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 Are More Prone To Burnout
Ever wonder why it is that high achieving women continue to find themselves on the cusp of burnout no matter how much self-care they practice?
Well on today's episode I am covering the #1 reason why high achieving women are more prone to burnout (hint: it has a lot to do with societal norms & conditioning BLEH!)
By the end of the episode, you will uncover:
- The trait that all high achieving women have that causes them to burnout ESPECIALLY in our societal constructs
- The reason why you find yourself continuing to go into worrying, overthinking, and overdrive when unforeseeable things happen
- The 3 step process to regulate your emotions and problem solve
Want to dive deeper? Schedule a free discovery call to uncover what is keeping you stuck in the burnout cycle
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Discover more ways I can support you in breaking the burnout cycle. Visit my website.
You're listening to Breaking the Burnout Cycle Podcast. On today's episode, I am going to be covering what the number one thing that all high achieving women who are burning out have in common. So stay tuned. Hi, I'm Dr. Rihanna Mokehi, 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. I hope that you are doing well. I wanted to share something that just happened the other day. Um, I just posted a story on my Instagram account. If you're not following me, I highly recommend just going over there, saying hello at Dr. Brianna Mulcahy. I would love to have you join the community there. But I was sharing a story about just kind of the recent struggles that we have been having with childcare. And oh Lord, this is, you know, everyone prepared me for kind of like the sleepless nights. They prepared me for the millions of diaper changes, the um fussiness that you might experience, etc. All of those things. But what no one prepared me for was just how hard childcare and finding childcare in America. If you're in America, I'm sure you can empathize. Um, but how hard it really is. Like, to be honest, it's probably been one of the most stressful and one of the hardest things that I've ever done in my entire life. Like the parenting piece is like a cakewalk compared to trying to find childcare. And so over on Instagram, I had shared on my stories just kind of like what was going on and just the emotions that I was feeling around it because yeah, I was frustrated. I was pissed off, I was angry that this was the fourth time she was calling in sick in three weeks. And I think a lot of the negative emotions that I was having at the time really had a lot to do with the fact that, right, there was these expectations of the time that I was going to have to be able to um execute the plan that I had for the week, where I had a lot on the to-do list, so to speak, of you know, reflecting on how 2025 went and then doing the year plan and the quarterly plans for my business in 2026, um, in addition to client calls. And so how many of you are listening to this and you can also empathize and relate, where it's like maybe you have a very busy month or a very busy week, and then a kiddo gets sick, or the something happens to your car, or like unforeseen circumstances happen, and it throws the entire schedule off, right? And and oftentimes, because we have so much on the plate as it is as high achievers, then on top of that, you're now having a lot of the stress of how you're gonna get it all done, and that is exactly you know what I was feeling. And so the reason why I think this story went viral is because I was sharing a lot of what I was feeling, but then I also was sharing the tools that I was using to regulate myself, to bring myself back into a grounded state so that I could actually, you know, problem solve from here, because the reality is that when you are in that heightened emotions, when you are in that dysregulated state, it is literally impossible on a neuroscience perspective to problem solve efficiently and to actually um find the solution at the time. Because what's going on when you're having these like big anxiety moments or big frustration and anger moments is that this is literally your fight, flight, or freeze response kicking in in your um in your brain, in your nervous system. And so what's happening is your brain is telling you we are in danger, and as a result, what happens on a neural standpoint is your prefrontal cortex, the logical thinking part of the brain actually shuts off in this moment. And so there have been a ton of neuroscience studies that show when we are in these heightened emotions and heightened like anxiety states, we actually are way, way, way worse at problem solving, let alone logical thinking. And so what I was sharing in the stories was one of the biggest tools that I teach my clients of how to get out of this dysregulated state, because like we talked about earlier, you cannot make like the logical part of the brain cannot make the best decisions at the time that you are in dysregulation because it literally shuts off when you're in fight, flight, or freeze response. In addition to that, the biggest thing that I see, the number one thing that I have seen time and time again, causes so many of the high-achieving women to come to me exhausted, burnt out, and just like emotionally depleted, is these dysregulated states, not the fact that they happen, but the fact that they continue happening 24-7, day in and day out, without ever closing the loop. And there's two reasons for why high achieving women, especially women, um why closing the loop is so damn hard. The first reason is because, first off, I think I can speak on behalf of majority of us women out there that we are told to not have these big emotions, to not have these negative emotions, especially when it comes to anger or frustration or um, you know, just straight up being pissed off. And so I think that there is like a stigma around just having any sort of these types of emotions, because I mean, let's be honest, there is a social norm that women are already emotional as it is. So God forbid, if you have any heightened emotions or negative emotions, then what often ends up happening is now we're seen as someone who's irrational or someone who can't handle what uh like what a man can handle because we have so many emotions. And because of that, I have seen so many high-achieving women who have practiced a pattern of not feeling or not showing, not necessarily not feeling, but not showing that they have these emotions as a fear that they'll be seen as weak or incapable. And so this is one of the reasons why it is so hard for women to close that stress loop. The second reason that I see happens all the time is it just comes down to a matter of like as a high achiever, let's be honest, like you probably have this work ethic where like when things go haywire, you go into a pattern of more doing as a way to kind of just like um control everything, and this is the number one reason why I see so many high-achieving women burn out is because you are literally trying to control things that cannot be controlled, and it's this uh subconscious protection mechanism that happens where you are trying to control the outcome by doing more, and in this case, you're trying to control the outcome by worrying more. And if there's one thing I've learned, the only thing that worrying does is eat your energy, right? No amount of worrying in the world can change the things that you can't control, no amount of worrying can change like the outcome. But you probably already know that, and the reason why, even though you know that your brain goes into this overdrive mode isn't a choice, it's not a logical choice, it's happening subconsciously because when you're in that heightened emotion, you are in a threat. The brain is perceiving this as a threat where it's like, I don't have control of this, and therefore this feels unsafe. And so the brain is trying to find different ways to try to run, to try to like keep you safe from that said threat. Even though the threat isn't like a tiger running after you, it's a threat because it's a threat to, oh, you know, like I'll go back to the example that I was sharing this whole story loop around, which was okay, the threat being now that my nanny's calling out sick, I don't have the time to get everything done. And if we follow that story loop, right, the reason why I felt so stressed at the time and so angry at the time is because what is the consequence of not having the time and not getting everything done? Well, then my brain is going down a consequence loop of saying, if I don't have the time to get everything done, then guess what? I'm not going to be able to hit my deadlines for my next launch, or I'm not going to be able to get these deliverables to my team or whatever it is, right? And so the brain is seeing that as failure. Like this will lead to failure, and then that will ruin my reputation. And we could go down that entire consequence story loop, but that is essentially what is happening in your mind and why your mind is just subconsciously going into overdrive as a way to try to protect you. And if you've ever experienced this, which I am sure if you are here listening to this podcast that and you are a high-achieving woman, you can empathize with everything that I am talking about. Where when you go into that overdrive mode, it is just freaking exhausting, right? Like it is so exhausting to have your brain not able to shut off, right? Like you wake up in the middle of the night and you can't shut your brain off because you know you're just stressed about all the things that have to get done or the things that are being pushed back because of the things you can't control, and then it leads to you're just irritated, and so um you snap at your kids or your spouse, and you are thinking there's like a million tabs open in your mind, and at the same time, your family's asking for things from you, your clients are asking for things from you, and you haven't even been able to like have a moment of peace, and like that is exhausting. And so, what I shared on the story, and I think this is the number one reason why it went viral, is I shared just how to get out of that overdrive mode because, like we talked about, it's exhausting, and so I'm gonna share that here. And the the first thing that I want to say is that there is never a tool that is going to be like the only thing you have to ever do. I always say this to everyone that um everyone heals and responds to things very differently. So many of you guys know I'm a physical therapist by background, and you know, one intervention could work for like one exercise could work for one patient and not work for the other patient. And the same is true when it comes to your healing journey. And so obviously, like the more tools that you have in your toolbox to try, I think empowers you at least to try something, right? Because nothing changes if nothing changes. So take it with a grain of salt, try it out. Um, if it doesn't work, I'm gonna be sharing more tools, so don't feel like this is the like do or die. It needs to work. Okay, so I just wanted to preface everything with that. So when you are in this dysregulated state around something that has happened that is stressing you out because it's pushing everything back and it's out of your control, the first thing is to first off let the emotion happen. Let it happen. Like, I don't know, scream at the top of your lungs, go outside, and um, I actually have like a pallet of wood or something that I can take a sledgehammer to if I'm really, really pissed off so that I don't like break anything. But the reason I have that is because it's a very regulating thing to let the emotion happen. The more you try to stop it, the more you are literally like um prolonging your suffering because the emotion, and I heard this really great uh analogy, but they said emotion is energy in motion, and so the longer that you try to control it, sustain it, and not allow it to move, the longer that it festers. And so the first thing I tell all of my clients is to first off acknowledge that you're pissed off and let it happen. Find a way to safely, I'm gonna emphasize safely, but safely and um in a controlled manner, so to speak, let it out. So for some people it's screaming at the top of your lungs, for other people it's um screaming into a pillow, for other people it's like myself, you know, moving the body or feeling like you're getting some form of destruction out. Um, and that just allows it to move through you. Okay, that's step number one. So obviously that one's gonna be a little bit trial and error of what works for you to make you feel like you are moving the energy through you. Um another way that I've seen done is just like tensing every muscle in your body and then releasing it, um, or shaking your body like or dancing even to just really move energy through. Okay. The second thing is once you have moved that through, you should start to feel like um if you've ever seen a child throw a tantrum, and then if you've ever seen like their parent comfort the child, and then you see like all of the muscles just kind of like go on slack and relax, that is kind of what it should feel like um if you've effectively moved through the emotion. Um and so if you don't feel that way, then go back, maybe try a different tool or try it for higher intensity or longer duration, okay. And then once that happens, the next thing you're going to do is come back to the problem. Okay, come back to the problem because now you are going to be in a more regulated state, and this is where you are going to look at every single thing that you wanted to get done. And you're going to then look at what capacity you have, and that could mean time, it could also mean energy, what capacity you have, and then what can realistically get done and what is going to move the needle forward. And so and so what you're essentially doing is you're managing your expectations here, and then you're reprioritizing based off the new circumstances. And this is easier said than done, okay, because what you are going to notice if you are playing full out and you do this exercise is that there will be your inner critic coming up, there will be resistance coming up in the body and even in the mind around why you need to get all of this stuff done, or why it's like overwhelming, or you're gonna feel a lot of this anxiety come up. And I tell all of my clients that when this happens, this is a great thing, first off, because I want you to get curious what is coming up for you, because if we dig into these emotions of overwhelming anxiety, these emotions are based in the potential fear of what could happen. They're based in a future-paced outcome, and so fear, if you think about it, is just placing your attention on an unwanted outcome. Then your brain is essentially uh saying that hey, if we don't get this stuff done, this is what will happen. And so it's also going to start showing you what subconsciously you believe, first off, it takes for you to be successful, but second off, it's going to show you what you're actually afraid of. Okay. And that is part of the healing process. And so if this is something where you try this exercise and you start noticing that and you want to dive into what that is for you, then I offer free discovery calls where you can essentially dive into that with me. And I will show you exactly what it is that your subconscious mind believes is required from you to be successful and second off, why it continues to keep you in this like um rumination and over-delivering and overdrive mode when things like this that are out of your control happen. Okay. And so I hope that you found this helpful. If you did, make sure to leave a review for the podcast and also share it with a friend, right? Like share it with someone that you think it would help. Um, other than that, I will see you on another episode next week, and bye for now.