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
The Biggest Mistake You Could Make In Your Burnout Healing Journey
Imagine waking every 30 minutes for seven months and trying to “optimize” your way out of it with Google threads and late-night Reddit dives. That was our home, and it mirrors how so many high achievers approach burnout: more hacks, more lists, more grit. Then one sleep coach asked a few sharp questions, spotted the real issues in minutes, and two nights later we slept eight hours straight. That whiplash result is the core lesson today: expertise collapses time, and blind spots—left unseen—keep us stuck.
We talk about the patterns that make burnout feel like groundhog day: saying yes when you mean no, carrying guilt when you rest, and tying your worth to output. I share why DIY strategies often fail even when they’re “right” on paper. When your capacity is at zero, research and trial-and-error become another job. The real blockers sit below the surface in subconscious beliefs and nervous system conditioning. Until those are named and rewired, boundaries won’t hold, self-care feels like cheating, and your calendar keeps overflowing.
You’ll hear how to replace overwhelm with targeted moves: a belief-to-behavior map, simple nervous system resets you can do between meetings, scripts that make “no” feel safe, and calendar rules that protect focus without sacrificing goals. We explore how outside eyes reveal what you can’t see from inside your habits, and why the fastest route to success without burnout is often asking for help. If you’re ready to stop guessing and start getting your energy back, book a free 45‑minute discovery call. We’ll uncover your hidden blocks and I’ll send you off with personalized first steps. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s running on fumes, and leave a review to help more people break the burnout cycle.
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Today I'm revealing the biggest mistake that you could ever make in your burnout healing journey. So stay tuned. Hi, I'm Dr. Rihanna Mulkay, 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. Today I am revealing the number one biggest mistake that you could ever make in your burnout healing journey. And um many of you guys have been following along every Wednesday. If you haven't and you're new here, welcome in. I am Dr. Rihanna Mulcahy. I have been helping high-achieving women like yourself overcome burnout, get out of survival mode so that they can achieve success without burnout. And the reason I am talking about this as the biggest mistake you could ever make is because me and my husband made this same exact mistake. And it wasn't in relation to burnout, but it was in relation to getting our son to sleep. And let me tell you about this story because it relates to why this is the biggest mistake you could make in your burnout journey. So if you have been following along, you probably already know that we have a now 14-month-old. And let me tell you, in the beginning, he was an awful sleeper. And if he's listening to this later on in his life, yeah, you were an awful sleeper. But all jokes aside, he was an awful sleeper, and what I mean by that is literally every single night he would wake up every 30 minutes. So every 30 minutes, Sean or myself, we had to get up to rock him back to sleep, and then it would happen again and again. Okay. And this went on for I don't know, seven months of his life. Okay, so that's seven months of Sean and I getting up every 30 minutes. And it's not like, okay, one of us got up and then the other one kept sleeping. It's like he was sharing a room with us because my mom at the time was staying with us. And so every time that he would cry, well, both of us are getting up, but we would take turns of who's gonna rock him to sleep. And let me tell you, seven months of struggling through that, of literally being so sleep deprived that we didn't even know what day it was. We didn't know uh, like oftentimes you would find us walking into rooms and we're like, what did I come in here for? It's like we were literally living zombies. But I share that because, like, I think around month five, I had suggested to Sean, I was like, hey, I've been doing research on how to get your baby to sleep better throughout the night, and I found um that there are sleep coaches, that there are sleep professionals who can help us, you know, just figure out what it is that maybe we are doing or not doing, and how we can help our son sleep throughout the night, because we're both so sleep deprived that literally if we went another six months, I probably would have killed someone. Like, no joke. I probably would have killed someone because oh my gosh, I was so irritable. I was like, literally, you could ask me what's for dinner, and I would snap and bite your head off, right? And it's just like that is how much sleep deprivation affects a person, and so you are probably like, okay, well, um, Sean was probably in the camp of hell yes, let's get some sleep, let's hire the sleep consultant. And I am here to tell you that is not the case. In fact, my husband was in camp. Let's continue trial and erroring, let's continue Googling ways and then implementing different strategies until we find the one that works. Because if you've ever Googled how to get your baby to sleep throughout the night, chances are you found a million different solutions, right? And it can not literally a million, but there's multiple solutions that you can try, and then there's different tactics that people out there are suggesting. And then if you go on the Reddit rabbit hole, well, oh my god, like forget even finding a solution because now you're starting to second guess every single solution that you found. And so it was so overwhelming to continue looking at that and having each and every thing that we've tried fail. And it got to the point where I was like, okay, I will be, I will support him. He wants to wait. Yes, it is a lot of money to invest in a sleep consultant, to get a sleep coach, but I don't know how much longer I can keep putting up with this. And so we got maybe three more weeks into 30 every 30 minutes waking up, where I eventually was just like, Sean, I am going to murder you or murder somebody if I do not get at least longer than 30 minutes of sleep. And that was kind of like the breaking point. And so we hired this amazing sleep consultant, this sleep coach, um Kelly Robson is her name, in case you are looking for a sleep coach of Baby Bliss Consulting. She's not a sponsor, but essentially I believe in her so much because she has helped and has changed our lives for the better, because we are sleeping as a family. And once we hired her, let me tell you, we had our initial consult call and she literally asked us maybe 10 questions, probably less, and immediately was like, Okay, here's what you're doing that is not working, here is what you need to start implementing, and that should solve it. And that took her like maybe three minutes, three minutes to diagnose what we were doing wrong and to tell us what we needed to change in order to get Kellen to sleep, okay? And what happened within two nights, I kid you not, within two nights, we were sleeping eight hours, eight hours, and so why do I share this story? Well, I share the story first off so that it can be on record that Sean did admit that he was wrong. I'm just kidding, but I share this story because how many of you out there are doing the same thing when it comes to your burnout, when it comes to your self-care, when it comes to figuring out why it is you are dealing with chronic exhaustion or any of the physical symptoms that arises when you are day in and day out chronically stressed. Because I know for the longest time I was also that person when it came to my burnout, where it's very easy to think to ourselves, I know what I'm doing wrong, I just have to, you know, set better boundaries, I just have to say no more, I just have to not work as much. And how many times has that been successful for you? Because if you're anything like I was when I was burnt out, trying to figure out how to stop feeling so dang exhausted, is that I went down similar rabbit holes, just like what I discussed here with the sleep consultant, thinking that I could just do it on my own. And the reality is that while yes, you might be able to find what works for you, think about how much time, energy, and money that might take you to find whatever that solution is. Because chances are if you are anything like the women that I serve, then you might already be at an empty tank at zero capacity, right? And so how are you expecting yourself to be able to have the mental and emotional and energy capacities to be able to do the research to trial and error, to implement more, versus just having someone who is able to show you where the blind spots are, who's able to show you, hey, you know what? These are the reasons why you can't set boundaries without feeling guilty. These are the reasons why you continue to take more on your plate and you say yes when you really want to say no. These are the reasons why you can't rest without feeling guilty. Because the hard truth is that you if you knew how to fix it, wouldn't you have fixed it already? And I say that with all the love in my heart because this is what took me literally burning out two times to finally realize that I could not do it on my own. And it's very similar to the story that I share about the sleep consultant, because the reality is you don't know what you don't know, and so how could you Google an answer for what you don't even realize is a mistake in the first place, right? Like how could you possibly even have that awareness to figure that out on your own? And the reality is you can't, and this is why coaches or having just somebody to be able to hold that mirror for you, to be able to point out the blind spots to you is vital in your healing journey out of burnout. And so, if this is something that you would like help with, where you would like help identifying what are the things that I don't even realize are contributing to my burnout, what are the reasons why I can't implement effectively the strategies that I know will help me protect my time and energy, then let's schedule a time to chat because what I do on any of the discovery calls that we do, whether or not you choose to work with me, whether or not you choose to take action towards healing from burnout without stepping back from your goals, is that we spend that 45 minutes just uncovering what it is that is contributing to your burnout, what it is that is subconsciously out of your awareness that is keeping you from being able to effectively protect your time and energy. And then once you uncover that, it's about learning what the first steps are for you to start implementing the changes that need to happen so that you can effectively protect your time and energy and heal from burnout without needing to step back from your career, from your business, from your goals. And so if you are ready to finally stop trial and erroring, if you're ready to finally figure out what is continuing to keep me stuck in the burnout cycle, despite me trying different tactics, different strategies to protect my time and energy, then schedule a free discovery call because on that 45 minutes, we are going to be not only uncovering what those blocks are for you, but I'm going to be giving you personalized steps on what to focus on to start getting your time and energy back. So that link is down below in the show notes. And until next episode, bye for now.