Name the real cost
Describe what pressure is doing to your energy, relationships and choices. Start with the part you are finding hardest to carry.
Therapy & Coaching
Private personal support
Online burnout therapy
You keep showing up. Privately, you know something needs to change. Make space to understand the exhaustion and build a more sustainable way to live.
Book a free consultation
When carrying on is costing too much
Being capable does not mean you have capacity.
You may still answer the messages, meet deadlines and look after everyone who depends on you. Inside, there is less patience, less interest and less room for anything unexpected. Rest feels overdue, yet stopping can bring guilt or anxiety rather than relief.
Perhaps you have tried a holiday, a quieter weekend or a better routine. You return to the same expectations and find yourself depleted again. The question becomes more personal: what keeps making your limits negotiable, even when you can see the cost?
Online burnout therapy offers a private place to explore that question. Sonia works with you on the pressure you are carrying, the emotional patterns around responsibility and the changes you want to make. Your life outside work belongs in that conversation too.
You might recognise this
The work gets done. Your own life gets what is left.
- You cannot properly switch off.Your attention stays with unfinished tasks, other people’s needs or what might go wrong if you step back.
- Small demands feel disproportionately hard.A message, decision or request can feel like one thing too many when you have little room left.
- Your relationships feel the pressure.You withdraw, become irritable or struggle to be present with people you care about, then feel guilty afterwards.
- You know the pattern but repeat it.You promise to protect your time, then agree to more because disappointing someone feels harder than exhausting yourself.
- Your sense of yourself has narrowed.Achievement and being useful take priority while enjoyment, creativity and your own needs become difficult to access.
The work beneath the workload
Understand what makes it difficult to do things differently.
A diary can show where your time goes. It cannot always explain why saying no feels unsafe, why rest feels undeserved or why you take responsibility for what belongs to someone else. Those are useful starting points for personal work.
Sonia’s integrated Therapy & Coaching approach gives you room to understand what you feel and practise what you want to change. You might explore perfectionism, fear of criticism, the need to be indispensable or familiar relationship patterns that follow you into work. The focus stays with your experience, without assuming every exhausted person has the same story.
Practical work might centre on a conversation about workload, a boundary with a client or a more honest agreement at home. You can prepare what you want to say, notice what makes it difficult and return to what happened afterwards. A boundary becomes more useful when you can hold it in the situation where you normally give it away.
The aim is to support your mental health, inner health and wellbeing alongside real responsibilities. You do not need a dramatic reinvention. You need changes that fit your circumstances and stop requiring you to ignore yourself.
If worry and overthinking are central, explore online anxiety therapy. For the decisions about which kind of support fits, read therapy or coaching for burnout.
From understanding to practice
A manageable way to begin.
Notice what keeps it going
Explore the expectations, fears and habits that make it difficult to protect your capacity, even when you want to.
Choose a workable change
Agree a practical step around a boundary, commitment or conversation. Keep it specific enough to use in your actual week.
Review without self-blame
Bring back what happened. Adjust the approach around what you learnt, instead of treating a difficult week as failure.
Personal support with Sonia
A place where you can stop being the capable one.
You may be a creative, a small business owner or an executive whose working life leaves little room for personal difficulty. In these sessions, your role gives context. The work centres on you: how you feel, what you need and what is becoming unsustainable.
For that specific experience, see personal support for business owners and executives. If sensory demand, masking or attention are part of your exhaustion, support for neurodivergent lives gives those needs room. You do not have to fit a standard account of burnout to ask for help.
Sonia brings over 15 years of therapeutic, coaching and leadership experience. Her training includes personal counselling, relationship counselling and life coaching. You can read Sonia’s therapeutic qualifications and client experiences before deciding whether to arrange a conversation.
Sessions are online only, from Sonia’s Bicester-based practice, with clients worldwide. A quiet, private space helps you speak freely. Persistent or unexplained exhaustion also deserves a conversation with your GP; personal support does not replace medical assessment or treatment.
Begin with a conversation
You can ask for support before you reach your limit.
Your free 20-minute online consultation is time to discuss what is happening, ask questions and consider whether working with Sonia feels right.
Before you begin
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to be signed off work to begin?+
No. You can seek support while you are still working, running a business or managing daily responsibilities. You do not need to reach a particular level of exhaustion first. The consultation is a place to describe what has changed and explore whether this support suits you.
Is this burnout therapy or coaching?+
Sonia offers integrated Therapy & Coaching. You can explore the emotional and relational patterns around overwork while making practical changes to boundaries, commitments and everyday responses. You do not have to choose between understanding yourself and taking action.
Can I come if I am neurodivergent or think I might be?+
Yes. You can discuss sensory demands, masking, attention, transitions and recovery needs without needing a diagnosis to begin. The pace and practical work can be shaped around what you find manageable. This service does not provide a diagnostic assessment.
How long does burnout recovery take?+
There is no fixed recovery timetable or guaranteed number of sessions. Your circumstances, health, resources and the demands around you all matter. You and Sonia can agree an initial focus and review whether the work is helping you make changes that you can sustain.
How do online sessions and fees work?+
Sonia works online only, based in Bicester with clients across the UK and worldwide. Individual sessions last 45 minutes. Standard fees are £95 per session by Direct Debit or £110 for a one-off session. A free 20-minute online consultation gives you time to discuss suitability and payment arrangements before deciding.