Raw and honest about burnout and recovery VOL 3

This post is based on my personal thoughts on Krapsakas blog.
It’s not scientific or evidence-based, and it may be triggering for some.
Take what resonates, and leave everything that doesn’t.

This post is a follow-up to the posts “Raw and honest about burnout and recovery VOL 1” and “Raw and honest about burnout and recovery VOL 2”.

After the collapse and the long phase of numbness, something started to shift.
Life didn’t return to what it was before – instead, everything I thought I was slowly started to change.

This part is about that transition. Leaving my old life behind, an identity shift I didn’t fully understand at the time, and how Krapsakas began to emerge from it.

Abandoning old life

I ended up on sick leave for a little over 6 weeks.
During this time, I also went to see a psychologist several times, who strictly advised* me to finally quit my job.

*Strictly advised that she could not and should not make decisions for the patient, but through mutual cooperation or communication, it became very clear that this working relationship could no longer continue.

I ended the working relationship by mutual agreement at the beginning of January.
Two days later, I contacted my parent, with whom I have not had any particularly warm relationships as an adult, we have rather just communicated neutrally.
I asked them if I could go live with them for a while?
Which them was not overly happy about, but them finally agreed.
Towards the end of January, I moved in with this parent.
And already in mid-February, I moved out again, in with a former school sister.

In fact, those weeks included a very large amount of giving up my old life.
I probably gave away half of my worldly possessions.
The plan was strong at the time to move to Scandinavia in the fall of this year. Side note – I haven’t thrown this plan overboard. I just don’t know yet if and when I’ll be able to implement it. But it’s a goal.

All this moving, quitting my job, saying goodbye to my hometown, starting to focus on Krapsakas… there was something raw about it all. Pure.
I no longer mourned the things I had left behind. I gave away everything that felt old and dragging like an anchor behind me.
There are very few things that I regret giving up today.

Spiritual Awakening 2.0

At first, I called it a spiritual awakening 2.0. Today, looking back, I would probably call it an identity shift. But because I experienced it through the same confusion, pain, and inner questioning as my first spiritual awakening, the name still feels right.

One of the biggest changes was that I stopped asking other people who I am. For most of my life, I didn’t realize how much I was still looking for permission.
Permission to be ambitious. Permission to be spiritual. Permission to be different. Permission to want what I want. Permission to trust my intuition.
Today, I don’t do that anymore.

If someone tells me they don’t like a part of me, that’s okay. They are allowed to feel that way. But it no longer automatically means that I have to change myself.
I can listen. I can reflect. If there is truth in what they say, I will take responsibility for it. But if it is simply a part of who I am, then I no longer feel the need to justify my existence.

One thing I noticed during this period was that I became much less interested in fitting in. I started seeing how many things in life are based on invisible rules that people simply agree to follow. Careers. Status. Success. Relationships. Social expectations.
None of it felt as solid anymore as it once did. Not in a depressing way. More like waking up and realizing that a lot of what we take seriously is still just a game we collectively agreed to play.

At the same time, I became much more emotional. Not more dramatic. More alive. When I am sad, I really feel sadness. When I care about someone, I care deeply.
When I love, I love fully. For years I felt emotionally numb. Now I feel everything much more intensely. Sometimes it is beautiful. Sometimes it is exhausting.

Another thing that changed was my relationships. I slowly stopped forcing connections that no longer felt right. Not through arguments. Not through drama.
I simply stopped holding on.
The older I get, the more I understand the price of keeping people in my life who are not really my people. The price is always paid with energy.

Looking back, that was the biggest change of all.
I stopped trying to become somebody, and slowly started returning to who I already was.

The disappearance of people and the rise of standards

I’ve talked many times on this blog about how I’ve gradually removed people from my life who weren’t really my people. Not because there was some big drama. Most of the time, there wasn’t. The truth was simple – we had grown in different directions.

For a long time, I kept people in my life because I was afraid of loneliness.
I ignored things that mattered to me and told myself that compromise means accepting everything. But there is a difference between accepting people and constantly abandoning yourself to keep a connection alive.

Over time, I started noticing how drained I felt after certain interactions. Some friendships felt one-sided, or based more on habit than real connection. Not because I truly wanted them, but because I was attached to what they used to be.

Letting go was uncomfortable. Sometimes it felt selfish, sometimes harsh. It made me question myself more than once.
But every time I ignored that inner discomfort and stayed in connections that no longer fit, I paid for it with my energy.

Most of the time, there wasn’t a dramatic ending. I simply stopped reaching out. Conversations faded slowly, and people who once felt close became distant.
The loneliness was real. There were moments of doubt, moments where my circle became noticeably smaller, and moments where I felt like I was between two worlds – no longer fully in the old one, not yet fully in the new one.

But looking back, I understand it better now. I was no longer willing to stay where I had to shrink myself to belong. And the more I learned about myself, the clearer my standards became.

Not status. Not success. Not popularity.
Character. Emotional maturity. Responsibility. Curiosity. Kindness. Humor. People who look for solutions, not excuses. People who are willing to grow.
Today my circle is smaller, but it feels far more real.

And somewhere in the middle of all of this, I started building something I didn’t yet fully understand.

Krapsakas was born from all of this

One thing I didn’t understand at the time was that Krapsakas wasn’t really born because I wanted to start a business.

I thought I was creating a clothing brand. And in a way, I was. I started designing clothes already in spring 2022 and made my first samples. Back then, I wrote everything into my notebooks, not a public blog.
Later in autumn 2022, I officially registered the company.

But what I didn’t see yet was the deeper layer behind it. What I was actually looking for was a way to express myself.

For years, I had adjusted myself to fit different environments, people, and expectations. I had spent so much energy trying to be what was needed that somewhere along the way I lost touch with what I wanted. Not what looked good on paper. Not what was realistic. Not what other people expected. What I wanted.

The more I recovered, the more obvious it became that I needed something that was mine. Something where I didn’t have to ask for permission, explain myself, or make myself smaller.

The blog was not the start, it was the translation. The first public blog post was only in April 2024. That was the moment Krapsakas started to become something more visible.

Many people see Krapsakas as a blog. A place where I share thoughts, experiences and stories from my life. And that’s understandable. But Krapsakas was never meant to live only in words.
The point has always been expression.

Some people express themselves through words. Others through music, art, photography or the way they decorate their homes. I believe we express ourselves all the time. Through the clothes we wear, the things we buy, the gifts we give, the spaces we create around us and the people we choose to spend time with.

Krapsakas was never meant to be just a blog or just a clothing brand.
It became a place for self-expression. A place where thoughts can be expressed through words, but also without words. Because sometimes a sentence on a sweatshirt says exactly what you want to say. And sometimes it doesn’t need words at all.

The interesting part is that Krapsakas didn’t grow out of burnout. Krapsakas already existed long before that.
What changed was my relationship with it.

For years, Krapsakas lived in the background of my life. I worked on it next to my full-time job, during evenings, weekends, and whenever I had enough energy left.
Most of my time and attention went into survival, responsibilities, and paying the bills.

Today, that has changed.
Krapsakas is no longer something I squeeze into the corners of my life. It has become the center of it.

The focus has changed too. At first, a large part of the journey was about finding myself again. Understanding who I am beneath expectations, stress, and other people’s opinions.

Today, it feels less like searching and more like expressing.
Less about becoming someone. More about allowing myself to be who I already am.
To be present. To trust my own voice. To create things that genuinely reflect me.
And to have the courage to be seen as myself, even when not everyone understands it.

That is probably the biggest difference between then and now.

Interim Summary

Looking back, it wasn’t just about rebuilding life or finding a new direction. It was the moment I stopped forcing myself into places where I didn’t actually fit.
I stopped the constant negotiation inside myself. Not as one big decision, but through many small ones.
And from there, things started to shift.

What changed wasn’t that I suddenly understood everything. It was that I stopped ignoring what I already knew.
From that point on, things didn’t feel the same anymore. The same situations didn’t carry the same weight or meaning.
I stopped pushing away my own real nature and expression, and I started allowing myself to be who I actually am. Fully. The good and the messy parts included.

Raw and honest about burnout and recovery VOL 4 will be released on 24.06.2026, and in that part, I’ll talk about how I started rebuilding my nervous system and what actually helped me slowly come back into myself.

With love,
Krapsakas Agnes