You Can’t Out-Think Exhaustion: The 4R Fix for High Achievers

Burnout doesn’t always arrive with sirens; sometimes it’s a quiet collapse on the office floor before a board meeting. We sit down with leadership psychologist and human performance expert Rachael Edmondson-Clark to unpack how high-achieving women slide from “I’ve got this” into overload, why dopamine and constant wins can become compulsive, and the simple biological habits that pull you back to steady ground. Rachael’s story moves from masking and toxic positivity to a mission-led life, with honest lessons about listening to the body, not just the mind.

Across the conversation, we blend psychology with physiology in practical ways you can use today. We explore the power of morning daylight to anchor your circadian rhythm, walking meetings to unlock creativity and problem solving, and micro-moments that repair relationships—a six-second kiss, the “Disney hug rule,” and being truly present for the people you love. We also talk about the trap of saving restoration for weekends or holidays and how to weave recovery into daily life, even when work and family demands are intense.

Rachael shares the Four R model—Recognise, Restore, Resolve, Regulate—a clear framework to spot stress signals early, top up resources, tackle external stressors with brave conversations, and use regulation as a bridge rather than a crutch. You’ll come away with language, tools and small rituals that reduce reactivity, expand bandwidth and protect long-term performance. Want more of Rachael’s work? Find her at https://ellevar.co.uk/ or on LinkedIn. If this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review to help more women break the burnout cycle.

The Balance & Beyond Podcast Hosted by Jo Stone, founder of The Balance Institute

For women who are already succeeding, but beginning to wonder if they're willing to keep losing themselves in the process.

We know high achievers, because we are one. This podcast draws on Jo's 20 years in global leadership and thousands of hours coaching executives and ambitious women: the patterns she sees, how to untangle them, and what it actually takes to keep your success without paying for it with yourself.

If something landed today, there's more where that came from.

And if you know a woman this would resonate with, send it her way.

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Transcript

Rachel’s Burnout Collapse Story

Jo Stone (Host) 0:03

Welcome to Balance and Beyond, a podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we're committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance where your career, relationships, and health all thrive, and where you have the power to define success on your terms. Dive right in. Can you imagine heating burnout so hard you wake up on the floor of your glass walled office? That's exactly what happened to Rachel Edmondson Clark, a powerhouse in leadership psychology and human performance, who joins us today. Let's dive right in. Why are high achieving women more prone to burnout?

Why High Achievers Are At Risk

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 0:52

I think we can be more prone to some of the mental health traits like our ambition and our constant drive for more and our high self-expectations that mean that we we drive ourselves and we push ourselves towards that success. Let's be honest about this as well. We get that dopamine hit when we are achieving, when we get the thing, when we achieve that success. And that dopamine system pushes us, and it can become obsessive and compulsive in some cases, and it can lead to burnout, to stress, and to poor mental health over time. I also think that we recognize being in high-performance environments is good for us to help us achieve those things, but equally, those environments can also push us and encourage us to mask some of these issues as well. So I think we get really good at reframing our stress and our mental strain. This doesn't happen to me. I'm high performing, so I can push on, I can get through this. We end up masking that ultimately over a prolonged period of time to our detriment.

Jo Stone (Host) 2:16

Absolutely. Mask is a really interesting word because it is what we do, isn't it? We put on the armour, we pretend everything's fine, we keep pushing. What do you see as some of the ways that women mask burnout or how we're actually feeling?

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 2:31

Well, in my personal experience, I pushed myself and masked for a really prolonged period of time. So not even months, I would say it was years. I had a team and a job that I cared about greatly, and I'd worked my entire career really to get where I wanted to be and to where I was at that point. I had pushed myself to the extent that I was disrespecting my body, neglecting the most important relationship in my life at that time, and ultimately that led me to burnout and collapse. I remember the moment vividly that it happened. I was in my glass-fronted office, I was preparing to go into the boardroom, and instead of walking out that door, I found myself lying on the floor staring up and looking up at the ceiling tiles. I'd collapsed, I couldn't think, I couldn't breathe. Um, and it was an incredibly scary and low moment for me at that point. And in the run-up to that, I had just continued to mask and reframe. So, with all that I knew about positive psychology at that point, I had just completely, continually reframed what I was experiencing to tell myself that it was okay and I would get through this, and I could just push and carry on. And eventually my body caught up with me and it said, Time out, that's enough.

Masking, Reframing And Biology

Jo Stone (Host) 4:07

I'm gonna put you on the floor, literally. That's it. Yeah, yeah. And it is really interesting. Your story, while obviously it's very unique to you, and it, I'm sure at the time it was uh you don't make light of those situations, it becomes all too common, doesn't it? This pushing ourselves. You mentioned this positive psychology. I think this is something that a lot of us do without actually realizing. I love that you've brought this to our attention, where it's the I'll be fine, just suck it up. We all have our own unique way of pushing ourselves to the limit.

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 4:41

So my burnout story was over 10 years ago now. And 10 years prior to that, I've been introduced to Tony Robbins. So some of your listeners may well be familiar with his triad and the three molders of meaning. So I had been practicing for 10 years how to reframe and how to choose what I decided that situations meant. And the framework for anybody that is not familiar with it is that we are making decisions, effectively, three decisions all of the time. One is how to move our bodies physically, the second one is where we're choosing to put our focus, and the third is our language and what we are saying ultimately the situation means. And those three decisions they can impact how we feel about things. So the way that I was reframing at that time was constantly saying to myself, well, if I can just get through this, if I can reach this next point here, everything will be fine. I can do this, I am okay. The way that I would physically move my body, that is a conscious regulation strategy, and it's fine in the short term. But if we're not getting back to true restoration of our biology, or we're not resolving how we are emotionally feeling, then over a prolonged period of time, one of the clinically predictive the risk and outcome is burnout. We can't forget the biology along with that positive psychology. It's like pushing water up a hill. So the two have to go hand in hand.

Reconnecting With The Body

Jo Stone (Host) 6:22

Absolutely. And what did you learn as your body decided, hello, I'm here, you can no longer ignore me anymore? What was that journey like for you when you were used to ignoring your body and pushing down those signals and I often call that toxic positivity, where we're just fine and we'll keep going. How did you really build that connection back?

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 6:44

It took a long time. And if I'm really very honest with you and your listeners, it's still a journey that I'm on. And that really is about having that connection with self. I mean, I know before we started recording, you were sharing a little bit about how the journaling has helped you really connect back with yourself and what feels in alignment. And I think that's an ongoing relationship that we have with ourselves and really tuning in to recognize that our feelings are very useful signals. What are they telling us? And how can we take really good, considered action off the back of that?

Jo Stone (Host) 7:21

What do you find now, you know, working with women and the work that you've done on yourself? How do we stop waiting until we're lying on the floor, staring up at the tiles, to have that wake-up call? What do you wish you know now that you perhaps would have loved to have given Rachel before she got there?

COVID Stress And Basic Restorers

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 7:41

Well, that's a really good question because if I'm honest, I have come close to it, but I haven't got there again. So during COVID, I was running my own business at this point. I had two young children. It was very difficult where we were trying to homeschool, didn't have any other support or care. My husband was also working, and it was really hard actually to be able to do things about that other than prioritize sleep, nutrition, daylight, nature where we could and where we were allowed to get out and walk. And of course, we were inhibited with the social interaction and connection and contact that we could have with others during that time, which is also a key part of restoring our own personal ecosystems and our mood. Mindset isn't everything, it's incredibly powerful, but it's not everything. And you really do need to make sure you are listening to your biology as well as your psychology.

Choosing A Mission Over A Career

Jo Stone (Host) 8:40

Which is interesting that so many of us have come to that same conclusion. I was in the mindset is everything. You can reframe anything, you can mind over matter, the whole works, but it just goes to show how much as a society we do put value in our minds and in our intelligence and don't put as much value or time and effort into understanding our biology or what's going on inside this organism that houses our brain that we put on such a pedestal.

Becoming A Scientist Of Yourself

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 9:11

And one of the big things helped me get better connected with myself was after that day when I collapsed, I did speak to the director that I reported into. We decided to restructure the team. Coming out the back of that, I was able to really think about what was important to me now. And I remember this moment really vividly. I was in the shower getting ready for work one morning, and it was as there was a whisper on my heart, and I never really listened to that voice. I remember turning to that voice and saying, What are you saying? Like, what like it was the first time I'd really acknowledged that voice inside. What it came back was, you're made for more than this. There's something else you should be doing. And when I got out of the shower, I had no idea what that was, but I had made a commitment to myself. I remember my foot touching the bath mat and saying to myself, right, don't want a job or a career anymore. I want something that feels like a life's mission that I can wake up to every single morning and I can love what I am doing. That then started me following my heart, what lit me up. And again, I didn't know the answer, but one of the things that I came across was around health coaching. And so I signed up to this health coaching course, not because I wanted to become a health coach, but because I wanted to learn more about holistic health and what that could mean for me and my own body. That was an absolutely beautiful year of learning over 300 different dietary theories, all aspects of health, not just diet, but being a scientist of myself and what worked for me and my body, and nurturing and honouring that in that space.

Jo Stone (Host) 11:04

Which is interesting because so many women don't think they have the time or don't give themselves permission to find out what works for them, but they've lost access to that inner wisdom. I love you said that you were guided by what was on your heart. Is that a journey that you've continued or a relationship that you've continued to develop?

Micro Moments Of Connection

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 11:22

Yes, and I'm not going to pretend that it's easy all the time. I recognize that I can flip out of that and get very in my head if I'm not careful. Things that help me come back to myself and come back to my heart. Nature, I just love, and I always find that so restorative. Back in May, actually, I was fortunate enough to go on holiday. We went to Turkey with my family, and it was a wonderful holiday, but in complete contrast, we'd been in Turkey on one of these all-inclusive, there'd been so much available to us. But it was one of these big hotels, and you know, you look down the beach and it's big hotel after big hotel after big hotel. And the day that we came back, we went to a place in a national park close to us. We just went up into the mountains. It was a bit of a rainy, drizzly day. Admittedly, my youngest had been car sick and it was everywhere in the car. But I remember going up that mountain, just feeling the greatest amount of peace, of calm, connectedness, because I was just out in this big expanse of nature and national park, more so than this fabulous holiday that we just had. And for me, it was the contrast of those two things. Because we often think, oh, if I can just get to the weekend, or if I can just get to the next holiday, then I'll get the chance to restore. And actually, I think how are we building in, integrating that restoration into our daily, into our daily lives? Getting out and walking, getting in daylight, getting in nature, I find one of the most deeply restorative things that I can do.

Jo Stone (Host) 13:05

And I love that story because it's not perfect. And I know I used to try to engineer, you know, family fun days, or I need restorative time, I need a half day at the spa. And if something like that was to happen, it would ruin it because it's not ours meant to go. But there is a beauty in accepting you can have this great experience in the mountains with the waft of vomit from a child's clothing, you know, coming past you. But I mean this ability or almost a muscle we need to build in finding those moments of peace and calm, even amongst the chaos and the car sick and the kids whinging instead of holding on to it looking a certain way.

Simple Daily Restoration Habits

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 13:46

Oh, hugely so. And in fact, one of my clients that I've been working with recently, this has been a constant theme for them in terms of their expectations of how they want either family holidays to be or weekends with the family. And when those expectations aren't met, it's a huge disappointment and create some dysregulation emotionally for them. And so we've been talking a lot around how you can trade those expectations for appreciation. One of the things I notice greatly in my life with work and family and it all being very, very busy, is that often the magic is in the moments, the small moments. I mean, for me, connection is a huge value of mine. And it can often just be in those few moments when you wake up and have that first exchange in the morning with your husband or your partner, with my kids, when I just have that moment where I go and give them a cuddle, or they come back from school. And someone said to me, if you kiss for six seconds, so you hold that kiss just a little bit longer, it's like magic. And so when I talk about those moments, so I tease with my husband now. I'm like, no, no, no, you come back here, we're having a six, and it makes a difference, it's like six seconds. But what I mean about it's those moments where there's so much magic to be had, and often I think with technology in our busy lives today, we're so often our attention is here in all these different places and fractious. Whereas actually, if we bring ourselves back to that present moment, be truly present with the people that we are with in that moment, and yeah, there's so much magic in that.

Jo Stone (Host) 15:36

I love that. Six seconds is all it takes, and you think what you could miss and how relationships can grow, whether it's a six-second hug or a six-second kiss. I know I have a rule with my youngest daughter's quite cuddly, and they call it the Disney hug rule. I, when I heard this, like I'm gonna adopt that. When you're a Disney character, you're never allowed to break the hug before the child. So the child always has to break the hug that's in their rules as cast members in Disney. And so I thought, I'm gonna adopt that. I'm always going to let her break the hug. And so I hug, and sometimes I've been amazed it's been 25 seconds or 30 seconds because I've not gone, okay, okay, off you go. Go get changed or go get ready for school or whatever. I just sit there and hug. So that's one of my little things that I've adopted in the last few years, which I'm gonna adopt your six-second rule and maybe you can adopt my Disney hug rule. Love that.

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 16:27

I love that. I love it. Yes, yes, please. I'm stealing that right now.

Jo Stone (Host) 16:31

As you said, it's those micro moments. And so often I know when I was working in corporate and I was incredibly busy and burnt out, my mind was never present. So I'd be having a hug and I would break it straight away because come on, come on, come on, come on, just all that ever came out of my mouth. Hurry up, hurry up, let's go, go, go. Because that's how my mind was racing. It was constantly frantic and lurching from one thing to the other. I could never enjoy anything. Just level of cortisol and adrenaline, really, that start running your system is insane.

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 17:04

And I wonder sometimes if one of the things that might be helpful for us to remember, as things are in many senses getting exponentially better, but also exponentially worse in the world, and the rate of change seems absolutely crazy. Is how can we bring it back to some of the really simple things, remembering that ultimately we are animals, and how do we just bring it back to the stuff that we would very naturally, naturally do, and how we've very naturally evolved?

Jo Stone (Host) 17:40

I find it fascinating that our brain loves to overcomplicate everything, particularly, I find high-achieving women. Like, no, no, no, no. It can't be as simple as just going stand in the sunshine. They downplay everything. Have you been on that journey of learning to really appreciate those little simple things or moments?

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 17:56

Oh gosh, yes. And my call to action for anyone that's thinking about that is when you wake up, just go and spend two minutes with your eyes in daylight. Two minutes or thereabouts will kickstart your circadian rhythm. It will be really helpful for you in terms of your energy, your body clock, and your eating patterns and everything else. And do what I did when I was doing the health coaching. Be that scientist of yourself. If you're not sure, go and try it and see what it can do. I've been working with some really high-performing corporates because they're under a great deal of strain. There's a lot that's happening for them in their organization, a lot of change. They're being put under very high demands. And so we've been working with senior leadership teams within that organization and simple things like getting out for a walk in daylight, but getting out with another companion, with a buddy, and going for a walk to chat things through, massively altering the clarity that they've got, the creativity that they've got, the problem solving that they've got, just because they're doing something small, like go and get some fresh air outside and move our bodies. We aren't designed to sit in front of screens all day the way that we so often do.

The Four R Model Explained

Jo Stone (Host) 19:12

We just work our butts. Rachel, is there anything that we haven't talked about today that you would like to pass on to our listeners or that you feel they need to know?

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 19:22

If I may, I may just share a model that I was introduced to about three years ago, and I want to give the person full credit for this. So I've been working with an organization called CHX Performance, and Professor Chris Beattie, who is Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology, gosh if I can get those words out, and cognition and neuroscience at both Oxford and Kent universities here in the UK. He has come up with what I consider to be one of the best frameworks or models in the 20 plus years that I have been fascinated with this. How do we have a consistent capacity to be able to perform at our best? Very simply. So we'll make sure that there's a visual of this that people can download and get. But very simply, it's this it's called the four R model. And those four R's are number one, we've got to recognize when we feel out of sorts, that that is a valuable signal to us. So what is it telling us? We've got to tune in and as we've been talking about, really listen to that. So the first R is to recognize. Once we've recognized, how much of that is an internal feedback loop that's telling us that our own internal systems, whether it's sleep, daylight, nutrition, movement, um, or just time with people that we love and care about and who care about us, is lacking in some way. And do we need to restore? So that's the second R. Is do we need to restore our mood, our energy, and our bandwidth to deal with stress? Because actually it's to do with that internal feedback loop of our own resources. Do we need to make sure we're topping those up? So that's the second R. Of course, we don't operate in a vacuum of just ourselves, we've got the wider world and things around us. And so the third R is about resolution. So sometimes it could be something or someone that is causing that emotional feeling to be there. Someone or something has upset us or um has angered us, frustrated us. And so, how do we recognize how do we recognize that? And what do we do to resolve it? We can't always resolve everything, but and and also we can't always resolve things straight away, but particularly in the workplace, I think we can lean into some brave and courageous conversations that help us get better resolution. And if we don't do that, we want to be really, really careful because what we could be doing, and this is the fourth R, is that we're regulating how we're feeling, and I think that's what's happening to a lot of us. Over time, we are suppressing how we are feeling, regulating it as I was, and whilst that conscious regulation that I talked about can be exceptionally helpful, so whilst I think that can be enormously helpful, wherever possible we want to be getting back to those other two R's, that restoration regularly throughout our days where we can, not waiting for the weekends or the holidays, but how we're regularly getting back to that and how we're regularly restoring any emotional dysregulation that we are feeling. So that to me has really helped bring the psychology and the biology together in one very simple, almost like an algorithm, really. It's a framework that you can keep coming back to time and time again, just to make sure that you are operating at your absolute best. So those four are. So yeah, we need to be able to recognize we're feeling something. Once we've recognized it, how much of that is mood related, i.e., to do with my sleep, my, you know, am I hungry or hangry? Is it to do with the fact that I've not been out, I've not had daylight, I've not had nature, I've not moved my body today? Is it just that I'm freezing cold or boiling hot? That's going to interrupt how you are feeling. So is this a personal ecosystem thing, something to do with my environment and what's going on for me? Or is this external, which is the third R? Because we want to be able to resolve it's something or someone from the external environment that is impacting me, that's making me feel triggered in some way. How do I go about either fixing that problem or resolving that problem with either the individual or the thing that is causing that issue? So when we can't either immediately restore or resolve, that's when we regulate. I could talk forever about this, Joe.

Jo Stone (Host) 24:03

I'm no, it's a it's a really helpful framework because I love that it's got a number of different components because it recognizes that there is, pun intended, it recognizes that there is a role that your internal ecosystem is playing and the external ecosystem. And very often I find in women it's both. It's often the unresolved emotions from yesterday that they tried to suppress and drown out with the wine. Now they're trying to start the day with the coffee, and then they wonder why they're triggered by something. So these types of frameworks can help us understand that we've got to break the circuit. You can't just keep pushing on and pushing on because you're gonna end up flat on the floor, staring at the wall, like Rachel did.

Closing Reflections And Resources

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 24:44

Exactly. Exactly, yes, yes. And if anyone's got any questions about this, of course, you know, please just reach out and and let me know, and I'll be glad to glad to answer those.

Jo Stone (Host) 24:56

Yeah. Well, Rachel, it's been wonderful having you here. Where can people learn more about you and the wonderful work that you do?

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 25:02

So the best place is through my website, which is www.elevar.co.uk, and elevar is e-l-l-ar. Or if people want to connect with me directly, just look up Rachel Edmondson Clark on LinkedIn. Drop me a message there.

Jo Stone (Host) 25:20

Well, thank you for having you today. We will be thinking about restoring and regulating and recognizing a great framework for us. And thank you again for sharing your story. I think it's so important that we share individual burnout journeys to reduce any shame about them and to know that other women aren't alone. So thanks for coming today.

Rachel Edmunson-Clark (Guest) 25:41

Joe, thank you for all you do and all you put out in the world. I think you're wonderful. Thank you.

Jo Stone (Host) 25:46

Thanks for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who might need to hear this today. And if you're feeling extra generous, leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice would mean the world to us. If you're keen to dive deeper into our world, visit balanceinstitute.com to discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women avoid burnout and create a life of balance and beyond. Thanks again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Balance and Beyond Podcast.