Successful abroad, and exhausted underneath
2 May 2026 · 5 min read · Burnout
When a whole family invests in one person's departure, that person does not get to have an ordinary career. Every promotion is proof the sacrifice was worth it. Every wobble is a private failure you cannot report home.
Add the quiet arithmetic of being an immigrant at work: proving competence a little more loudly, reading a room whose humour you learned late, staying because the visa is attached to the job. Your nervous system has been braced for years.
Burnout in this context is not laziness or weakness. It is what happens when you have been running an extra process in the background of every interaction since you arrived.
We do not begin by asking you to do less. We begin by naming what you have been carrying, which is usually more than you have ever said out loud.
Written by Srividya, clinical psychologist at SELFSAME Therapy. Reading is not a substitute for support — if something here landed, it may be worth saying out loud.