write down whatever comes up without editing. If a memory surfaces, ask yourself: Is there one small way I could let this back in?
Sarah Oelschig is a human resources leader, certified professional coach, and trained counselor whose career has centered on helping people navigate workplace exhaustion, transitions, and the inner critic. She holds an M.A. in Counseling Psychology from the University of San Francisco and a Professional Coaching for Life and Work Certificate from UC Davis. Her new book is Unburned: A Slightly Messy, Mostly Honest Guide to Life After Burnout. Learn more at sarahoelschigcoaching.com.
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