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 Neuroscience Of Why It Is So Damn Hard To Set Boundaries
Ever wonder why setting boundaries feels so hard?
We unpack why setting boundaries feels like danger to the brain and how to regulate your nervous system so you can speak up with clarity.
Practical steps show how to pause, calm your body, and reinforce limits without guilt, even during holiday triggers.
• the tribe-based survival wiring behind people pleasing
• why fight, flight, or freeze hijacks boundary moments
• simple breath and presence tools to self-regulate
• clean, short scripts to set and restate limits
• how repetition retrains others and your nervous system
• stopping resentment to conserve energy and end burnout loops
Grab the Boundary Setting Guide with complete scripts and a no-guilt exercise
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Discover more ways I can support you in breaking the burnout cycle. Visit my website.
If you struggle to set boundaries, then today's episode is for you because I am diving into the neuroscience of why it is so damn hard to set those boundaries. Alright, let's dive in. Hi, I'm Dr. Rihanna Mulkeghi, 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. But if you're new here, welcome. This is Breaking the Burnout Cycle Podcast, and I am your host, Dr. Rihanna Mulcahy. I've been helping high-achieving women over the past four years overcome self-sabotaging behaviors that are keeping them stuck not only in burnout, but that's keeping them stuck from the level of success that they want. And one of the biggest areas is boundaries. And not just boundaries with their clients, but boundaries with their family and their friends. And so I thought that today's episode would be fitting, considering it is Christmas Eve. And so if you are celebrating out there, uh I hope that you are safely at wherever it is you're celebrating. And I hope that this episode helps you as we go into the lion's den, so to speak, as we go into these settings where it can sometimes be really triggering because chances are you might know like the areas that you're growing and healing through, but the people around us aren't always in that growth mindset. And so someone asked me the other day, what is the hardest thing about um the work that I do? And I chuckled a little bit because I think most people think the hardest part is going to be the work itself. When in actuality, I think one of the hardest parts about doing the inner work is the fact that not everyone is doing the inner work. And so when we are in these environments where there are a lot of people who aren't even aware that there are areas that they're still um, you know, healing from or that they even need to be healing from, right? When we're in those environments, I think sometimes it can feel extra triggering because uh just that they're so oblivious to the ways that they are deflecting or the ways that they are projecting onto you, and that in itself can not only be frustrating, but it can be um extremely triggering. And so if this is you and you are already kind of like dreading the fact that you know this is going to happen, then this is the perfect episode for you because I am going to be going through not only the neuroscience of why setting the boundaries are hard, but what you can do in these moments to kind of like regulate a little bit so that you can actually enjoy your holiday. Because I think that speaking from experience, a lot of us get the well-intentioned advice in these moments to just like ignore it, take the higher road, to let these um these things go because they don't mean it in a malicious way. And while that might be true, here's why it's still important that you understand how to set a boundary in these moments, how to reinforce a boundary. Because here's what you might not realize nothing changes if nothing changes. And what I mean by that is that what you might not realize is that you are actually teaching or training someone on how to respect your time, your emotional space, your even physical space. And so every time that we allow our boundaries to be porous, we essentially are teaching people that it is okay. And it's not to say you're going to go super rigid and cut them off or anything like that, but it's to say there's a happy medium when it comes to boundary setting. Okay. And one of the biggest areas that I see, especially for high-achieving women, for women who have thrived on people pleasing, is that the common pattern to resort back to is just kind of like letting it go, taking the higher road, not saying anything. But inadvertently, what we're not realizing is that A, we're reinforcing that pattern, and B, you're training the other people how to respect you, or in this case, not respect your time and energy. And so it is a skill. It is a skill to be able to reinforce your boundary even when it feels uncomfortable. And so, how do you start to make the uncomfortable less uncomfortable? Well, I think the first place to start is always with clarity on understanding why it is so uncomfortable in the first place. Because when you can understand what is going on on a neurological level, then I think that it sets you free, at least for my brain and uh most of the women that I serve. When I can actually come to a logical explanation of like understanding why it's happening, for me, anyways, and for the women that I serve, there's like this light bulb moment where just like when you show your child there is no monster under the bed, right? You are doing the same thing for your mind in this case of like showing yourself, first off, it's not a personal flaw that it feels so hard to set the boundary. But second off, like you start understanding what the actual um perceived threat is in these cases, so that you can have those repetitions of first off building awareness and then of like rewiring that pattern so that eventually it becomes less uncomfortable. And so here's what's happening on a neurological level, okay, is if we go back to the very beginning of our existence on this earth as humankind, right? If we go back to the caveman days, we are tribal by nature, meaning that we all have a tribe, we all have this innate desire to be a part of something bigger than us, whether it's a family unit, spirituality, um, we all want to be seen, loved, safe, heard, all of these things. And if we went all the way back to caveman days, well, guess what? In caveman days, if you are a part of a tribe, your chances of survival are a lot higher. Why? Because you have people surrounding you, you have a community that can help you to protect, you know, yourself from bears or saber-toothed tigers or whatever it was that was trying to kill you at that time. Get kicked out of the tribe, and guess what happens? Well, now you're on your own. You that means you have to be able to not only fend for yourself, but you have to be able to um scavenge on your own and build a like a safe haven or a safe place to live. And if you think about how much time and energy it would take to survive like that, I don't know if any of you guys are fans of the show alone. Um, if you haven't watched it, highly recommend it. I think it's on Netflix now, but uh that's besides the point. Um, in that show, as the name implies, it's showing just how much time, energy, and work it takes to be able to survive on your own. And this is the number one reason why uh it's illogical, but why on a neural level we are afraid to ruffle feathers or rock the boat sometimes because of a fear that we might get kicked out of the tribe. And so on a subconscious level, this is what is happening every time you try to go and set a boundary or you know, um state what you don't like with your family members, especially, because think about uh the perception to the brain here is this is my tribe, and literally this is your tribe. Like you were born into this family for a majority of your formative years. Your parents were seen as the leaders, the chiefs, or whatever you want to call it, the leaders of the family household, right? They made the decisions, they are the ones that um kept you alive, they kept you safe, they kept food on the table, clothes on your back, all of these things. And so it's in our formative years that we start to look um towards your parents and those parent figures as the ones who know it all, right? And our immature brains at the time don't know any better. And so how we learn of what is the social norms of my tribe is we learn from experience and we learn from um observation of what do we see, what do we hear, what are the things that attain me love and safety and praise, and that becomes the patterns that we then uh subconsciously and oftentimes without us even knowing, indoctrinate as the lens at which we look at the world through. But then as we grow up and as a lot of us move away to go to college, we start to then see other uh mindsets, other approaches to life, other approaches to success, and then we start questioning some of the values, some of the stories that we were uh raised on, but it still doesn't take away the innate wanting to be loved, to be praised, to be safe with your parents, with your tribe. And so this is why, even though you might logically know and um have chosen a different way of operating and a different way of thinking, subconsciously, if you haven't rewired the pattern to feel like if you haven't rewired your nervous system's ability to feel safe in uh bringing that into the tribe, then guess what? It's going to feel like a threat because even though you know it logically, every time the brain perceives you as putting yourself in a situation where, you know, I could potentially get kicked out of the tribe, I could potentially uh be rejected, criticized, or physically or even emotionally harmed, it's going to shut off the logical part of your brain, and that um subconscious part that is trying to keep you safe kicks in. And so what happens when you feel that resistance, when you feel that discomfort, is that's a fight, flight, or freeze response. That is your nervous system telling you we are not safe, get out. And as human beings, our nature is to avoid discomfort, like our minds, our nervous systems love the path of least resistance, and so it will literally make it so uncomfortable to the point that you just either fight, literally, like verbally uh fight with your family, or you flee. And in a lot of cases of recovering people pleasers, right, the easiest path of least resistance is to flee, is to avoid conflict, is to take the higher road in this case. But like I said earlier, if we want to break the pattern, then we have to reinforce the new pattern, which is lovingly setting or reinforcing a boundary. So how do you do that? Well, first off, it's about embracing that you feel very uncomfortable, that there is an actual physiological event happening where you are being threatened on a psychological level, and so as a result, you're going into a fight, flight, or freeze response. It's then about understanding that discomfort does not mean unsafe in most cases, okay? And so some of the tools that I teach my clients is to first off um let the nervous system know that you are safe, and so there are a few ways that you can try this. The first is going to be stepping away from the situation at first, going to the bathroom or something, and taking uh some breaths. Uh typically it's going to be long exhale in these moments. And this is something that I teach in depth in um the Rewire to Thrive program, but taking some breaths to kind of regulate and slow the nervous system in this moment. The other option can be there is just kind of like bringing in presence to your body and like almost like reminding your body that you are in a safe environment, and that can look like um you're trying to rub lotion on your hands extremely slow. And maybe you go and grab some lotion and do it uh itself, but you want to be intentionally slow about this, and you're starting to bring your awareness to the hands. So, what you're doing in this moment is you're just kind of like re-centering, refocusing the attention to know that you're safe, right? And to bring awareness to the present now. Um and so try those things on, see if they work for you. And the next step is then just about when you are in that regulated state, okay, then it's about going back to reinforce the boundary because the more that you avoid the boundary, it doesn't make it better. You're simply just avoiding the discomfort in the like in the now, and you're delaying it for later, or you're going to end up eventually feeling resentment towards the people that you actually want to have a genuine relationship with in most cases, and these emotions of anger and resentment, which resentment is really uh a different shade of anger, but when we hold these emotions, it can physically and emotionally drain your energy, and the stress gets stuck in the body. And I think there was a quote by Buddha, I don't actually know if it was by Buddha himself, but the quote goes that when you hang on to anger, it is like drinking poison and hoping that the other person dies. And it's so true, and it took me a really long time to realize this and to learn this, but hanging on to the resentment, hanging on to the anger, and oftentimes, like you know, we'll find ways to express that anger and resentment, whether it's passive-aggressive comments, or you are going to cut the person off, like you don't talk to them, you give them the silent treatment, whatever it is. Those are other ways to deflect, and that is actually a coping mechanism that doesn't change the situation of a family member or a friend or a client even respecting a boundary because oftentimes they don't even know what you actually want, and so this is not just about you know um teaching people how to respect your time and energy and your personal space, but it's also about how to let that stress cycle stop so that you are not wasting precious energy that you already don't have to hold on to these negative emotions. And so those were the two steps. And as a recap, it was to acknowledge and then find a way to try to regulate the nervous system, like you do not have to address conflict right then and there every single time. Okay, you know yourself the best of what is the best way for you to handle it, and the second step was then about reinforcing it. And if you are in your head right now thinking, well, what do I even say to reinforce it? I actually have created a boundary setting guide, and um, I'll link that down in the show notes. It has complete scripts that you can try out to set a boundary or reinforce a boundary. And so if you would like those scripts, um it is down below, and it also walks you through an exercise so that you can set those boundaries without feeling guilt. Okay. So, other than that, I hope you found that helpful. I will see you guys on another episode, and I hope that you have a very Merry Christmas and happy holidays if you do celebrate. All right, bye for now.