You're Not Tired, You're Tapped Out
Black Girl Burnout
Kelley Bonner
4.7 • 763 Ratings
🗓️ 27 August 2025
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode of Black Girl Burnout, Kelley shares the powerful truth that exhaustion isn’t always about needing more sleep. Sometimes, your body is tapped out—living in chronic stress and unable to downshift into rest. Drawing from her own story of nervous system dysregulation, she unpacks how years of carrying too much can leave you wired even while exhausted. This conversation is an invitation to pause, reset, and explore practices that bring your body back to safety.
Key Takeaways:
- Being tapped out means your nervous system is stuck in stress mode—it’s different from simple tiredness.
- Chronic stress can disrupt sleep, spike heart rate, and create physical symptoms even at rest.
- Black women are often conditioned to self-silence and normalize pain, leading to hidden depletion.
- Vacations, catch-up naps, or “pushing through” don’t heal nervous system dysregulation.
- True restoration comes from nervous system resets, boundaries, joy practices, and professional support.
Episode Highlights:
- 00:38 – Kelley's story: sleep struggles, smart ring tracking, and discovering heart rate spikes
- 03:18 – Learning her nervous system was stuck in stress mode
- 05:29 – The deeper difference between tiredness and being tapped out
- 07:06 – How cultural self-silencing leads to chronic stress in Black women
- 09:20 – Why ignoring symptoms or relying only on vacations doesn’t help
- 12:13 – Small nervous system resets anyone can try
- 13:27 – Boundaries and the importance of daily self-care
- 13:55 – Normalizing medical and therapeutic support
- 15:18 – Joy resets: music, rituals, creativity
- 17:13 – Reflection prompt: How do you know when you’re tapped out?
Gentle Reflection Prompt:
What’s one sign for you that you’re tapped out—not just tired?
If this episode resonates, share it with someone who might be running on empty without realizing it. And don’t forget to leave a review—it helps other Black women find the show and start their own journey out of burnout.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Black Girl Burnout podcast. Kelly here. |
| 0:04.0 | And today I am here to tell you, you're not tired. |
| 0:09.3 | You're tapped out. |
| 0:11.3 | This episode is all about how to distinguish between physical tiredness and nervous system |
| 0:18.7 | dysregulation when your nervous system is, absolutely not, I need help. |
| 0:25.9 | And this is something I feel particularly equipped to talk about, not just because I'm a licensed |
| 0:30.0 | therapist, but honestly just because of my own personal experience with having a dysregulated |
| 0:36.0 | nervous system. |
| 0:38.3 | A couple of months ago, I stumbled on to something. |
| 0:43.3 | My sleep has been terrible to mediocre for years, and there are many reasons for that. |
| 0:49.3 | I am in my early 40s, so that means perimenopause is knocking at the door, if not already present. |
| 0:57.5 | I also have some health conditions that relate to sleep. I had an extremely stressful last |
| 1:05.9 | few years. 2024 was a tough year and the hardest year of my life. but it's not been the only tough year I've had. |
| 1:14.6 | I've had many years. |
| 1:16.4 | The year before that, I had a surgery. |
| 1:19.2 | I was still recovering from that went awry. |
| 1:22.1 | So it's been a lot of years. |
| 1:24.0 | I would say the last three, four years have been extremely stressful, even up until |
| 1:29.5 | me leaving my job. Honestly, I could probably go back five years and tell you between the |
| 1:34.4 | burnout from being in my job, leaving my job to start my own business, having a surgery |
| 1:40.1 | that went awry, having both my parents really ill, yada yada, you get it. |
| 1:46.1 | My own physical stuff going on. |
... |
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