Several supportive articles discuss the signs of burnout, curate self-care tips, and share examples of mental health breaks. For example, these Calm and Psychology Today blogs explore burnout in depth, and offer clinical and practical clarity for recognition and recovery. But understanding when you need a mental health break is layered. Here, we’ll unpack a few layers that aren’t as frequently considered, to complement pre-existing mental health resources.


1. Your physical, mental, and spiritual responses to stress are a form of wisdom.

We all feel the heat—the world is on fire literally and figuratively. As a student, engaging with the news while advocating in your community may make the future feel grim. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, or afraid right now, know that these are appropriate responses to bearing witness to crumbling governments, violence, human rights violations, climate destruction, and a cost of living crises. The world’s pain—near or far—is in our hands via social media, which presents a complex relationship between connection and consumption. You may be attending protests, signing petitions, and organizing with your friends or teammates—fighting for what you believe in. Burnout, in response, means you’re human. And the first step in self-care is cradling this wisdom in your body, mind, and spirit—because you already have it. And you are not alone.


In a similar vein, the world of sports is becoming increasingly complicated: NCAA-related court rulings, Name Image & Likeness (NIL) contracts, scholarships, and recruiting are likely top of mind for you and your family. School, friendships, and family time add additional layers. For all high school students, affording and applying for post-secondary education can feel overwhelming as universities and colleges grapple with shifting policy, declining funding opportunities, and application requirements.


It’s a lot, likely too much, and it’s always okay to say so. That’s step one. So let’s say it together: “Being a human is a lot right now, and we’re not alone in feeling this way.”


But how do you keep going if it feels like you can’t take a mental health break—that you can’t escape a never ending ache?


Well, what do we do when we’re losing a game or competition? We try again. We reimagine the game plan.



2. There’s a calm before a rainbow, as there is before a storm.

Often, mental health breaks and self-care are spoken about in a vacuum of individuality—the responsibility for navigating them is placed on one person: you. Similarly, your athletic and/or academic goals exist in a world with flawed systems. But acknowledging all of this isn’t the same thing as hopelessness or accepting defeat. Learning how to seek joy, rest, and well-being is a revolution in and of itself. So let’s do it. Let’s refine what we mean by taking a mental health break and building a self-care plan.


You’ve likely heard the phrase, “the calm before the storm,” but what about before the rainbow? It’s much easier to anticipate a storm when you’re in one. It’s much harder to use your imagination and anticipate a rainbow. Let’s think about a few examples. During a game, timeouts aren’t only called when the score gap has widened; they’re called even when you’re winning and playing exceptionally. You wouldn’t ask for a sub when you’re crawling on the court and unable to breathe. You’d ask (or your coach would notice) when you begin to show signs of fatigue. You start making changes when you’re losing by ten, not fifty, because you have hope and imagination of a positive outcome. Similarly, when preparing for an exam, you don’t take a snack or water break only after studying for four hours straight. Maybe you bring snacks and water with you, scheduling them using the Pomodoro Technique (even if you’re not ‘starving’ when the timer goes off every 25 minutes!).



As students and/or student-athletes, you’re dedicated to your craft multi-fold, giving full-body passion every day, all day, whether in the classroom, extracurriculars, part-time jobs, or in competition. It’s easy to absorb the idea that if you love what you do, nothing should ever feel like “work.” But your body, mind, and spirit are working, and if they’re always ‘on’—even in fulfilling, exciting ways—you will burn out. Yes! You read that right: You can burnout doing what you love most. And the signs are harder to see if you’re genuine, authentic, and energized about your goals. If something is harder to see through the haze of dedication, then it’s easier to dismiss. You have to build in mental health breaks and self-care that bolster your passion.



3. Create the experience of rest.

It’s not always easy to know what type of rest you need. And your rest choices may not be fully restful if they’re adjacent to your sport, extracurriculars, or school work. For example, playing a sport-related video game, such as NBA2K, employs the same or a similar mindset as your sport. The same is true of loving to read as a student, or only listening to music that’s similar to what you’ll be performing in choir.


Similarly, many of us have shared ‘rituals’ that we turn to for rest, such as walking in nature, spiritual practices, cooking, meditation, or taking naps. These are fantastic choices, but as Dr. Rachel Barr points out via a research paper by Sabine Sonnentag and Charlotte Fritz, “While these activities remain consistent, we don’t, so we experience them differently. And then it’s easy to forget that the activity itself is not the goal. The goal is how you feel while you’re doing it and afterwards.” Dr. Barr also says that rest and self-care are less about what you do, and more about who you are while you’re doing it—operationalizing the experience.


Each day, when you incorporate a mental health break, ask yourself: what would I like to feel right now? Safe, grounded, rejuvenated, exhilarated, joyful, or creative? Would it feel good to be someone other than a student or an athlete during my mental health break? What activities might help me feel these things? Your answers will likely be different every day, and different again for a longer break. That’s great, and will help you learn to listen to what your mind, body, and spirit need and ask for. Everything is temporary and flexible, including what a mental health break or self-care plan offers. Importantly, you haven’t failed if your choice of rest doesn’t “fix” everything.



4. Fix < Recalibrate & Recharge.


Even alongside everything we’ve considered above, a mental health break won’t solve anything. But it will recharge you. It will better equip you to walk with the world—with your world. A mental health break is a vibe check, a recalibration, or a factory reset. Do you remember the feeling after an off-day from training, working, or studying? How refreshed your mind, social energy, or muscles feel? When you return to read, work, or practice after an off-day, do you now believe you’re never going to feel mental fatigue, social exhaustion, or muscle soreness again? We wish! But you will, of course, and with rest you’re more ready to navigate it again and again. You’re not a problem or a liability to be fixed. And as we discussed earlier, we don’t recover in isolation.



5. Communication is key.


Speaking about how you’re feeling with friends, coworkers, coaches, classmates, teachers, and family—with honesty and authenticity—will help everyone help you. But this is undoubtedly hard when it feels like so much is at stake.


Something to remember and remind yourself is that almost nothing is so serious and urgent that it can’t be paused for a day or even a week. This is true of school work, tests, practice, games, extracurriculars, a part-time job, and even applications. Requesting changes, better accessibility, adaptations, absences, and extensions are absolutely reasonable asks in an unpredictable human life and world, even though they feel scary. At the same time, it’s true that you have to speak up about what you need, which can include saying that you don’t know what you need.


Let’s say you’ve had a particularly packed week with many tests, university/college applications, and perhaps a part-time job, extracurricular clubs, or sports practice/games. You wake up for a commitment to one of these early on Saturday morning, and feel completely exhausted and depleted. Maybe your family is also struggling with something, or the news of a particular political decision deeply impacted you. In your mind, maybe you’re wondering if you can attend. Truthfully, you probably can. But should you? Knowing when to take a mental health break is about breathing through these layers: what you can do isn’t the same as what you could do as your best, most prepared, supported, and rested self. If you always use ‘what can I do’ as a barometer, then you may reach a point where you can’t do anything. Your thinking through these considerations is what you might want to share with your friends, teammates, family, mentors, coaches, guidance counselors, coworkers, or teachers.


“I know I can’t give my best today, and I’d like to be able to tomorrow, so could I take a break today?”


Perhaps there’s a scale to what you’re able to bring on any given day. Maybe you ask, “Could I substitute with something less physically, mentally, or emotionally demanding?”


Asking for what you need—while being honest about what you do have to give—opens a new line of dialogue and enables trust: the people who you communicate with will trust your authenticity, self awareness, and intentional care. It shows your dedication to the mental health of a team, family, or classroom.


Has an adult you love and trust ever told you that, sometimes, the most unselfish thing you can do is in fact, seemingly selfish? Taking care of yourself is a form of giving; it also takes care of everyone in your orbit. It allows you to be in community with them in the healthiest way. And when you begin a chain of vulnerability, it will go on a run, building confidence beyond yourself.