Burnout to Balance: Recovery, Rest, and Rebuilding Your Life (The Psychology of Wellbeing Series Book 6)

You are exhausted in a way that sleep does not fix. You have tried the holiday. You have tried resting more, caring less, pushing harder. None of it has touched what is actually wrong, because what is actually wrong is not tiredness — it is burnout, and burnout is a physiological state, not a mood.
Dr. Melanie du Preez, a clinical psychologist with over 26 years of experience — and a late-diagnosed autistic ADHDer herself — has written the book she needed and could not find: a clear-eyed, clinically grounded account of what burnout actually is, why it happens to capable people without warning, and what recovery genuinely requires.
Inside, you will find:
• The three-dimension model of burnout, and why “a hard week” and clinical burnout are not the same thing
• A dedicated chapter on autistic and ADHD burnout — the masking-driven exhaustion most burnout books never mention
• The physiology of chronic stress: why willpower cannot override a dysregulated stress-response system
• Seven kinds of rest, and why sleep alone rarely solves burnout
• The identity work of recovery — who you are when output stops defining you
• How to change your actual conditions, not just your coping strategies
• A realistic, graduated path back to full capacity — and how to avoid the relapse that premature return almost guarantees
Written in plain, honest, occasionally dry language — with real case studies, practical exercises, and zero toxic positivity — Burnout to Balance is for anyone who is at capacity, past it, or watching someone they love get there.