Work-Life Balance When Everything Feels Urgent: Creating a Life That Doesn’t Revolve Around Work
- Dr. M. Sophia Aguirre, Ph.D., CGP, FAGPA
- Apr 9, 2023
- 7 min read
Updated: Aug 11
You close your laptop at the end of the day, but work doesn't exactly end.
There's an email you could answer. A project you should probably get ahead on. A Slack notification appears while you're making dinner. Maybe you work from home, which means the place where you're supposed to rest is also the place where unfinished work sits waiting for you.
Even when no one is explicitly asking you to keep working, it can be surprisingly difficult to stop.
For many people, “work-life balance” has started to feel like one more thing they're failing at. We're told to set better boundaries, practice self-care, put our phones away, and make time for what matters. Yet those recommendations can feel almost insulting when you're navigating an unreasonable workload, financial pressure, caregiving responsibilities, discrimination, graduate school, multiple jobs, or a workplace culture that quietly rewards being available all the time.
At Aguirre Center for Inclusive Psychotherapy, we think about work-life balance differently. Rather than asking How can I perfectly balance everything?, it may be more useful to ask:
Does the way I'm living leave enough room for me to still feel like a person?
Maybe “Balance” Isn't Actually the Goal
The word balance suggests that work and the rest of our lives can be divided into neat, equal portions. Real life rarely works that way.
There may be seasons when your career requires more of you. There may be seasons when parenting, caregiving, relationships, health, grief, or simply surviving requires far more.
A sustainable life doesn't necessarily mean giving every part of your life equal time. It means having enough flexibility that work does not consistently consume the energy you need for everything—and everyone—else.
The warning signs often appear gradually. You stop making plans during the week because you're too tired. Exercise, hobbies, friendships, or sleep become things you'll “get back to” when work calms down. Sunday afternoon begins to feel less like a weekend and more like the beginning of Monday.
Eventually, you may realize that your life has become organized around recovering from work and preparing to return to it.
When Being Good at Your Job Becomes Part of the Problem
Ironically, the people who struggle most with work-life boundaries are often exceptionally responsible.
You're the person who gets things done. Coworkers know they can rely on you. You notice what needs to happen before anyone asks, step in when someone else is overwhelmed, and have difficulty leaving something unfinished when you know you could take care of it.
Those qualities may have helped you succeed. They may also make it easier for workplaces—and sometimes other people in your life—to continually ask for more.
For people who struggle with perfectionism, people-pleasing, or anxiety, setting a boundary can feel more uncomfortable than simply doing the extra work. Saying no may bring fears of disappointing someone, seeming uncommitted, or being perceived as difficult. Our Anxiety Therapy work often explores these patterns because sometimes overworking isn't driven only by workload; it is also driven by what slowing down brings up emotionally.
The challenge is that competence can hide depletion remarkably well.
You may continue performing, achieving, and taking care of everyone around you long after your internal resources have begun running low.
Work-Life Balance Isn't Just an Individual Responsibility
This is where many conversations about work-life balance fall short.
They place the responsibility entirely on the person who is exhausted.
Take a bubble bath. Practice mindfulness. Wake up earlier. Manage your time better.
Those things may be helpful, but no morning routine can make an exploitative workplace sustainable.
Some people have far more freedom to establish boundaries than others. A salaried professional with paid leave has different choices from someone working multiple hourly jobs. A person with financial security may be able to turn down overtime when someone supporting extended family cannot. Racism, sexism, ableism, immigration experiences, caregiving expectations, and workplace power dynamics can all affect how safe it feels to say, I can't take on anything else.
For BIPOC professionals, work may also involve the additional emotional labor of monitoring how you speak, respond, dress, disagree, or take up space. Our article on the mental health cost of code-switching explores how constantly adapting yourself in professional environments can add an invisible layer of work to the workday.
Creating a healthier relationship with work therefore isn't only about becoming better at self-care. It also involves becoming more honest about what your environment is asking from you.
When Work Starts Taking More Than Time
An unhealthy relationship with work doesn't always look like eighty-hour weeks.
Sometimes it looks like being physically home but mentally somewhere else.
You're at dinner while thinking about tomorrow's meeting. You're watching television while checking email. You're playing with your child while part of your attention remains on a problem you haven't solved. You take a vacation but need several days before your body stops feeling like it should be doing something productive.
Over time, chronic work stress can affect sleep, relationships, mood, concentration, and the ability to experience pleasure outside of work. For some people, prolonged stress eventually develops into high-functioning burnout, where they continue meeting responsibilities while feeling increasingly depleted, irritable, numb, or disconnected underneath it all. ACIP's current burnout resources specifically address how chronic stress can coexist with continued functioning.
This is an important distinction because you don't have to wait until you can no longer function before deciding that something needs to change.
Boundaries Aren't Just About Saying No
Boundaries are often described as though they're simply a matter of becoming more assertive.
Sometimes they are.
But meaningful boundaries often require tolerating the feelings that come after you set them.
You may decide not to answer email after 7 p.m. and then spend the evening worrying that someone thinks you're unresponsive. You may decline an extra project and immediately want to send another message explaining yourself. You may take a day off and feel guilty instead of rested.
This doesn't mean the boundary was wrong.
It may mean you've spent a long time learning that being useful, productive, accommodating, or available is how you stay valued.
Creating healthier boundaries can involve noticing those beliefs and gradually learning that your worth does not disappear when you're unavailable.
What Does a More Sustainable Life Actually Look Like?
A healthier relationship with work probably won't emerge from finding the perfect productivity system.
It may begin with smaller questions.
When do you actually feel restored? Which relationships have been getting the leftovers of your energy? What have you stopped doing because work always seems more urgent? When you imagine disappointing your boss or coworker, what feels frightening about it? What would become possible if every free hour didn't need to be productive?
The answers will look different for everyone.
For one person, sustainability may mean closing the laptop at a consistent time. For another, it may mean asking for help, delegating, taking earned time off, or reconsidering whether the workplace itself is sustainable. For someone in a helping profession, it may mean recognizing that caring deeply about your work doesn't require giving all of yourself to it.
ACIP's Therapy for Therapists specialty specifically supports clinicians navigating over-functioning, perfectionism, burnout, secondary trauma, and difficulty establishing a healthy work-life balance.
The goal isn't to stop caring about your work.
It's to build a life in which work is allowed to matter without being allowed to become everything.
Therapy for Work Stress and Burnout in Atlanta
At Aguirre Center for Inclusive Psychotherapy, we work with adults navigating chronic work stress, burnout, anxiety, perfectionism, people-pleasing, caregiving responsibilities, identity-related stress, and the pressure to continually perform.
Our Individual Therapy & Counseling in Atlanta offers a space to understand not only how overwhelmed you feel, but also the relational, cultural, workplace, and systemic factors that may be keeping you overwhelmed. ACIP's individual therapy services explicitly support concerns including burnout, perfectionism, anxiety, depression, racial stress, and over-functioning.
We serve clients in Midtown Atlanta, Buckhead, Decatur, Old Fourth Ward, Inman Park, East Atlanta, Sandy Springs, and surrounding Metro Atlanta communities, with virtual therapy available throughout Georgia.
If your life has begun to feel like something you squeeze into the spaces around work, you don't necessarily need to become better at handling more.
You may need space to consider what you want your life to make room for.
ACIP offers a free 15-minute phone consultation to help you determine whether our practice feels like the right fit. Visit Getting Started to request an appointment or explore our therapists to find someone whose approach resonates with you.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT MAINTAINING WORK-LIFE BALANCE
What does a healthy work-life balance actually look like?
A healthy work-life balance does not necessarily mean dividing work and personal life equally. It means creating enough space for rest, relationships, health, interests, and other priorities without work consistently consuming the energy you need for the rest of your life.
What are signs that work is taking over your life?
Signs may include thinking about work during most of your personal time, regularly checking messages after hours, difficulty relaxing, withdrawing from relationships or hobbies, disrupted sleep, irritability, emotional exhaustion, and feeling as though weekends are primarily for recovering from work.
Why do I feel guilty when I'm not working?
Guilt around rest can develop when productivity becomes closely connected to self-worth, security, achievement, or belonging. Perfectionism, anxiety, family expectations, financial pressure, workplace culture, and experiences of marginalization can also make slowing down feel uncomfortable or unsafe.
Can poor work-life balance lead to burnout?
Chronic work stress without enough recovery can contribute to burnout. Someone experiencing burnout may feel exhausted, detached, irritable, emotionally numb, or less effective at work, although some people continue functioning at a high level while experiencing significant internal depletion.
How can I set better boundaries with work?
Useful boundaries might include establishing clearer work hours, limiting after-hours communication, taking earned time off, delegating when possible, and becoming more selective about additional responsibilities. Effective boundaries also often require learning to tolerate the guilt or anxiety that can arise when you stop being constantly available.
Is work-life balance entirely my responsibility?
No. Personal boundaries matter, but workload, workplace culture, financial circumstances, discrimination, caregiving responsibilities, job security, and access to paid leave all affect a person's ability to create balance. Work-life stress should not automatically be treated as an individual time-management problem.
Can therapy help with work stress and burnout?
Yes. Therapy can help you understand patterns such as perfectionism, anxiety, people-pleasing, over-functioning, difficulty setting boundaries, or tying self-worth to productivity. It can also provide space to consider whether aspects of your workplace or larger environment need to change.
Does ACIP offer therapy for work stress and burnout in Atlanta?
Yes. Aguirre Center for Inclusive Psychotherapy works with adults experiencing work stress, burnout, anxiety, perfectionism, and over-functioning at its Atlanta and Decatur offices and through virtual therapy throughout Georgia.
