Why Resilience and Burnout Are More Connected Than You Think

You may have been told you are resilient. Perhaps after a crisis, a loss, or a difficult season at work. People say it with admiration: “You’re so strong. You always cope.” From the outside, resilience looks like a gift. It allows you to keep going, to adapt, to hold things together when life is demanding.

But resilience can also be skin-deep. Research in psychology has shown that people who appear to thrive after adversity often carry hidden costs beneath the surface, from chronic stress to physical illness (Chen, Miller & Yu, 2018). On paper, they are doing well. Inside, they are depleted. The applause they receive for coping overlooks the price being paid.

When resilience becomes endurance

There is a difference between resilience and endurance. True resilience allows space for recovery and repair. Endurance, on the other hand, means pushing forward at any cost.

Stevan Hobfoll’s Conservation of Resources theory helps explain this. We each have a set of resources: time, energy, emotional capacity, support. Stress arises when those resources are threatened or drained. Many people who see themselves as resilient continue to pour their resources into others or into surviving, while neglecting to replenish their own. Over time, what looks like resilience is actually erosion.

The same pattern appears in workplaces. The Job Demands–Resources model shows that when demands stay high and resources remain low, burnout is almost inevitable (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). Resilience may buy time, but it cannot sustain health, connection, or presence without restoration.

The hidden costs of resilience

The costs of resilience are often invisible. They can show up as constant fatigue, restless sleep, or physical tension. Some people notice they are quick to irritability, or that they feel detached from the people they care about. Others describe a flatness that leaves little room for joy.

Medical research backs this up. Long-term stress and emotional suppression increase the risk of physical health problems, including cardiovascular disease and immune system dysfunction (Slavich, 2016). What looks like resilience from the outside may, in fact, be the body absorbing what the mind is determined to carry.

The social cost can be just as painful. Being praised for resilience can deepen the sense of disconnection. You are admired for surviving, but rarely invited to show what surviving has cost you.

When resilience disconnects you from yourself

Carl Rogers, the founder of person-centred therapy, described incongruence: the gap between how life appears and how it feels inside. Resilience can widen that gap. The stronger and more capable you appear, the harder it becomes to acknowledge exhaustion or grief. Eventually you find yourself living in the performance of resilience rather than in your lived truth.

Disconnection is the outcome. It can feel like being cut off from your own emotions, or like you are going through the motions without much presence. It can also show up in relationships, where you feel present in body but absent in spirit. Over time, resilience that once felt protective can become isolating.

Signs resilience might be masking burnout

Resilience can be admirable, but there are moments when it begins to conceal more than it reveals. Some signs to look out for include:

• Feeling exhausted even after rest.

• Finding it hard to connect emotionally with others.

• Noticing irritability or tension more often than ease.

• Struggling to remember the last time you felt joy.

• Being praised for how well you cope, but feeling unseen in how much it costs you.

These are not signs of weakness. They are signals that resilience has turned into endurance, and that something deeper needs care.

Redefining resilience

Resilience does not need to mean silence or endurance. A fuller definition of resilience involves both survival and recovery. It allows space for vulnerability, rest, and support. It makes room for the human need to replenish, not just to endure.

Therapy offers a space to explore this shift. It is not about dismantling your strength. It is about creating a place where strength and struggle can exist side by side. In person-centred therapy, the focus is not on praising you for coping, but on helping you reconnect with the parts of yourself that have gone unheard while you were surviving. That reconnection is what turns endurance into real resilience.

Closing reflection

The myth of resilience is that it always serves us. In reality, resilience without restoration can keep us distant from ourselves and from others. If you recognise yourself in this, it may not mean you lack strength. It may mean that the very strength you are known for has kept you from feeling alive. Therapy at The Farley can be the place where you begin to move from coping into connection.

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References

Chen, E., Miller, G. E., & Yu, T. (2018). Broaden-and-build theory and the skin-deep resilience framework. Development and Psychopathology, 30(5), 1743–1754.

Hobfoll, S. E. (1989). Conservation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualising stress. American Psychologist, 44(3), 513–524.

Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2007). The Job Demands–Resources model: State of the art. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22(3), 309–328.

Slavich, G. M. (2016). Psychoneuroimmunology of stress and mental health. Current Opinion in Psychology, 5, 90–95.

Rogers, C. R. (1961). On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.