Treating Caregiver Burnout with Somatic Therapy
Are you a caregiver in NYC experiencing emotional exhaustion, guilt, or compassion fatigue? Are you being stretched to your breaking point? If so, you’re not alone, and you’re part of a quiet but powerful workforce.
3 min read
Key points:
Caregiver burnout is a real clinical concern, not just tiredness. 63 million Americans identify as caregivers, and the sustained stress of putting others first can lead to emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion — often without the caregiver recognizing it in themselves.
Caregiving often starts earlier than people realize. For many, the pattern began in childhood — managing households, supporting parents, raising siblings — long before it was ever a conscious choice.
The burden falls unevenly. Women, LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, and people of color carry a disproportionate share of caregiving labor, often with less support and more societal pressure to do so without complaint.
Somatic therapy works by bringing caregivers back into their own bodies. Modalities like AEDP and Somatic Experiencing help caregivers notice what they've been ignoring in themselves — physical sensations, buried emotions, unmet needs — without judgment or guilt.
Taking care of yourself doesn't mean taking care of others less well. The article makes the case that as caregivers begin to inhabit themselves more fully, they often find they can offer care to others more freely — not less.
As of 2025, 63 million Americans identify as caregivers. In New York City alone, over 1.3 million people care for loved ones while also managing work, family, and personal responsibilities. Many of these caregivers are women or older adults who provide at least 30 hours of care each week in addition to working outside the home.
The result is a population stretched thin, unseen, and at high risk for burnout—making somatic therapy an increasingly vital support for caregivers across New York City.
Caregiving roles are often framed as admirable. And they are. But they also come at a cost. When your life is oriented around caring for others, it can become easier to attune to someone else’s needs than to your own. It might feel harder and harder to connect to your own internal world.
Over time, caregivers can be at risk of caregiver burnout, a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by the prolonged stress of caring for another person. (Caregiver burnout is also sometimes known as caregiver stress syndrome, caregiver fatigue, or caregiver burden.)
This burnout may show up as:
Constant exhaustion or overwhelm
Irritability or compassion fatigue, which makes it more difficult to empathize with the people you care for
Difficulty focusing or making decisions
Feelings of hopelessness, guilt, or numbness
It is natural for caregivers to eventually feel depleted, unseen, or uncertain about who they are beyond their identity as a caregiver. They say things like: “I’ve been taking care of him for so long that I don’t even know what it would look like to take care of me.” Or “I have to keep track of everything myself. I’m never first on my own list.”
Some caregiving roles are taken on in adulthood, but others begin in childhood—especially for those who were “adultified” early, taking on responsibilities like managing household duties, caring for siblings, or supporting parents emotionally or financially.
For some, caregiving is a formal job, such as in healthcare, social work, or education. For others, it means providing unpaid support for a family member. Most caregivers are women, who are still expected to provide disproportionate emotional and physical labor in families and communities, often without adequate support. Many others are members of other marginalized groups, like LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, and people of color who already face additional pressures and receive less institutional support. Cultural and systemic biases often reinforce these patterns. LGBTQ+ caregivers, for instance, may find that their roles are invalidated or misunderstood. Children of color, meanwhile, are more likely to be perceived as older or more responsible than their white peers. In the long term, the adultification of children of color increases psychological strain.
How somatic therapy helps caregivers in NYC
At Downtown Somatic Therapy, we specialize in helping caregivers in NYC reconnect with their own needs through somatic therapy, body-based therapeutic approaches like AEDP, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy or Somatic Experiencing. These modalities are designed to restore balance, resilience, and emotional well-being.
Caregivers should not feel alone in this experience, and somatic therapists are available to support caregivers here in New York. In somatic therapy, caregivers are invited to return to themselves—not just intellectually, but physically and emotionally. Therapeutic modalities like AEDP and somatic experiencing help caregivers create internal practices of emotional awareness and attunement that can help caregivers include themselves in the equation.
In therapy, we strengthen a new muscle by staying present with a caregiver’s experience. Caregivers are invited to notice the subtle ways that they disconnect from their own experience to prioritize another person. For instance, when a partner is sick and in need of care, you might find yourself leaning in so much that it’s hard to notice what’s going on in your own body. You turn away from your own aches and pains to attend to another person’s. In session, through sensation, breath, or visualization, you can notice what is calling for attention in your own body and heart, without pushing past it or stuffing it down.
It’s not uncommon for caregivers to initially feel guilt or discomfort as they begin to prioritize their own needs in and outside of therapy. Some clients report feeling selfish, or worried about what could happen if they “drop the ball” at home or work. Those responses are natural, and they can even serve a protective function, helping caregivers push through exceedingly difficult circumstances. Somatic therapy helps caregivers gently reexamine these responses and any accompanying shame, guilt, and dissociation.
Somatic Experiencing and releasing the ‘default parent’ role
Isabela spent much of her childhood raising her siblings. Years later, she found herself overwhelmed by the idea of saying no to her brother’s request for financial support. In therapy, Isabela was able to start noticing the tightness in her chest and the queasy feelings in her stomach as she even imagined saying no to her brother. These sensations were tied to early memories of being praised for being the “default parent.”
By using somatic techniques like breathwork, movement, and self-touch, Isabela accessed buried emotions—grief, anger, fear—and began to release the shame of putting her needs first. These feelings, and her role within the family, were no longer sustainable. Over time, she built the capacity to set limits and act from a place of self-respect rather than complete obligation.
Many caregivers don’t feel that they have the permission to experience positive experiences like joy, pleasure, and possibility. AEDP and somatic approaches enable clients to begin welcoming these experiences into their lives. These feelings can sometimes trigger fear or disgust for caregivers who understandably worry that pleasure might distract them or diminish their focus. But AEDP and Somatic Experiencing help clients connect with joy and pleasure while managing their responsibility.
Finding joy and setting limits with AEDP therapy
Caregivers often struggle to experience joy, pleasure, and rest, feeling as if they haven’t earned it. But somatic therapy helps clients set limits, create the space to pursue new relationships, rediscover intimacy with others, and embark on opportunities that feel aligned with their desires, not just with their obligations.
Consider Maya: 33, Asian American, supporting her parents, studying, and building her career. For years, romantic relationships felt risky or out of reach. As Maya began to slow down in therapy and reconnect with her body, she noticed a longing: for affection, partnership, and reciprocity. These weren’t extraneous desires. They were deeply human.
It is no accident that as caregivers like Maya begin to inhabit themselves more fully, they often find that they can offer care––to themselves, to their care partners, to others––more freely. When we apply compassion to ourselves as freely as we apply it to others, care no longer needs to come at the cost of our own wellbeing.
Are you ready to find relief from caregiver stress? Reach out to Downtown Somatic Therapy to schedule a free consultation with a therapist who understands how to take care of others while taking care of yourself.