The Silent Burnout and Why It’s Never “Enough”

What happens when you hit the milestone… and feel nothing?

You launched the thing, crushed the deadline, hit the bestseller list. But instead of celebration, there’s only a quiet panic: What now?

On The Tamsen Show, psychotherapist Israa Nasir named this feeling for what it is: toxic productivity. A relentless drive to achieve, not because of passion or joy, but because your sense of worth depends on it.

“You get the achievement, and another checkmark appears on the horizon,” Israa said. “It never feels like enough.”

This mindset is often seeded in childhood. If you were only praised when you performed, got the grades, won the game, made the honor roll, you may have learned to trade identity for achievement. That pattern follows you into adulthood. Rest starts to feel shameful. You call yourself “lazy” for slowing down. You set goal after goal, not realizing you’re chasing love in the shape of metrics.

How to know you’ve crossed into toxic productivity:

• You skip meals or cancel plans to “get more done”
  
  
• Rest feels like guilt, not relief
  
  
• You can’t remember the last time you celebrated a win
  
  
• You compare your pace to others, or even to a younger version of yourself
  
  

But here’s the truth: Burnout isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of misaligned values.

Recovery starts with asking, What do I actually want to feel when I achieve something? And then working backwards from there, not from someone else’s checklist.

“Healthy productivity doesn’t treat rest as a reward,” Israa said. “It treats rest as a requirement.”

​​Listen to this conversation on The Tamsen Show to break the cycle.