The Wellness Industry Told Us To Optimise Everything. Now We’re Exhausted
Bianca Alleyne
Because burnout isn’t a badge of honour anymore
As conversations around Mental Health Awareness Month resurface once again this May, the numbers paint a bleak picture. Recent UK studies found women are significantly more likely than men to report work negatively impacting their mental health, while chronic stress and burnout continue to rise across younger demographics navigating careers shaped by constant connectivity, overstimulation and pressure to perform. Yet despite wellness culture becoming a multi-billion-pound industry built on the promise of balance, many people feel more exhausted than ever.
There was a time when burnout felt like a warning sign. Now, it feels more like a personality trait.
Somewhere between the infinite side hustles, constant notifications, “soft life” discourse and pressure from our social media algorithms to constantly optimise ourselves, stress has become deeply embedded in the way we work, socialise and define success. Especially within creative industries, being overwhelmed is often worn as proof of ambition. Exhaustion has become aestheticised. Busy has become aspirational.
“I think we can wear stress as a badge of honour,” says Kylie Griffiths-Wilson, founder of Stress Sucks. “How many times a day do you hear the phrase, ‘I’m just so busy’? It’s become tied to productivity and success, especially in creative industries where there’s often pressure to always be available, visible and productive.”
Before founding Stress Sucks, Griffiths-Wilson worked as a fashion editor at VICE before moving into styling and creative direction for artists including Kali Uchis and Ciara. Like many people navigating high-pressure creative careers, she found herself caught in cycles of chronic stress and overstimulation disguised as normality.
The problem, she explains, is that modern stress rarely arrives dramatically. It accumulates quietly through constant accessibility, digital noise and the inability to properly switch off.
“A huge amount of modern stress comes from overstimulation,” she says. “Most of us are overstimulated from the moment we wake up. Notifications, social media, work messages, noise and information mean our brains are processing constantly without much recovery time. I think many people are living in low-level fight or flight without even realising it.”
The idea that low-level survival mode being a default state feels particularly relevant now. Wellness culture may have exploded over the past decade, but many people seem more exhausted than ever. The irony is difficult to ignore: self-care has become another performance metric.
“Wellness has become so complicated and performative in some spaces that it can actually create more stress,” Griffiths-Wilson says. “People feel like they need perfect routines, expensive supplements and hours of free time to look after themselves ‘properly’. I think wellbeing should support your life, not become another thing you feel like you’re failing at.”
In many ways, this marks a wider cultural shift with the conversation around wellbeing moving away from optimisation and toward “regulation”. Less about becoming your “best self” and more about learning how to exist without constantly running on adrenaline.
For high-achieving people especially, that can feel surprisingly uncomfortable.
“A lot of high-achieving people are used to functioning in high-pressure environments, so their nervous systems almost become wired for stress and stimulation,” she explains. “There’s often a fear that slowing down means falling behind.”
It also explains why rest has become so emotionally loaded. In a culture where productivity is closely tied to identity and self-worth, slowing down can trigger guilt rather than relief.
“We’re conditioned to constantly do, achieve and be productive, so rest can start to feel like failure because you’re not actively producing something,” she says. “But rest is essential for our mental and physical health. Ironically, when we allow ourselves proper recovery, we usually become more creative, productive and resilient overall.”
There’s a reason conversations around nervous system regulation, burnout and digital fatigue have become increasingly mainstream. People are beginning to realise that exhaustion is not simply the cost of ambition. Nor is disappearing to a luxury retreat for six months a realistic solution for most people.
Instead, Griffiths-Wilson advocates for something less performative and ultimately more sustainable: practical wellbeing.
“For me, realistic wellbeing is consistency over perfection,” she says. “Sleeping better, spending time outside, regulating stress before burnout hits, moving your body, having boundaries and allowing yourself moments to slow down. It doesn’t have to be extreme to be effective.”
That philosophy became the foundation of Stress Sucks, which was born almost accidentally after Griffiths-Wilson was invited to host a stress workshop at a festival. Instead of promoting unattainable wellness ideals, she focused on “5 Minute Fixes”, a series of small, accessible tools people could actually implement in everyday life.
“The response was incredible because people weren’t looking for perfection,” she says. “They just wanted support that actually felt achievable.”
Perhaps that’s the real shift happening now. Not a rejection of ambition, but a growing awareness that constant overwhelm is not a sustainable lifestyle strategy. The new aspiration is no longer endless productivity at all costs; it’s about learning how to succeed without completely disconnecting from yourself in the process.
Share This Story
Related Posts
