Burnout Coach NYC
Mindfulness-Based Approach
About
Caught between hustle and presence
For years, I was chasing something. Some version of wholeness I thought I had to earn. I believed if I just did enough, fixed enough, became enough, I’d finally feel at peace.
So I kept striving, polishing, and performing. But the more I tried to shape myself into something acceptable, the further I drifted from who I was.
“Be more, do more… slow down and just breathe”
“Hustle harder… be still”
“Become your best self… what you are is enough”
Even presence started to feel like another goal to achieve.
Healing didn’t begin with more effort. It began when I stopped trying so hard. When I softened, listened, and began reconnecting with what had been there all along.
That shift became the foundation of how I live now. It’s also the heart of the work I offer.
I’m Jo Liu, a burnout coach and mindful coach based in New York. I work with emotionally aware people carrying quiet exhaustion beneath the surface. Often, there’s a sense that something’s slipping. It’s getting harder to keep pushing. This isn’t clinical work or performance coaching. It’s relational, steady, and grounded in presence.
This isn’t clinical work or performance coaching. It’s relational, steady, and grounded in presence.
How healing changed for me
I used to think healing meant doing more: figuring it out, pushing myself, getting it right. But what I needed wasn’t more insight. It was a different relationship with myself.
I needed to stop abandoning myself in the name of performance and start caring for myself with the same energy I gave to everything else. I needed room to unravel, to stop striving, and to know I was still worthy of care.
“What I needed wasn’t more insight. It was a different relationship with myself.”
What I needed wasn’t more insight. It was a different relationship with myself.
Often, the pain isn’t who we are. It’s the distance we’ve created from ourselves just to keep going. I know that place.
This work meets you as a whole person, not a list of problems to solve. We begin by listening, with presence and care, for what your burnout, anxiety, or self-doubt may be signaling beneath the surface.
The work I offer
The people who find their way here are often emotionally aware and deeply capable, yet inwardly exhausted. Many are navigating burnout, anxiety, or a sense of emotional overwhelm that’s hard to name.
They’ve spent years performing strength, holding themselves to relentless standards, and pushing aside their own needs just to keep going.
At some point, it starts to wear on them. Not just mentally, but emotionally and physically. What they’re craving isn’t more motivation or inspiration. It’s relief, a felt sense of home within themselves.
That’s what I offer. Not a service to consume, but a steady, relational space where you can finally let down your guard.
A space that’s trauma-informed, shaped by emotional safety, nervous system awareness, and attunement to what may not yet have words.
This work supports you to reconnect with the parts of yourself you had to mute or manage just to hold it together. The shame. The self-criticism. The pressure to be everything for everyone. They don’t need to be fixed. They need space to soften and be met honestly.
This isn’t a fix. It’s a return to the part of you that never needed fixing.
You bring your lived experience: the ache, the questions, and the parts you’ve learned to keep quiet just to get through the day. I bring grounded presence and attuned support.
The process is intuitive, steady, and deeply human.
In this space, something in you can start to exhale. What’s tangled begins to loosen. You may feel less braced, more able to meet your days without shutting down or turning on yourself.
This work often resonates with people who sense that healing isn’t about fixing what’s “wrong,” but about returning to what’s quietly true.
Together, we create the conditions for relief and reconnection. Not through striving. Through presence. This isn’t a fix. It’s a return to the part of you that never needed fixing.
While this work is based in NYC, I also support clients online from other high-pressure cities like Boston, Washington DC, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, where pressure can quietly shape how people relate to their worth, rest, and internal safety.
If that kind of relief speaks to you, you’re welcome to schedule a free 25-minute Zoom video call to see if this work feels like a fit.
A personal turn inward
An existential crisis during my years working in NYC led me to meditation and self-inquiry.
At the time, I was immersed in visual storytelling through art direction and photography, searching for beauty and meaning in a transient world. I was trying to fill an inner void with outer validation. What once felt fulfilling no longer quieted the emptiness I carried.
Relentless drive helped me succeed, but it quietly eroded me too.
I had always been a drill sergeant to myself. Relentless drive helped me succeed, but it quietly eroded me too.
Around that time, old trauma surfaced. It was raw, familiar, and no longer ignorable. My usual coping tactics of burying myself in work, numbing with distraction, and forcing a positive spin stopped working.
For years, I had learned to shut down parts of myself, blunting my sensitivity just enough to manage my own emotional intensity and what I absorbed from others. The armor kept me going in a world that often felt overwhelming, yet it dimmed my capacity to feel joy. Eventually, the cost of that disconnection caught up with me. I wasn’t falling apart. But I wasn’t fully here either.
I began to see how the distance from myself was bleeding into everything: my relationships, my ability to feel, and my capacity to soften. Without self-compassion, I kept circling the same patterns.
Through meditation and inner work, I began to step back from my mind. I learned to notice my thoughts and emotions without judgment. What looked like a breaking point became a beginning.
I turned inward and started peeling back the layers: societal, cultural, ancestral. Layers that had silenced my deeper truth. It was messy, uncertain, and often painful. But in surrendering the striving and the need to hold it all together, something softer began to emerge.
When I finally stopped outrunning what I’d spent years pushing down, I began trading self-loathing for self-acceptance. And grace started to pour in.
From self-pressure to self-trust
This work isn’t about quick fixes or polished strategies. It offers grounded burnout and anxiety support that helps you reconnect with yourself in a real and sustainable way. Not through striving, but through presence.
People often describe feeling more anchored. A steadiness that wasn’t there before begins to emerge. They stop pushing down what they feel, and over time, they start trusting themselves more. Instead of criticizing every move, they begin meeting who they are with more understanding and acceptance.
Because when you’re not constantly battling self-doubt, it becomes easier to meet life as you are, without the pressure to perform or protect.
This isn’t about becoming perfect. It’s about becoming whole.
The creative thread
Before I stepped into this work, I spent years crafting visual narratives through art direction and photography, drawn to the emotional depth behind images and the stories they quietly tell. That background still shapes how I hold space.
I’ve always been drawn to nuance, to what’s underneath, just outside the edges of language.
There’s often an emotional undercurrent before anything is named. That’s where I stay tuned.
I listen closely to what’s felt in the pauses and held between the words. There’s usually an emotional undercurrent before anything’s said. That’s what I stay with. Working intuitively isn’t linear or scripted. It asks for presence, care, and attention to what’s unfolding in you in the moment.
Like creative work, this process is layered. It’s often something you feel long before you can explain it. What someone brings in is rarely the whole picture. I pay attention to what’s underneath. My role is to meet what’s emerging and hold space for what’s coming up.
That’s what keeps this work alive for me.
Bio
I’m a 70s kid who grew up between continents. Childhood in Asia, teenage years in South America, and I’ve been rooted in the U.S. since 1995. I’ve called Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and now New York home (since 2010). Each city shaped the way I see, listen, and stay in touch with my stillness.
Before this chapter, I spent over two decades as a creative in advertising crafting images and stories. That work showed me how powerful our inner narratives can be.
These days, I help people return to a deeper sense of themselves. Something that has always been there and never needed fixing.
I find joy in jazz, dancing, drumming, and being in nature. I’m not aligned with any one religion or tradition.
I believe in the wisdom of the heart and offer inclusive, respectful care to people of all identities, orientations, and beliefs.
My influences & training
My approach is shaped by contemplative practices that emphasize presence, compassion, and inner awareness. I am inspired by Buddhist and Taoist philosophy not as religion, but as pathways to insight, gentleness, and a heart-based way of being. Teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh, Adyashanti, and Tara Brach have helped me meet life with more honesty and heart. Along the way, I also discovered the joy of supporting others through their own inner journeys.
My training includes Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Vipassana and Zen meditation, certification in Trauma-Informed Care, crisis support training, Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) through the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, and Ericksonian Hypnosis (Master Practitioner). I’ve also studied complementary frameworks such as the chakra system. I hold a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).
These approaches continue to inform the anxiety support and burnout recovery work I offer today.
