Why am I still exhausted when work has eased off?

Why does the tiredness stay even when work eases?

A quiet week ought to give you something back, and when it gives nothing, the tiredness is not coming from the hours.

You take your leave. You sleep in, walk, see the people you promised to see. Then on Monday the same heaviness is there to meet you, and you start wondering what is wrong with you, because on paper nothing is going badly. Most people abroad begin with that question, and it is already pointing the wrong way.

What you are spending is more than energy. On a posting you carry a role in front of people who see you as that role: the organisation, the employer, the country you come from. Carrying it is small and constant. It lives in the half-second before you reply at a work dinner, in a second language that is good but always takes work, in the care you give a sentence that would cost nothing back home. None of it is heavy on its own. All of it is switched on.

A study followed 212 international aid workers from before their deployment to afterwards, and emotional exhaustion had risen by the time they returned and remained raised three to six months later¹. Their work was harsher than most corporate or diplomatic postings, the answers were self-reported, and some participants dropped out along the way, so I read it as the outline of a pattern rather than a measure of your week. What matches my experience is the delay: the recovery people expect when the assignment ends often does not arrive on time.

Why is it so hard to admit I am struggling in this job?

The role comes with an unspoken condition: that you are someone who copes abroad. You were probably picked partly for that. Saying you are worn out can feel like returning the very quality you were chosen for.

There are practical reasons too, and they are not excuses.

• There is an end date. You promise yourself you will hold on until the assignment finishes, and the finish line keeps moving.
• The people who would get it work with you. Whatever you confide circulates in a small professional circle you will move in for years.
• Family get the highlights. Relatives hear the cheerful version, since the difficult one would only alarm people who are too far away to help.

Each choice makes sense alone. Added up, they leave you as the sole keeper of how heavy it has become, and nobody can set a weight down inside their own head. Near the end of a first meeting I often hear it said quietly: nobody else knows this.

Why does my own life feel like a place I only visit?

An assignment abroad builds your life around the job, and everything else makes do with the leftovers. Friendships that need years are squeezed into months. The flat is furnished as temporary. Your grasp of the local language stops at what the supermarket requires, because the evening class keeps colliding with work trips.

Much of the unspoken weight usually falls on the partner who followed you. Having sacrificed more, they often complain less, seeing your long days and not wanting to pile anything on. Their restraint is loving, and it gradually removes the one conversation in which you could both be honest about what the arrangement costs. When a couple comes to me after several postings, this is frequently what they are really here about, under the label of a quarrel over something else.

In a survey of 207 internationally mobile adults, most of them women accompanying a partner’s career, how stressed and how isolated people felt explained far more of their wellbeing than the cultural distance between countries did². It was a single snapshot, largely of Western families, so it cannot show what came first. That matches my experience. The problem is seldom the place itself, and much more often how sparse ordinary life has become.

Is this burnout, or the life around the job?

Usually both are present, and it helps to separate them, because each needs something different. The questions below are ones I think through with clients. They are not a test, and a hard answer does not settle anything by itself.

• What happens on a free weekend? Exhaustion from work eases a little. A deeper wearing-down stays at the same level whatever the calendar says.
• What have you stopped wanting? Losing interest in the job is one thing. Losing interest in people and evenings is a wider loss.
• Who here knows the everyday you? If the honest answer is no one, that gap is doing some of the damage you are blaming on the work.

Some of what you carry may also predate this posting. A mobile life suits people who are good at starting over, and that skill is occasionally acquired young, when holding on to people was not straightforward. I would not presume this, but I would be curious whether going has always felt easier than staying.

What helps while the posting goes on?

The contract probably will not change soon, so look for modest habits you can repeat away from work.

• Mark the end of the day. Fresh air, hot water, different clothes, any small ritual that tells you the role is finished for today. Without a signal it stays on until you fall asleep.
• Build one friendship with no work overlap. Forget networking. You need a single person whose opinion of you has nothing to do with your job.
• Tell your partner the true version once a week. Keep it short and honest. You are not trying to fix it, only to share what you have been carrying alone.
• Treat the next assignment as a choice. One posting can roll into the next without a real decision. Choose a fixed point each year for the two of you to review it seriously.

Such habits relieve pressure, but they fall short if the deadness has gone on for months, if alcohol has become how you unwind each night, if you have stopped replying to those closest to you, or if picturing the next assignment leaves you feeling nothing. At that stage, better planning will not reach it, and a conversation with someone unconnected to your work is worthwhile. A few sessions often help clarify the open question: which part comes from the job, and which part you carried in yourself.

Questions people ask

Can I have sessions by video from wherever I am posted?

Yes: all sessions are by video, at a regular time in Copenhagen time that fits around your schedule. If you travel for work, we can plan sessions around your trips.

Is this connected to my employer in any way?

No, therapy with me is independent of your organisation, and your employer is not involved. That independence is often what makes it possible to speak freely for the first time.

Is it worth starting if my posting ends in a few months?

Yes, because the end of a posting is often when exhaustion surfaces most clearly. Video sessions can continue wherever you go next.

Should my partner come too?

Come alone if the exhaustion is mostly yours to understand; come together if the posting has become the thing you cannot talk about at home. Some people start alone and invite their partner later.

What happens in a first session?

We look at a few recent weeks in detail rather than your whole career. From there it usually becomes clearer what belongs to the job, what to the life around it, and what to you.

If a job abroad has left you running on empty, I can help you understand what the tiredness is made of in online psychotherapy, by video.

Sources

1. Lopes Cardozo, Gotway Crawford, Eriksson and colleagues. Psychological distress, depression, anxiety, and burnout among international humanitarian aid workers: a longitudinal study. 212 aid workers. PLOS ONE, 2012.
2. Herrmann Aegerter, Meyer, Gaab and Ooi. Expatriation stressors and the well-being of accompanying partners: a commonality analysis approach. 207 internationally mobile adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 2025.

How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.