Overtrained and overwhelmed: Work stress in overdrive
Introduction
I’ve been an avid runner for about twenty years, someone who genuinely loves the rhythm of racing and the structure of training. Earlier in my career, marathon prep became a ritual: five days a week of running, high weekly mileage, carefully timed speed work, strength training, and tune-up races. These rituals didn’t happen in a vacuum. I was also experiencing a great deal of work stress from a demanding full-time job, often checking emails well past 9:00 PM, then winding down late, only to wake up by 5:30 AM to lace up for my morning miles.
From the outside, it might have looked like I was thriving. I was productive, disciplined, and focused. But internally, I was unraveling. Despite all the work I put in, my pace slowed, injuries piled up, and I got sick more often. Instead of feeling stronger, I felt depleted. But I pushed harder. I told myself that effort would lead to progress. Instead, I found burnout.
If this experience sounds familiar—if you’ve ever been stuck in a loop of chasing goals while feeling like you’re running on fumes—you’re not alone. Many high-achieving professionals live in this cycle, where work stress, perfectionism, and overtraining quietly erode not only our performance, but also our sense of self.
This post explores how these forces interact and offers Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)-informed tools to help you break the cycle and reconnect with what truly matters.
Attempting to qualify for the Boston Marathon at the Berlin Marathon
The real cost of work stress
The American Psychological Association (APA, 2018) defines work stress—also referred to as occupational stress—as the mental and physical strain that emerges when job demands outpace your ability to cope. That definition sounds straightforward, but in practice, work stress for high-achievers often hides under the surface.
Maybe you’re navigating back-to-back meetings, impossible deadlines, and endless decision fatigue. You might also be grappling with unrelenting internal pressure to perform at the highest level—pressure that rarely turns off, even when you leave the office.
This kind of work stress doesn’t clock out at 5:00 PM. It follows you home, to your workouts, to your weekends, and often into your self-worth. And if you also happen to be someone who’s deeply committed to athletic training, the load becomes even heavier.
When perfectionism or people-pleasing are in the mix, it becomes especially difficult to take a break. Rest feels like weakness. Slowing down feels like falling behind. You might convince yourself that this level of stress is simply the price of success.
But let’s be clear: the price is steep. Chronic stress—whether from work or compounded by training—can lead to physical exhaustion, hormonal disruption, poor sleep, immune suppression, and increased injury risk. On the mental health front, you may notice heightened irritability, emotional numbness, imposter syndrome, and difficulty concentrating. Over time, if left unaddressed, this can spiral into anxiety, depression, or burnout.
High achievers are often praised for their ability to “power through,” but beneath that praise is a dangerous assumption: that enduring stress is admirable. That it proves you’re strong, committed, even invincible. But the truth is, no one is built to run on overdrive forever—not even you.
Perfectionism: The invisible fuel feeding the fire
Perfectionism is one of the most insidious drivers of work stress, and it often masquerades as ambition or diligence. It tells you that you’re only worthy when you’re performing. That rest must be earned, that mistakes are fatal, and that anything less than 100% means failure.
At work, perfectionism might show up as triple-checking every deliverable, staying late to make “just one more tweak,” or feeling paralyzed by the fear of delegating or making decisions. It may also look like procrastination, delaying tasks because you’re afraid you won’t do them perfectly.
In training, perfectionism might lead to obsessing over paces, logging every detail in your fitness tracker, or doubling down on workouts even when your body is screaming for rest. Alternatively, it might show up as avoidance, such as putting off hard workouts because you’re afraid you won’t perform well enough, and therefore feel like you’re falling short.
Regardless of how it shows up, perfectionism fuels a toxic loop of self-criticism, guilt, and shame. It creates internal rules—rigid, often invisible—that dictate when you’re allowed to rest, celebrate, or even feel proud of yourself. It makes you believe that you must accomplish unrealistic outcomes despite having limited resources. And when you inevitably fall short of these impossible expectations, your sense of worth takes a hit. (For details on how to set more realistic, values-aligned goals, see Burned out but ambitious? Try SMART goals that last.)
The end result? You start believing you don’t deserve to rest until you’ve met some arbitrary standard—at work, in training, or in life. Perfectionism not only heightens stress, but also hijacks your relationship with yourself.
When overtraining becomes self-sabotage
Overtraining is often viewed purely through a physical lens—something that happens when you log too many miles, lift too heavy, or skip recovery days. But for high-achieving professionals, overtraining is rarely just about the body. It’s often a way to manage emotions that feel unmanageable elsewhere.
When you’re wired to push through work stress and reward yourself with productivity, workouts can become another way to perform. You might tell yourself you’re just staying disciplined, but underneath that narrative, training becomes a way to burn off guilt, numb anxiety, or maintain control. You might find yourself running intervals on a pulled hamstring or skipping rest days even when you’re exhausted, telling yourself that discomfort is a sign of progress.
This is where overtraining turns into self-sabotage.
When exercise becomes a tool for proving your worth, it loses its role as a source of joy, vitality, or movement. And the more exhausted and emotionally depleted you become, the harder it is to engage with training—or work—in a meaningful way.
If any of these statements resonate, it may be time to reassess your relationship with effort and recovery:
You feel guilty taking a rest day.
You train even when you're sick, injured, or mentally burned out.
Your mood is tied to how your workout goes.
You use exercise to cope with shame, anxiety, or self-doubt.
You feel like your performance defines your value.
The hard truth is this: Pushing harder isn’t always the answer. Sometimes, it’s the very thing keeping you stuck.
The loop: How work stress, perfectionism, and overtraining feed off each other
Let’s talk about the loop, the one where work stress drives perfectionism, which drives overtraining, which depletes your physical and emotional resources, which then makes work more stressful.
Research supports this cycle. Studies have shown that high-pressure environments like competitive workplaces exacerbate perfectionistic thinking, especially when fear of failure is present (Hill & Curran, 2016). And in athletic populations, perfectionism has been linked to increased rates of burnout, emotional exhaustion, and compulsive training (Madigan, Stoeber, & Passfield, 2017; Lainas & Cho, 2017; Kveton, Jelinek, & Buresova, 2021).
What often begins as a well-intentioned desire to do your best slowly becomes a system of self-punishment, where rest feels undeserved and success feels fleeting. And compulsive exercise – in which you not only train hard, but you also find it hard to stop, even when you know you need to rest – can become a way of life in striving for the best outcomes while also trying to quell a fear of failure and judgement (Bills et al., 2025). When your emotional resilience starts to erode, even small tasks can feel overwhelming.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not broken. You’re just caught in a loop. But loops can be interrupted with awareness, intention, and support.
ACT-informed strategies for getting unstuck
Using tools from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), you can start to shift your relationship with work stress, perfectionism, and performance—not by eliminating them, but by relating to them differently.
Cognitive Distancing
Rather than fusing with self-critical thoughts (“I’m failing,” “I’m lazy,” “I’ll never be good enough”), practice noticing them as thoughts instead of truths.
Try prefixing the thought with: “I’m having the thought that…
Visualize your thoughts as leaves floating down a stream or cars passing on a road.
Label recurring thought patterns: “There’s that ‘I’m not doing enough’ story again.”
These techniques don’t make the thoughts disappear, but they create space between you and the inner critic, giving you more room to choose your response.
Values Clarification
Achievement is not a value—it’s an outcome. Review this list and ask yourself:
What truly matters to me?
What kind of person do I want to be at work, in training, and in relationships?
How do I want to show up when I succeed—and when I fail?
What qualities do I want to embody on a day-to-day basis?
What brings me a sense of meaning or vitality?
Let these answers guide your behavior, not your stress or shame.
Committed Action
Once you’ve clarified your values, take small steps toward living in alignment with them. It can help to visualize them using this Bull’s Eye resource to gain clarity. Some ideas to help you live a values-aligned life include:
Prioritize rest as an act of self-respect, not weakness.
Opt for flexibility over rigidity in your schedule.
Set realistic expectations around performance at work and in training.
Ask: “Is this action helping me live according to my values, or feeding my fear?”
Self-Compassion
Shifting these patterns is hard. It requires courage. Validate the difficulty and treat yourself with the same kindness you’d offer a close friend. Remember: letting go of perfectionism isn’t giving up—it’s coming home to yourself.
Some brief exercises (Harris, 2016) to get you started include:
Kindly acknowledge your pain by saying to yourself “This is really difficult, I’m having a feeling of shame.” Then say something that encourages kindness toward yourself, such as “Go easy on yourself, Gentle, Kindness.”
Gently place a hand on your heart or stomach and offer words of care.
Incorporate a simple acceptance gesture, such as breathing into/around the pain, expanding awareness, dropping anchor to notice what else is present.
Distance yourself from your inner experience. Say to yourself: “This is painful, and I’m choosing to be kind to myself anyway,” or “I’m having the thought that I’m a loser.”
Imagine a warm healing light going into parts of your body when it hurts, to soothe and heal.
Spend time with people who care about you and who you know will treat you kindly, do hobbies and other meaningful activities that you find fulfilling/nurturing, or engage in spiritual and religious rituals and practices.
Conclusion
If you’re feeling caught in a cycle of overtraining and overworking, take a moment to pause. Ask yourself not what’s next, but what matters. Reclaiming your energy, focus, and vitality starts not with more effort, but with more intention.
You don’t need to wait until you're burned out to make a change. You don’t need to earn rest. And you don’t have to untangle this alone.
If this post resonates and you’re ready to explore a new way of relating to work stress, performance, and your own sense of self, I’d love to support you. For more information, check out my specialty pages: Overcome Perfectionism and Overcome People-Pleasing. Feel free to reach out for a free 15-minute consultation. Let’s talk about what matters to you—and how you can start living from that place again.
