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
Why High-Achieving Women Burn Out From Overgiving And How To Stop It
Ever notice how “being generous” somehow ends with you exhausted, frustrated, and wondering why the extra effort never pays off? We go straight to the root of overgiving and expose the stealth expectations that keep high-achieving women stuck in a loop of burnout and disappointment. Instead of vague advice, we break down the brain-based patterns that drive people-pleasing and offer clear steps to reclaim your time, energy, and self-respect.
We unpack how hidden bargains sound—if I give more, they’ll promote me, refer me, or finally see me as good—and why those unspoken rules backfire. You’ll hear why you can’t control outcomes, how resentment flags crossed boundaries, and what it means to give from alignment rather than fear. We share personal stories where free sessions and extra favors drained capacity and actually reduced results, then show how clean boundaries and explicit expectations improve commitment, performance, and mental clarity.
You’ll learn practical tools to pause before saying yes, name the real motive behind the offer, and set limits that protect your focus. Entrepreneurs, managers, and caregivers will get language for “capacity checks,” ways to replace endless favors with clear agreements, and a leadership lens that honors mutual responsibility. The big mindset shift—transformation thrives when people have skin in the game—helps you stop rescuing and start empowering, at work and at home.
If you’re ready to trade chronic overgiving for intentional, high-impact generosity, this conversation will help you spot stealth expectations, rewire people-pleasing, and lead with calm authority. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to tell us which boundary you’ll set first.
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Discover more ways I can support you in breaking the burnout cycle. Visit my website.
If you are a high-achieving woman who constantly finds yourself giving to other people even though you know you don't have capacity, then this episode's for you because I am talking about the reason why it's happening and what you can do about it instead. Hi, I'm Dr. Rihanna Mulkehy, 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. Hello, my high achievers. Welcome into another episode of Breaking the Burnout Cycle Podcast. Um, I'm really excited for today's episode because over the past four years, this pattern, I kid you not, is one of the biggest patterns that I coach so many high achieving women like yourself through. And it's the pattern of overgiving, of overgiving, even though you know you don't have time, energy, capacity to be giving at the level that you continue to do. And that for a lot of the women that I work with tends to look like, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, it looks like giving people more of your time and your energy, uh, doing things for free, um, giving people free bonus sessions. If you're in your nine to five, it looks like saying yes when you really want to say no. It looks like you accommodating every request that comes through the door, anytime someone asks, can you do me a favor? You're essentially putting everyone else's priorities and everyone else's needs before your own. And, you know, while most high-achieving women think that, oh, it's only at work or it's only in my business, here is the problem. Because if you were to actually be honest with yourself and do an audit of the way that you operate, not just at work and in your business, but also in your household, I'm willing to bet that you also are finding this overgiving happening in other areas of life, like with your family or your in-laws or your kids or your friends. And while it might seem like a nice gesture, like you are doing it because you just genuinely care, I'm sure that is part of what is driving it. But nine times out of ten, the number one reason why I see this pattern happening, it actually isn't from a place of just genuine, I want to serve you. And I get why you think that it is coming from that place. It's coming from that place of, well, I am just trying to be generous, I'm trying to be nice, I'm trying to do what's right, I'm trying to create an impact, right? It's about the impact, it's not about the money in my business or those things. And I get that. In fact, I used to say this all the time as well. In fact, every people pleaser that I know comes from this place of it's I'm just trying to do what's right. I'm trying to do um what is in alignment with my values of giving, of being generous, of being kind. And if that were the case, let me ask you this why is it then that you sometimes will notice resentment or anger or frustration coming up around the situation or the person that you just gave your 110% to, right? When you're already running on E. And I bring that up because if we dissect and look at the emotions of resentment, the emotions of disappointment, the emotions of frustration and anger, oftentimes that is a really great clue on what it is that is happening either on a subconscious level or on a conscious level within our attention, right? It's where are we focusing our attention in this scenario that is then eliciting these negative emotions. And when you look at those emotions, oftentimes they stem from what we call stealth expectations. They are expectations that we had about what would happen if we gave more of ourselves to this other person in this situation. And I nine times out of ten, okay, when I am coaching women through this pattern, at the root of it all is actually there is a stealth expectation of what will happen by giving away more of your time and energy. And so there's a stealth expectation, such as, well, if I give more bonus sessions to a client, then they will be happy with me, and then they will tell all of their friends, and it'll lead to more referrals, it'll lead to more um more business, more clients coming through the door. Or it's if I say yes, if I am a team player, if I am giving more of myself in these situations, then it will lead to people recognizing my hard work, recognizing my sacrifice, recognizing my giving, and that will lead to a promotion, or it will lead to uh an award, or it will lead to something. Or sometimes it's just as simple as if I give more of my time and energy, then they will think that I am a good person. They will think that I am a nice person, and this can be such a slippery slope to be on, because oftentimes these are expectations that are happening that are you know below our awareness. They are happening subconsciously as a way to protect yourself, to protect your reputation, to protect your um potential risk of losing any love, any acceptance, any safety. And as the word stealth implies, these are happening, these expectations are happening often outside of our own awareness. And if we're not aware of it, then A, right, we can't fix what we don't know, and B, it's one of the biggest reasons why I see so many high-achieving women continue to give more and more and more of themselves, hoping that it will lead to more success, hoping that it will lead to um an improved reputation, which will lead to more clients or more opportunities, when in fact, the only thing that it continues to lead to is more burnout. And in fact, this was like a lesson that I had to learn the hard way, and that sometimes I still find myself learning the hard way of like a good reminder that at the end of the day, no matter how much of yourself you give, you cannot control the outcome. You cannot control what other people think, you cannot control if other people get results in your coaching or in the services that you provide. You cannot control the external outcomes, no matter how much you give. And, you know, in fact, I was just reminded about this situation where I literally gave away free coaching services to a past client of mine, and guess what happened? What happened is that the person didn't take it serious. Where it's like getting them on a call is like hurting cats, or get and and that's the thing, is like not only does the stealth expectations of trying to manage um potentially being seen in a bad light or trying to manage whether or not people think you're a good person or not, is that it will always lead to burnout because not only are you going to be continuing to give from an empty cup, okay, you're also going to continue finding yourself disappointed when those stealth expectations are not met. Because the very emotion of disappointment means that you had an expectation of what would happen if I do this, then this will happen, right? Then this outcome will happen. And when that doesn't happen, then that is where disappointment comes in. And I can I kid you not, this is this is something that at the very beginning, when I entered into entrepreneurship, this is something that I used to do, that I used to think that, oh, I'm giving away these things because it's just me doing what's right. It's me being a nice person, it's me being genuine, it's me being generous. When at the end of the day, why did I continue to feel disappointment every single time that that person never reciprocated, right? When they never left a review, or when they all of a sudden ghosted and I can't even get them on another call. Even though all of these things are free. Well, the reason why it's happening is because I'm expecting that to happen, right? And so if you look at what is the intention behind overgiving, oftentimes it is not coming from a genuine place. Oftentimes it's coming from a place of I hope that I will get this if I give that. And that is the stealth expectation, and that is where you we have to be honest with ourselves. Are we gen are we truly making the choice to give our services away for free from a place of love, or are we giving away things for free from a place of fear, from a place that if I don't, then what will they think of me? And it's a really hard mirror to look in. It truly is because it implies that your actions of overgiving are actually from a place of self-preservation and self-protection. It's from a place of um I am doing this as a way to try to consol control your perception of me. And that is very confronting for anyone who uncovers that as the reason why you continue to find yourself overgiving even though you don't have capacity for that, or you even though deep down you don't want to say yes. But as I always tell my clients, right, we cannot heal from what we cannot accept. And so part of the healing process and getting off of the burnout cycle is about looking at what is driving my behaviors, what is driving the reason why I continue to find myself in this behavior of giving when I really don't want to give, when I really don't have capacity to give. Because here's what I've learned in the four years that I've done it. Not only are you hurting yourself, right? It's right, because when just think about it, when you are in those emotions of resentment or disappointment or anger or frustration, how does that feel within the body? If you've ever felt that, it can be very all-consuming, right? It consumes every single one of your thoughts, it consumes kind of the emotions and the mood that you feel throughout the day, it consumes the energy levels that you're able to show up in those sessions with that person. And nine times out of ten, it's actually a disservice not only to you, because it affects the way that you can hold space for people, but it also hurts the other person. And the analogy that I use all the time is if we is like raising children, or if you don't have children, then it's dogs or pets or whatever it is, right? If you continue to let like give and give and give and give and let them have whatever they want, well, we are hurting them more than we're helping them because we are not essentially um helping them rise to their full potential, right? And and the same is true for your clients, is the more that you give away things for free, the less that they tend to value it. I mean, just think about any free thing that you have received over the past, I don't know, six months to a year. Do you even know where that free thing is? Chances are if you're anything like me, no, you just toss it to the side. You don't it it's not of importance, you don't prioritize it. And the same is true when it comes to giving away services for free. Is I I have seen time and time again, and in fact, just like I was talking about earlier, right? I was reminded of the same lesson that you can give away your services for free, but at the end of the day, oftentimes the transformation is in the transaction because there's skin in the game and the person has to rise to the occasion. They have to rise to their full potential, they have to take it serious. And this, you know, if you're not a business owner, then it's the same thing of like when if you're a leader, right? To lead is to set boundaries, to set expectations out loud and clearly so that the other person can rise to the occasion. And so that is the number one reason why giving away your time, energy, and services for free and constantly putting everyone before yourself is not only hurting yourself, but it's hurting the people that you serve. And so, how do you break free from that? Well, it's a matter of first acknowledging that this is happening because you're trying to control perceptions, but then it's about rewiring and unlearning the stories that are driving the subconscious stealth expectations. And so, if this is something that you are looking to learn how to do, then I have a free training coming up on October 29th, 2025, at the time of this recording. And we are going to be covering the exact brain-based tools to help you stop putting everyone else's needs before your own, to set those boundaries confidently without guilt, so that you can finally step off of the cycle of exhaustion and guilt and shame and just burnout. And so the link is down below to register. Um, other than that, if you found this helpful and you think that someone else could benefit from the episode, share it with them. Um, and other than that, I appreciate each and every one of you, and I hope that you have an amazing rest of your week.