The frightening thing is that I can still perform well while feeling almost absent inside it

Dear Delyara, That is why burnout hides in me so easily. I can still answer. Still show up. Still smile. Still make the children laugh, still get the report done, still hold the room together enough that from the outside nothing looks severe enough to justify intervention. The structure remains. What goes missing is harder to photograph. Spark. inward room. desire. capacity for delight. The feeling of being fully present inside the things I am doing instead of simply carrying them efficiently from one hour to the next. I don’t want to wait until obvious collapse before I let this count as suffering. Distance from yourself is already a serious symptom.