The hours nobody counts
If you commute from Newmarket, Aurora or Richmond Hill into downtown Toronto, you may be spending somewhere between ninety minutes and three hours a day getting to work and back. Over a year, that is the equivalent of several full weeks spent in a car or on a train.
Most people I meet do not think of this as a mental health issue. They think of it as traffic. But when clients from Vaughan or Markham describe feeling permanently behind, permanently tired, and vaguely resentful without knowing why, the commute is often sitting quietly at the centre of it.
Why commuting is more than lost time
A long commute is not simply time subtracted from your day. It has qualities that make it particularly draining:
- It is unpredictable. A collision on the 404 can add forty minutes without warning, so you can never fully settle.
- It demands alertness without offering stimulation. You must stay vigilant, but there is little reward in it.
- It sits at both ends of the day. It eats the morning before work and the evening you were hoping to enjoy.
- It is difficult to opt out of. When housing affordability is what put you further from work in the first place, the commute can feel like a trap rather than a choice.
The result is a day bracketed by low-grade stress, with the parts of life that restore you squeezed into whatever remains.
What burnout actually looks like
Burnout is often imagined as dramatic collapse. Far more often it arrives quietly, as a gradual flattening.
People describe it as: going through the motions competently but feeling nothing much about any of it; snapping at family within minutes of walking through the door; losing interest in things that used to matter; a Sunday-evening dread that starts earlier each week; and exhaustion that a weekend no longer touches.
The distinguishing feature is not tiredness. It is the loss of the sense that any of it means anything.
Building a boundary between the road and the house
Where the commute cannot be shortened, the transition can be made deliberate. Some things that tend to help:
- Create a decompression ritual. Ten minutes between arriving and engaging with the household, spent walking around the block or simply sitting in the parked car, does more than it sounds like it should. The goal is to arrive home as a person rather than as the last twenty minutes of traffic.
- Stop using the drive for problem-solving. Many people spend the commute rehearsing conversations or planning the evening. This keeps the working day running well past its end. Music, an audiobook, or a podcast unrelated to work interrupts that.
- Name the cost out loud at home. Partners often read post-commute withdrawal as disinterest. Saying plainly that you need twenty minutes before you can be present prevents a small friction from becoming a recurring conflict.
- Guard one weekday evening. Not for errands. For something that is actually yours.
- Reassess the arrangement periodically. A commute accepted as temporary can quietly become permanent. It is worth asking every so often whether the trade is still one you would choose.
When it is time to talk to someone
If the flatness has lasted months, if it has followed you into your weekends and holidays, or if the people close to you have started to comment, that is worth attention. Burnout responds well to being addressed early, and tends to entrench when it is pushed through.
I offer therapy for individuals and couples across Richmond Hill, Newmarket, Aurora, Markham, Vaughan and Toronto, in English and Farsi. Evening and online appointments are available anywhere in Ontario, which for many commuting clients is the difference between attending and not.
This article is for general information and is not a substitute for individual clinical advice. If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, please call or text 988, the Suicide Crisis Helpline, or go to your nearest emergency department.