Invisible Weight: The Corporate Burnout Hiding Behind High Performance

What happens when the weight you're carrying was never fully yours to begin with?

In this episode of Unsealing You, Natalie Luke sits down with Joanna Sadowska, PhD, EMBA— a bench scientist turned scientific communicator and entrepreneur — who made one of the hardest pivots a high achiever can make: walking away from a ten-year identity to build something entirely new. While still holding a full-time job.

What Joanna's story reveals is something Natalie calls the Trust Tax — the compounding cost of being trusted by others and by yourself in ways that serve the system without building the person. Corporate burnout rarely looks like collapse. It looks like someone who is still delivering, still promoted, still showing up — and quietly disappearing from the inside.

In this conversation, you will hear:

• Why corporate burnout is a design problem — not a discipline problem
• What it actually feels like to not know what to call yourself anymore — and what gets you through
• The sentence that separates a personal failure story from a structural diagnosis
• Why the standard you hold yourself to may be the weight nobody asked you to carry
• Why asking for help is not a personal concession — it is a structural decision

If you are in a transition, carrying more than you agreed to, or quietly wondering whether the weight is supposed to feel this heavy — this episode is for you.

If this episode resonated — if you recognized yourself in Joanna's story — I have two free and low-cost tools built exactly for what you just heard about.

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In 15 minutes, find out exactly where you are over-carrying — and where the load is actually coming from. This is not a mindset quiz. It is a structural self-assessment that identifies whether your over-responsibility is emerging, chronic, or identity-level. Free. No fluff. Just clarity.

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Guest Bio

Joanna Sadowska, PhD, EMBA is a scientific communicator and entrepreneur who spent over a decade as a bench scientist before building a business that helps companies and researchers communicate complex ideas clearly. She holds an executive MBA and has navigated one of the hardest pivots a high achiever can make — from being the expert to becoming the person who builds and communicates the work of other experts.

Connect with Joanna on LinkedIn. Click Here!

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The Executive Wins Podcast features inspiring Executives who share their biggest wins.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Uncealing You. Today's guest is Joanna, and she spent over a decade as a bench scientist designing experiments, publishing research, delivering excellence in the lab. Then she made one of the hardest pivots a high achiever can make. She walked away from the identity she had spent 10 years building and started over a new field, new business, and new version of herself while still holding a full-time job. What I want you to pay attention to in this conversation is not what she did. It's how she thought about it. Because Joanna did something that most capable people never do. She learned to put things down. Not because she gave up, because she simply figured out what was actually hers to carry. That is harder than it sounds. And by the end of this episode, I think you're going to understand exactly why. I'm Dr. Natalie Luke, and let's get into it. Joanna, thank you so much for coming on to Unsealing You. I'm really happy to have you on to hear about your career and all your pivots. You've spent several years as a scientist leading complex projects, publishing and managing collaborations. And during that time, you started to build your work in communication as you are doing it today in writing. What did that period actually look like for you day to day when you were doing both the science and the communication work?

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Thank you so much, Natalie, for having me. It's a it's a great pleasure. How it looked like it was definitely intense. That was the time as any time of transition in life. So when I was a scientist, uh wet lab scientist, I realized, okay, I really enjoy that, but I also want to make impact in different areas. Science, and what I really start enjoying is actually scientific communication and uh content creation. So day-to-day life. So as any life, you have your nine to five where you dedicate hours in the lab where you're spending the hours. I was spending many hours in front of the in front of the bench designing the experiments as a typical scientific look uh life look like. And then after hours, or actually before starting my work, I was dedicating time to learn about the communication, to read about the communication. The great thing is that as a scientist, you always learn, you always read. So I could overlap to a certain extent both of my both my work and my passion in that time. So during the daytime, when I was reading the articles, when I was reviewing science, anything interesting that I found, then I was using that for the future, a scientific communication for creating content. And at the same time, also understanding um business side. So because one thing is communicating and the other one's actually selling yourself to clients and your services to clients. So building also this uh the skills, how to how to create a business, how to sell the business, how to speak to people. That was also another part that I was um doing in my free time that uh I didn't have too much. But it was very intense and uh rewarding time for me.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Yeah. So in the intense and rewarding time, did you ever feel like maybe it was a waste of time as you were doing or like any discouragement as you were doing this because it was so intense?

SPEAKER_00 3:20

I think in any transition, in any pivoting Natalie, there is a moment when you're hitting a wall. Uh and uh that's something that uh is usually difficult. It's uh very, very challenging. So I also reached that point of uh, I don't know, uh I don't want to call it burnout, but point of really high saturation where I had just too many things going on at the same time, full-time job, transition, you know, studies that I decided to do at uh at the time when I was a scientist, when I decided to also launch myself into an uh EMBA program and actually learn about the business. There were moments when I was arriving to the point like I can't do it. I have too many priorities in my life. I should focus in or refocus uh on certain things.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

But uh did you hear that? Too many priorities, not too little effort, not too little talent, too many priorities landing on one person. That's not a time management problem. That's not a discipline problem. That is what I call the trust tax at work. And Joanna is describing it from the inside. Here is exactly what's happening. She's excellent, she is trusted, and because she's trusted the system, her employer, her executive MVA program, her own ambitions kept routing more to her because she catches everything, because the alternative is watching things fall, and she cares too much to let that happen. So the load compounds and compounds until one day it doesn't compound quietly anymore. And I want you to notice is that Joanna did not say she was failing, she was still showing up, still enrolled in the MBA, still running the business, still doing the job. The saturation hit while she was still delivering. That's exactly what the trust tax looks like from the inside. And most people never name it until something breaks.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

I think in that moment uh you realized also, I realized the power of your network, the power of your colleagues, the power of the safety net that you have, and other people that help you actually, okay. Uh, do you want to calm down um and and help you know to find to find the way and just move the wall together with you? And you understand, I understood, you know, that I don't only rely on myself and my own skills, but I really have a very supporting environment that can help me with uh achieving my goals. Yeah, definitely there is a time when you're hitting a wall, but uh, I think with uh great people in your life you can overcome those challenges. That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Can you tell me maybe a story of one of those folks that helped you? How did they go about helping you? What were you thinking and what did they do for you? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

I think when I was doing a transition, I find myself in a great moment of life. What at the same time I was doing my executive MBA, and that's where I met the people, like-minded people, like myself, you know, who are also in this transition in life who actually understand the struggles. So I definitely have very supportive uh colleagues. Uh shout out to Hannah and uh Carmen, who was always supporting me and uh giving me this warm, either virtual or real hugs, how to how to manage this this moment. And also career coaches. I think that's something that uh at a certain stage of your career you're you realized uh might be also beneficial. So I had two very good career coaches to actually help me refocus myself, who help me find the priorities, who also help me overcome this feeling of um feel bad. I mean, you're not giving up your nine to five, but you also may maybe feel sometimes that you underdeliver. So they also helped me to kind of uh refocus my my mind in in my priorities. So definitely people itself, career coaches, I think that's the most beneficial lessons that I that I got from from them. Um they helped me to find find the right way.

SPEAKER_01 7:13

So it sounds like in that moment what you were doing is redirecting where you focus your energy. Absolutely. Yeah. So when you began uh expanding beyond science into communication and business, that's a big identity shift. What did you need to did you feel that you need, what did you feel you needed to prove and how did that influence where you put your energy?

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Great question, Natalie. Um, and I agree, huge identity shift, you know, for someone who has been over 10 years scientists, delivering excellence, delivering science, all of a sudden you feels like you you give your give up your career, give up your your part of your part of yourself. You I didn't know how to call myself, right? You know, like I'm not really a scientist anymore, but I'm also not a scientific communicator at that time because I don't have uh that much uh expertise. I mean, I do have expertise, but I don't perceive that that I I didn't perceive that I have this this expertise because after all, as a scientist, you you do communicate science all the time. So it was the moment what as you're you're right, it requires you to redirect energies to find yourself find yourself, basically finding yourself again, finding yourself who you are, how you wanna.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Stop right there. Did you catch that? She has over 10 years of scientific training. She has built a business, she has an executive MBA, and she said, I don't know what to call myself. That's not imposter syndrome, that's the identity trap, and it's one of the most overlooked costs of any major transition. Here is what happens to high performers we tie our identity to our role. The role becomes who we are: scientist, leader, the expert, the one with the answers. And for a long time, that works. The role and the person feel like the same thing. But when the role changes, and suddenly the question is not just what do I know? What do I do now? The question is, who am I now? And that question is terrifying because the old identity was the thing that made you feel valuable, made you feel safe, made you feel like you belonged in the room. This is why so many capable people either stay stuck in a role they've outgrown or blow themselves out trying to hold two identities at once: the one that feels real and the one that doesn't feel earned yet. Joanna found her way through, but what I want you to notice, she didn't push through the identity crisis, she sat in it, she got coaches, she let people hold space while she figured out who she was becoming.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

That's not a weakness, that's a structural move that makes the transition possible be perceived, but I also find that moment a great moment of growth because you're basically reshaping yourself. You can always you can be whatever, whoever you want, right? And this moment, this pivot in life where where you decide to do this this switch, it really helped me, you know, to to yeah, to reshape myself, to to define who I am, right? That uh I am a scientific communicator, I am a businesswoman who grow my uh and grow my business as well. And I had to uh reshift the the energy. What was very helpful for me, particularly, is to redefining my priorities. At certain stage, when I had so many things, I my to-do list started growing and growing and growing because you have your to-do list for work. Nine to five, you have to your to-do list for business, you have to to-do list for private life. At certain stage, I realized it's just not feasible. I can't uh uh reach uh and uh fulfill every 20 points that I put every day. And and it became, after all, energy training, it became discouraging as well because when you're not click putting all the points after all, it it is discouraging because you feel uh that there's certain failure, and that was the moment of realization okay, maybe um it's just too much, right? It's not that I'm not enough, it's just too much for for me, for one person to deliver everything.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

I want you to hear the distinction she just made because it is everything. She said, it's not that I'm not enough, it's that it's just too much. That sentence is the difference between a personal failure story and a structural diagnosis. And most high performers never make that distinction. They keep adding to the list, they keep optimizing their mornings, they keep pushing because the assumption underneath it all is that if they were just a little better, a little more disciplined, a little bit more resilient, they could carry it. But the list was never the problem. The design was the problem. When Joanna stopped and said, I need three priorities, not 20. She did something most people are terrified to do. She admitted that the system she was running was broken. Not her, the system. And she redesigned it. That is responsibility design and action. Not how am I gonna cope with this load, but why is this load structured this way and what actually needs to change? The to-do list that never empties is not a motivation problem, it's a design problem. And design problems have design solutions.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Defining in my case, free priorities, like big goals in life, like annual goals, and kind of uh shifting air and redirecting my to-do list towards those goals, right? So starting evaluating my tasks and my moves through the lens of those goals, right? Is this task really contribute to moving my goal forward? Is this is attending this event really contribute to my goal 1ABC, right? And that's something that was very helpful for me to just kind of spending a lot of time about thinking what my priorities are and having them very clear helped me really move forward because then the decision is becoming relatively easy, right? It's basically pretty much I don't want to say black and white, but uh it's pretty much yes and no. And saying no becomes easier in that situation.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Yeah. And I could see that, you know, for you, you're transitioning from a science scientist to a writer, but some people transition from the um person who delivers the science to becoming a leader and not having to deliver that science and that identity shift in there. I could see where they would experience some of the same things where it's like, hey, you know what? You can't do your old job and your new job at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Yeah, absolutely. I'm absolutely you're absolutely right. Definitely these transitions from from scientists to the management roles are uh it's it's a very similar type of transition because you from dealing with science, deal start dealing with people, and this is absolutely um totally different, different area because you you really require different set of skills for uh managing people, for leading people, helping others, others to grow. Um and so it is this writing, right? Uh from being a scientist and being responsible for my samples only, um, and delivering excellence just for myself to delivering excellence for clients and making them being happy and being satisfied with the services, it's it's a it's a huge learning um experience to ensuring and to ensuring that they are happy and becoming this this person who is client-oriented or or people-oriented, and that's something that uh I had to learn.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

So as you were making that transition from the the scientists and learning to what were some of the things that you felt like you needed to give up responsibility for in hindsight and that were not yours to carry.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Okay, so with this that now are not not not mines to carry. Um I feel as a scientist, we are myself as a scientist. I think we we are doubting ourselves a lot, especially in the in the lab conditions, right? When you're just kind of always questioning results or we're questioning what we are getting, right? Is it the right direction that I'm heading? And I had to give up this mindset to a certain point, you know, having more confidence in my own skills and what I deliver to the clients, because otherwise I just spend too many times giving thought. Is it excellent enough? Is it good enough? So rather than progressing, you know, I I felt that I was in this moment where I was just like having this internal dialogue which was stopping me actually for delivering to the client. And um, sometimes it's better done than perfect than just showing client the results, even if they're not fully unfinished and getting the other opinion and the feedback. Um, that's something that I that I learned. And um, yeah. Giving up on excellence sound sounds horrible because I I still believe that I deliver excellence to the client, but it's uh it's a different type of excellence and different type of of delivery. But uh yeah, having more confidence in showing client your work, it's something that I had to learn on the way.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Yeah, I mean I think that is so insightful, especially when you're like you said, as a scientist, you have to, okay, we got these great results, but what if this was wrong? What if that was wrong? Can we reproduce these results? Absolutely. And I see a like a certain perfectionistic tendency. I work with scientists all the time, and I don't know how I had to actually start to define a rabbit hole in a wormhole. Like, okay, that I would define as a rabbit hole. Let's get out of there. Come on, guys. That's a definite wormhole, and it's going to a lot of other wormholes.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

We need to back out of here. ASAP. Absolutely. Absolutely. As a scientist, we are perfectionists, we strive to deliver excellence, and uh um and this is great for science, but not necessarily for business. Business rewards speed over excellence, and that was a big lesson for me when moved towards business.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Write that one down. Business rewards speed over excellence. Now, here is what I want to add to that because this is bigger than a lesson about business versus science. What Joanna is describing is what happens when you carry the standards of one system into a completely different one. And this is not just a scientist's problem. I see this with leaders all the time. They're trained in an environment that rewarded one kind of excellence, thoroughness, precision, getting it perfect before it goes out. And then they step into a new role, a new level, a new context, and they bring the same standard with them because that standard is how they earned their reputation. It is how they proved their worth. But the new environment doesn't need that standard, it needs something different. And they are carrying a weight, a self-imposed standard that nobody in the room actually asked for. That is a form of the trust tax, too. Not just what the system puts on you, what you put on yourself, because you haven't yet asked which bar you're actually supposed to be clearing. I love that we were able to point that out. So now that you've built across science, communication, and business, and you're operating in multiple dimensions, how do you think about boundaries not as a limit, but as a way of directing your energy?

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SPEAKER_00 19:15

When it comes to boundaries, it comes again uh to goals. And that's what I uh mentioned before, right? I think that having clearly defined goals in your life, both professional and private goals, um, help you define the boundaries itself and when you are directing your energy. So if your goals are clear, I think that makes very relative, relatively easy to set up boundaries as well. So using this, uh using the goals as a lens again to to prioritizing certain things help to set up boundaries, right? Like uh for me, for instance, if my goal is is to grow my business or my goal is to get more clients, any kind of decision that I'm making or any kind of uh connection that I'm making, I'm evaluating through this and uh setting up boundaries accordingly, right? If if this connection event uh contributes to my goals, that's great. If it doesn't contribute, okay, I will set a boundary there. Because after all, I have to protect my my own energy to make sure that uh I'm able to to deliver the goals and uh still deliver the excellence to to people.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Yep. So how do you go about catching yourself if I mean because things can happen. I mean, there's uh shiny quarters there all the time to chase or to that looks interesting. That might help me catch my, you know, get my goals.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

How do you catch yourself? Through my mistakes, Natalie. It's not that I'm, you know, it's still it happens, you know, as you said, there are this this gold coins like I will do this, I will do that. Yeah, I mean, we are humans, right? We all of us we have temptations, right? And you sometimes you just do what I'm doing, what I'm not supposed to do. I'm going for three events in a row for three days and realizing that wasn't a good idea, after all, right? So that's this kind of arriving to those points of of saturation, like kind of uh when when my body or my mind is tired, that helps me to just kind of catch myself, okay, Joanna, maybe maybe slow down. Um they also I also leave a little bit uh room to wiggle for for fun because obviously there's a part to for reaching there's a part that is dedicated to reach my goals and to grow my business. I also want to enjoy the way, right? So yeah, still collect some of those coins and still be tempted by uh by certain events, certain opportunities, unexpected opportunities, right? And and just take them because sometimes they can really give you totally different views and totally different um perspective for for certain things. So I'm still do them from time to time and then just uh also try to find uh enough time to to reset after all and reload my batteries. Reset my favorite word.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Well, you've um so you've built A very strong platform sharing insights in communications, complex ideas, and making them clear. That was your passion is taking complex scientific information and making it clear to folks. It's not an easy thing, I will say. Do you ever get an opportunity to see how you people are stepping into their true potential or kind of hold them, holding themselves back?

SPEAKER_00 23:08

I think it depends a lot of the person. And it's very individualistic, right? Especially with the customers that I'm uh that I'm working with. Depends quite a lot from the background and how open-minded they are. As with everyone, everyone is getting feedback, but depends on you how you will take this feedback to to your heart and to your to your mind, right? And the same is happening with uh with customers or my audience, right? There are certain uh individuals, certain people who uh take a feedback, take their potential and explore their potential and and grow and evolve and develop new skills and develop new um uh way of communicating uh their science or or the business. And there are certain people who um are more resistant to change, which is which is also okay, who doesn't have such a huge uh growing mindset to to change. And that's also fine, right? After all everyone is is making certain choices.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

Right. And so one of the things that I like to talk about, especially is is you're thinking about your career and the things that you've done. You've taken a certain amount of accountability and responsibility for your career, for thinking about yourself, being open to thinking about the possibilities. I wonder if there's kind of like a um threat um fine balance between taking too much responsibility and not taking enough. Have you thought about that or encountered that at all in your journey?

SPEAKER_00 24:40

In my own journey, I haven't encountered that that much because, as you mentioned, you know, I'm kind of a person who takes my uh career or my fate with my own hands and decide to just put the direction and the strategy by myself and just uh taking the responsibility. I do find also, again, coming from the scientific background, that as a scientist, we are very hesitant about asking for help. We we always do uh or take those responsibilities as I did myself, you know. I just put uh a lot of weight on my own shoulders and put all the responsibilities on my own shoulders and just move my career in the direction that I want. But uh during that time I realized, you know, that asking for help, asking for mentoring, asking for coaching, it's something that could be super helpful, asking for other opinions, okay, other views. It's something that could be very beneficial in your in my career path, right? And it was very beneficial in my in my career path when I was finding myself. It was great for me to actually interact with others, asking for help, certain things, for introductions. And that kind of makes makes makes the way a little bit easier. It's still responsibility, but uh it's kind of divided and other people are.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Joanna just described the moment the trust tax started to lift. Not because the work got easier, not because the stakes got lower, but because she stopped trying to carry it all in one lane. Here is what I want you to understand about asking for help. Because I don't think we talk about this the right way. We frame it as humility, we frame it as knowing your limits, and those things they're true, but they miss the structural truth underneath. Asking for help is not admitting weakness, asking for help is redesigning the system. When Joanna reached out to a career coach, and when she leaned into her executive MVA colleagues, when she let other people into the weight she was carrying, she was not giving up responsibility, she was distributing it correctly, she was building a structure around her that could hold more than one person ever could alone. And that is what the trust tax demands as a solution. Not harder work, not better coping, a deliberate redesign of who holds what, and the courage to ask for the support that should have been there all along. If you are someone who has been carrying everything yourself and you know who you are, I want you to hear this. The ask is not the weakness, the refusal to ask is what makes the system fragile. Because the system that runs on one person is one person away from breaking.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

Yeah, people are helpful, and that's what I really really appreciate and I realized during my journey, right? If you if you ask for help, you will likely receive that. So, and that's something what uh what worked for me when it comes to responsibilities and um taking the and deciding on your career path.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Okay. I I think that's great advice, and I'm glad that we were able to bring that out. So, for someone who is capable, driven, and trying to grow themselves in their career, how would you advise them to expand what they're doing without ending up caring more than they really should?

SPEAKER_00 28:22

Okay, so first of all, confidence, a lot of confidence in yourself. I think that's something that frequently is is is is missing uh when you're changing the careers and you feel very lost in in your path when the path is new, which which is obvious. So a lot of trying to have a lot of confidence in yourself, in your skills, because skills are usually there, you know, but we just kind of uh don't think about ourselves that we are able to deliver. Support, finding support, as I as I mentioned before, I think it's very important to support yourself with I call them cheerleaders in my life, you know, people who who will who will cheer you up and who will help you. So having like people who are really your cheerleaders and can really lift you up in those in those moments, seeking guidance from others and defining clearly where you want to go, or trying to define clearly what is your next goal, and because that will help you to redirect the energy and reshape your way towards the career that that you are looking for, rather than spreading yourself to thin among different projects, different events, and different engagements. So having that clear, spending time on thinking what uh what is the next goal, I think it's very important. It could take weeks, it could take months, just kind of clearly define where you want to go. And once you have that clear, just uh just start moving towards the direction. And uh that's uh that's my recommendation for for others. Excellent. Any last final words of wisdom for the folks that are listening? You're capable of of more than you think, so just start doing and everything will go well. I think that's that's that's my own. That's what I want to share with others. I think start doing and start moving, and everything will be fine. Um, because uh it is in you and uh yeah, it has to, yeah, you just they have to just have huge uh confidence in themselves and everything will go well, and I'm truly believe that. Excellent.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

Thank you so much for joining us on Unsealing You. I'm sure if folks have some questions, should they reach out via LinkedIn?

SPEAKER_00 30:17

Absolutely, more than happy to connect with anyone through LinkedIn, more than happy to have a chat um and to reply any questions that others can have.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

Okay, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Absolutely, thank you so much, Natalie.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

That was Joanna, and I want to sit with a few things that she said before we close. She described hitting a wall, not from failure, but from success, from being trusted so much that the low compounded passed what any one person could carry. She described not knowing what to call herself because the role she had mastered for 10 years was no longer the role she was meant to occupy. She described a to-do list that was never emptied. And the moment she realized it wasn't her fault, she realized it was the design. And then she did the hardest thing. She asked for help. Not because she gave up, it was because she finally understood that carrying everything alone is not a sign of strength. It's a sign of that the system needed to change. And she was the only one positioned to change it. And that is the trust tax in reverse. Instead of the system extracting from you, the system actually holds you. If something in this conversation landed for you, if you recognize yourself in Joanna's story, I want you to ask one question before you move on with your day. What are you carrying right now that was never actually yours to carry alone? You don't have to answer that immediately, but I want that question to stay with you because the moment you can name it, that's the moment you begin to redesign it. If you would like some tools to help you along your way, visit the Unsealing Zone at Unsealing, like the ceiling above your head, zone, U N C E I L I N G Zone.com, and I have some free tools for you and a notebook that you can use to help you along the way. This is Unsealing You, and I'm Natalie Luke, your host. And I'll see you the next time.