Caregiver Burnout Therapy in Burnaby, BC
Caregiver burnout counselling at Harbour Counselling & Wellness supports caregivers in Burnaby, BC — in-person or online — navigating compassion fatigue, caregiver fatigue, and the exhaustion of holding everything together for others. Sessions integrate relational, somatic, and trauma-informed approaches to help you build a relationship with care that includes yourself too.
Finding Your Way Through the Weight of Care
Caregiver burnout and compassion fatigue can be about much more than feeling tired.
It is often the deeper exhaustion that comes from being the one who notices, anticipates, supports, adapts, and holds things together. The one others rely on. The one who keeps going, even when parts of you are longing to be cared for too.
You may feel disconnected from yourself—like the parts of you that once felt alive, creative, free, or connected have become harder to access.
Perhaps you are carrying the weight of family responsibilities, cultural expectations, gendered roles, survival, or the belief that being needed is how you show love.
Caregiving can be an expression of deep devotion. It can hold love, pride, and meaning. And it can also hold exhaustion, grief, resentment, and longing.
For many of us, especially those from the Global Majority, caregiving cannot be separated from larger stories of family, migration, responsibility, culture, and belonging. We may have inherited ways of caring that helped families and communities survive, while leaving little room for our own needs, desires, rest, or becoming.
Sometimes being the person who holds everything together can slowly become the only way we know how to exist.
How I approach caregiver burnout
Together, we explore caregiver burnout and stress not as personal failures, but as signals that something within you may be asking for care, attention, and change.
We may explore:
What have I been carrying for others?
What parts of myself have I had to set aside?
What happens when I am no longer the only person who supports?
What would it mean to receive care, too?
What healing can look like
My approach integrates relational, somatic, and trauma-informed perspectives. We pay attention not only to your thoughts and stories, but also to your body—your sensations, your energy, your capacity, and the ways your body communicates what has become too much or has been carried for too long.
Healing from burnout is not about becoming less caring.
It is not about abandoning the people you love.
It is about creating a relationship with care that includes you.
You are allowed to be a whole person—not only a provider, helper, protector, or the one who holds everything together.
There is a way of caring that does not require leaving yourself behind.
Frequently Asked Questions
Still have questions? Take a look at the FAQ or reach out anytime.
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Are you feeling the cost of carrying the weight of responsibility for others - emotionally, relationally, financially, or the invisible to-do list? If so, this branch of therapy is for you.
You might be exhausted, resentful, overwhelmed, and detached from yourself or others. You might strugglel to know what you need or fear communicating this because you’ve been repeatedly dismissed or ignored. You’re the person others turn to when something needs to be handled, soothed, organized, or held together. Is there a place you can turn? A place where you can be met fully without being talked out of your experience?
Taking care of others can be tied to so many complicated things. While, for some, it can be meaningful and fulfilling, there is a cost. You deserve a non-judgmental, empathetic and safe space to bring the weight of all you’re facing.
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Over-functioning and people-pleasing
Over-responsbilty or prioritizing others emotions and comfort above your own
Guilt, anxiety, or fear when setting boundaries
Exhaustion, resentment, grief and rage
Redefing your needs, your self-care practices, and reestablishing fulfulling relationships that nourish and nurture you
Exploring family obligations, expectations and boundary setting that feels culturally aligned
Reconnecting with rest, pleasure, agency, and aliveness
Distinguish between caring for others and carrying others
We can also explore desire, pleasure, agency, aliveness, and creative expression. Therapy can be enjoyable at times!
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The impact of caregiving is not only a cognitive experience. These patterns can become deeply embodied; coming from a long line of caregivers rooted in outdated times, belief systems, unattended ancestral hooks that nudge you to replay ways of being that no longer serve you.
This shows up in all the ways your body automatically moves toward fixing, anticipating, monitoring, soothing, or taking on responsibility when you don’t have capacity. You may have difficulty resting or slowing down. You can feel the tension, irritability, exhaustion, and numbness and may feel guilt or shame around this.
Body work allows us to slow these patterns down and build greater awareness of your body's signals, needs, boundaries, and capacity. We listen to the needs of your body and gently put aside the narratives that convince you not to listen.
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Responsibility and care are often shaped by family roles, culture, gender, race, migration, economic circumstances, and experiences of marginalization.
Sometimes what looks like ‘you thing’—not being able to say no, feeling responsible for everyone, or struggling to rest—has developed within systems that have taught you that value is connected to what we provide for others.
In this regard, it’s necessary to hold the personal and the systemic context of your experience while exploring what realistically can transform within operating in the greater systems that are slower to change.
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Not necessarily.
You are being invited in to create more choice in how you care, without abandoning yourself in the process.
We explore what it means to remain care for others without taking over-responsibility for everything they feel, need or feel entitled to receive.
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You begin to notice your limitations before you reach exhaustion.
You begin to trust your own needs, and make choices that include you.
You begin to intentionally carve out pockets of rest without earning it.
You practice care without overextending yourself.
You may have more energy to engage in forgotten or abandoned relationships or activities that once brought you pleasure.
You develop more skill, strategy and practice to navigate complex and difficult emotions.
You do not have to harden. You can remain soft in a world that trains us to become rigid to survive. This requires you to care for yourself just as deeply as you do for others.