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
Five Lessons Postpartum Depression Taught Me About Change
What do you do when everything feels like it is breaking all at once? When everything you know and are comfortable with no longer are an option as the universe asks you to expand?
Today I open up about the 5 biggest lessons that my latest battle with my postpartum depression showed me about change and how we can navigate it with ease rather than stress
This episode is for you if you’ve felt behind, trapped by invisible timelines, or guilty for not loving a new season the “right” way. This conversation is meant to meet you where you are.
Expect practical steps, honest reflections, and a path to reframe your inner narrative so expansion feels possible again.
If you're ready to learn how the secret to breaking the stress cycle surrounding change so that you can finally enjoy life again, then join our live training to learn and practice the exact tools we use to quiet the inner critic and regulate the nervous system.
You can register by clicking here
Subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to help others find the show—then tell us: which “should” are you ready to drop today?
Have a question that you want answered on the show? Send us a text!
Connect with me on social: Facebook or Instagram!
Like this episode? Share it in your stories and tag me @dr.reanamulcahy
Love the show? Leave a 5-star review, and let me know what was most helpful for you.
Discover more ways I can support you in breaking the burnout cycle. Visit my website.
If you are a high-achieving woman who is currently in a season where it feels like everything is falling apart, then today's episode is for you because I am sharing five of the most powerful lessons that I learned in a similar season. So stay tuned. Hi, I'm Dr. Rihanna Mulkhi, 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. Welcome into another episode of Breaking the Burnout Cycle Podcast. Um, it's been a while since I've been here on the podcast talking into your speakers or earbuds or whatever it is you use to listen to podcasts. And um I took a little bit of a break, as you may or may not have noticed, but a lot of that has had to do with, you know, healing through a lot of the changes that have happened. Um, you know, many of you guys know this, but back last year of September of 2024, we welcomed our first kiddo, and it has been such a magical but also very confronting journey of motherhood. And, you know, there's been a lot of physical changes as well as hormonal changes, as well as just mental changes and uh spiritual changes, I I would say as well. And, you know, if you've ever been in a season of life as well, where it is literally like the analogy I give is like transplanting a plant from a pot that it was getting comfortable growing in and putting it into a bigger pot, right? Like the plant at first goes through a lot of stress and then it flourishes. And I think that if you've ever been at a phase in your life where it feels like everything is being uprooted, like everything is changing, it can feel very threatening, very confronting, right? And I would say, you know, this past um few months to even about, you know, half the year, it has been such an internal battle with postpartum depression and with, you know, just kind of healing through the changes that were happening. And, you know, I think I'm finally at a point where not only do I feel a lot more grounded, but I feel like I'm at a point where I am ready to share kind of what I've been going through, some of the identity crisis that was happening um as I shifted from one season of life where it was just my husband and I and the dogs, to now, you know, a family of three with our dogs. And I wanted to share this because if you are currently in a season of life, you don't necessarily have to be stepping into motherhood or fatherhood, but it's about stepping into a new season of life that requires you to up level the way you think, the way you show up, the way that you operate from, then chances are you might be able to relate to some of this where it really does feel um like a season that is forcing you to outgrow the pot that you got comfortable in, right? Going back to the plant analogy. And if this is you, I want you to know first off that it's temporary, okay? So like it is not going to last forever, and this too shall pass. And so if you're currently in the thick of it, just know that like you will get out of this, it's one step at a time, and you know, I think that as high achievers, we tend to want to go fast, and so when things get really uncomfortable, it's just natural human nature to want to get out of that discomfort as fast as possible. But the beauty of healing is that it requires us to sit in that discomfort, and sometimes, right, it requires us to look it in the face, to look at the discomfort, the fear, the uh sadness, the grief, whatever emotions are coming up for you, to look at it in the face and really just kind of like work through it, acknowledge it. And so today is all about just kind of sharing some of the biggest lessons that I think my journey with postpartum depression has taught me. And my hope is that it will help those of you who are going through a season of change to A, find some hope and B maybe even find some insight that might help you to have the breakthrough um that might allow you to heal, right? And so the first uh lesson that I wanted to share was just kind of on the topic of the duality of emotions. Because uh, I will be honest, when I became a mom, right, like I thought it was gonna be this magical thing. Like, if you hear moms who not all, okay, so I'm not generalizing or stereotyping, but like if you talk to a lot of moms out there, typically what you're going to hear is they'll talk about how amazing the journey is, right? Like they'll talk about the highlights of it, the the moments of oh, you know, once you become a mom, it's like you never knew that you could love someone that much. And then they talk about how it's this magical thing of um finding your purpose and uh having another reason to live, and like just like this new drive sets in or kicks in. And every single mom that I know, anyway, that I had talked to described motherhood in that capacity. And yes, they did acknowledge that it's hard, so I'm not gonna like diminish that, but in my mind, I had this picture of what it should look like, and because of that, I actually didn't feel the magicalness of it. It was like, okay, on one hand, yes, I am excited for this new phase of you know our family together. I am excited for this new journey. I'm excited that uh I was able to bring into this world life because that is such a gift. And, you know, on one hand, I felt this way of like deep gratitude for the amazing capabilities that my body was able to go through and to have the privilege to breathe life into this world, but on the other hand, there was just a lot of like you know, uh grief is the best way to say it. Grief of losing what once was, and that was something that I never expected, I guess, to experience. And you know, when I go back and think about just the way that people portrayed motherhood to me, I just had it in my mind that I wasn't supposed to be feeling this way, that something was wrong with me for feeling the way I felt about the change that was happening, right? Of feeling this like grief of what was. And I almost started to like internally criticize myself that oh, I must not be grateful enough. And you know, I my internal critic would say things like, Well, you're lucky that you were able to even bring life into this world. Like, look at how many women want to do that and they can't do that, and yet here you are, you know, saying, Sometimes you wish that we weren't at this phase of life of all of this change, of bringing a child into the world, of being a mom. Right. And so I felt so shameful for just kind of the way that I was feeling in motherhood. And the reality is, you know, during these past few months, I've been behind the scenes doing a lot of my own internal work of healing and letting go and uh using the tools that I teach my own clients and going back to the drawing board uh to reground myself in this season of life. And that is one of the biggest lessons that I think I had to be okay with, which is that it's okay to have both the emotions of excitement and joy and also the emotions of grief, right? If you think about grief, it is such a pervasive and it is such an interesting um emotion because of that duality, right? And we're taught kind of we well, first off, we haven't even been taught how to really navigate our emotions, and so when we come across uh feeling the duality of of life, then we start to question if something's wrong with us. And so what it had taught me is that it is okay to feel both. And so if you are in a season where you're potentially feeling both excitement for an opportunity, maybe that you're at, but you're also feeling overwhelm and frustration or whatever it is, that it's okay to have both. Okay, and that leads me into lesson number two, because lesson number two was all about how like that internal critic, the judgment. Because what I learned is that the longer that I judged myself for feeling the way that I actually felt, for feeling a certain way, the slower my healing went. And the same is going to be true for you because here's the thing: as my mentor has once told me, we can only heal from what we can accept. We can only heal from what we can accept, and the longer that you judge yourself indicates that you're not accepting of what is, right? It means there's a reason why you judge yourself, and the only reason you judge yourself is because you have this should. You have a story of what it means to feel this way, right? So you're judging yourself because you're essentially that internal critic is saying, dude, you are feeling this way, you shouldn't feel this way, and therefore something's wrong with you, right? And then it starts to go into all of that shame and guilt, and those emotions are the very emotions that inhibit your ability to accept, to move forward, and to heal. And so I learned that the longer that I tried to fight the fact that I was feeling grief, the longer that I stayed in grief. Because Brene Brown's work, if you haven't read anything by her Atlas of the Heart, is amazing in terms of like understanding more about these emotions of shame and grief. And she talks about how shame it thrives in isolation, right? It thrives in secrecy, it thrives in the darkness, where you kind of like stuff things down, you don't address it, but the minute that you acknowledge it, the minute that you talk to someone about it, the minute that you admit what it is that is in the room with you, right? The big elephant in the room with you, the faster that you move through it because shame dissipates once you take away its power, which is once you bring it into the awareness. And so that was lesson number two is like letting go of this judgment and just accepting that you know what, this is the way I'm feeling, and there it means nothing. So it's having this neutrality around these emotions rather than the story that you're enrolling yourself in and telling yourself that it means uh for feeling that way. Lesson number three, this one's gonna be a little bit of a tough one if um you're not ready for it. So, number three, the biggest lesson for me was that my suffering was my own choice. And I mean that with all the love in my heart. Because oftentimes when we get into this place of depression or like a shamanic death or whatever you want to call it, right? Just basically a low point in your life. I think it's very easy to go to the blame game to point fingers at the reason why we're struggling, the reason why we're suffering, the reason why we are going through what we're going through, right? It's very easy to say the reason I feel the way I feel is because of my circumstances. It's because I don't have the supportive husband, I don't have the level of income that I want yet, I don't have uh, you know, the supportive community, I don't have the opportunities yet. And it's easy and very alluring to do that, to blame our circumstances for the reason why we feel the way we feel. And why is that? Well, because it's easier to point fingers, to go to the blame game, to blame our circumstances, right? Like it's easier to do that than it is to actually look within, to look in the mirror, to look at, you know, what are the ways that I am participating in my own suffering? And this was for me as well. Like, I had to take a hard look in the mirror of what is it that I am like, what am I doing that is contributing to my suffering? Because here's the thing we are always going to go through changes, okay? Change is the only constant, it's the only thing that is guaranteed in this life. Our suffering, on the other hand, is not guaranteed. It is a choice because it's a choice of where we are choosing to place our attention and the things or the story that we're making situations or our circumstances mean. This was a really hard lesson for me to actually like learn because, like I said, the 3D, the circumstances, they're all true, right? They're all facts, they're all things. Like if you are saying I don't have the income level that I want yet, yes, you could look at your bank account and prove that to be true. If you say I don't have the number of clients I want yet, yes, you can look at the number of people that you're serving right now, and that could be proven true. You can look at uh, you know, the ways that other people have certain communities that are supportive, and then find evidence for the reason why you do not have that, and you can prove that to be true. And so the point being that while those are all true statements, right? It's not what causes your suffering. What is actually causing your suffering is the power that you're giving away to your circumstances, it's the stories that are popping up internally about what it means about you and your inherent worth and your abilities that is causing your suffering. It's the stories that you're making it mean about life should look a certain way and it doesn't, and because of that, right, you're drawing conclusions your well, not intentionally, but your subconscious mind is drawing conclusions, closing the story loops, and making meaning of your circumstances, and that is what causes suffering. And that was really hard for me to understand and learn because while I can know that logically, right, the a lot of the postpartum depression was rooted in uh if you if you look at it, and I have looked back at a lot of the things that I was journaling, everything was focused on the time that I no longer had, the freedom that I felt I no longer had, uh, the the stories that I was telling myself that I should be further along in my business. And if I was further along, then I wouldn't have to, you know, work this many hours, and then motherhood wouldn't have been this way, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And so, like, that's what I'm saying. Is it is the stories that we are choosing to tell ourselves, the meaning that we are choosing to make our circumstances and situations mean that is causing your suffering. And it's not just, you know, the stories you're making it mean about your circumstances, but it's also comparing your circumstances, your current situation, to the expectations or the timelines that we often hold ourselves to, right? It's these timelines that we have in our head that I should be, right? The shoulds. We start shoulding on ourselves. And because of that, right, if it doesn't look the way we think it should look, then we have unmet expectations, which then leads to the resentment, the disappointment, and then if that continues, it becomes the depression that we feel. And so it's a combination of the stories you're making it uh, you know, your circumstances mean about you, but it's also in relation to these stealth expectations, these timelines that we put ourselves on as high achievers, right? Like, if you think about it, how often do we set these goals and have these like epic, audacious visions of what we want, and we kind of put a timestamp on it, whether we know it consciously, like you actually set a goal, uh, you know, within one year I will insert whatever your goal is, or it's like these are the things I want, and then you kind of create subconsciously this timeline in your head that it has to happen by a certain time. And then when that doesn't happen, or it takes longer than we thought that it should take, then we start beating ourselves up. We start telling ourselves, it must mean that I'm not smart enough, I'm not disciplined enough, maybe I'm not worthy, maybe it's not in the cards for me. And this was the exact things that I was doing around motherhood and my goals that I had and still have, not had, um, around the goals that I have for my business. It's like I was beating myself up internally that, oh, I should have been further along, I should have done more before Kellen came, I should have uh took advantage of all of the free time that I had before motherhood, and it was just contributing to my suffering. It was this focus on the things that I hadn't achieved yet, and a focus on the things that I no longer had anymore to that, you know, to the capacity that I wanted it, and it's like that was causing all of my unhappiness. And I heard this amazing segment from a book that I wanted to share with you because I think that this is something that a lot of people don't talk about when it comes to depression. Um, and the book is called Depression and the Body. I would have to look up who the author is, and I can link it down below. But the segment states The depressed person is imprisoned by unconscious barriers of shoulds and shouldn'ts, which isolate him, limit him, and eventually crush his spirit. Living within this prison, he spins fantasies of freedom, he concocts schemes of his liberation and dreams of a world where his life will be different. These dreams, like all illusions, serve to sustain his spirit. They encourage him, but they also confront him from realistically confronting the internal forces that bind him. Sooner or later, the illusion collapses, the dream fails, and his reality stares him in the face. When these things happen, he becomes depressed, he feels hopeless. In pursuit of our illusions, we set up unreal goals. That is, goals that, if achieved, we believe will automatically set us free, will restore our right to self-expression and make us capable of loving. But what is unreal is not the goal itself, but the reward that it is that we believe is supposed to follow from that achievement, that satisfaction. And that segment of the book really talks about how depression, the author believes that depression is generally not always a matter of hormonal changes or, you know, um a chemical makeup of your body, but rather it is your soul protesting this false notion that we hold of what will make us happy. And it took me this entire almost this entire year since Kellen was born for that to finally land. And I'm still reminding myself on a daily basis, but that was a powerful lesson for me, which is lesson three, and that is the lesson that happiness, confidence, peace, it's all a choice. It's all a choice. No amount of money, no amount of accolades or certifications, no amount of successes or achievements will make you happy. And the longer that you hold on to that false notion, the longer you're going to keep chasing until it gets to the point that you either run out of steam or and and burn out, right? Or you get so depressed that you just quit altogether. And so that was lesson number three for me, and it was so powerful to you know be reminded of that because I think as high achievers, it can get so easy to get lost in the pursuit of our goals. Okay, lesson number four was having a safe community was everything, it was everything, and um I want to really emphasize safe, right? Like having a safe community, and it doesn't have to be like this big thing, it was seriously compiled of my parents, my husband, and a few mentors of mine that were helping me with energy healing and were helping me with um emotional processing and listening to my guides and my intuition and those things, and like that for me was just so powerful, and I'm forever grateful because when you go it alone, right, it's very easy to then get stuck in your head, and so having these people were invaluable. Okay, lesson number five is I was just so grateful for having tools to work through this season of life. Because to be honest with you, if this motherhood season of life came, you know, I I think back to the time when I burned out for a second time, I don't think I would have made it. Like, to be honest, like I don't think I would be here, and I I say this candidly, I do not think I would be here sitting on this podcast talking to you. And the reason for that is because the tools have been such a um such a I don't know even know how to describe it, but it's it's just so amazing to have tools that you can rely on to help you quiet your mind, to quiet the noise in your mind, to regulate your nervous system, and to get in that practice of pulling yourself out of these dark places and healing through it, not just ignoring it and numbing out, which is what I used to do. And so if this is something that you would like support with as well, of having a safe community where we teach the tools that can help you to quiet some of the noise in your head around whatever it is you're going through, then I wanted to invite you to a free training where we are going to be going through those exact tools to help you quiet that internal critic, the noise in your mind. And so if anything in this episode has been resonating with you, if it has been hitting home for you and you are like, Yes, I need those exact tools because I'm just exhausted from just the constant stressors of life and the internal noise that happens around that, then I wanted to invite you to a free training that we are doing. Um, I am going to be doing this pretty much every single month until the end of the year. And the biggest reason why I am choosing to do this until the end of the year and going forward even as well, but for now, what I do know is that I'm going to be doing it until the end of the year. The reason I am doing this is because I am just so grateful that, you know, the universe sent these tools into my life at a time where it was very vulnerable, at my lowest of lows, burning out for the second time. And it helped me then, and it has remained my foundation, my anchor, my rock that has gotten me through other areas. Areas such as the one that I have just been talking about in this episode. And so this is just my way of giving back to other high achieving women who might be going through situations like this because I know how powerful these tools can be if we use them, right? And I know how powerful it can be because I've seen it transform not only my life, but the lives of so many women that I've been helping over the past four years move through change and situations similar to everything that I have been going through as well. And so the link's gonna be down below. Um I'm there's gonna be multiple times and options that you can choose. And so find a date, find a time that works for you. There are gonna be no replays available because uh I am gonna be doing every single one of these live, meaning whoever's in the room, that is just a sacred space that is safe for you to join on that call live. And it's a way that you can ask questions, you can be immersed in the experience, like because the reality is you can learn about all of the tools to help you heal and to help you regulate your nervous system and to help you move through these scenarios, but if you don't put it into action, then it doesn't matter, it falls short. And so this is not just another training, this is a way for you to begin the process of learning the powerful tools that have helped so many up until this point. So the links down below. I am so excited to be back. I'm so excited to uh be sharing again, just kind of like what has helped move through situations like these so that we can continue right reclaiming ourselves and enjoying life the way it was meant to be enjoyed. All right, so I will see you guys on another um episode. But until then, bye for now.