You are not failing to keep up. You may have been carrying too much for too long.
Structured and relational counselling for adults navigating chronic stress, burnout, overload, irritability, shutdown, and the exhaustion of being the person who keeps everything going.
Support in Calgary, Cochrane, and across Alberta
You may be looking for more than advice to take a weekend off, practice better self-care, or become more efficient. You want to understand why your capacity has changed, what keeps draining it, and how to recover without building the exact same life that depleted you.
At The Right Room, stress and burnout counselling is collaborative, practical, and attentive to the full context of your life. Together, we can work with chronic overload, perfectionism, overfunctioning, people-pleasing, work stress, emotional exhaustion, boundaries, relationships, nervous-system activation, and the difficult task of deciding what actually needs to change.
The Focus of Treatment
More than taking a break.
Burnout is rarely solved by one good weekend when the conditions that depleted you are still waiting on Monday. Together, we look at what is consuming your capacity, what recovery actually requires, and how to build a life that asks less of you than constant overextension.
01
A clearer map of overload
We map where your energy is going: workload, caregiving, relationships, decision-making, masking, perfectionism, conflict, responsibility, sensory demands, and the invisible labour you may barely count anymore. The goal is to understand why your capacity changed rather than treating exhaustion as a personal failure.
02
More protected capacity
Recovery is not only about adding relaxation. We identify what can be reduced, delegated, postponed, renegotiated, or done differently so your nervous system is not expected to recover while the same demands keep accumulating. Boundaries, workload, expectations, and access to genuine rest all become part of treatment.
03
A more sustainable way of living
We work toward a version of functioning that does not depend on urgency, guilt, adrenaline, or being endlessly available. That may mean changing routines, expectations, relationships, work patterns, or the way you define productivity and enough. The goal is not to make you capable of tolerating more. It is to help life require less self-abandonment.
What Treatment May Include
A plan built around what is draining you.
Stress and burnout do not come from one source. Treatment is tailored to your workload, relationships, responsibilities, nervous-system needs, health, routines, identity, values, and the expectations you carry for yourself. Together, we identify what needs recovery, what needs support, and what may actually need to change.
01
Understanding your stress and burnout pattern
Your care begins with a structured look at what has been demanding your energy and how your capacity has changed over time. We explore workload, caregiving, relationships, sleep, physical tension, emotional demands, masking, perfectionism, irritability, avoidance, concentration, and the point where pushing through stopped working. This gives us a clearer map of the problem before asking you to do more.
02
Recovery, regulation, and restoring capacity
When your system has been running under sustained demand, recovery has to become more than whatever time is left over. We look at sleep, decompression, sensory needs, movement, transitions, genuine downtime, and the difference between activities that distract you and activities that actually help you recover. The goal is to rebuild capacity without turning rest into another performance target.
03
Perfectionism, overfunctioning, and self-worth
Burnout often develops in people who are exceptionally good at overriding their own limits. We can examine the rules underneath that pattern: I should be able to handle this, people need me, resting is lazy, asking for help is failure, or my value comes from what I produce. The goal is not to lower your standards until you stop caring. It is to separate ambition and responsibility from chronic self-extraction.
04
Boundaries, workload, and the invisible load
Sometimes the most therapeutic intervention is not a breathing exercise. It is changing what is expected of you. We look at workload, availability, emotional labour, decision fatigue, household responsibilities, communication patterns, and places where saying yes has become automatic. Together, we build boundaries that protect capacity without requiring you to become uncaring or disconnected.
05
Relationships, resentment, and receiving support
Burnout can make ordinary requests feel unbearable and leave you resentful of people you genuinely love. We can explore where you are over-responsible, under-supported, chronically available, or carrying relational roles that no longer feel sustainable. Therapy can help you ask more clearly, receive help with less guilt, and stay connected without always being the person who carries everyone else.
06
Identity, values, and deciding what is worth your energy
Burnout can expose a difficult question: if you cannot keep doing everything, what actually matters enough to keep? Using ACT-informed work, we clarify your values, distinguish chosen commitments from inherited expectations, and make decisions about where your limited energy deserves to go. Recovery becomes not only about feeling better, but about building a life you are more willing to return to.
07
Early warning signs and preventing another crash
As capacity begins to return, we identify the signs that you are slipping back into overextension: working later, skipping meals, irritability, losing recovery time, withdrawing, saying yes automatically, relying on urgency, or treating exhaustion as something to solve later. We create a plan for responding earlier so recovery does not end with returning to the exact pattern that caused the crash.
Who This Approach Is Designed For
Stress and burnout do not look the same for everyone.
This approach is designed for adults who are:
- High-functioning on the outside while privately feeling depleted, irritable, detached, or close to shutting down
- Carrying demanding work, caregiving, leadership, relationship, or family responsibilities with very little room left for yourself
- Used to being capable and confused or ashamed that your usual strategies are no longer working
- Cycling between overworking, pushing through, crashing, recovering just enough, and starting again
- Struggling with perfectionism, people-pleasing, over-responsibility, difficulty saying no, or guilt when you rest
- Neurodivergent, highly sensitive, or masking heavily and realizing that the cost of appearing fine has become unsustainable
Many of my clients are thoughtful, driven, dependable people who have become excellent at functioning past their own limits. They are not looking for someone to teach them how to squeeze more productivity out of an exhausted system. They are looking for clarity, permission to take their limits seriously, and a more sustainable way to carry what matters.
If you want a therapy process that respects your ambition without glorifying exhaustion, looks seriously at the systems and expectations surrounding you, and helps you recover without asking you to become less capable or less caring, this approach may be a good fit.
Counselling Locations
Support in Calgary, Cochrane, and online across Alberta.
Stress and burnout counselling is available in person at both The Right Room locations, as well as virtually for clients located anywhere in Alberta.
In Person
Cochrane
In-person stress and burnout counselling is available from The Right Room’s downtown Cochrane office.
Explore the Cochrane location
In Person
Calgary
In-person stress and burnout counselling is also available from The Right Room’s northwest Calgary location.
Explore the Calgary location
Virtual
Across Alberta
Virtual sessions are available for clients who are physically located in Alberta at the time of their appointment.
Learn about virtual counsellingFlexible Access
Whether you prefer meeting in person or from the comfort of your own space, therapy is tailored to your current capacity, responsibilities, relationships, recovery needs, goals, and the practical realities of your life.
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions about stress and burnout counselling.
Starting therapy can bring up questions about whether what you are experiencing really counts as burnout, whether you need to change jobs, how long recovery takes, and what therapy can realistically change. Here are answers to some of the questions people ask most often.
Do I need a referral to begin stress and burnout counselling?
No. You can self-refer for counselling. You do not need a referral from a family physician or psychiatrist to book a consultation or begin therapy.
If you already work with a physician, psychiatrist, or another health care provider, I can collaborate with them with your written consent.
Do I need a formal diagnosis to get help with burnout?
No. You do not need a formal diagnosis to begin counselling for stress or burnout. We can start with what you are noticing: exhaustion, irritability, dread, reduced capacity, difficulty concentrating, detachment, resentment, sleep disruption, or the feeling that everything now takes more effort than it should.
We can also look at whether another concern such as depression, anxiety, ADHD, trauma, sleep problems, or a medical issue may be contributing to what you are experiencing and discuss whether additional assessment or medical support would be useful.
How many sessions will I need?
The number and frequency of sessions depend on your goals, current symptoms, and support needs.
Many clients begin with weekly or biweekly sessions while we map the sources of overload, create more immediate protection for capacity, and work on boundaries, recovery, expectations, and the patterns that keep pulling them back into overextension. Sessions may become less frequent as functioning becomes more sustainable.
We regularly review whether the pace of therapy continues to feel useful and sustainable.
How much does stress and burnout counselling cost?
Individual counselling sessions are $235 for 60 minutes.
Insurance reimbursement may be available depending on your benefits provider and plan. A receipt is provided after each appointment for submission to your insurance company.
Do I have to quit my job to recover from burnout?
Not necessarily. Sometimes work is a major part of the problem and a leave, role change, reduced workload, or career decision may eventually need to be considered. In other cases, meaningful improvement can come from changes to boundaries, expectations, support, workload, recovery, and the way responsibility is distributed.
Therapy is not about telling you to quit or stay. It is a place to understand the trade-offs clearly and make decisions that fit your health, values, finances, relationships, and longer-term goals.
What happens during the first session?
The first full session focuses on understanding what is demanding your energy, how long this has been building, what has changed in your functioning, and what your current responsibilities actually look like. We explore work, relationships, caregiving, sleep, physical tension, emotional load, boundaries, coping patterns, strengths, and goals.
We may begin mapping where your capacity is being spent and which demands are most urgent to address, but you will not be handed a generic self-care checklist before we understand the life you are trying to recover inside.
What should I do if I am in crisis?
The Right Room is not an emergency or crisis service. If you are at immediate risk of harming yourself or someone else, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department.
As part of ongoing treatment, we can also create a personalized safety and response plan if stress, hopelessness, shutdown, substance use, or other risk begins to increase between appointments.
Still Unsure?
A no-cost 15-minute consultation gives you an opportunity to ask questions, discuss what you are looking for, and determine whether working together feels like the right next step.
Meet Your Therapist
Structured care with a real human.
Hi, I’m Hannah Tan, Registered Provisional Psychologist and founder of The Right Room.
I work with adults who are used to being capable, responsible, and relied upon, including people navigating chronic stress, burnout, perfectionism, overfunctioning, compassion fatigue, work strain, caregiving pressure, relationship stress, and neurodivergent overload. My approach integrates relational therapy with evidence-informed models including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, DBT-informed skills, values work, and practical behavioural change.
Burnout treatment requires more than telling an exhausted person to practice self-care more consistently. I bring structure and clinical understanding to the work while remaining collaborative, relational, trauma-informed, culturally informed, and attentive to the real systems surrounding you: work, family, relationships, identity, finances, responsibilities, and the expectations you place on yourself.
I am not interested in helping you become more efficient at abandoning yourself. We can work directly with what chronic stress is doing to your life while protecting the parts of you that still care deeply about your work, relationships, ambitions, humour, responsibilities, and the people who matter to you. Recovery does not require becoming less driven. It may require changing what your drive is costing you.
Ready When You Are
You should not have to burn yourself out to keep your life running.
If you have become the person who can still get everything done but no longer has much left when the day is over, therapy can be a place to take that seriously. We can work toward recovery that protects your health, relationships, ambition, and capacity without simply preparing you to tolerate the same unsustainable load again.