Beauty Rituals for When You’re Burnt Out

I made it through a wedding, a birthday, and a beauty sale without a panic attack—here’s how I’m recovering, inside and out.

Between my sister-in-law’s wedding, my birthday, and a behemoth Beautyfor sale, I am officially exhausted.

So much work, socializing, and attention has been a major shock to my post-rehab system, but I somehow got through it without a single panic attack—even when I was navigating a 15-foot U-Haul truck through Manhattan or hosting a party for 100+ people I’ve never met before. FWIW, my therapists (and my husband) are all in awe.

While my perfectly curated cocktail of mental health meds surely helped the cause (shoutout to beta blockers, which are truly doing the lord’s work), I’m most proud of myself for sticking to the routines that help me feel like me—especially when everything around me felt like chaos.

Even at my most overstimulated, I still managed to:

• Meditate every morning with Insight Timer, an app I cannot stop recommending

• Journal and track my habits, even if some days the only habit I tracked was “checked if I was still breathing”

• Hit 10,000+ steps a day with help from my Apple Watch, which is now an integral part of my summer bracelet stack thanks to this chic $12 band (people keep asking if it’s Hermès, and I very much let them)

• Practice daily gratitude with my “three good things” list—even if one of them was just “iced coffee with almond milk that hit just right”

Emotionally, I feel… shockingly okay. But physically? I am wrecked.

I used to think that this type of burnout was just part of being ambitious, productive, or social. Now I know it’s what happens when I don’t give myself a break until I have no choice. So this week, I’m choosing rest on purpose. Not because I earned it—but because I need it. And honestly? That should be reason enough.

Historically, my way of rebooting my mental health has involved laying on the couch with a joint and an endless stream of TikTok videos, but the *~* healed *~* version of me know that’s not the best way to get myself back to baseline.

I’ve learned that rest isn’t passive—it’s intentional. So these days, my recovery rituals are a little less “escape into a scroll-hole” and a little more “romanticize the hell out of basic survival.”

Here are the ones that are actually helping.

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