Silence Imposter Syndrome and Beat Burnout with Rachel Wexler

In honor of International Women’s Day, I’m joined by executive coach Rachel Wexler for a real conversation about what happens when you look “fine” on the outside—but inside you’re pushing, overthinking, and quietly unraveling. Rachel shares how early pressure to appear successful can create perfectionism and people-pleasing, and how a personal turning point helped her finally get support and shift the way she cared for herself.

We connect the dots between imposter syndrome (that “I’m a fraud” feeling), anxiety, and the slow slide into burnout—especially when your workload grows faster than your sense of stability or support. Rachel explains how imposter thoughts can pull you out of the “productive stress” zone and into chronic self-doubt, and why that uncertainty can spiral into exhaustion over time. 

Rachel also breaks burnout down into three clear parts:

Exhaustion (emotional, physical, or both)

Cynicism / depersonalization (withdrawing, losing connection and meaning)

Reduced efficacy (losing your edge and feeling less effective than you used to) 

I also share how imposter syndrome can feel compounded when you’re already “passing as normal” with a mood disorder—how the pressure to perform can stack on top of what you’re already managing internally. 

And we get practical about what helps: why remote work can strip away the small moments that build reassurance and belonging, and how to intentionally recreate those feedback loops by asking directly for feedback, scheduling connection, and choosing psychologically safe environments with authentic leadership and a solid job-fit dynamic. Rachel offers so many actionable words of wisdom. Start taking notes!

Work with Rachel: Rachel Wexler Leadership: Next Level Executive Coaching for Modern Leaders and Organizations

Follow Rachel: Rachel regularly shares reflections, learnings, and perspectives on leadership on LinkedIn and Instagram

JEWEL: Joining and Empowering Women in the Exploration of Lived Experience celebrates professional women leaders' journeys, with the intention of using their stories to provide career insights and navigation support to mid-career women on the rise.

Transcript

Sponsor And Opening

Janine 0:00

We are supported by the Soar with Tapping app. Tapping is a powerful science-backed tool that calms your nervous system. I've been using Sore with Tapping nightly for insomnia, and I am sleeping well. Visit the Sore with Tapping app at Apple and Google Play Stores to start your journey towards freedom right from your phone. Welcome to Bipolar She. I'm your host, Janine Well. In honor of International Women's Day, my guest is executive coach Rachel Wexler, and we're talking about women in the workplace. Rachel currently counsels women in their early careers as well as C-suite clients. Today she offers insight on how we find work that allows us to have just enough stress to be in the zone of productivity, and how to negotiate imposter syndrome should it ever arise. She breaks down burnout into distinct parts, and we get real about the toll of exhaustion. Rachel is founder of the Joule Project, which stands for joining and empowering women in the exploration of lived experience. The project is a database of interviews with over 60 change makers and leaders whose voices offer inspiration and insight on career development, especially for early to mid-career women. I share Rachel's passion for gathering stories from those with live life experience. It is so vital. Voice upon voice, we can normalize any hardship women are going through. So thank you and welcome, Rachel. Welcome, Rachel. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Thanks, Janine. It's so nice to be here. I really appreciate you inviting me.

Childhood Roots Of People-Pleasing

Janine 1:55

Well, I'm happy you're here, and I always do this to all of my guests. I just jump right in and I ask that you go back to some point in time when your mental health was challenged.

Cracks In The Veneer And Getting Help

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Let me go back to myself as a child and explain how that got me to a place where I found myself ill-equipped as an adult. I grew up in a family where there was a fair amount of mental health instability and where there was a lot of pressure to hide what might be happening beneath the surface or behind closed doors, and a pressure to put out a sign of success and happiness and fulfillment. And how did that impact me? Well, I became a natural pleaser and a conflict avoider. My goal was to figure out how to make everyone else happy so that I could, in my way, control situations from becoming out of hand. And you know, we all know that a healthy amount of stress is good. And so I threw myself into everything I did. And I, that idea of achievement was pretty central to everything that seemed to be to make everyone else proud of me and also seem productive. So I went to the right schools, I got the right jobs, I figured out how to look good for everybody else, right? And then when I was 40, I was remember being at my birthday party with some very, very close friends. And they made these toasts that were really complimentary. But the pervading theme was I don't know how you do all the things you do. And all of a sudden I realized that I was continuing to put out this veneer, that everything was great when inside I didn't feel that at all. And a couple years later, it took a pretty bad ski accident for me to really face some truths and to start to get some help, to really think learn how to advocate, how to practice self-care and really how to practice self-compassion. Because if left untreated, that was going to be the route to burnout, exhaustion, and deeper depression. So you did get help for depression at that point? It was my primary care physician who actually said, you know what, a little medication would be helpful to you. And therapy would also be the right path to really starting to face some of the things that I had spent 40 plus years pretending weren't really an issue.

Janine 4:59

And did that experience impact the work that you're doing right now?

Linking Imposter Syndrome To Burnout

The Three Dimensions Of Burnout

Mental Health, Identity, And “Passing”

SPEAKER_00 5:05

I think it absolutely did. As I launched my consulting and my coaching practice, I also wanted to really harness some of the stories that women leaders have experienced and some of the lessons that they've learned, the influences that they've had, how they have grown into the leaders whom they are today, because no one person has all the answers. And so if we can collect different gems of someone's experience and we can make some personal meaning on our own. So that is the Jewel project. What I'd love to do is help make a connection between imposter syndrome and burnout, right? So imposter syndrome, let's say, is somebody who is feeling the sense of fraud. Most of the time, it's like an intellectual fraud. Like I'm in this job, and someone's asked me to do something that is far beyond my capabilities. And to a certain extent, like stress is good. And so if it's what powers you through a really hard project or to the next promotion or raise or to a new field or some variant of what you're doing, that's really positive and good. But when that sense of being, and by the way, I say to a lot of my clients when they're talking about imposter syndrome, I remind them somebody hired you to do this job because they saw that you have the, if not the capabilities right now, the potential to do the job, right? And so you're not a fraud, you're learning as you're going. But sometimes that sense of fraud of being a fraud tends to outweigh that zone of productivity or that feeling of productivity and confidence. And that individual starts to question herself in this case. But imposter syndrome for a long time was known as a associated with women. And the reality is there are plenty of men and more than anyone ever expects who also deal with imposter syndrome on a regular basis. And so you start questioning yourself, and that that creates anxiety. And we all know when left untreated, anxiety can lead to depression, right? It can also lead to exhaustion. And exhaustion is one of three dimensions of burnout. So you take somebody who's thriving in their career, right? They're doing well, they're, they're, they move on from one assignment to the next, and the pressures, the responsibilities, the expectations grow and grow. And at some point, they are feeling that there's such a mismatch between where they are and what is being expected of them that they start to feel like I can't do it, or I'm giving everything to my job and I'm not giving enough to myself. And that leads to burnout. Burnout is seen in an emotional exhaustion, right? It can be a physical exhaustion and it can also be an emotional one, that real sense of depletion. Secondly, burnout is depersonalization or cynicism. So it's that withdrawal, that loss of connection. Sometimes it's somebody says, you know, I used to love what I was doing because I felt like we were really helping people, right? There had been value in what they did. And then all of a sudden they've lost that sense of idealism. And the third dimension is a loss of productivity. And so that can be I used to be such a high performer, and I'm just not finding myself as efficacious as I used to be. And with that comes a lower morale, maybe worsened coping skills, right? And so you can see where there's that zone of productivity where that stress is good. And just like anything in life, when too much of even a good thing can lead to anxiety and burnout. And that's really where what was once a healthy stress becomes a mental health challenge.

Janine 9:23

Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like for those of us who do have mental health issues and perhaps more severe ones, we'll say mood disorder, bipolar disorder. I carry a sense of imposter syndrome just kind of through my world and my day-to-day life. Like, okay, I'm not normal, but I have to pass as normal. So I'm going to, you know, do this and try to be normal. And so I feel like that is something I'm sure I'm not alone in that. But then you add on expectations from a job and feeling, you know, and then feeling more of like a double whammy of imposter syndrome. So it just seems like it can certainly be compounded for those of us that are already kind of trying to hide a little bit.

Choosing Contexts And Bosses Wisely

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Yeah, without a doubt. And you you can see, you know, it's like you're you're on a treadmill already, right? And you are getting to, you know, you're running 10% longer than you've been running already, you're already getting tired, and then all of a sudden the incline goes up. So you can see that for a mentally healthy individual, right, without a pre-existing condition or known condition, this stress can exacerbate a real sense of like a lack of control. And so, you know, in a work sense, but really in any sense, it's about choosing those right environments, right? So it's the right work context or the right organizations to get involved in, even from a volunteer position, right? It's about choosing the right bosses because you can have the best job in the world, but your relationship with your boss is so fundamental to your success in the job and your self-concept around the job. It's about trusting oneself when you know that things are not quite right, really getting to a place where we can listen to ourselves and also taking breaks, understanding what our own needs are. And sometimes it's easy to jump on, jump onto that treadmill and actually turn up the dial and make it go faster when sometimes what we really need, and actually those around us need too, is just to slow it down a little bit and take a break to gain perspective and so on and so forth.

Asking For Help And Feedback Gaps

Janine 12:00

Ultimately, did you have to ask for help to get your life back on track or into a better position? I did.

Remote Work And Lost Micro-Connections

SPEAKER_00 12:08

I did. I needed to I needed to ask for help on a number of fronts. And let me be the first to admit I am still learning to ask for help. So I can't say that I have all the answers, but learning to ask for help, even for just one from just one person, is the beginning. So I have a number of clients who have a different variant, we'll say, of imposter syndrome, in that they don't know where they stand and they don't get that active feedback. And that's hard because, you know, I was and I was thinking about it when I was on a Zoom call a couple weeks ago, and there were probably 10 people on the call. And I was going back to, you know, 2015, seems like such a long time ago. And I used that just because it was 10 years ago. But most of our meetings were around a table, right? And so if the meeting is starting five minutes late, you, or even three minutes late, you turn to the person next to you and you have a little conversation. And maybe in that conversation, you say, I really enjoyed your presentation last week, or you say, You said something in a meeting, and I don't know if I really understand what you intended. Can you clarify it for me? Right. And that's a connection. That's a connecting point. When we go into a Zoom and there are 10 faces on the screen, you have to take a risk to speak up. And so what oftentimes happens is that people don't talk or they talk about something really superficial. And those opportunities for connection are lost. And it's it really is a loss, right? Because those are those opportunities to really get to know each other. And we have lost some of that. And so we don't get that feedback. We don't get that feedback of walking down the hall and someone high-fives you because they think you did a really good job. Or somebody says, you know what, can I just tell you something that happened yesterday and I just want to let you know it before it festers, or before we don't see each other for another couple of weeks? We've lost those moments. And those are really those moments where people get informal feedback about how well they're doing and that make them feel more comfortable in their current situations.

Creating Safety, Risk, And Fit

Janine 14:52

So, how do we make those connections? How do we compensate for that? You know, in this age that we're in, both in the workplace and at home, like how do we kind of fight for connection?

It’s Not All On You

Normalizing Experience And Closing

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Yeah. And what I really do with many of my clients is encourage them to seek feedback, to schedule that time. And it takes out some of the spontaneity, of course, but it's much better of asking a question directly than sitting on one's own and feeling disconnected and questioning. Because if we go back to the imposter syndrome to burnout continuum, when we don't know where we stand, we start to question ourselves and become anxious, right? And that's the tip of the iceberg. I think the other piece is there really is no substitute for in-person connection. And so when you have the opportunity to be in person, I would 100% take advantage of those moments. It's also about identifying psychologically safe environments, whether that is work environments or recreational environments. We like to be in places that are fair and transparent and we know where things stand. There's really no substitute for empathetic leadership so that everyone around that leader feels seen and heard and known. And to be in environments where dialogue is encouraged, healthy conflict is not just tolerated, but almost expected, where we can challenge each other and share discordant beliefs and then come back in the end and acknowledge that having different points of view are still okay. And where people feel safe taking risks. We don't grow without taking risks, right? And stepping a little bit out of our comfort zone. And to put ourselves in environments where those things can happen also help to help people feel as though they fit in their environments. I think one of the things, Janine, is that people often think, well, I can't solve the environment so I can fix myself. And maybe that's a better workout routine, right? I'm gonna get in shape because if I'm in physical shape, then I'll be in mental shape. Or it's I'm learning meditation, right? Or I'm changing my work schedule to better accommodate my life situations, you know, things like that. And that only goes so far. But when we think about how do we address burnout, right? Which is like kind of a manifestation of imposter syndrome, it's also about addressing the context, right? So you've got, you know, if we talk about it purely in a work environment, but imagine that we can take it beyond work so that we're also talking about any community organization or recreational organization, right? But to find that person job fit. So you want to put yourself in a healthy context, right? But it's also about what is the what is the work life or what is the lifeblood of the organization? It's not just about the day-to-day, but it's about being resonant with the the values and about having a greater goal in whatever type of work you're doing.

Janine 18:43

I think this is so helpful, Rachel. I don't usually think about I I always put the focus on myself in the sense that I should be able to fit into something. There isn't, it's all, it's all me. I carry all the issues and and and not looking. And it's so tiring. Yeah, and not looking at the actual environment or feeling like that you're allowed to do that.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

It becomes less about what society is telling us we should want and more about really, you know, to the point of taking breaks and gaining perspective that really helps in in all of this, in building mental health so that we don't ultimately burn out.

Janine 19:26

Yeah, absolutely. I think this is just so helpful going from this pop culture idea of imposter syndrome and looking at it, it's serious and it's preventable, like a lot of mental health issues. But it does. It can lead to anxiety, it can lead to major depression. So it is worth listening to and learning how to combat that. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Absolutely. I am honored to be here, but the topics that you address and the people you brought onto the show really not only touch people's hearts, but I would imagine also make people feel like they're not alone. They're not the only ones going through whatever situation or you know topic you're discussing. And I'm on the side of the coin right now where people do tell me what the minute they hear I'm a I'm an executive coach, they start telling me what's going on in their world. And in some cases it's gratifying, in other cases, it's completely humbling. But what I can say is that people want to know that they're not alone, that they're not the first one going through this. And in so doing, it helps to normalize their own experience and emotions. And there's such value to the work that you're doing. So thank you, Janine.

Janine 20:52

Oh no, thank you. Thank you so much for listening. Please do share an episode of Bipolar She. It's how we keep this little independent podcast alive. And please check out my link in the show notes for Buy Me a Coffee. It's a platform where you can support me and the podcast for just a few dollars. These small donations are keeping me and my editor afloat. And as always, thank you for listening.