Breaking The Burnout Cycle
Are you a female entrepreneur who is currently spinning your wheels, doing all the right things, yet continuing to find yourself hitting an invisible wall that is keeping you from the success, fulfillment, freedom, & happiness you want?
You’ve read the books. Taken the courses. Implemented the strategies. You know the “how to”...but somehow they either don’t work for you when you apply them OR you can’t get yourself to stay consistent with them to get them to work for you.
And because of that there is a part of you that wonders deep down
“Why is this working for everyone else but me?”
“Maybe I’m doing something wrong? What am I missing?”
“Am I not doing enough?”
…or worse - “Is something wrong with me?”
And because you’ve only learned one way to achieve success, you now find yourself believing that the only way to achieve your goals is to work even harder. To push and push and push, like nothing else matters, not your health, not your family, not your life.
Here’s the truth: You’re not broken. You’re just burnt out from doing success the way you were taught — the hustle-harder, push-through, ignore-your-needs kind of way.
Breaking the Burnout Cycle is the podcast that finally speaks to you. Hosted by Dr. Reana Mulcahy, subconscious reprogramming coach and former hustle-addict turned aligned success mentor, this show is your permission slip to stop over-functioning, start honoring your truth, and finally create the next level of success from a place of alignment, not exhaustion.
Dr. Reana over the past 4 years has been high achievers, like yourself, break free from the burnout cycle by teaching brain-based tools, rooted in neuroscience and neuropsychology, to help you identify, understand, and break free from subconscious habits that are keeping you from the success, fulfillment, and freedom you crave.
Each week, we dive into subconscious mindset work, nervous system healing, and the invisible beliefs that keep high achievers stuck in survival mode — even when they look “successful” on the outside. You'll hear solo episodes, client breakthroughs, and expert conversations designed to help you rewire your beliefs, reclaim your energy, and rise into the results, relationships, and reality you know you’re meant for.
It’s time to stop chasing success that costs you your peace. It’s time to break the burnout cycle — for good.
Subscribe now and let’s rewrite the rules of success, together.
Breaking The Burnout Cycle
Episode 62: Are You Burning Out Trying to Fix Everyone Else?
Feeling exhausted from trying to change family members who just don't seem to get it? You're not alone, and this might be draining your energy more than you realize.
After experiencing this frustration while living with my mother for several months, I noticed the same pattern emerging in my coaching clients—the belief that if only their loved ones would change, everything would be better. This expectation creates a loop of disappointment that feeds directly into burnout.
The hard truth I've learned through neuroscience and personal experience is that people rarely change because someone tells them to. Most humans are motivated by pain or avoiding pain, not by a desire for self-improvement. This explains why your heartfelt conversations about how someone's behavior affects you often fall on deaf ears—they aren't feeling enough discomfort to motivate change on your timeline.
The pathway to freedom from this exhausting cycle isn't trying harder to make others understand. Instead, it comes from focusing on how you show up when triggered. When I stopped expecting my mother to change and started examining my own reactions—taking time to process my emotions before responding—something unexpected happened. She noticed. These shifts in my behavior sparked her curiosity in ways my words never could.
This approach isn't settling or giving up. It's recognizing that modeling change is far more powerful than demanding it. Children learn by watching, not by being told, and adults aren't so different. By breaking your own patterns and responding with awareness rather than reaction, you create space for others to become curious about their own behavior.
Ready to break free from this energy-draining cycle? Book a discovery call to learn how our upcoming Rewired to Thrive program can help you identify the subconscious beliefs triggering your reactions and reclaim your energy for what truly matters.
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Hi, I'm Dr Riana Mulcahy and after burning out not just once but twice, I've uncovered that burnout becomes a never-ending loop unless you uncover the subconscious beliefs at the root of it all. Each week, I'm bringing you brain-based tools and strategies that will help you to identify and rewire subconscious blocks keeping you from the success, happiness and freedom that you really want. This is Breaking the Burnout Cycle Podcast. Hey, everyone, welcome into another episode. I you know, I just hope that your guys Memorial Day weekend went amazing, that you had just a great time with family and friends, and if you are anything like me and the clients that I serve, let's be honest, sometimes being with family can actually be one of the most triggering things for us. Am I right? And you know I wanted to share about that because over this past week we just finished up, wrapping up with the most recent cohort of the students that have gone through the Rewired to Thrive program, and you know to say that I am proud would be an understatement because of just the amount of courage, the amount of bravery and strength that each and every student showed as they were leaning in and digging through just kind of some of their own, you know, uncomfortable thoughts and belief patterns and the emotions that are associated with that. And you know, I always acknowledge just anyone who you know, including yourselves out there, if you are on this journey, this healing journey of bettering yourself, of you know, constantly looking at ways that you can always break the cycle where you can essentially continue bettering yourselves for the next generation. And I think that there are so many of us out there.
Speaker 1:And you know, when I first started on my healing journey, journey there, I remember very distinctly, and I still have moments like this where sometimes it can just be really frustrating to feel like you are the only one who is trying to get better and you kind of start looking at how many of our family members are, just like, not aware of their own patterns or they're not even seeing it as a problem. And I remember, you know just very distinctly how, when that is the case, oh my goodness, I know from speaking from experience I can sometimes just see red where I just almost feel like I need to, you know, yell or I need to do some kind of like behavior or outburst in order to feel understood, in order to feel seen, in order to feel, you know, like I'm being understood on why this is a problem, and then you could do all of that and the other person is just like, completely still oblivious to the fact that you know they're doing anything that I don't want to say right or wrong, because nothing is ever right or wrong but like they're doing something that is either breaking your boundary or it's affecting your emotions and your energy, and like you're essentially feeling unheard and I can't tell you. You know that I'm perfect at this, because there are moments, actually, you know, many of you guys might know, but if you don't, my mom has been living with us for the past five or six months out of choice out of choice, by the way, to help me and my husband Sean watch our son Kellen, and while I'm so grateful, I also have noticed my own triggers coming up in this instance, and if you can imagine living with your mom or with your parents right, I'm sure every adult out there can probably empathize to some extent where it's just like, oh my god, you're driving me nuts. And you know, I always find it funny just how, when I am coaching, one of the things that I actually look for is what are patterns that I am continually coaching my own clients through, Because oftentimes what I notice is the reason why I continue to coach patterns is it's often a reflection of the areas that I need to grow in as well, and that's kind of like.
Speaker 1:Some of the things that I started noticing over these past few months is students would constantly come with you know, they wanted to coach through a situation where they felt like the other person wasn't doing their share of the work in the relationship. Right, they weren't changing, they weren't hearing them, they weren't doing the things that they were hoping they would do. And it really got me thinking about how the moments where I would get really frustrated with my mom, where I could empathize completely with every single student who we were coaching through that with Because that is just something that it's like right, a natural tendency, where it's like, well, why wouldn't you want to get better at this? Why wouldn't you want to understand and communicate better and all of these things and here's the reality. That was a very tough pill for me to swallow when I first was making this mistake, and the mistake that I'm referring to is the mistake of believing that everyone out there your loved ones especially wants to better themselves. Because here's the reality.
Speaker 1:The reality is actually that people on a neuroscience level people on a neuroscience level are not driven by the desire to be better necessarily. It's not to say that no one that, like everyone, is in that boat, but majority of people are not. What majority of people are driven by is actually they are driven by pain or the avoidance of pain. Is actually they are driven by pain or the avoidance of pain? Just think about how anyone who goes to the doctor right? What are they typically there for? Well, they're typically there because they have a problem that they want solved, and so that's a prime example of how people oftentimes not always, but often are not driven by preventative. They don't want to necessarily spend the time, the energy and the money to prevent, but the minute that they have problems, they want to find the solution to the problem, and that's just a natural tendency from a human perspective on what motivates and drives people.
Speaker 1:And that, for me, was a very hard pill to swallow, where, essentially, I would find myself just feeling like well then, what's the point? What's the point where, if I'm doing all the work and I'm, you know, changing, I am working towards bettering myself? What's the point if no one else is doing it, and this is the frustration that was coming up for a lot of my students during these past months. And the biggest thing of why I coach my students out of this is because with that, frustration oftentimes follows if it's prolonged enough resentment. And if you have ever been in the emotion of resentment, you can probably bring to mind just the physical symptoms that associate with that, where it's almost like you just feel angry, you just feel like tenseness in your body, and not only that, but you can probably also bring to mind just the amount of energy that it takes to bite your tongue where you're not snapping at that person or you're trying to be nice or whatever it is. And it's a lot of energy. And in fact this is actually one of the biggest reasons why I see the exhaustion happen around.
Speaker 1:Burnout is oftentimes in life. There is not just how much there is to do on the plate, but there is also just this energetic drain that is happening around the areas where they are carrying resentment or frustrations. If we want to break free of just that exhaustion feeling, then we have to be able to understand that this is a pattern that needs to be let go, and it's easier said than done. Right, like every human being, you know, if you remember me talking about all the time, there are three things that we want, and part of that is to be understood and to be accepted for our viewpoints.
Speaker 1:And so, when you think about needing to let go, for a lot of high achievers, for a lot of people that I work with, there comes this almost like sense of defeat, this almost sense of like well, I just need to settle. And here's the reality. No, that's actually not the case. You aren't settling, but you're letting go of the expectation that, essentially, you're always going to be disappointed from, and that expectation is hoping and waiting and wanting the other person to change, because the reality is you can't control that. No matter how much you try to tell them or you try to convince them why they need to see it your way or why they need to change, that will never happen until they are themselves ready. And the longer that you try to change someone, the longer you'll stay in this disappointment and this energy suck.
Speaker 1:And so the question that the student brought, which it's a very valid question it's like well then, how do I break free from that? How do I let go, especially if it's around someone that I want in my life, that I love and that I respect and that, you know, I just want them to understand, and that's where, around loved ones, around family, this can be very tricky, but this is where the energetic boundary that I teach is so important and it's letting go of the expectation and here's what I found to be true that, you know, I think about what causes a lot of these patterns and oftentimes a lot of it is stemmed from inner child wounds that are happening, that are manifesting in the way they think and ultimately, the way that they automatic excuse me, automatically react to certain triggers. And so when I think about a child and an inner child, I think about just kind of like this, this, um, the way that children learn. And when you think about the way that children learn, how do they typically learn? Most people realize that it's not the matter, it's not the amount of times that you tell a child something, but that children often learn by modeling. They learn by seeing you do something, seeing you speak something, think about something, act on something, and they're watching and observing and kind of learning from that.
Speaker 1:And so, typically, what I have found in my own experience and also in the clients that I've coached, is that when you can focus on just standing in your power and changing yourself and changing the way that you show up and changing the way that you view the world, the way that you respond to circumstances, that oftentimes it's not unnoticed. And actually I have had a lot of beautiful moments with my mom where, if I think back to the very first times where I was in my own healing journey and I was trying to verbalize all the things that I wanted her to understand, it often did not go very well and would lead to fights. Alternatively, you know, when I have learned to essentially shift and focus more on my own growth and the way that I show up, even in the moments that I feel triggered, even in these moments where I feel frustrated, right where I let go of the expectation that she should just get it, that she should want to change, then what I've typically seen is that that behavior that I show up with and that often isn't right away, it takes me moments where I have to step away and process and look at. You know, what is it that is triggering me here? What do I feel unheard in? What do I? What is bringing up that emotion for me? What am I making it mean? And you know, it's, then, about looking at it from a lens of like.
Speaker 1:Where in my mom's life has she gone through certain things? That is the reason why she's acting this way or saying a certain thing a certain way, and when I look at it that way, it allows me to look at it through a lens of grace, through a lens of like. We're all just doing the best that we can with what was modeled to us, and I think about you know, luckily I have my grandma here and it's just seeing how my grandma's patterns. My mom has broken free from a lot of those, but there are still some very ingrained ones, and it's almost like every generation. We are working to unlearn some of these things so that the next generation can have a better experience, and so it allows us to start looking at it from that perspective of grace, of understanding that they are trying their best with the tools that they were given, and it doesn't mean that you never have that conversation with them ever again about the things that you hope they will see as an area to change. It's just to say that we're not holding the expectation over them that they will change.
Speaker 1:And it's looking at it more from the lens of how can I show up differently, at it more from the lens of how can I show up differently. And you know the moments that I've had with my mom where I've come back and I've shown up differently, rather than the usual pattern of being upset or yelling or, you know, sometimes breaking things let's be honest like I I've that is kind of my pattern is I get really frustrated and it just has this moment of like, just pure rage. And it's in those moments that my mom has noticed and she's actually commented on it and we've had conversations about it. That has opened up the opportunity to have those discussions and that has been the way that she has learned certain things are no longer serving our family, that certain patterns are no longer serving her, and that's the point is that the way that we show up often is what will model the work that we've been doing and that is what often sparks the curiosity to want to change.
Speaker 1:And so if this is something that you have been going through, that you have been working through yourself and you're still finding yourself struggling with looking at it from that lens, or even just decreasing or diminishing the trigger, taking your power back, then I want to invite you to book a free discovery call. On that call, we're essentially just talking about what is the trigger for you and what comes up for you, so that you can start building awareness around what is the exact belief that is triggering the negative emotions and, ultimately, the behavior patterns that you know are no longer serving you, because that is the thing that will continue to eat your energy and continue to keep you exhausted and tired. We have a new cohort that is opening up here in the next two weeks, and so if this is something that you are interested in learning more about, then book that discovery call and I will see you on that. Other than that, I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week and I will see you on next week's episode. Bye for now.