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
What To Do When Your Vision Feels Heavy
Your vision used to light you up—so why does it feel heavy now? We dig into the brain-based reason excitement fades and explain how stealth expectations quietly condition you to delay joy, confidence, and fulfillment until you hit the next milestone. If you’ve found yourself chasing goal after goal for a quick high that never lasts, this conversation offers a practical path to break the loop and rebuild a stable inner foundation.
We share why the nervous system becomes hooked on short-lived dopamine spikes, how that fuels the burnout cycle, and the subtle ways high achievers move the finish line without realizing it. Then we pivot to a grounded approach for choosing your emotional state first, using proof stacking and small daily reps to train your brain that happiness, confidence, and fulfillment are available now—not later. You’ll learn to spot hidden rules like “I can’t feel successful until X,” run a clear audit of your beliefs, and replace external validation with internal cues that actually sustain momentum.
If this helped, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s stuck in the grind, and leave a quick review so more people can find these tools. Want support applying the audit?
DM me on Instagram at Dr. Reana Mulcahy and tell me what you uncovered.
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Discover more ways I can support you in breaking the burnout cycle. Visit my website.
If you are at a season where your vision doesn't excite you anymore and sometimes might even feel heavy, then this episode's for you because I am talking about why this is happening and the neuroscience behind that. Alright, stay tuned. Hi, I'm Dr. Rihanna Mulkey, 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. Alright, one of the biggest questions that I get asked all of the time in the coaching program and from my one-on-one clients is why is it that I suddenly don't feel excited by the vision that I have anymore? Or what is it like there's something about the way that I'm doing things or the journey that I'm on where I now am starting to just feel like everything is heavy and everything feels like an energetic push, like it's not exciting to me anymore, and I just don't know what I'm doing wrong, or maybe I'm not even on the right path. And a lot of the women who come to me with this problem often are talking about just this internal compass feeling lost, right? And if you have ever experienced that, then you know just how discombobulating or just how confronting and uncomfortable it can feel to feel like you are on the wrong journey, where it starts to feel like maybe I made the wrong decision, maybe I went in the wrong career path, maybe I created my business around the wrong niche, and you start to really just question every single one of your life choices that you've ever made up until this point. And what I need you to hear first off is that the feeling that you are lost doesn't necessarily mean that you made the wrong choices or that you are actually lost. The reason that you feel this way is actually because of what so many of us don't even realize is there, which is that we have these stealth expectations, these expectations that um may not be in our conscious awareness. And these are very dangerous because they can often make us feel a certain way, like in this scenario that we're describing, right? You feel that this discomfort, this void, this feeling like you made the wrong choice because you don't feel a certain way. And that is very dangerous because then it starts to what I've seen in the four years that I've been helping women is that it starts to cause women to often look inwards and to start blaming themselves for feeling this way, where they start thinking, well, maybe something's wrong with me, or maybe it means that I didn't do something right, or that I didn't choose the right career path, or I didn't choose the right niche, and then they start almost like self uh that inner critic starts getting really loud where it starts to create this whole cycle of shame and guilt, and that as we know, as I've covered on past episodes, is a very pervasive emotion because it starts to create many of the burnout uh excuse me, the burnout patterns that I see where they start to isolate themselves, they start to um put more on their plate as a way to try to fill that void, thinking, well, this must not have been the end of the journey, and so on and so forth, and then it just spirals out of control to the point where they wake up one day and they're like, nothing solved this problem. And so here's what I need you to hear is that first off, the reason why you might feel lost or you might not feel the excitement, the fulfillment, the joy that you once had with the vision that you put all of this time, energy, effort towards, the reason you might not feel that anymore towards that isn't because you made a wrong choice. Oftentimes, in fact, nine times out of ten, the reason it's happening is because there is that stealth expectation of what you believe will give you the feeling of fulfillment, the feeling of success, the feeling of confidence, the feeling of joy, the feeling of happiness. And the biggest problem that arises when we expect hitting these goals, hitting these milestones to be what fuels these emotions is that it's fleeting. It's fleeting, and this is why I see time and time again high-achiev women continuing to raise the bar each and every time, right? It's like they hit the goal and then all of a sudden they feel excited, they feel fulfilled, they feel a certain way, but then that starts to fade. And so what happens next? Well, they move on to the next goal and the next goal, and so on and so forth. And that is because they're continuing to chase this feeling, they're continuing to chase that fulfillment, that feeling of happiness and joy. And in my program, it's what I call, um, if you have kids around, close their ears, but it's what I call shitty dopamine hits, right? It's we start to become addicted to hitting a certain goal, making us feel a certain way, and that is unsustainable because it relies on everything external. And so what happens when you know things start to get busy and the excitement starts to fade, or it's like um I remember being in my nine to five job where it was like the excitement that I had of becoming a PT, of achieving everything that I thought would make me feel fulfilled, where that started to fade as you know certain demands started coming up as um passion was suddenly starting to be replaced with pressure. And then the story flipped where it became this whole thing of like, well, it must be because I haven't done enough or I need to achieve more, and it just becomes this cycle of more, right? You just constantly start seeking more ways to feel that way, and it's unsustainable when it's outside of you. And in fact, it took me burning out twice, both in my nine to five job as a physical therapist, but also burning out in my first business, which was a cookie business, to realize how much of a problem this is, where it's like the high achievers delight, where it's you literally continue to chase what you believe will finally make you feel a certain way. And the reality is the only way that you can feel happy or fulfilled or confident or you know, at peace is when you choose to feel that way. And I know that sounds like, well, okay, let me just think positive. That's not what I mean at all. What I mean is that these emotions are a choice because often the biggest area that we miss is that you can feel happy right now, you can feel confident right now, but the reason why you don't feel happy, fulfilled, or confident now is because there is a stealth expectation like we had talked about earlier, and that stealth expectation is enrolling you in this belief or this story that I will not be happy until I hit my goal, or I will not feel fulfilled until I see ten new clients coming through my door every single month, right? And it so what's happening psychologically is that your brain is delaying gratification, it is essentially saying we cannot celebrate, we are not happy until whatever that goal is achieved. And so the way that you actually feel happy, fulfilled, confident, the way that you feel that right now is that you make a choice. And what I mean by that is that it's a conscious discipline, it's a mental discipline of being able to see all of the ways that you already have happiness, that you already feel confident, because chances are, right, like you can think of things that you feel confident in. So for example, putting like putting on your shoes, you don't have to think twice about that. So that implies you're what? You're confident. So why is it that when it comes to certain things, you don't feel confident or that you don't feel fulfilled, right? And it's it's all a matter of perspective, it's a matter of what you are choosing to focus on, and it's not an intentional choice. So I first want you to hear that. It's a subconscious choice that is happening because of those stealth expectations, and so if you want to be able to like break free of this never-ending um wild goose chase for what will make you feel fulfilled, or what will fill the void, or what will make you feel happy, it has to start from the inside out. And to start from the inside out, you first have to understand what is it that you already believe you need in order to be happy or in order to be fulfilled, or in order to be confident, right? Because chances are if you were to actually do an audit of what it is that you think you need in order to have that emotion, chances are it is going to be something that is external to you. And some of the examples that I have had from clients are things like more clients, more money, more degrees, and it's this false belief that those things will give them freedom or fulfillment or happiness or confidence when the reality is you already have access to it, but it's within you, not outside of you. And so, how do you shift your perspective to focus on that? Well, like I talked about, it's a discipline of the mind, but you can't build a discipline if you don't even realize if you have this um mental block in the first place, and so the place to actually start is just to do an audit, just to ask yourself, what do I believe I need in order to be happy or in order to feel fulfilled, or in order to feel excited? What is it that my mind is enrolling me in that is creating this like addiction to looking outside of yourself? Because the reality is until you look within and create that from within, you are basically the analogy I give all the time to my clients is it is like building a house on a rocky foundation, on something that is not stable, because the minute that you get criticism or the minute that something goes wrong, well, guess what? There goes your confidence, there goes your fulfillment, there goes everything becomes uh subjective to not subjective, subjected to the external world, which is always changing, right? The only constant in life is change, and so that's where you have to start is you first have to understand yourself of what is it that you believe will give you those things. And so if you would like some help digging into these mental blocks, because the reason why they are out of your awareness is because it's subconscious, it's happening subconsciously, which means below your awareness. And so um, if this is something that you need help uncovering, what it is that is keeping you from feeling those things now, then shoot me a message on Instagram at Dr. Rihanna Mulcahy. Um the link is down below in the show notes as well. You can find me there, send me a DM, and just let's just talk about what it is that you're uncovering after doing the exercise from this episode. All right, that's all I have for you today. And other than that, I will see you guys next week on another episode. Bye for now.