Burnout & Life That No Longer Fits
When rest gives you breathing room, but not the whole answer
Maybe you have already reached the point where your body, mind, or circumstances have said: enough.
Perhaps your doctor has signed you off work. Maybe slowing down has brought genuine relief. Norway’s sick-leave system can offer something incredibly valuable when we are depleted: space.
And then, sometimes, the questions begin...
Why did I become this exhausted?
Why am I not bouncing back?
How much of this is work, and how much is everything else?
What if I return to exactly the same life that burned me out?
What if I know something needs to change but not sure what?
I offer English-language counselling and coaching for people living in Norway who want space to explore what is underneath burnout, exhaustion, overwhelm, or the growing sense that the life they have been managing is no longer sustainable.
Online throughout Norway and internationally, with in person sessions in Oslo.
50-minute sessions · 900 NOK · Sessions in English
Sick leave can be a beginning
Sometimes stopping work is exactly what is needed.
There can be enormous relief in finally having permission to sleep, recover, breathe, attend appointments, or simply stop trying to hold everything together for a while.
But rest can also create enough quiet for other things to become visible.
You might begin noticing that work was only one part of the exhaustion.
There may also be:
caregiving or parenting demands
chronic illness, disability, or changing health
Neurodivergence, masking, or years of adaptation
relationship stress or carrying more than your share
loneliness or lack of meaningful community
immigration and the effort of building a life in another country
grief or major life transition
financial pressure
difficulty asking for or receiving help
environments that require constant social or sensory adaptation
expectations around success, responsibility, usefulness, or independence
years of overriding your own limits because there never seemed to be another option
Burnout often becomes more understandable when we widen the view beyond “Why couldn’t I cope?” and begin looking at the conditions a person has been trying to live within.
For internationals, there can be another layer
Building a life in Norway can be wonderful while also asking a great deal of you.
You may be learning unfamiliar systems, making sense of “janteloven”, building friendships from scratch, navigating work in another culture, learning Norwegian, maintaining relationships across borders, dealing with residency or immigration logistics, or trying to establish a sense of home far from the people who have known you longest.
Perhaps your professional identity changed when you moved or you followed a partner here and their life became more rooted while yours became less so. And everyone speaks English beautifully, yet there are still moments when you realize that functioning comfortably in English and feeling culturally at home are two different things.
None of these things need to mean that Norway is the wrong place for you. They are simply part of the ecosystem in which your energy, health, relationships, and sense of belonging are living.
Getting underneath the exhaustion
My approach is relational, embodied, collaborative, and experiential. We can move slowly. You do not need to know what to say, or what you need. I create space for us to slow down together and find grounding again.
Sometimes the work is practical. We might explore workload, boundaries, relationships, caregiving, support, daily rhythms, decisions, or changes that could make life more sustainable.
Sometimes we follow the roots further. There may be grief underneath the exhaustion or anger that never had anywhere useful to go. Or an identity built around being competent, helpful, responsible, or easy to rely on or fear of disappointing people. Maybe there’s a history of adapting yourself to environments that did not fit particularly well or a part of you that learned very early that rest needed to be earned.
Maybe there’s a growing longing for nature, creativity, solitude, community, intimacy, play, meaning, or a different rhythm of life entirely. We may work through conversation as well as emotion, sensation, movement, imagery, memory, and experiential practices.
My work draws from more than ten years of counselling experience, including Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, somatic and experiential approaches, Internal Family Systems, ACT, mindfulness, Gestalt, and relational practice.
There may be more than one thing asking for care
Burnout rarely arrives carrying a neat little label explaining itself. Exhaustion can intersect with physical illness, chronic pain, disability, hormonal or other health changes, neurodivergence, grief, depression or anxiety, caregiving, sleep disruption, relationship stress, and major life transitions.
Sometimes several things are happening at once, and that complexity matters.
Our work does not require deciding that every symptom is “just burnout.” Medical concerns deserve appropriate medical care, and counselling or coaching can sit alongside your GP, specialists, physiotherapy, occupational support, or other healthcare when those are part of what you need.
What we can explore together is the wider landscape:
What has life been asking of you?
What has your health changed?
Where are you receiving support, and where are you carrying things alone?
What environments nourish you and which ones continually drain you?
What expectations have become impossible to keep meeting?
What have you been overriding for a very long time?
What kind of life could actually support the person you are now?
You were never meant to carry an entire ecosystem alone
Modern life can ask an astonishing amount from one person. Paid work may only be the beginning.
There is cooking, cleaning, appointments, finances, parenting, caregiving, relationships, healthcare, bureaucracy, exercise, friendships, messages, emails, planning, learning, commuting, maintaining a home, keeping up with the world, and somehow remembering to buy toilet paper.
Add illness, neurodivergence, migration, disability, children, caring for ageing family, financial uncertainty, or limited community support, and the equation becomes even more demanding.
Yet we live within cultures that often measure people through output, independence, achievement, availability, and how efficiently they keep everything moving.
It is easy for exhaustion to become personalized:
I should be able to handle this.
Other people manage.
I need to get more disciplined.
Why can’t I just function normally?
A wider lens asks a different question:
What conditions would make it possible for a human being to thrive here?
That is a much more interesting place to begin.
Finding what recovery means to you…
Sometimes people understandably want one thing from burnout recovery: I just want to feel like myself again. And sometimes parts of that earlier self genuinely do return: energy, curiosity, creativity, pleasure, connection. But burnout can also reveal that the previous arrangement required too much.
Perhaps recovery includes discovering:
what your actual limits are
what kind of work fits you now
how much solitude or social connection you need
which responsibilities belong to you
what support needs to become less optional
how illness or neurodivergence changes the conditions you need
what pace of life allows you to remain present inside it
which expectations you want to stop carrying
what gives you energy rather than merely consuming less of it
what you want your days to contain when productivity is no longer the only measure
The aim does not have to be returning you to the exact life that existed before the exhaustion. There may be something more sustainable waiting to be grown.
Living outside Norway? Online sessions are available internationally.
[Learn more about international online counselling →]
This work may especially resonate if...
you are on sick leave and wondering what comes next
you have returned to work but still feel deeply depleted
you are highly capable and profoundly tired
burnout overlaps with chronic illness or disability
you are autistic, have ADHD, or questioning whether neurodivergence is part of the picture
you are carrying significant parenting or caregiving responsibilities
you moved to Norway and lost some of the support structures you once relied on
you understand your burnout intellectually but still feel stuck inside it
you have spent years adapting yourself to environments that demand too much
conventional burnout advice feels painfully small compared with what you are carrying
you are questioning the values or expectations your life has been organized around
you find yourself longing for more quiet, nature, creativity, community, or space
some part of you suspects that your exhaustion is connected to a larger change already unfolding
You do not need to know what needs to change before you arrive. We can listen together.
FAQ
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Sick leave can create valuable space for recovery. Our work can use some of that space to understand what contributed to the exhaustion, what else may be happening alongside it, what support is missing, and what conditions might make returning to work or shaping the next chapter more sustainable.
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That is welcome here. Chronic illness, disability, pain, changing capacity, and burnout can intersect in complicated ways.
Counselling/coaching does not replace medical assessment or treatment. We can work alongside the healthcare support you are receiving while exploring the emotional, relational, practical, and life changes that illness may bring.
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I am a Washington State Licensed Mental Health Counselor with more than ten years of counselling experience. My Norway-based work is offered as non-clinical counselling/coaching and relational support rather than psychotherapy or healthcare under a Norwegian clinical license.
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Yes. We can explore masking, chronic adaptation, sensory and social demands, identity, shame, environments, relationships, and the conditions that make life more or less sustainable for you.
You do not need a formal diagnosis for neurodivergence to be something we are curious about.
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Parenting, caring for a partner, supporting children with additional needs, or helping ill or ageing family members can profoundly shape the amount of capacity available for everything else.
We can explore caregiving without pretending that the solution is simply better boundaries or more self-care. Sometimes the real question is what support the whole ecosystem needs.
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We can work toward greater energy, capacity, and engagement with life.
But I will not assume that maximum productivity is the measure of recovery.
We can become curious about what you want your energy back for and how best to support you in that direction.
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Those things belong together perfectly well.
You can appreciate your life here and still be lonely, exhausted, overwhelmed, homesick, socially disoriented, or unsure what you need.
There is no requirement to turn Norway into either paradise or the problem.
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Yes—everything you share with me is confidential. I treat your story with care, meaning I won’t share what you say with others, and I offer a safe, respectful space where all parts of you are welcome.
Many people come to me because they’ve felt judged, unseen, or misunderstood elsewhere. You don’t have to censor yourself here. I don’t offer advice from a distance—I meet you where you are, with presence, honesty, and kindness.
That said, I don’t work with people who are in active crisis or experiencing ongoing suicidal thoughts. If you’re ever at risk of harming yourself or someone else, we’ll pause and work together to find the right support. I’ll never abandon you, but I will make sure you get the care you need to stay safe.
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I have a wide range of personal and professional experience working with a vast array of different intersecting cultural identities and expressions. I have worked with people of all different racial and ethnic backgrounds, religions, ages/generations, socioeconomic statuses, disabilities, neurotypes, sexualities, gender identities, relationship orientations, national origins, and political views. I’m someone who is comfortable holding lots of space for nuance, complexity, and polarity. Everything and everyone is welcome. Nothing is too taboo or off limits and you will not be pathologized.
I have extensive experience working with the following communities/cultural contexts:
-LGBTQIA+
-Polyamorous, non-monogamous, open relationships
-Kink and BDSM, highly taboo and stigmatized sexual identities/desires
-Sex workers
-Neurodivergence
-Chronic illness and disability
-1st and 2nd gen immigrants, third culture kids, expats, internationals
-Multiple intersecting marginalized identities
What if recovery could mean more than returning to the old pace?
You do not need to arrive with a plan to fix yourself. We can begin by becoming curious about the life your exhaustion has been trying to live inside.
Free 30-minute consultation
A relaxed chance to meet, tell me a little about what has been happening, ask questions, and get a sense of whether working together feels like a good fit.
