My Burnout Story

My “oh shit, something’s wrong” moment was when I had a meltdown at a bunch spot.

The year was 2021, and my business was thriving. Things were opening back up after the pandemic, so we decided to go to bunch.

To say the pressure was on is putting it lightly. It had been on for over a year by then - the pressure to work harder, serve my clients, hold my family together through the universal stress, avoid doom scrolling, and make sure my son kept up with his remote high school curriculum had made me like Mount St. Helens, ready to explode.

I just didn’t know it yet.

So here’s what happened...

An anti-masker chose THAT moment to go off on his soapbox topic while my husband, Mike & I were just making casual conversation with his wife (she was wearing a great hat that coordinated with her mask).

He was almost yelling about how it was all fake: the pandemic, COVID, the news, wearing masks, all of it.

Little did this guy know, we had a very close friend who had just been diagnosed with irreparable heart damage from COVID. So this hit really close to home.

I was just there to get some waffles and eggs.

I wasn’t there to have this conversation.

And something in me broke.

All of a sudden, the sides of my vision went black. I felt the undeniable panic of knowing I HAD to leave.

I actually begged the guy to just stop. I’m not the kind to beg a man for ANYTHING.

And suddenly the tears burst from my eyes. Panicky, frenzied tears. My body was shaking, all of that pent-up stress forcing itself out of my physical body.

The manager who knew us well came over and asked the couple to leave. His wife was mortified because he’d been yelling this whole time while she tried to dial him down. I can only imagine what that conversation was like once they were in the car.

The host got us seated quickly, and the whole restaurant was worried about this unhinged lady who was trying to settle down and just couldn’t catch her breath. Part of me was mortified that I was the unhinged lady.

I finally settled down after lots of hugs from my favorite servers and some good hot coffee.

Once I got home, I realized something had to change. So, I signed up for therapy that afternoon and started a few days later.

Being the academic I am, though, I also dived into the research. Why had I - and why do women as a whole - fall into the trap of burnout so easily?

I put on my historian hat and took an unbiased journey into the scientific and medical research into burnout. What I found was not surprising but truly disappointing.

It was far too narrow.

I also started learning even more self-soothing and self-care techniques to help keep myself from going deep into burnout again: IFS, EFT, Reiki, and more.

To really get my head wrapped around it, I put fingers to keyboard and wrote a book based on my experience and the experience of my clients as I helped them on their own burnout recovery journey.

What emerged was a dynamic approach to burnout prevention and recovery that addresses all aspects of us:

• our physical bodies

• our mental health

• our social health

• our empathy

• our energetic body, and

• our emotional health.

AND a life where I deal with stress before it becomes a problem - before it becomes burnout.

It works every time.

Now, I’m helping as many women break free from the good girl conditioning and social constructs that tell us how to be and that ultimately burn us out.

My work has always been about creating sustainable strategies for business and life. After my burnout experience, I knew I needed to go deeper.

Thanks for being here. 💜