Holding Hope When It’s Heavy

Therapy feels different for many therapists than it did a few years ago. Not just because the world has changed — though it absolutely has — but because we have changed as a collective.

Since 2020, it’s been one long stretch of adaptation. First it was learning how to hold space through online sessions. Then it was trying to support clients who were living through collective trauma while they were living through it right alongside them at a personal level. Then came the slow return, the shifting expectations, the politics, the polarization, the cost of living, and now the rise of AI and apps replacing human connection in places that used to feel sacred.

Somewhere in there, many of us may have not realized how much adaptation takes from the nervous system.

You've likely adjusted, readjusted, and readjusted again — and that constant pivoting has a cost. I don’t think most therapists are burned out, exactly. I think it's more adaptation exhausted.

What Adaptation Exhaustion Looks Like

It can feel really subtle. It might be that you wake up already a little tired, even after a full night of sleep. You may notice that you can’t focus quite as long, or that you reach for your phone when you used to reach for a moment of silence. You start needing more recovery time between clients — not because you don’t enjoy the session or seeing them, but because the variety of topics and needs they come in with require so much more of you than ever before.

Therapists are highly adaptive people by nature. You’re trained to adjust, to meet the client where they are, to keep showing up. But when the culture around us keeps shifting faster than our bodies can integrate, the result isn’t needing to increase resilience — it’s trying to run on fumes, which is causing depletion.

The Problem with “Just One More Thing”

Now we’re also being told to brace for another change with the advances in technology — clients use AI and apps to do therapy, and you learn to use platforms to scale your practice.

And while some of those tools are helpful, they also quietly erode the piece of therapy that matters most: the human experience of coregulation.

That’s the real work, where healing happens.

But it’s getting harder to hold that space of honoring how much coregulation can heal, when the system around us rewards speed over presence and productivity over pause.

What Helps

There’s no five-step plan here, and I’m not going to tell you to schedule another self-care ritual. Sometimes that can end up feeling like yet another chore on the to do list. What helps right now are the things that remind you that you’re human — not a machine trying to keep up, so do some simple things that help you as a human.

As my friend Chad would say....KISS...Keep It Super Simple.

• Eat something warm. Your body needs grounding, not optimization.

• End your day deliberately. Take two minutes after your last session to breathe, stretch, or just close your eyes. Tell your body, “that’s enough for today.”

• Limit input. The brain can only hold so many stories — the news, social media, client trauma, your own. It’s okay to turn some of it down in favor of a bit of yoga, or art work.

• Reconnect with something real. A walk, music, cooking, quiet conversation. Anything that isn’t digital or designed.

And maybe most importantly: remember that you don’t have to keep up with every change. It’s okay to move at the pace your nervous system is prepared for.

Why Hope Still Matters

Even when it feels like the ground keeps shifting, your work still matters. Every time you regulate yourself in session, you help someone else regulate. Every time you pause instead of reacting, you create a small space of sanity in a very loud world.

It may be helpful for you to pause and realize you may be feeling what every adaptive human being feels when the world moves too fast for too long.

Take a breath. Eat something warm. And let yourself be a little less “productive” and a little more human this week.