From High-Functioning to Hollowed-Out: A Musician’s Reckoning with Burnout, Academia, and Belonging

We don’t know we’re burning out because burnout is the culture.

We don’t know we’re anxious because anxiety is the air we breathe in academic and artistic spaces.

We don’t know we’re in survival mode because survival is how we’re trained to succeed.

I finished my D.M.A. in 2007, walking straight into the smoke of the first economic crisis. There were no jobs—at least not for people like me without tenure, name recognition, or a chair behind me.

So I hustled.

I stitched a career together the way many musicians do: five adjunct positions, four orchestras, long drives for short gigs, private students squeezed in wherever I could. I polished my E-flat and bass clarinet skills not for the joy of it, but because I had to stay employable. And I was grateful—I told myself I should be. I had my Alexander Technique certification, a master’s in arts management, and the ability to say yes.

I said yes to everything.

Tuesday and Thursday mornings, I was on the road at 4:30 AM for a 9 AM class three hours away. Other days, I was teaching music business, starting an AT program, forming chamber ensembles, self-producing CDs, and holding down a clarinet studio. I moved across the country to Idaho when UNCG laid off all adjuncts. I rebuilt everything again.

From 2007 to 2014, I said yes so many times that my body forgot how to say no.

And then, like so many of you, I climbed the ladder. I got the full-time job. I got tenure. I published. I was promoted. I restructured programs and designed new courses. I built new ensembles and kept creating.

And I burned out.

Quietly. Gradually. Almost invisibly.

Because in academia, burnout doesn’t look like collapse.

It looks like competence. It looks like functioning. It looks like achievement.

Until it costs you your health. Your relationships. Your sense of self.

Systems That Conditioned Us to Burn Out

We are conditioned from day one—musicians, performers, and educators alike—to believe that our worth is in our output. That we are lucky to be here. That art isn’t a job but a privilege, so we should do more, ask for less, and never complain.

We watched credit hours shrink while expectations stayed the same.

We were told to be innovative, interdisciplinary, and available—without increased pay or support.

We adapted to systems that demanded more and gave less.

We internalized it all.

Then came COVID.

We all remember the eerie silence, the empty halls, the screens, the masks over bells and mouths, the air filters humming between us. We isolated. We numbed. We adapted again.

And when it was “time to return,” no one stopped to ask:

What have we lost? Who have we become?

Instead, we rushed back into the old systems with new wounds. We carried grief, fog, fatigue, and fragility into a world pretending nothing had changed.

How Do You Know You’re Burned Out?

You’re burned out when…

• You’re always tired but can’t rest.

• You meet every deadline but feel hollow.

• You say yes out of fear, not desire.

• You feel resentful when asked to do what you used to love.

• You fantasize about quitting everything and disappearing.

• You can’t remember the last time you felt music in your body.

High-functioning anxiety doesn’t look panicked. It looks prepared.

It’s the perfectly built syllabus, the over-prepped rehearsal, the extra email reply sent at 11:42 PM.

It’s gratitude laced with guilt.

It’s a nervous system that has forgotten what safety feels like.

What Now?

We can’t rest our way out of systems that are built on depletion.

But we can begin again in our bodies.

This is where somatic work enters—not to fix you, but to reintroduce you to yourself.

To help you feel your limits.

To know when “yes” is honest and when it’s survival.

To remember what belonging feels like in your own skin.

It’s not indulgent. It’s necessary.

Because you are not a machine. You are not your productivity.

You are not just the art you produce—you are an artist.

If you are reading this and feel seen, you’re not alone.

And you’re not broken. You’re responding to a system that’s unsustainable.

We’re building something different at mBODYed—an approach grounded in nervous system regulation, somatic education, and collective repair for artists and educators.

Sign up for the upcoming free class

Listen to our latest podcast episode on artistic burnout

Explore the Becoming mBODYed cohort (starts August 15)

Because healing doesn’t mean doing less. It means doing what matters—with your whole self.

You are the revolution

You did everything they said you should.

You earned the degrees. You built the résumé. You stayed late, drove early, and said yes—over and over—because that’s what it takes.

And still, it cost you. Your body. Your joy. Your belonging.

But here you are.

Not because you pushed harder—but because some quiet part of you refused to disappear.

That’s the part we listen to now.

You are not weak for needing rest.

You are not ungrateful for questioning the system.

You are not broken for being exhausted.

You are wise for noticing.

You are brave for staying.

You are powerful for imagining a new way.

The system won’t validate your nervous system.

It won’t tell you to slow down, breathe, feel, belong.

But your body will.

Your body remembers what’s true.

And when you choose to follow it—not the grind, not the guilt, not the ghost of who you were expected to be—you become the kind of artist this world needs:

whole, rooted, and free.

The revolution is not in leaving your field.

It’s in coming home to yourself while still inside it.

And when you do that, you don’t just survive academia.

You transform it—from the inside out.