What Burnout Actually Feels Like (Early-Stage Founder Edition) | Mini Burnout Series

Burnout doesn’t always look like a breakdown. Sometimes it’s waking up, opening your email, and feeling your entire body flood with stress.

This is Bettina’s Mini Burnout Series—and today, I’m sharing what founder burnout looks like for me in real time as an early-stage female founder balancing product, content, a team, and the start of a VC raise. When things move slower than you want, patience becomes the hardest job in the room—and the pressure can feel constant.

I walk through the simple reset that helped me today: a walk, a visual mindfulness practice, and reaching out for support. Because sometimes burnout hides inside routines that look “healthy”—like overworking, overtraining, and under-eating.

We also get into what sustainable wellness actually requires: asking for help, taking breaks before you crash, and retraining your mind through small habits like gratitude.

Try this with me: 4 things you’re grateful for in the morning, 4 at night.

If you want real tools—not surface-level positivity—follow, share, and subscribe to stay with me through this series.

Transcript

Welcome To Fortify Wellness

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You're listening to the Fortify Wellness podcast. I'm Mettina Mahoney, founder of Fortify Wellness. This is season 11. I build Fortify after having to rebuild my life from burnout, from trauma, from feeling like I was holding it together on the outside, but not okay on the inside. Fortify connects you to the right support for your mind, body, and soul. Therapy, coaching, fitness, and meditation all in one place. Because most people don't need more content. They need the right support. So this podcast is where we talk about that. Real conversations, real tools, no fake positivity. Because if you're tired of just getting for the day and you actually want to feel better, you're in the right place. A quick note before we begin: this podcast isn't medical advice, but it is a space for real support. Season 11 starts now. Let's get into it. So, you guys, I'm here to talk to you about the struggle of life. Okay. The struggle of life that is burnout and being a founder and being a human that is working constantly. It's something that I'm always working on in therapy. And it's something that I want to get better at because I want to feel sustainable. So I'm going to talk about my burnout, but remember, like, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a psychologist. This is just like my own experience with burnout that I really just hope makes you feel less alone because it's very, very normal. It's very common. So this morning I woke up. I usually go to the gym around 6 or 6:30. And, you know, I'm usually, I come up, I read my emails, I start my day after that, and I eat my breakfast. And this morning I had a sore throat. I just wasn't feeling good. I started reading email, trying to address the emails, and I just felt really stressed and anxious. Like truly. I just felt very overwhelmed. There was too much going on. And I decided to take a walk. So do you know the Jake Shane podcast where he's like, someone will ask a question and he'll subscribe them a song. Well, I subscribed to myself a song called Take a Walk by Passion Pit. And I went outside, I took my matcha, and I went for a walk. And I started doing this like visual meditation. I was observed, like observing the colors of the buildings and the people. And it just made me feel a lot better. And I texted a friend and it just made me feel better. I kind of gave my, she gave me permission, even though she didn't have to, to like take a few days off. And I think I have to start journaling a lot more and processing what I'm feeling and why I'm feeling it. But ultimately, it doesn't help that I have a cold. And I think I got a cold because it's been all over the place with the weather. I think it's really tough being a founder. It's really tough being an early stage female founder in tech. And I think for me, things have been going a lot slower than I've wanted them to go. And within development, and sometimes that just happens and there's nothing anyone can do about them. It's teaching me a lot about patience. And patience is not my virtue. Like it's not something that I'm very good at. But I'm really trying because I feel like like every every lesson is for a reason. Like your journey is supposed to happen the way it's supposed to happen for a reason. And ultimately, I feel like I'm meant to be on this track that I'm building this platform for a reason. And I know it's an incredible product. I just want it to get out there to a million people like tomorrow. And we're doing so many exciting things. Like we're having an influencer pop up in the summer. Um, we're partnering with universities. We're we're getting it, we're we're getting ready to just fly. I'm starting my VC raise, which is very stressful. And I did something I'm very proud of. I asked a friend for help and she designed it for me. So God bless Sarah. Like, thank you, Sarah, for doing that because that was crazy. And I'm not a visual person. So it's like when you're a solo founder and you have social media and you have a team and you have the VC deck, which by the way, raising a VC raise. This is like a full-time job. So you have all these little things to do, plus my personal side and all the things I'm doing on the side, it's like it's a lot. It's a lot. And I think I'm pretty good at like, you know, time management. But in the process of time management, um, I think I have been working myself to the grindstone. Like I've been on a actually on a diet trying to like feel healthy. Um, I have been, you know, working out a ton. I always aim for like five days a week. But like on the surface, I'm like, wow, I'm I'm hitting every single point. I'm going to therapy. You know, I'm doing my thing. But I realized that I've been very tired recently. And this was not on purpose, by the way. Like I realized I was only eating 1500 calories a day. So that was not intentional. You can't keep me away from food. So I wasn't trying not to eat food, but I think the diet has kind of changed my eating patterns a little bit. And waking up early at 6 or 6 30, like that has changed a lot for me. I used to wake up a tiny bit later later. Like I used to um, I used to wake up at seven and then I wouldn't work out until maybe nine, or wake up at, or I'd work out at 12. So the body changes and the energy changes and what would energize me in the morning with what I would eat would be very different, you know, versus work waking up on and working out on an empty stomach and then coming back reading emails and then eating, you know, my oatmeal bowl. Like, of course, by 11:30, I'm gonna be tired. So I am working on getting more calories into my day and being more intentional because I want to feel healthy. I want to feel like I am, you know, having as much energy as I should in my 20s because I'm so young. So I'm trying to be very patient with myself and trying to remember that like Rome wasn't built in a day, and then I'm putting in the effort. And something that I really love that my therapist is actually telling me about is writing gratitude. So, writing, you know, what you're grateful for in the morning and in the evening. And it's so funny because I had been doing that and not realizing it, but in terms of work, like I would think to myself, okay, what do I need to get done during the day so that by the end of the day I feel satisfied, like I was productive. Even though I have been productive, I still don't feel like it's good enough. And I don't know if you feel the same way, but I think it can be really tough as a founder because no one is giving you a gold start, no one's giving you a promotion, no, no one's giving you a paycheck. So it's like you have all the pressure of everything. And if the ship sinks or or or sails, it's on you. So I think in a lot of ways, my background in dance and being a competitive dancer had really prepared me for this because I am disciplined. And in spite of people not giving me a gold star for doing what I do, I wake up and I have kind of like a schedule for what I do for work. But I think the interesting thing and that I deal with is the feeling to submit sometimes to how you're feeling. If you're tired, you know, can you take a day off? If you're tired, um, are you able to reset? Are you able to, you know, go outside, go for a walk, work out? You know, some people take a nap. I can't take a nap. Anytime I take a nap, I wake up and I feel worse. So I definitely don't take a nap. But yeah, I feel um I feel like today I'm giving myself a break. I am recording this episode, but I'm not gonna do any more work for Fortify today. Um I am gonna do some posts and follow up with my developer, but that's really it because I deserve to take a break. And this is your sign, even though you didn't need to, and your permission to also take a break, because you can't pour from an empty cup, which can be really challenging because wouldn't we like to sometimes? I wish I could be one of those people that could operate on three hours of sleep, but I can't. And it's interesting, like it's been a pattern in my life where I don't necessarily take enough breaks. I like to go, go, go. Like, what would happen if you stood still? And I don't know. I still don't have an answer to that question. I'm very curious about that question, actually. Ultimately, I feel like typically movement helps me. I'm trying not to go to the gym today because I'm not feeling good, and I don't think that's necessarily a good idea to push myself too hard. I thought a walk was really good. I'm gonna go on another walk today, and it's beautiful outside. But this is your permission to take a break. It is okay to take a break. It is okay, I think sometimes to feel tired and to feel maybe a little sad, and I think it's a sign that you're alive and that you have feelings, and that you know, life is this wave and it's not always going to be perfect, contrary to what social media says, and I think that it is an incredible opportunity that we have to make the best out of our lives, and people don't talk about it, people talk about hustle culture on social media, but we all need breaks, and I've found and have taken them this week that has been better. So I think we should do this together. I think we should go on this like gratitude journaling journey together. You know, writing four things every morning about what we're grateful for, four things in the evening about what we're grateful for, and comments on this podcast in the comments below. Comments on social media, DM me, but let's hold each other accountable to remember what we're grateful for, you know, because there's so much to be proud of. And I think our brain tends to focus on the negative, but it is malleable, and we can't train it to think in the positive and to hold it to give ourselves grace for just being human and not being able to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So this is your permission to take a break. This is your bit, this is your permission to go out for a walk, to write down some words of gratitude for yourself and for what you've accomplished. And I'm so proud of you. And you're not doing this alone. You have this fortified community, and I am so, so proud of you. So keep going and take your break. You deserve it. Figure out what works best for you, and let's show some gratitude for ourselves and for other people. Love you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If this resonated with you, don't just listen, pass it along to a friend who really needs to hear it. Follow the show, subscribe, follow us on social media on all platforms at AT Fortify Wellness. AT Fortify Wellness. Remember, you don't have to figure this out alone. You are not alone, and I will see you next week on the Fortify Wellness Podcast.