Your Personal Wellness

You wake up. The alarm goes off. And before your feet even touch the floor, you already feel heavy. Not sleepy — heavy. Like someone draped a wet blanket over your shoulders overnight and you are expected to go through the entire day carrying it. You shower. You dress. You sit in traffic or stand in a matatu. And by the time you reach your desk, you have nothing left. Your colleagues think you are fine because you still show up, still smile, still type emails. But inside, something has shifted. You are going through the motions. You cannot remember the last time work felt meaningful or the last time you laughed — really laughed — without forcing it.

Most people call this "burnout" and assume they just need a holiday. Take a weekend off, sleep in, maybe go to the coast. But here is the thing most people do not know: burnout is not just a feeling. It is a physical condition. Your body is keeping score of every deadline, every 2am email, every argument with a difficult boss, every month your salary came late. There is a concept that scientists call "allostatic load" — and in simple language, it means this: your body has a stress budget. Every time something stressful happens, your body spends from that budget. It releases cortisol (your stress hormone) and adrenaline to help you cope. That is normal and healthy. The problem is when you keep spending and never deposit anything back. No proper rest. No recovery. No safety. Eventually, the budget runs dry. And that is when your body starts breaking down.

This is not some abstract theory from a textbook. This is what is happening inside you right now if you have been pushing through chronic stress for months or years. Your immune system weakens — and suddenly you catch every cold going around the office. Your digestion goes haywire — unexplained stomach problems, bloating, or that constant low-level nausea that no doctor can fully explain. Your sleep becomes shallow even when you get eight hours, because your body stays on guard, as if it is waiting for the next crisis even while you are unconscious. Your blood pressure slowly creeps up. And mentally, you start forgetting things that should be easy — names, tasks, conversations from yesterday. This is not early dementia. This is your brain actually shrinking under chronic stress. The part of your brain that handles memory and learning (called the hippocampus, if you want the technical name) literally gets damaged by too much cortisol. Read that again: chronic office stress can cause measurable damage to your brain.

How Burnout Sneaks Up On You

Two psychologists mapped out twelve stages of burnout, and the scary part is that the first few stages look completely normal. In fact, they look like the behaviour most workplaces reward.

Stage 1 looks like ambition. You volunteer for extra work. You stay late. You want to prove yourself. Your boss loves it. Stage 2, you start doing other people's work because you do not trust anyone to do it as well as you. Stage 3, you skip lunch. You sleep five hours. You cancel plans with friends because "things are hectic." Sound familiar? Most driven professionals in Nairobi, Lagos, or Johannesburg live permanently at Stage 3. They think it is normal because everyone is doing it. The office culture says this is what hard work looks like.

By Stage 4, you know something is wrong but you blame everything else. The commute. Your spouse. The economy. You do not want to look at the real problem because that would mean questioning the very lifestyle that is supposed to be your success story. It is only around Stage 7 — when you start pulling away from people, when cynicism takes over, when you stop caring about things that used to matter — that other people start noticing. And by Stages 10 to 12, which include complete emotional emptiness, clinical depression, and physical collapse, the damage requires months or years to undo. Not a long weekend. Not a spa day. Actual, dedicated recovery time.

Why "Just Take a Break" Does Not Fix This

Here is something no one tells you: your body recovers from burnout on a biological timeline, not a motivational one. You cannot "positive think" your way out of physical damage. If you have been running on empty for two years, you should expect roughly two years of deliberate recovery. That sounds harsh, but it is reality. Your nervous system needs to learn that it is safe again. Your hormones need to rebalance. Your sleep patterns need to repair. This process cannot be rushed any more than a broken bone can be rushed.

What actually helps is not Instagram self-care. It is this: reducing the source of stress (not just adding coping tools on top of it), real sleep (not just more hours in bed, but sleep where your body actually reaches deep rest), physical movement (walking counts — your body does not care if it is a gym or a walk to the stage), and breathing exercises that activate the part of your nervous system responsible for calming you down. There is a nerve that runs from your brain all the way down to your stomach called the vagus nerve, and slow, deep breathing literally sends a "you are safe" signal through it. Four seconds in, hold four, four seconds out. That is not woo-woo. That is your body's built-in reset button.

And perhaps the most important warning: if you burn out, partially recover, and go back to the exact same job with the same toxic conditions — the burnout comes back faster and harder the second time. Your nervous system remembers. It does not give you the benefit of the doubt anymore. So recovery is not complete when you "feel better." Recovery is complete when the conditions that broke you have actually changed. Anything less is putting a plaster on a wound that is still open.

Have you ever walked into a meeting feeling completely prepared — and then your mind went blank? Or snapped at your partner after work for absolutely no reason? Or sat at your desk staring at a screen for twenty minutes without actually reading a single word? These are not random glitches in your personality. They are your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do. And once you understand this, everything about your reactions at work starts making sense.

Your body has a built-in alarm system that has been running since before humans lived in cities or worked in offices. Think of it like a traffic light with three settings — green, yellow, and red. Each one changes how you think, feel, and behave. And you shift between them all day long, usually without realising it.

Green mode is when you feel safe. Your brain works properly. You can think creatively, listen to other people, make good decisions, and actually enjoy the moment. Your digestion works. Your immune system works. You sleep well. This is the state where you do your best work. When people say someone has "good energy" or "presence" in a room, that person is usually in green mode. They are calm, but alert. Present, but flexible.

Yellow mode is fight-or-flight. Your heart speeds up. Your muscles tense. Your vision narrows. Your body floods with stress hormones because it thinks there is a threat. Now, the "threat" might be an aggressive email, a surprise meeting invite from your boss, or a phone call from HR. Your body does not know the difference between a lion chasing you and your supervisor calling you into their office unexpectedly. The alarm goes off the same way. In yellow mode, you can still function, but your thinking becomes rigid. You default to habitual responses. You lose nuance. This is why arguments escalate — two people in yellow mode cannot listen to each other. They are both in survival mode, defending territory.

Red mode is shutdown. This is the body's last resort when it decides that neither fighting nor running will save you. Your energy collapses. You feel numb, detached, foggy. You can be physically in a room but mentally gone. People in red mode often get misread — their boss thinks they are lazy or disengaged. Their spouse thinks they do not care. But the truth is their nervous system has pulled the emergency brake because it ran out of options. This is not a character flaw. It is biology protecting you from overload.

What This Means at Work

Most workplaces accidentally keep people in yellow mode all day. The open office is noisy. The workload is unpredictable. The manager's tone is tense. There is a WhatsApp group that pings at 10pm. The monthly targets feel impossible. None of these things are life-threatening, but your nervous system processes them as threats because it cannot tell the difference. It was designed for a world where threats were physical and temporary — run from the predator, then rest. It was not designed for a world where the predator is an email chain that never stops.

This is why some people are brilliant in one meeting and completely useless in the next. It is not about competence. It is about which mode their nervous system is in. A person cannot do complex thinking in yellow mode. They cannot be creative in red mode. The most important professional skill that nobody teaches you is the ability to notice which mode you are in and shift yourself back toward green.

How to Reset Your Alarm System

The good news is that you can learn to move between these states on purpose. Here are things that actually work — not because they sound nice, but because they directly communicate with your nervous system:

• Slow breathing — Breathing out longer than you breathe in activates the "safe" signal in your body. Try breathing in for 4 counts and out for 6 counts. Do this for two minutes before or after a stressful interaction.
• Cold water on your face or wrists — This triggers what is called the "dive reflex." It instantly slows your heart rate. Keep a bottle of cold water at your desk.
• Humming or singing — Sounds silly, but the vibration stimulates that same vagus nerve from your brain to your gut. Even humming quietly on your commute can shift you from yellow to green.
• Safe human contact — A genuine conversation with someone you trust. Not about work. Not about problems. Just connection. This signals safety to your nervous system more powerfully than any breathing exercise.

The point is not to never feel stressed. That is impossible. The point is to stop living in yellow and red mode permanently, because that is where burnout, chronic illness, and emotional shutdown begin. Your body is not broken. It is responding logically to an environment that does not give it enough safety signals. The more you understand this, the more power you have to change it.

Let us talk about the thing every tired person says: "I sleep, but I wake up exhausted." You get into bed. You might even get seven or eight hours. But in the morning, your body feels like it barely rested. Your mind is foggy before the first cup of coffee. Your motivation for the day ahead is somewhere between low and nonexistent. And you wonder: is something wrong with me?

Probably not. What is more likely is that your sleep is broken in ways you cannot see. And understanding why is one of the most important things you can do for your health, your performance, and your sanity.

Sleep is not just "being unconscious for several hours." Your brain does critical work while you sleep, and it does different types of work during different stages. There are two stages that matter most. The first is deep sleep (sometimes called slow-wave sleep). This is when your body physically repairs itself — muscles heal, hormones rebalance, the immune system rebuilds. Think of it as the body's maintenance shift. The second is REM sleep (the dreaming stage). This is when your brain processes emotions and consolidates memories. It takes the overwhelming experiences of the day and files them away so they stop feeling so raw. Without enough REM sleep, yesterday's stress carries forward into today, and today's stress carries into tomorrow, and the emotional backlog keeps growing until you feel constantly on edge for no clear reason.

Why Stress Wrecks Your Sleep — Even When You Get Enough Hours

Here is the problem: when your body is in a chronic stress state (stuck in yellow mode, as we talked about), it does not allow deep sleep to happen properly. Your nervous system stays on guard. It keeps your cortisol elevated through the night, which means you spend more time in light, restless sleep and less time in the restorative stages. You might technically be in bed for eight hours, but your body only got three or four hours of actual repair. That is why you wake up feeling like you barely slept. Quantity is not the same as quality.

There is another modern killer of sleep quality: screens. And not just because of "blue light" (which gets all the headlines). The real problem is that your phone is an anxiety machine. The last thing most people do before bed is scroll through social media, check work emails, or read the news. Every one of those activities activates your threat-detection system. A work message triggers "I need to deal with this." A news headline triggers "the world is dangerous." An Instagram post triggers "I am not doing enough." You are literally flooding your nervous system with stimulation and then wondering why it will not shut down for the night.

What Actually Helps

The solutions are simple, but they require discipline — which is why most people ignore them. That does not make them less true.

• Phone out of the bedroom. Buy a KSh 500 alarm clock. Your phone is not your alarm — it is an anchor that keeps you connected to every stressor in your life.
• Same bedtime and wake time. Your body loves rhythm. If you go to bed at different times every night, your internal clock cannot set itself. Pick a time. Stick to it. Even on weekends.
• No caffeine after 2pm. Caffeine has a half-life of about 5-6 hours. That 3pm coffee is still in your system at 9pm. You might fall asleep, but it disrupts your deep sleep stages.
• Cool, dark room. Your body temperature needs to drop slightly to enter deep sleep. A hot room fights this. Open a window. Use lighter blankets.
• Wind-down ritual. This does not need to be candles and meditation (though that is fine if you like it). It can be a cup of herbal tea, a chapter of a book, or just sitting quietly for fifteen minutes. The point is to give your nervous system a signal: "The day is over. You can stand down."

Think about sleep as your body's nightly repair shop. If you keep the shop closed (poor sleep) or keep interrupting the mechanics while they work (restless sleep), the damage from the day accumulates. After weeks or months of this, you do not just feel tired. You feel broken. And the solution was never another cup of coffee. The solution was learning to sleep properly.

One more thing worth mentioning: if you have tried all of this and your sleep is still consistently terrible, it may be worth seeing a doctor. Sleep disorders like sleep apnea (where you briefly stop breathing during sleep — more common than people think) are treatable and dramatically improve quality of life. There is no weakness in getting help for something your body is doing wrong while you are unconscious.

Nobody plans to develop a drinking problem. Nobody wakes up one morning and says, "I think I will start using alcohol to manage my emotions." It happens gradually. You have a beer after work because the day was long. Then two beers. Then it becomes the thing you look forward to — not the taste, but the feeling of your shoulders dropping, the noise in your mind quieting down, the temporary permission to stop thinking about deadlines and targets and reports.

In Kenya, there is a particular silence around this. Drinking culture is deeply social. After-work drinks are how deals are made, how relationships are maintained, how stress is collectively managed. Saying "I don't drink" can feel like opting out of professional life. And so people who are using alcohol to cope often do not recognise it as coping, because everyone around them is doing the same thing. The line between "social drinking" and "self-medicating" is invisible from the outside.

But the body keeps score. Alcohol is a depressant — it slows your nervous system down, which is why it feels like relief when you are stressed. But it does something else that most people do not realise: it destroys sleep quality. You might pass out quickly after drinking, but alcohol prevents your brain from entering REM sleep — the stage where emotional processing happens. So you wake up with your stress from yesterday completely unprocessed, plus the physical effects of the alcohol. You feel worse. And the most natural response to feeling worse is... to drink again that evening. This is the loop. This is how it tightens.

It Is Not Just Alcohol

The same pattern applies to other substances, and some of them are so normalised that they barely register as a concern. Caffeine is the biggest one. Six cups of coffee a day is not hydration — it is stimulant dependence. Your body is too tired to function, so you override the tiredness with caffeine, which borrows energy from tomorrow to pay for today. Energy drinks are the same thing with more sugar. Khat, which is culturally embedded in parts of East Africa, is a stimulant that creates similar dependency patterns. And then there are the substances that people use more privately — sleeping pills, painkillers taken more often than prescribed, marijuana used not recreationally but as the only way to quiet an anxious mind at night.

The common thread in all of these is the same: the substance is not the problem. The substance is the painkiller. The problem is the pain. And the pain is almost always rooted in chronic workplace stress, financial pressure, or relationship strain that has gone unaddressed for too long. Treating substance use without addressing the underlying stressor is like taking cough medicine for tuberculosis. The cough might quiet down temporarily, but the disease progresses.

How to Tell If You Have Crossed the Line

This is not about moral judgement. Nobody is saying "drinking is bad" or trying to lecture you about your choices. The question is purely functional: is this thing helping you, or has it started hurting you? Here are some honest questions:

• Do you need the substance to unwind, or can you relax without it?
• Has the amount increased over time to get the same effect?
• Do you feel irritable, anxious, or restless when you cannot access it?
• Has it affected your sleep, your relationships, or your performance?
• Do you think about it during the day — not wanting it exactly, but knowing it is waiting for you?
• Have you tried to cut back and found it harder than expected?

If you answered yes to two or more, you are probably past the line. And that is okay. It does not make you weak or broken. It makes you human. Your brain found something that provided temporary relief from genuine pain, and it latched onto it because that is what brains do. The path forward is not shame. It is addressing the pain itself — the job that is crushing you, the financial pressure that never eases, the relationship that drains more than it gives.

Starting the Conversation

The hardest part is usually admitting it to yourself. The second hardest part is saying it out loud to someone else. In many Kenyan communities, talking about mental health struggles or substance issues carries real stigma. But the cost of silence is higher than the cost of being honest. If you recognise yourself in this article, consider these starting points: talk to one person you trust — not about quitting, just about what you are going through. Call the NACADA helpline (1192) for a confidential, judgement-free conversation. See a counsellor who understands substance use — not someone who will lecture you, but someone who will help you understand the root cause.

Recovery is not about willpower. It is about understanding why you needed the coping mechanism in the first place, and then building something better to replace it. That "something better" usually involves rest, connection, professional support, and often, a hard look at the work or life conditions that pushed you into coping mode. You deserve more than surviving the day. You deserve to actually live through it.

It starts before the alarm. Sometimes it wakes you up at 4am. Not a nightmare — just a feeling. A tightness in your chest, a racing mind that immediately jumps to the day ahead. What if that email is bad news? What if the presentation goes wrong? What if they are thinking of letting me go? Your body tenses. Your stomach churns. And you have not even gotten out of bed yet.

This is workplace anxiety. And if you are reading this and thinking "that is just normal stress" — it is worth understanding the difference, because the distinction matters for how you deal with it. Stress is a response to a specific situation. A deadline. A difficult conversation. A heavy workload. When the situation resolves, the stress reduces. Anxiety is different. Anxiety is when your body stays in alarm mode even when there is no immediate threat. It is the alarm system ringing continuously, even when the house is not on fire. Your body is reacting to the possibility of danger, not the reality of it. And it does not have an off switch that responds to logic.

This is why people who experience workplace anxiety often feel frustrated with themselves. They know logically that the email will probably be fine. They know they have done good work. They know they are unlikely to be fired today. But knowing these things does not stop the feeling, because anxiety does not live in the logical part of your brain. It lives in the older, survival-oriented part — the part that makes decisions faster than thought. And once that part is activated, you cannot reason with it any more than you can reason with a smoke detector.

What Workplace Anxiety Actually Feels Like

Because anxiety is not always dramatic, many people live with it for years without giving it a name. They just think they are "a worrier" or "high-strung" or "always stressed." But the body tells the truth even when the mind refuses to. These are common physical signs:

• A tight feeling in your chest that comes and goes throughout the day
• Stomach problems — nausea, IBS symptoms, loss of appetite, or nervous eating
• Difficulty concentrating, even on simple tasks — your brain is too busy scanning for threats to focus on a spreadsheet
• Jaw clenching or teeth grinding, often during sleep without realising it
• Heart racing for no apparent reason — sometimes in the middle of a calm moment
• Avoidance — putting off phone calls, delaying responses, procrastinating not because of laziness but because engaging with the task triggers a wave of dread
• Constantly seeking reassurance — asking colleagues "was that email okay?" or "do you think they are angry?"

Why Work Makes Anxiety Worse

Work is the perfect breeding ground for anxiety because it combines several features that the anxious brain responds to intensely: uncertain outcomes, social evaluation, financial dependence, and limited control. You depend on your job for survival. You are constantly being evaluated. And you cannot fully control the outcome of most things. For someone with anxiety, every interaction becomes an opportunity for something to go wrong, and the brain helpfully runs simulations of every possible disaster on a continuous loop.

This is especially intense in certain Kenyan workplace dynamics. Many organisations run on fear-based management — where employees are threatened with termination for minor mistakes, public criticism is used as a "motivation" tool, and there is no psychological safety to admit when you are struggling. In these environments, anxiety is not irrational. It is a perfectly logical response to a genuinely unsafe system. The problem is that your body does not turn the alarm off at 5pm. You carry it home. You carry it to bed. You carry it into your weekends and your relationships.

What You Can Do About It

First, name it. Seriously. The simple act of saying "I have anxiety" — even just to yourself — reduces its power. Research has shown that labelling a feeling activates the logical part of your brain and calms the survival part. It is called "affect labelling" if you want the technical term, but the simple version is: name it to tame it.

Second, separate what is real from what is imagined. Write it down. "What am I actually afraid of?" then "What is the evidence for this fear?" then "What would I tell a friend who had this same worry?" You will often find that the fear is valid but exaggerated — your brain has taken a 5% risk and presented it as a 90% certainty.

Third, reduce your body's arousal level. This is not about positive thinking. It is about physiologically calming your nervous system. Slow breathing (in for 4, out for 6). Cold water on your wrists. A five-minute walk. Anything that sends a "safe" signal to your body. Do this before trying to think your way through the anxiety. You cannot think clearly when your alarm system is ringing.

And finally, if anxiety is constant, if it is affecting your ability to function, if it is ruining your relationships or your sleep or your health — see a professional. Anxiety is one of the most treatable mental health conditions. A good therapist can help you in weeks, not years. You do not need to be in crisis to ask for help. You just need to be honest enough to admit that the alarm has been ringing for too long and you cannot switch it off alone.

You got the promotion. Or the new job. Or the invitation to speak on a panel. And instead of feeling proud, a quiet voice in your head says: "They only picked you because they do not know you well enough yet. When they figure out that you are not actually that good, it is over."

You are sitting in a boardroom full of people with MBAs and twenty years of experience, and you are convinced you do not belong there — even though someone invited you. You are presenting a report you worked on for weeks, and the whole time you are waiting for someone to challenge a number, ask a question you cannot answer, or expose the fact that you googled half the methodology. You get praised for your work and your first thought is not "thank you" — it is "if they only they knew."

This is imposter syndrome. And it affects an estimated 70% of professionals at some point in their careers. It disproportionately affects high achievers — which is the cruel irony. The people who work the hardest and care the most are the ones most likely to believe they are frauds. Mediocre professionals rarely experience imposter syndrome because they do not reflect on their performance deeply enough to question it. It is the conscientious ones, the ones who set high standards and then compare themselves relentlessly to those standards, who suffer most.

Where Does It Come From?

Imposter syndrome is not a personality flaw. It is a pattern that usually has identifiable roots:

• Family expectations — Growing up as "the smart one" in the family creates enormous pressure. Your identity becomes tied to achievement, and any stumble feels like an existential threat. If you were the first in your family to attend university or enter a professional career, the pressure is even higher because you are carrying the hopes of an entire family structure.
• Being the "only one" — The only woman at the table. The only person from a certain background. The only one who did not go to a prestigious school. When you are visibly different from the majority, your brain interprets this as evidence that you do not belong, even when your work says otherwise.
• Workplace culture — Some organisations breed imposter syndrome by creating environments where uncertainty is met with punishment rather than support. If asking a question gets you labelled as incompetent, you learn to pretend you know everything — and the gap between what you pretend and what you feel grows into a canyon of self-doubt.
• Success without mentorship — If you achieved your position through individual effort without anyone guiding you or affirming that your journey is valid, there is no external reference point. You have no one saying "this is normal, I felt this way too." So you assume the discomfort means something is wrong with you.

What Imposter Syndrome Actually Costs You

The real damage is not that you feel uncomfortable. The real damage is what you do in response to the feeling. People with imposter syndrome tend to overwork (to prove they deserve their position), avoid opportunities (turning down leadership roles because they "are not ready"), dismiss compliments (which means they never build a healthy sense of their own strengths), and stay silent in situations where their input would be valuable. Over time, this creates a pattern where the most capable people in the room contribute the least — not because they have nothing to say, but because they do not believe they have earned the right to say it.

In the African professional context, this is compounded by historical dynamics. Generations of being told — through colonialism, through media, through institutional bias — that expertise and authority naturally belong to certain people and not others. The imposter feeling is not just personal. It is layered over a collective history that questioned the legitimacy of an entire continent's intellectual contribution. When an African professional feels like a fraud in a global boardroom, they are not just battling personal insecurity. They are battling the residual weight of a system that said people who look like them are not supposed to be there.

How to Fight Back

You cannot eliminate imposter syndrome. But you can change your relationship with it.

Keep a "proof file." Not a CV — a private document where you record specific evidence of your competence. Projects completed. Positive feedback received. Problems solved. Moments where you genuinely made a difference. When the imposter voice gets loud, open the file. Feelings are not facts. Evidence is facts.

Talk about it. The silence is what gives imposter syndrome its power. The moment you say to a trusted colleague "I feel like I don't belong here," you will almost certainly hear back "I feel the same way." That shared recognition breaks the isolation that fuels self-doubt.

Separate discomfort from incompetence. Growth is uncomfortable. New roles are uncomfortable. Leading people is uncomfortable. But discomfort is not evidence that you are a fraud. It is evidence that you are in unfamiliar territory. Those are not the same thing.

Lower the invisible bar. Many people with imposter syndrome have set an internal standard that is unreachable. Their definition of "competent" is essentially "perfect" — and since perfection is impossible, they permanently feel inadequate. Ask yourself: "If a colleague performed at my level, would I think they were incompetent?" The answer is almost always no. Give yourself the same grace you would give someone else.

Every self-help article on the internet will tell you: "Set boundaries." "Learn to say no." "Protect your energy." And then they leave you alone with your boundary-less life, a demanding boss, three WhatsApp groups from work, and a culture that rewards whoever sacrifices the most. The advice is correct in theory. But in practice? In a Kenyan workplace where hierarchy is deep, where "going above and beyond" is the baseline expectation, and where your salary supports not just you but potentially an entire extended family — "just say no" is not a strategy. It is a fantasy.

So let us talk about what boundaries actually are, why they are hard, and how to build them in the real world — not the motivational-poster world.

A boundary is not a wall. It is a decision about how you will spend your limited resources — your time, your energy, your attention. You only have so much of each. When you say yes to something, you are automatically saying no to something else. The question is whether you are making that trade-off consciously or whether someone else is making it for you. Most people have never thought about it this way. They react to requests as they come in, and their schedule becomes a reflection of other people's priorities, not their own.

Why We Are So Bad at This

There are deep reasons why setting boundaries feels impossible, and they go beyond simple people-pleasing:

• Financial dependency — When your job is your only income and it supports dependants, challenging the status quo feels genuinely risky. "What if they fire me?" is not an irrational fear when the job market is tight and there is no safety net.
• Cultural conditioning — In many African cultures, respect for elders and authority is non-negotiable. Saying "no" to your boss — even when the request is unreasonable — feels like disrespect. It goes against values you were raised with.
• Identity — Many professionals define themselves through their productivity. "I am the reliable one." "I am the one who always delivers." Saying no threatens that identity. If you are not the person who does everything, then who are you?
• Guilt — Especially for women and first-generation professionals. Taking time for yourself when others are struggling feels selfish. How can you rest when your mother is still working? How can you say no when your unemployed cousin needs you?

Boundaries That Work in the Real World

Forget the "just say no" advice. Here are strategies that work even in hierarchical, high-pressure environments:

The Priority Trade-Off. Instead of saying "no" (which sounds like defiance), say "Yes, I can take this on. Which of my current tasks should I deprioritise to make room for it?" This puts the decision back on the person making the demand. It communicates your capacity without conflict. And it forces your manager to confront the reality that you are one human being, not three.

The Time Boundary. "I am available until 6pm. I will action this first thing tomorrow." This is not rude. It is professional. It establishes a predictable rhythm. People who respond to emails at 11pm are not more dedicated — they are more exploitable. And they are training their colleagues to expect availability that is unsustainable.

The Energy Audit. At the end of each week, write down: what drained me? What energised me? Over a month, patterns emerge. You might discover that a particular meeting is consistently pointless, or that a specific colleague's requests always come with unnecessary drama. Once you see the pattern, you can start making targeted changes rather than trying to overhaul everything at once.

The Non-Negotiable. Choose one thing that you will protect no matter what. It does not have to be dramatic. Maybe it is dinner with your family three nights a week. Maybe it is a 30-minute walk during lunch. Maybe it is no work calls on Sunday morning. One protected thing is better than a thousand intentions. Guard it like it pays your rent.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Setting boundaries will cost you something. Some people will not like it. Your boss might push back. Colleagues might gossip. Family members might call you selfish. This is the price. But here is what it costs to have no boundaries: your health, your relationships, your clarity of mind, and eventually, your ability to perform the very work you are sacrificing everything for. Burnout does not make you a martyr. It makes you a casualty. And no organisation attends the funeral of someone who died working themselves to death and thinks "we should have asked them to do more."

You are not a machine. You have limits. And those limits are not weaknesses — they are the walls that keep the structure standing. A building without boundaries is not a building. It is a pile of rubble. The same is true for you.