Burning Out From Banking, Pro Tennis Taught Me When It’s Time to Quit

This as-told-to-essay is based on a conversation with 26-year-old Vitoria Okuyama. Her former employment, tennis ranking, and medical diagnoses have been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Citi didn’t provide a comment when contacted by Business Insider.

As a tennis player, improving opened doors: the US Open, travel, and a scholarship to a good school. In investment banking, the better I got, the more dinners with friends I missed, the more 4 a.m. finishes I pulled, and the harder the projects I was given.

I burned out in both careers: with tennis, I lasted six years, but with banking, I was done after nine months.

I wouldn’t wish burnout on anyone, but I’m grateful that the experience forced me to question what truly matters, understand my limits, and know when to walk away.

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I was the world’s 118th best under-18s tennis player

I grew up in Arapongas, a small city in Brazil, where I played sports a lot. When I was 10, a friend invited me to try a new sport — tennis. I was good and started playing regional tournaments in Brazil, followed by international ones.

At 15, I had to choose between a tennis career and transferring to a better high school in another city. I chose the option of traveling the world, rather than sitting in a classroom all day.

I moved to Curitiba, the capital of my state, where a tennis club that provided me with a coach and sponsorship for competitions. While studying part-time, I trained six hours a day and spent up to seven months a year competing in tournaments across South America, Europe, and Africa. In 2017, I reached No. 118 in the world for under-18s.

By 16, though, I was already burned out and knew I didn’t want tennis to be my career. I still enjoyed playing doubles, but I always struggled to enjoy singles. I would get anxious before stepping on the court and cry before matches. What kept me going was my love of travel.

Tennis was my ticket to financial independence

When I turned 18 in 2017, I played in the US Open girls’ singles. The highlight was visiting New York City. I felt like I’d made it by competing in such a major competition, but the opportunity to travel was the real driver, not the tennis.

I wanted to quit tennis, but after the tournament, a coach from the College of William & Mary in Virginia offered me a scholarship, and I knew that by taking this opportunity, I’d have a better chance at achieving what I wanted most: financial independence through a good education.

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Moving to the US in 2017 was a big culture shock. My English wasn’t great, and there were no other Brazilians at the school. Luckily, the tennis team had many international players, and we built a family away from home.

At college, we practiced for around 20 hours each week. We’d train in the mornings, go to school, and compete in matches on weekends. Forcing myself to play only led to more feelings of anxiety and depression.

For me, playing tennis was just a means to an end: my parents couldn’t afford tuition, so without the scholarship, I would have had to leave college.

I pushed through until I was 22, and found myself shutting down my feelings and ignoring the signs of burnout my body was giving me.

My limits as a banker were less obvious than as a tennis player

I didn’t know what I wanted to do after college, other than achieve financial independence from my parents. Older teammates had mentioned the world of finance could be lucrative, and that was all I needed to know.

In the summers after my junior and senior years of college, in 2020 and 2021, I interned at banks in Brazil. I then took a year to study for a Master’s in Finance at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. A mentor I had met through my tennis agent connected me to an associate he knew at Citi. That was my foot in the door and led to interviews, a final stage Superday, and eventually a full-time job as an investment banking analyst.

When I arrived in New York City for the job in July 2022, I was ambitious and eager to learn. I gave everything I had to be the best version of myself. My best had no limit, and I had no idea how to pace myself. I worked from 10 a.m. until 4 a.m. for two to three months straight. We did have protected Saturdays, but other than that, I couldn’t really escape the work.

At least with tennis, the physical limits were obvious. With investment banking, I just kept pushing myself. After nine months, in May 2023, I was feeling burned out. I was crying every day, which is unlike me, and I was also having panic attacks for the first time.

Things were getting worse, so I told my managers I needed to slow down. They responded well, taking some things off my plate, and I continued pushing through with a lighter workload. I thought by taking on less work, I’d be able to recover, but I didn’t realize how depressed I was and how difficult it would be to recover while you’re still in the system.

Quitting wasn’t simple. As an immigrant from Brazil, I could have lost my visa. I also didn’t want to jump into another job because I had no idea what I actually wanted to do, so I stayed at Citi while I tried to figure out what was next.

Burnout made me numb

In October 2024, I broke down at the gym. In the middle of a set. I started crying with no obvious trigger. This is exactly what happened the first time I was burned out when I was 16 and playing tennis.

In January 2025, I took a 13-week leave of absence from work and went on a weeklong ayahuasca retreat in the Peruvian Amazon. It was a chance to completely disconnect from the outside world and to reconnect with myself. The recovery process wasn’t linear, but for the first time in a while, I started to feel like myself again.

I realized that burnout makes it hard to get excited about anything — you feel numb. A month into my leave, I was starting to gain clarity about the direction I wanted to take. I had already started talking to people in fields I found interesting, like VC founders, and attending networking events.

I left the job in June 2025, almost three years after my start date. A month later, I got married to an American, which meant I no longer needed a work visa.

Leaving my job was a long time coming. On my last day, I went back to where I’d stood on my first day at Citi, looking up in amazement. This time, I thought, “Wow. This was such a journey.” It was a full-circle moment.

While it was very hard to burn out and have an identity crisis, I got so much out of the experience. I’m grateful to have gained experience at Citi, to have learned about myself, and to have gotten to where I wanted to be financially.

At 26, I still don’t have everything figured out, but I’m very happy. I’ve got the room to explore what actually lights me up because I have the time. I work part-time at a startup, and I’m on a fellowship with Fibe, a community for tech founders, CEOs, and professionals. I’m just going where my curiosity takes me.

My advice to other people going through burnout is to allow yourself the time to fully recover. I kept working with less intensity, but that wasn’t enough. The only way for me to recover was to know when to stop.