Why Busy People Struggle Most with Mental Health (And What to Do)

You know you should take care of your mental health. You've read the articles. You know about meditation and therapy and journaling and exercise and sleep hygiene and boundaries.

You also know that your next free hour is sometime in March. Maybe.

So the mental health advice sits on the shelf next to the unread books and the expired gym membership, another thing you'll get to when life calms down. Except life never calms down. And the longer you wait, the more you need the help you're postponing.

This isn't a willpower problem. It's a structural one. And it affects the people who seem like they need it least.

Why do busy people have anxiety?

There's a widespread assumption that busy people are simply stressed, and that stress is the price of ambition. That's partly true. But it's not the whole story.

Research consistently shows that the busiest, most outwardly successful people often have the worst mental health outcomes. Not despite their busyness, but because of it. Here's why.

Busyness as avoidance

This is the one nobody wants to hear, so let's get it out of the way.

For many busy people, the busyness isn't just about ambition or necessity. It's a coping mechanism. As long as you're occupied, you don't have to feel the things you've been avoiding.

Grief. Loneliness. Dissatisfaction. Fear. The question of whether this life you've built is actually the one you want.

Being busy keeps these at bay. There's always another email, another meeting, another project. The moment you stop, the feelings start to surface, which is exactly why stopping feels so uncomfortable.

Psychologists call this "experiential avoidance," the tendency to avoid unpleasant internal experiences (emotions, thoughts, sensations) even when doing so creates long-term harm. Chronic busyness is one of the most socially acceptable forms of experiential avoidance because our culture actually rewards it.

Nobody stages an intervention for the person who works 70-hour weeks. They get a promotion.

The identity trap

When "busy" becomes your identity, slowing down feels like losing yourself.

Think about how you answer the question "How are you?" If the answer is almost always "Busy" or "Crazy week" or "So much going on," busyness has become part of how you define yourself. And identities are hard to change, even when they're hurting you.

The identity trap works like this: you believe your value comes from your output. You produce, therefore you matter. If you stop producing, you stop mattering. So you can't stop.

This isn't vanity. For many people, it was learned early. In families where love was conditional on achievement. In schools that ranked students by performance. In a culture that treats productivity as a moral virtue and rest as laziness.

When busyness equals worth, taking care of your mental health feels indulgent. Like something for people who have time. People who aren't as important or needed as you are.

Why slowing down feels dangerous

If you've ever had a day with nothing planned and felt not relief but panic, you understand this.

Busy people often experience what psychologist Dr. Devon Price calls "performance as survival." The nervous system has learned that staying busy equals staying safe. Stopping means vulnerability. Vulnerability means danger.

This shows up as:

• Anxiety that spikes during vacations or weekends
• Compulsive email checking during time off
• Feeling restless or guilty when not working
• Creating busywork to fill empty time
• Getting sick the moment you finally stop (your body crashes when the adrenaline drops)

The busyness isn't just a habit. For many people, it's a trauma response that looks like ambition.

The myth of "I'll deal with it later"

Every busy person has a version of this story: "Once this quarter ends." "Once the kids are in school." "Once I get through this launch." "Once things settle down."

Things don't settle down. There's always a next quarter, a next phase, a next deadline. The "later" when you'll finally address your mental health doesn't arrive because the system is designed to keep producing urgency.

Meanwhile, the things you're postponing tend to compound. Unprocessed stress becomes chronic anxiety. Unaddressed relationship issues become crises. Ignored physical symptoms become health problems. The interest on emotional debt is high.

A longitudinal study published in The Lancet followed over 600,000 workers and found that those working 55+ hours per week had a 33% increased risk of stroke and a 13% increased risk of coronary heart disease compared to those working standard hours. The body keeps the score, even when the mind insists there's no time to listen.

The feedback loop

Busyness and poor mental health create a vicious cycle:

1. You're busy, so you skip self-care
2. Skipping self-care degrades your mental health
3. Degraded mental health reduces your efficiency
4. Reduced efficiency means tasks take longer
5. Tasks taking longer makes you busier
6. You're busier, so you skip more self-care
7. Repeat

This is why the common advice to "make time for yourself" rings hollow. The cycle actively works against it. Breaking the cycle requires not just intention but strategy.

Signs you're too busy for your own wellbeing

Busyness becomes a problem when it stops being a phase and becomes a permanent state. Here are signs you've crossed that line:

Physical warnings:

• You're always tired but can't sleep well
• You get sick more often (chronic stress suppresses immune function)
• You rely on caffeine to function and alcohol to wind down
• Persistent headaches, back pain, stomach issues with no clear medical cause
• You can't remember the last time you felt physically relaxed

Emotional warnings:

• You feel numb more often than you feel anything specific
• Small things make you disproportionately angry or tearful
• You feel disconnected from people you care about
• Joy feels like something that happens to other people
• You dread things you used to enjoy

Behavioral warnings:

• You can't sit still without checking your phone
• You eat meals while doing something else (always)
• You cancel personal plans for work regularly
• You haven't had an unstructured conversation in weeks
• You feel guilty about anything that isn't productive

Cognitive warnings:

• You can't focus despite working all the time
• You forget things you normally wouldn't
• Decision fatigue hits earlier and harder
• You have trouble thinking about anything except what's next on the list
• Creative thinking feels impossible

If you recognized yourself in several of these, this isn't something to file away for later. Later is how you got here.

How to take care of mental health when you're busy

Here's the tension: the people who most need mental health support are the ones who feel they have the least time for it. So any strategy has to be realistic about that constraint, not dismissive of it.

This isn't about adding a 90-minute morning routine to your already packed day. It's about finding the smallest effective interventions that can fit into the life you actually have.

Micro-check-ins (2 minutes)

Three times a day (set a phone alarm if you need to), pause and answer three questions:

1. What am I feeling right now? (Name the emotion, not the task)
2. What does my body need? (Water? Movement? A break from the screen?)
3. What's actually urgent vs. what just feels urgent?

This takes less time than scrolling social media, and it interrupts the autopilot that keeps busy people disconnected from themselves.

Research on "ecological momentary assessment" shows that simply pausing to notice your emotional state throughout the day improves emotional regulation. Awareness is an intervention, not just a precursor to one.

The 5-minute decompression

Between meetings, tasks, or transitions, take five minutes to do nothing productive. Not "productive rest" like reading an article. Actual nothing. Stare out a window. Sit in your car. Close your eyes.

Your brain needs transition time. Without it, the stress from one context bleeds into the next, and by the end of the day, you're carrying the accumulated tension of every interaction and task stacked on top of each other.

Five minutes of genuine disengagement between contexts can prevent that pile-up.

Renegotiate one commitment

You probably can't overhaul your schedule tomorrow. But you can identify one recurring commitment that isn't serving you and either reduce it, delegate it, or eliminate it.

This might be a meeting that doesn't need you. A volunteer obligation you took on out of guilt. A social commitment that drains rather than nourishes. A standard at work that exceeds what's actually required.

Freeing up even 30 minutes a week creates space that didn't exist before. Protect that space.

Talk while you move

If you genuinely cannot add another sitting-still activity to your day, combine. Take a phone call with a friend while walking. Process your thoughts out loud during your commute. Have a conversation with someone you trust while doing something you'd be doing anyway.

This isn't ideal. Dedicated time for mental health support is better. But if the choice is "imperfect support" or "no support," imperfect wins every time.

Set one boundary this week

Not ten. One.

• "I don't check email after 8 PM"
• "I take my lunch break away from my desk"
• "I don't schedule meetings on Friday afternoons"
• "I say no to one request this week"

A single, consistent boundary does more than ten aspirational ones you'll abandon in three days. Start small. Build from there.

Use waiting time intentionally

You already have unused minutes scattered throughout your day: waiting for coffee, sitting in a waiting room, standing in line, waiting for a meeting to start.

Instead of filling these with email or social media (which increase stress), try:

• Three deep breaths (sounds basic because it is, and it works)
• A quick body scan (notice where you're holding tension and consciously release it)
• One minute of just being present with whatever's around you

These aren't a replacement for deeper work. They're maintenance. Like stretching so you don't seize up entirely.

Lower the barrier to professional support

If traditional weekly therapy feels impossible with your schedule, consider alternatives:

• Asynchronous therapy (text-based platforms where you write when you can)
• Biweekly sessions instead of weekly
• Early morning or evening appointment slots
• AI-assisted tools for daily processing (more on this below)
• Weekend intensives instead of weekly sessions

The therapy model of "same time every week for 50 minutes" doesn't work for everyone. That's a limitation of the format, not evidence that you don't need support.

Stop glorifying your own busyness

This is an internal shift, not a schedule change. Notice when you use busyness as a status symbol. Notice when you feel proud of being overwhelmed. Notice when you compete with others about who's more swamped.

Each time you glorify your busyness, you reinforce the belief that your worth depends on it. Each time you describe being overwhelmed as a badge of honor, you make it harder to step back.

Try replacing "I'm so busy" with something more honest: "I'm not managing my time well" or "I've taken on too much" or even just "I'm tired." Honesty is the first crack in the wall.

The real question

Here's what it comes down to: What is the busyness protecting you from?

That's not a rhetorical question. It has an answer, and the answer is probably uncomfortable.

For some people, busyness protects against the fear of being ordinary. For others, it's a shield against grief they haven't processed. For others, it's the only way they know to feel valuable.

You don't have to answer that question today. But you do have to start asking it. Because until you understand what the busyness is doing for you emotionally, no productivity system or time management hack will give you peace. You'll just fill any freed-up time with more work.

The busiest, most accomplished people in the world still have internal lives. Still have emotions that need processing. Still have bodies that need rest and relationships that need attention. Productivity doesn't make you immune to being human.

You know that. You've probably known it for a while.

The question is whether you'll keep knowing it as a theory, or start treating it as something that requires action.

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ILTY was built for people who don't have an hour to spare but desperately need someone to talk to. A conversation at 11 PM when the day finally stops. A five-minute check-in between meetings. A space to say "I'm not okay" without scheduling it three weeks out. Available whenever you are.

Try ILTY Free because mental health shouldn't require a clear calendar.

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Related Reading

• ILTY for Work Stress: How ILTY helps professionals manage work-related mental health challenges.
• Burnout Recovery: A Step-by-Step Guide: When busyness has already taken its toll.
• ILTY for Work: Using ILTY to process work stress in real time.