Burnout Is a Signal - Not a Weakness: A More Sustainable Way to Lead

Join me as I sit down with psychologist and leadership development consultant Dr. Christina Pate, whose work explores the intersection of human behavior, organizational culture, and sustainable performance.

Christina’s path into this work began with her own experience of burnout - not as something to push through, but as information that something deeper was misaligned. Since then, she has focused on helping leaders and organizations understand how nervous system patterns, identity pressures, and workplace expectations shape how we perform, lead, and sustain ourselves over time.

We talk about over-functioning, identity beyond roles, the pressure many women leaders carry to hold more than their share, and what it means to build lives and organizations that support wellbeing rather than quietly erode it.

This is a thoughtful conversation about leadership, sustainability, complexity, and learning to build success that can actually last.

You’ll Learn:

⭐ Why burnout is often a signal of misalignment - not a personal failure
⭐ How leadership mirrors the way we lead ourselves
⭐ The role of nervous system awareness in sustainable performance
⭐ The difference between scalable success and sustainable success
⭐ Why holding complexity is a modern leadership skill

Key Insights:

Burnout as Information:
Burnout often reveals misalignment between values, identity, expectations, and systems - not a lack of resilience.

Leadership Starts Internally:
The way we regulate stress, set boundaries, and relate to uncertainty shapes how we lead others.

Sustainable vs Scalable Success:
Organizations frequently optimize for growth and output without building the internal conditions required for people to thrive.

Nervous System Awareness Changes Leadership:
Stress responses influence decision-making, communication, and capacity long before conscious strategy.

Identity Beyond Roles:
Career disruption, burnout, and transition often surface deeper questions about identity and purpose.

Complexity Over Certainty:
Modern leadership requires the ability to hold nuance, reject binary thinking, and operate in ambiguity.

Timestamps:

[00:00:00] – Introduction and meeting through LEAP Academy
[00:03:00] – Early burnout and redefining success
[00:07:00] – Burnout as signal, not failure
[00:12:00] – Leadership as a mirror of self-leadership
[00:18:00] – Over-functioning and invisible responsibility
[00:25:00] – Disruption, grief, and rebuilding frameworks
[00:28:00] – Nervous system awareness and leadership
[00:33:00] – Fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses
[00:38:00] – Rejecting binary thinking and holding complexity
[00:41:00] – Identity shifts and the future of work
[00:44:00] – Micro practices for regulation and sustainability
[00:47:00] – Legacy as sustainability, not scale

Resources and Links:

Connect with Dr. Christina Pate

Learn more about her leadership development work

Take Christina’s stress response quiz 

Find host Kristin Belden on LinkedIn or at BeldenStrategies.com

Sign up for more conversations and insights at BeldenStrategies.com/newsletter

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, follow the show, and leave a review.
And if you’re interested in more conversations about leadership, identity, and building sustainable success, join my newsletter at BeldenStrategies.com

Transcript

Speaker 2: [00:00:00] Hi all. Welcome back to kind of a big deal. I'm your host, Kristin Belden, and my guest today is Dr. Christina Pate, psychologist and leadership development and consultant who has spent her career sitting at the intersection of human behavior, organizational culture, and the way we lead ourselves. She's one of those rare thinkers who can hold both the individual and the institution because she knows deeply and personally that an organization can only be as healthy as the people leading it.

Christina's path includes a full reckoning that became the breakthrough that shaped everything she does today. We talk about what it really means to burn out in the clinical sense, the nervous system's role in our decisions long before our conscious mind catches up and why sustainability beats scalability every time.

We also get into the identity work that happens when you finally stop performing yourself and start remembering yourself. This one is personal, layered and full of [00:01:00] moments. I know you'll want to rewind. Here's Christina.



Speaker 3: Hi, Christina. 

Speaker 4: Hi, Kristin. 

Speaker 3: It's so good to see you. Happy Wednesday. 

Speaker 4: Yes, happy Wednesday. Great to see you. 

Speaker 3: I have in front of me, Dr. Christina Pate. I actually have never asked you, is it Pate is, am I actually saying that right? 

Speaker 4: P is pate and you don't have to. 

Speaker 3: Yes, I do. Yes I do. Yes I do. Because that's kind of a big deal and that's the whole, we can say it once, we don't have to say it the whole time, but I gotta at least start there.

Christina and I met as a handful of women that I've interviewed, um, through. The coaching program that we both went through LEAP Academy and we're actually gonna see each other next week at a conference that they put on, which I'm super excited about. We found our way to each other amidst a handful of other women that stay in contact, you know, over a year later, which is [00:02:00] pretty amazing.

And I think that's so important when you're going through these types of evolutions or inflection points or. Whatever the languages we want to use, and we're always evolving in some way, of course, but. In these like really specific moments when we're growing and we're moving into whatever's next, I know that I have felt so held by being in this 

Speaker 4: Yes.

Speaker 3: Group of women. So, um, okay, back to you. So 

Speaker 4: this is a collective conversation. It's like us are being here, I think. If we didn't have this experience together. So 

Speaker 3: yes. Fair. Yes. But I do wanna make sure folks know who you are. She is a psychologist and leadership development consultant and I was sharing with her earlier that she is one of those unicorns that can hold both the individual and the organization.

And 

Speaker 4: I have the compliment. I'm getting used to doing that too. 

Speaker 3: Listen again, that's what we're here for. [00:03:00] Um. But it's really true. I mean, and I think it's, it's really, that's not an easy, it's not easy to hold both. A lot of times when you work with a consultant, they're focused primarily on the business or the structure or the teams, or you know, all of the things that make a company what it is.

Or you're working with an individual coach or somebody that's working just on your own personal or professional development. And the fact that your mind can see and hold both is really incredible. And I think we need more of that, the bridging of the, the business and the human. And so really incredible work that Christina does.

And I think that's just a good place to start really is the work that you care most about and you know, kind of what you've been focused on For the last bit of time, let's start, let's start there. 

Speaker 4: Sure. So my, as you sort of describe, my work sits at the intersection of human behavior and culture [00:04:00] and how we actually are living inside of the systems that we build.

Early in my career, I burned out pretty hard and. I think that experience really reshaped how I think about leadership and performance and just our definitions of success. Um, and, you know, over time just came to see that the, the way that we're leading organizations is just mirroring the way that we lead ourselves.

And so that insight, I think, really became, for me, the foundation for the work that I do today. Just helping people in organizations build the internal conditions to thrive in ways that are actually sustainable, not always just scalable. Right? 

Speaker 3: Mm. So, ooh, you just had like two great sound points right there.

Yes. Sustainable, not just scalable, and then Yes. Being the mirror right to the leadership. I think I recognized that too when I started the work that I do now today. An organization can only be as healthy as its leadership in a [00:05:00] lot of ways. Even if you're great at masking or compartmentalizing, it's still, it doesn't matter.

That will influence the way you're leading your team. I was gonna say, where did we even start and how did you wind up here, but you kind of. Alluded to it a bit there with your own experience with burnout. Yeah. So maybe before we go there though, let's go back to the very beginning of post college, post education, those early days of dipping your toes into the career waters.

What, what were you drawn to and where did you start your journey? 

Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel like I've always been drawn to understand both humans and systems, and so I just kind of kept circling around these different areas and so I never really went looking for a career. The next thing just sort of arrived for me, and interestingly, you know, I feel like early on I [00:06:00] was highly credentialed, trusted in leadership positions, even when I was younger.

But I was always internally running on over responsibility and on performance pressure and on like nervous system overdrive. So I was doing a lot of meaningful work, but quietly always paying a very personal cost. And I mean, I think that goes back even to just. As a young person, being a first generation college graduate and growing up in a working class family, there's this sort of first gen achiever patterns of over functioning and perfectionism and people pleasing, and I think a lot of women are just conditioned to be in those roles anyway, regardless of of some of those other background characteristics.

But you had this sort of. Lifetime of being rewarded for just like pushing through instead of really listening inward and being in a lot of leadership environments, they often just reinforce [00:07:00] that pattern, especially for women. So I think for me, pretty early on in my career, there was just this growing mismatch between my values, my work as a psychologist, and then how I was actually living.

You know, it just became so obvious to me that those were. Really out of alignment. And I think a lot of women leaders can recognize themselves in that space, but maybe you've never really named it. And I think it, I think that just sort of helps us to start to reframe burnout a little bit more as a systems issue rather than a personal failure.

That makes sense. 

Speaker 3: Ooh, oh my gosh, yes. That makes all the sense because I do think, again, as you were saying. We tend to hold and own these things as if they are our own, right? Because we have been conditioned to hold all the things. And so of course, why wouldn't we also then hold that this is our responsibility, or this is something that we have done to ourselves that's not just [00:08:00] at the system level.

So when you talk about naming it, were you able, do you think in that, you said you were aware of it, but were you able to name it for what it was and f. Find your way kind of through that? Or was that something that took this kind of intense burnout experience to be able to see? 

Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know that when I was early in my career, if I would've named it as burnout until I had a literal physical and emotional breakdown.

It was quite a reckoning. Right. But it was also this breakthrough, which is where. I then I was like, oh, that's what that means to burnout. And in a clinical sense, not just this colloquial sense that we sort of talk about, but it was sort of like in those moments. I vowed that I would never live or work like that again.

I was like, this life I, I get existential so easily. So it's like, for me, what are we doing here Anyway? I'm like, I'm a psychologist and what am I doing? Why am [00:09:00] I doing this? You know, so, but there's these moments in that sort of burnout, recovery where it was, I felt lost because here I was, somebody that was trained in cognitive and behavioral psychology and all of these performance tools.

But none of that was enough. And it was, I could explain an intellectualized stress. I could understand culture intellectually, but my body just wasn't cooperating anymore. And so that's really when I began experimenting outside of some of the traditional things that psychology studies, it's a little more common now, but really for me, it became this insight.

Without nervous system regulation is not gonna lead to sustainable change because our nervous systems are shaping our decisions, our boundaries, our energy, like we, before our conscious mind even understands what's happening. Um, and so for a long time I was able to [00:10:00] keep that vow to myself. I built better boundaries, sometimes a little bit too rigid, as the pendulum was a little bit and I was choosing more aligned roles, I felt like I was working more humanely.

And I think on the outside it looked like, oh, I finally got it figured out. But then mid-career, I think I was tested again. And not necessarily in the same way, but in a more sophisticated way. You know, when you're in senior leadership and people management and high stakes, high visibility work, you have all of these unrealistic expectations.

All of that pressure is just rolling downhill. Right. And you're working in. Systems that are rewarding overextension, and it just becomes the norm. And even though I knew more this time and I had better boundaries, I still felt like I softened those boundaries in really familiar ways to protect my team.

Speaker 3: Oh, 

Speaker 4: interesting impact. And I was putting my needs last. So it [00:11:00] didn't necessarily look like burnout at first. It just looked like good leadership. And I think this happens to women a lot because we are the caretakers, we are the responsible ones that are protecting the people at our own expense. Right? So I think underneath all of that, all it was, um.

Wrestling with what Mary Oliver calls the booties of ambition and the sort of disease to please. And so I think that belief that being responsible means carrying more than my share. And I think so many women leaders have that as well. So it required a lot of recalibration. It is a reminder like growth isn't linear.

It's like we move from math to algebra to calculus. It's the same material, and the lesson just gets more advanced over time, right? Yes. So it's just sort of like that work is ongoing, but the key is just to become aware and notice it sooner, so your response sooner in, more healthy, in healthier.

Speaker 3: [00:12:00] Absolutely. I was reflecting on this recently, and maybe I've shared this with you before, but in my last full-time role, um, you know, we were kind of, it was in between like the not waning days of COVID, but we had gotten through the intensity of those first, you know, first horrible months and then it, the insurrection, right?

Like there was all of these things happening in so many of our worlds and. We had an incredible leader at the time who brought us all together for an all staff and said. Essentially you are building a muscle that you don't even know you need yet and you might 

Speaker 4: chill on that. 

Speaker 3: And I think about that all the time because truly when you're in these moments, it can feel debilitating and they are debilitating sometimes, right?

We, we process grief and all of these intense traumas and all of the things that we have to experience in our world, [00:13:00] but. When inevitably, again, to your point, it's not linear, so something will come our way. Again, you have that muscle at least built right. It may have atrophied because you haven't been, you know, working the reps or whatever, but like it's there.

Speaker 4: Yeah. 

Speaker 3: And so there's some thing in your body that is able to respond differently 

Speaker 4: Yes. 

Speaker 3: To it. And I think that's kind of what you're saying, right? Like when you see it again or you 

Speaker 4: Yes. 

Speaker 3: Come into that place again, you can at least. Maybe name it a little sooner than you are able to the first time.

Speaker 4: Absolutely. It's, you know, you're learning to, I mean, to your point, there's like, it's almost like muscle memory, you know, to your, to your metaphor. So you're learning to read your body's internal signals and trust them and not just ignore them. And I think that's where a lot of the nervous system work has been.

The missing link personally for people, but also organizationally, we're not designing organizations. To [00:14:00] enable or, you know, provide the conditions that human brains and bodies need to not only just perform, but to do well. And I think there's also, uh, some of the sort of identity work too is like letting go of martyrdom and overgiving.

I think that is a very common characteristic of women leaders and that identity and belief work around self-worth and responsibility. As it's not always our responsibility to carry all of it for everybody all the time, and so connecting that and eventually decoupling that from your sense of self-worth and your sense of responsibility, I think is really important.

And probably just grieving how long you override yourself and abandon yourself and betray yourself, you know? Yes. For so many years, there's a little bit of a grieving process for that too. 

Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely. My experience was not the same in that it came from burnout [00:15:00] necessarily, but you know my story that a few and a half years ago, my entire career world imploded and found myself in a similar space, just mentally and physically around like, what am I without this thing and how do I.

What is my identity, if not wrapped up in productivity or the title or the salary or whatever it is? Can you remember those like first few months and when you were healthy enough in your body and in your spirit to actually start to kind of recognize what was happening? Do you remember what that felt like when you were first kind of navigating, removing yourself a bit from.

What was, 

Speaker 4: yeah, I think the first time is really like, I've always known this, it was like this remembering. 

Speaker 3: Hmm. 

Speaker 4: But 'cause it had been so clouded, and I hear that a lot [00:16:00] too from people that, you know, once they reached this point, they're like, I don't know who I am anymore. Or I don't know what my purpose is.

And it's because you're in such nervous system overload constantly, you can't see that stuff clearly. But when you can finally get that opportunity to get regulated again, for me anyway, it was this sort of remembering of who I am and what I was here to do. And even if that looks different at different points in your life, I think there's always a common thread that is always running through all of those roles or those hats that we're wearing.

Um mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. I feel remember so vividly. Incredible discomfort. At first, I like physically felt like I don't know what to do with my hands. I was like, what do you, what do I do? Like literally I felt deeply, deeply uncomfortable in that quiet and in the forced pause. I [00:17:00] did not know how to just be, which is really something from somebody who like has a very.

Robust yoga practice and you know, meditate. Oh, you know, all the things that we are 

Speaker 4: uncertain. 

Speaker 3: Yes. Like all these things. 

Speaker 4: I know exactly who I'm then 

Speaker 3: a hundred, but at the end of the day, that is still output in some ways. Right? It is still a part of a routine. It's still part of like, you know, how you make up a day, and so to have everything stripped so bare.

Was, yeah, I think uncomfortable is the best word I can think of, but yes, that's a great way to say it. Yes it is. Yes. It really feels like you're walking around with a massive, you know, wound on your arm and everybody can see it. I remember going, even with my dearest friends, I tend to go very internal when I go through something like this and I'm like, I don't want to even be around people.

And it's not because. [00:18:00] I'm afraid that they'll ask me questions, I'll talk about all the things. It's literally like the energy of being around people. At that time, I was like, I can't. I can't. There's nothing more for me to give other than like making sure I'm okay. But once that started, once the wounds started to heal a little bit.

A hundred percent. I would say the exact same thing. It almost was like a getting to know myself again over that next year, year and a half, where you start to uncover these pieces of yourself that maybe you either forgot about or you just had to ignore for a little while, or you put off to the side and.

I literally came out to my husband one day and I'm like, oh my gosh, I forgot all about this like thing that I love and it's weird. So I'm wondering, you said there was always this kind of knowing. Was there anything as you navigated that evolution [00:19:00] that you found surprising at all that you had maybe forgotten about?

Or was it all just there and kind of revealed itself back to you pretty quickly? 

Speaker 4: I don't know that there was anything. Surprising. I think the biggest switch for me was giving myself permission to go after it again. 

Speaker 3: Mm. 

Speaker 4: Because we're so, it's like conditioned out of us so young to like, no, you need to get a job because you need to pay your bills.

And if it happens to be something you enjoy or love doing, that's great, but that's not the primary reason that we work, right? 

Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 4: At least from my sort of working class. Oh, 

Speaker 3: totally. 

Speaker 4: Family values. And so I am such a mission-driven, purpose-driven person, and so to give myself permission to say. No damn it like this is who I am and this is what I'm supposed to do and [00:20:00] I'm gonna go after.

It was quite liberating. Also terrifying because what you love to do may or may not make you money, but at the end of the day, I do think if you align. Your purpose with your life's work, the money will follow, or the other sorts of resources that you need will follow. Mm 

Speaker 3: mm-hmm. Yeah. I, this idea of martyrdom, you kind of touched on it again too, around the giving of ourselves so much to the thing, or if you're in mission-driven work, that peaks something for me.

'cause I worked in nonprofit for so long and I, you know, worked for social impact companies and you can really convince yourself. That you're quote unquote doing it for the cause. And that's not even just a gendered thing that's across the board, right? It's we are giving of ourselves in order to forward this mission or have greater impact.

And you may or may not have listened to my conversation with this woman, Kate and Aho, but she figured that out really young. I was so impressed when I was talking to her because she knew from a very young [00:21:00] age that she wanted to do this incredibly deep mission-driven work that she knew was gonna take a lot out of her.

She knew was going to push her. She knew it was gonna take a long time to see any kind of the impact that she wanted to see happen. So she set up these like really incredible boundaries for herself at a very young age and learned how to make sure that she was taking care of herself. Amidst that and I was like, do you need to bottle that?

Like whatever that is, 

Speaker 4: I'll drink it. 

Speaker 3: I know. I was like, who does that? That's not, to your point, that's not the way. 

Speaker 4: And 

Speaker 3: she was like, yeah, we live in a 

Speaker 4: crystal clear and unwilling to waiver. 

Speaker 3: Yes. And she's like, I know it'll make me better at what I do. Ultimately. I know. And we all know these things, right?

Logically, to your point, we can know them intellectually. But to feel it and to do it and to live it is something very, very, very different. And yeah. I'm curious how that's showing up for you [00:22:00] now. You know, as you are building and growing and, and I'm asking, I always ask these questions 'cause there's something in me that also is grappling with it a little bit, but.

How you set boundaries now as you're building for what's next, because I think it's always interesting when you're out of corporate or you're out of a full-time role for a little while and you're navigating your own day. I have found it's really easy to give all of myself to the thing that I'm building and not like my boundaries were actually probably better honestly, when I had a structured framework in front of me than they are now.

I've learned it's taken me a minute, but. For a while there it can be so like porous, the idea between your life that you're building and the career that you're building. So I'm wondering how that's showing up for you now. 

Speaker 4: Yeah, I think these are for me a little bit newer boundaries. Well, in some ways I think the amount of time that I can work and work hard [00:23:00] is where I really have to put boundaries.

Because if I am interested in something and I want something. I will work to the end of the earth to get it done. And then I look up and I'm like, oh my God, I've been working for like 14 hours. You know, yes, whatcha doing here, but when you're passionate about something and you really want something, I think it's easy to do that.

So I can use a little bit of firmer boundaries in that way, but I am at a place where. I am much more selective about the type of work that I take or the clients with whom I work. Being aligned on very fundamental values is important to me. Integrity is important to me, and so working with people and companies.

Whether it's an in-house role or a consulting role is important, and those boundaries are important. 'cause it's very easy, again, to get back into the mindset of like, well, I need work. You know, we can just take it. [00:24:00] And it's like, no, I'm going to stay in alignment with who I am now and who I'm becoming. I think having those boundaries around those relationships is important.

Speaker 3: Mm. Yeah. I, I love that. I, I've noticed for myself when it comes to working independently and whether it's in advisory or consulting, I am now better able to articulate. It's not always just the client fit, it is the how I approach the work. 

Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. 

Speaker 3: Fit, and I totally understand that. If you're looking for the kind of consultant that has like a very specific way in which they work, right?

Or you need to move at a pace that doesn't necessarily align with my belief that you have to have the foundation first. Like, I'm not your girl. And I think in the beginning days I would've been like, yes, I'll do that. Because to your point, I'm building something I need to and and there's nothing wrong with that.

I don't Anybody that's out there building if you're 

Speaker 4: Exactly. 

Speaker 3: You are. There's nothing wrong with doing that in the beginning [00:25:00] 'cause you do gotta make it work. But I do think as you evolve and as you're in it a little bit longer, you're able to also see for yourself more, wait a second. No, that does not.

I'm not trying to do that. That's what I'm trying to get away from that. Do that anymore.

I would love for you to share a little bit if you're willing. I think this is a two part question. You know, one is you have had a year that has really challenged you in a lot of different ways, and if you're open to sharing as much as you would like to share and feel comfortable with. But more importantly, you shared with me before we started recording that the frameworks that you have created, you then relied on for yourself and it's really what got you through some really intense experiences.

So. I would love if you would be open to sharing what that framework looked like for you without giving too much away. You know, if, if this is something that you [00:26:00] use with clients, of course I'm not asking you to give too much detail, but I think that there are probably a lot of women that could use even just a piece or two of, if they're going through something that feels hard or if they're facing a challenging moment like.

Are there a couple of things that you could share within that framework that really made the biggest difference for you? 

Speaker 4: Yeah, so, as you know, um, my last little over a year started with, I was displaced in the fires in California, and so that was the first like. I felt like the first sweeping of 2025. And you know, when you go through that, you're already sort of living randomly all over the place.

You have to deal with so many different things, insurance and all of that stuff. And it's, you think after a couple of months of this just there's a couple constant, everything's happening at the same time. All these other things started to happen in my life too. I was laid off from a job, but then I also got a new, a great [00:27:00] co consulting contract.

And then I lost a dear friend of mine who was my neighbor in the Palisades, and then I moved in with a partner and then that relationship ended. Like everything in my life, 2025 was just swept away. And it's just one of those years where you're thinking. Like, can it get any worse? And then it feels like it does, but when you have just a moment to step back from it, you think, oh wow.

Look at all of the opportunity that is getting created by all of these misaligned things being out of my life. Not my dear friend, of course, but yeah, I'm still, there's still lessons to be learned in some of that grief, but what helped me get through that, I was reflecting on this too. As I was sort of fortifying my framework and I thought, what did I learn obviously in my traditional training in psychology, but then what did I learn through my experiences, both in my own life and in my work with [00:28:00] clients over the years?

And there was a process that emerged that I just keep repeating over and over again. And so for me, the sort of process wasn't really invented, didn't come from my mind. It was distilled from my experiences and my clients' experiences. So for me, it's just a mirror of human development. It's building awareness first, and it's bottom up processing.

So. All of the psychology I had been taught is mindset work and it's behavioral work and it's habits. And if we're not starting with a level of awareness of ourself and others and getting ourselves regulated and co-regulating with each other, none of that stuff sticks. We can say all the affirmations in the world, and if your body doesn't have the capacity to hold the change.

You will not be able to change effectively. Mm-hmm. So having that awareness, building your nervous system capacity. Being in [00:29:00] connection with people and environments that are sustaining and not draining. I think a lot of women feel obligated to be in a lot of relationships that we don't really wanna be in.

So getting very clear about what those relationships are and those environments that are nourishing rather than, you know, extracting. And then of course, from there, building healthy habits, really realigning with purpose. And meeting and making sure that our identity is leading the way and, and not our dysregulated nervous systems.

And then we can work on the mindset stuff. So it's just a, it's a process, but always starting with the self inside of there. And. 

Speaker 3: You talk a lot about nervous system work, and I'm with you. I don't know that everybody fully mm-hmm. Has a clear grasp on what that actually might mean. I think we, we can hear these things a lot Sure.

And not fully know how that might function in our own daily [00:30:00] life. So if you could give just like a two second brief of when you talk about the nervous system. What do you mean when you think about being out of alignment and then the work it requires to get yourself centered? 

Speaker 4: Yeah, so essentially if you think about like signs of dysregulation or your stress responses, they show up differently for everybody and sometimes differently within the same person, depending on the situation.

But it's your fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. So I think becoming aware of. 

Speaker 3: Did you say fight, flight, freeze and fawn. 

Speaker 4: Fawn. That's people. Oh, I 

Speaker 3: don't 

Speaker 4: know this one. It's a behavioral manifestation that has a little bit of fight and a little bit of flight in there. Um mm-hmm. But it's so, it's so common in women.

As a behavioral manifestation of a stress response. And so it's kind of become its own study category, I guess you could say. 

Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't know this. This is so [00:31:00] fascinating. Okay. Yeah, and, and of course it's the least researched because it has to do with women. 

Speaker 4: Yeah. So it's like physiologically or biologically there's fight, flight and freeze or shut down.

And then Fawn is really thinking about. The ways that when we're not able to fight or to flee, for example, especially growing up, right? We learn these other ways of responding to stress, and a lot of times those are gonna be keeping the peace or people pleasing or doing favors, anything that's going to keep us safe.

Because maybe fighting, is it safe or fleeing? Is it safe in those situations? And so it becomes a protective pattern, um, wow. That we embody. But it's also something that we can work with. And of course, I think with any of these, like I hate to pathologize any of them. It's really about. The ways that our nervous systems [00:32:00] learn to protect itself, the way that our brains learned to protect itself from threats of all kinds, physical and psychological.

So that is a little bit, you know, in terms of becoming aware of what your stress responses are. And then it's really about pairing strategies. 'cause there's all sorts of regulation strategies out there these days, and a lot of those are gonna actually make people's nervous systems worse. It's good they're gonna 'cause 

Speaker 3: it's not their particular stress response.

Speaker 4: That's right. So if, let's say, for example, you're in a freeze response and all you wanna do is just rotten bed all day. Well the last sort of nervous system regulation strategy you wanna use is something that's more calming because you actually need gentle movement to up upregulate your system. 

Speaker 3: Oh, 

Speaker 4: interesting.

Or if you're an avoidant and you're all over the place running from task to task. Grabbing a cup of coffee for more caffeine is not going to help you focus. 

Speaker 3: This is the wrong choice, [00:33:00] 

Speaker 4: right? So, you know, I think becoming aware of your own stress response pairing regulation strategies can help to build capacity because stress is never going to stop, right?

Stress isn't even bad, right? And change is definitely not going to stop. But we can increase our capacity to hold change to manage stress. And to be more resilient after major stressful events happen in that way. 

Speaker 3: Asking for a friend, how does one start to even do, does some, would someone need to work with someone in order to understand what their unique stress response is?

Or is this something that somebody might be able to kind of. Figure out for themselves. 

Speaker 4: You could probably figure it out a little bit for yourself. I have a free quiz if you wanna take that. You can find out what you think. 

Speaker 3: Oh, what a perfect, what a perfect entry. I love it. Yeah, 

Speaker 4: so I mean, it's not a scientifically [00:34:00] valid instrument by any means, but it will give you a little bit of insight into maybe what you lean towards.

And again, I'm somebody who over time things have sort of shifted because I've tried to work on things in some ways and sometimes the pendulum swings to another style. Sure. Um, or, you know, what have you. Different context, different relationships might trigger different sorts of responses. But typically speaking, a fight response is gonna be somebody that like pushes through.

Maybe when they're really stressed out and they get more assertive, more aggressive, more loud. Just what you would think of with fight doesn't necessarily mean a fist fight or a physical fight. Yeah, a freeze response is kind of what it sounds like. You tend to withdraw, shut down, you get immobilized. You have trouble getting up and getting moving.

And then your flea response is often a very avoidant type or is trying to multitask 10 things but never gets any of them done. Or just avoids sort of, you know, stressful situations altogether, whether [00:35:00] that's physically or emotionally. And then fa, as I said earlier, is a lot of people pleasing, trying to keep the peace, trying to be the mediator, wants everybody to be happy and often at the expense of their own.

Speaker 3: I was curious about that on the Fawn piece. It just keeps like rumbling around in my mind, around what is a stress response versus what is a skill, and that sounds a little weird. Fawning is obviously not a skill, but to mediate, to be able to read the room, to be able to know like how to. Not play to different groups, but to know like how to be in different rooms or take care of people.

Do you see a, a difference or is there a way to kind of recognize what is just this innate, you know, like the unhealthy response versus. Something that you may have actually built as a skill over time. 

Speaker 4: So like any characteristic there is a [00:36:00] continuum of more positive or negative aspects or you know, sort of light and shadow aspects of that.

So when we're thinking about Fawn, for example, oftentimes what is a strength inside of you also has its own shadow side. So if I'm somebody who is highly empathetic. Is really able to attune to other people's needs. I can read a room. You are going to be more likely probably that when you're stressed, you're going to lean on what your biggest strengths are.

So if your strength is, you know, managing people and harmonizing with others and having healthy, attuned relationships. That might be then the skills that you lean on, but it might then go into sort of a shadow side of that, which is the overgiving, the people pleasing, the appeasing as a means to reduce some of that stress for ourselves.

Speaker 3: Mm. 

Speaker 4: I don't think it's like that for everyone, but I can certainly see that's how it would be for me anyways. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like [00:37:00] there's, the key then is, I keep coming back to this over and over, is the Yes and. I feel like that is the theme across the board of every conversation I have, whether it's about, it's a yes and it's yes, this might be a stress response to be aware of, and it may also be something that is what, you know, makes you unique and shine or whatever.

And the holding of that duality just across the board, the tension of it can be both and it does not have to be one. Is so tricky in so many ways, and I think many women, as we enter this phase of our lives or our careers, that just continues to be where the like secret lies. It's like we can become more comfortable with Yes.

And in so many different ways. Um, yes, I can be ambitious and passionate and want to build. [00:38:00] Or go after that big job or whatever it is, and be more in tune and aware of what I need to have a life that matters to me and is not just about that thing. Right. I think many times, and I'm so curious, your perspective on this, because I'm imagining you still consume a great amount of content and are really interested in these spaces.

So I feel like, and maybe it's just because this is the media bubble that I'm in, but. So much of what gets regurgitated, it's very much a black or white. It's like either you do it this way because you have a 4:00 AM routine and you get up and you do the thing and you are rigid and routined, and then you, you know, make a gazillion dollars or you're like a hippie living on a farm that doesn't care about anything.

It truly feels like, and I'm, I'm being a bit silly about it, but it. It feels to me like so much of the content that's out there now is picking one or the other and not living in that space of [00:39:00] holding both. Are you finding that to be true with what you're seeing out there, or is that just what I'm consuming?

Speaker 4: No, absolutely, and I think as the world becomes increasingly complex, that is a skillset that we have to have. Because it is the only way to navigate the complexity. Our lives are a paradox. They're a giant paradox. And so there's always going to be this tension. And if we're not able to learn to hold that and to find the magic in that complexity and navigate that complexity, and in the liminal space too, it's things just aren't black and white.

It is just not how the world works. And I mean, human beings are just full of nuance. So. I certainly don't ascribe to any rigid routines of any way. I think that sort of binary thinking is actually what's making it harder for people to navigate uncertainty, to navigate the complexity of our lives, and to sit with the ambiguity and the [00:40:00] discomfort.

Of that. So I think that is going to be increasingly a skill that we all need to have to live in the modern world. 

Speaker 3: Yes, it's such a great reminder for anyone too, you know, with kids or our caretaking in any way for a younger generation. Because these are not the things that are taught explicitly for the most part.

Right. Our education system has not caught up with the moment that we're in, as far as I can tell anyways. Maybe that's just our, and I love our school to be very clear. We have an amazing community. The teacher's incredible, but we are trying to prepare for a time that no one can even imagine. There was also something to this around what I've been interested in learning more about lately and a lot of big.

Names are talking about this, but that the big kind of crazy thing that we're all driving very fast towards is not an economic crisis, but one, a crisis of identity. Because with [00:41:00] job loss, with these things, with automation, inevitably it will turn over into whatever's next. But in that liminal space of not knowing, right, maybe what's next for me as this person that has been used to contributing to society in a very specific way, how to.

Hold that and be okay with that and maybe do some work pri I'm like, okay, how do we all do the work now so that we can be more prepared? Not that there's like a day and a moment that it happens. It will gradually happen over time, but. I think that also speaks a little bit to that being okay with the discomfort of the unknown.

Speaker 4: Yeah. I think if we are not rooted in who we are and without all of these roles that we play in our life, whether it's being a parent, being a worker, being a spouse, whatever, I think, I think we are going to be at the [00:42:00] mercy of whatever. Pulls and pushes and twists and turns that the market, that society has things moving in.

But if we're rooted in our center and our core, we know who we are. It's going to be a lot easier to build equanimity, to be able to move through that uncertainty, to be able to sit in the, get comfortable with the discomfort of the liminal space and to understand that uncertainty is just part of the game.

That change is the work. We're here to do at this time on Earth. 

Speaker 3: Yeah. You may not have an answer to this, but I'll ask it anyhow. If there's somebody listening who maybe this is the beginning of a journey for them or they've not really, uh, or maybe not even totally ready yet to start. Thinking about digging in in that way, or maybe they are, but they haven't started.

What would be your suggestion for either a first question to ask themselves or a, an exercise to [00:43:00] potentially try? And I, I recognize this is also unique for the individual, but would you say there's anything that you would recommend just as a starting point? 

Speaker 4: I mean, one of the most significant questions for me, and I think you brought this up earlier on the call too, was being asked, who am I?

And as I started to journal out, it was that list of roles, right? And then being asked, okay, now that you've got all that out on your paper, who am I underneath? All of that? And just keep peeling back those layers. Of who am I? Why am I here? What am I doing? What do I want? And then I always start to think about what brings me joy, what lights me up?

What am I good at? There's concepts in some Eastern traditions, whether it's icky guy or dharma, that are really focused on that. The integration of those aspects of the self. You know, what lights me up? What am I good at? What does [00:44:00] society need? And somewhere in all of that gets distilled out is your reason for being.

And I think that can really help to guide someone through staying true to your values, moving forward in alignment, whether it's in work or other parts of your life. And I'll say it again, I've said it a million times today, but bottom up, you gotta get regulated first. You can't even like, see or hear all of that if you're in constant state of fight, flight, or freeze.

So, 

Speaker 3: mm-hmm. Such a good reminder. I, I continue to come back to, um, literal like really simple things that I didn't have as part of a practice before. That can also, I think, sometimes be a misconception is that you have to have. You know, some big robust practice or exercise that you start taking on, but for me, it's been in these teeny timey little edits that I've made in my [00:45:00] day, whether it's literally standing out on my back porch.

Before I pick up my phone, even if it's for like 30 seconds just to remember where I am, it's sounds so woo woo for anybody that like doesn't do any of this. It's like, what are you even talking about? 

Speaker 4: Ancient traditions? This is normal, you know? 

Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, but it's like it was not, none of this was normal to me.

Three years ago, I would've laughed in your face if you told me that I was gonna spend every morning saying hi to the birds before I checked my email. But this is crazy. Like that would've never even occurred to 

Speaker 4: me. 

Speaker 3: Right. 

Speaker 4: You noticed birds before? 

Speaker 3: No, never. And now I have like a whole thing and it's like, but even on the days that I'm in a rush where I know I need to get going, it's 10 seconds, 30 seconds.

It does not have to be. If you sit out on the porch with a cup of coffee for a half hour 

Speaker 4: micro, that 

Speaker 3: would be lovely. I'm here for that. But. The reality is many of us have busy lives, so it's like one of those teeny tiny little [00:46:00] moments, or whether it's putting your hands on your heart and taking a few breaths.

These are things that are available and free. That's all of us in so many different ways. And to allow yourself, again, I think the permission factor is important here too, particularly for women leaders. It can feel like, I don't have time to do any of that. I've gotta hold all these things. I gotta do the thing.

I've gotta, you know, rush this kid to whatever, or take care of this board meeting. Okay, cool. But like 30 seconds to one minute of your day, we, we've gotta find a way to allow that to be true. 

Speaker 4: And I, I believe the most, the simplest things are the antidote to the complexity of our lives, and it doesn't take a massive overhaul of your life to heal and learn and grow and change.

It happens whether it's for an individual or for an organization. It happens in everyday moments in these little micro interactions and micro practices that you would start to [00:47:00] build that capacity. To handle the day and to constantly deal with all the change and the uncertainty. It's really it. It really is so simple and it really does happen in those little moments and focusing on the most natural things.

I mean, my God, the birds outside. Yeah. It's like, oh yeah, like I'm a human being and I'm here on this earth and look at this beautiful creature right here, or touching your own heart reminds you that you are. Alive and you know, you're here for a reason. It's like, we forget we're just going on autopilot all day.

So, 

Speaker 3: totally. And I found out there's an actual psychological, you know, when you're, when you hear birds essentially, that means there's no danger because in the, like back in the uh, cave man woman days, it was like if the birds are quiet, they are hiding from predator or whatever. And so, I don't know, this is actually like scientific fact.

Speaker 4: We're all connected. Everything [00:48:00] connected. 

Speaker 3: Yes. It makes sense to me. Well, I think you're just so amazing and the work you're doing is so incredible and you've, you know, every conversation touches on this over the course of the time we spend. But I do always like to end with the same question for every woman and is around legacy.

And I, I have to stop doing the disclaimer 'cause I'm sure everyone's heard this by now. But ultimately I really want, I want a reframe around legacy. I want it to feel light and I want it to feel not like this heavy thing that we're leaving behind, but the light, energizing thing that we're all actively building toward.

And so I do, I like to ask everyone, what does building a legacy mean to you? 

Speaker 4: I think it's always evolving, but I think really it's around helping people and organizations stop breaking themselves to succeed at air quotes. For those of you listening, [00:49:00] and for me, legacy is not about scale. It is about sustainability and really living the life that we're meant to live here.

'cause at the end of someone's life, they never say. I wish I would've worked more or I wish I would've worked harder. We know this from decades of research, so for me it's about sustainability, it's about wellbeing, and it's about living the life you came here to live, not what somebody else decided it was for you.

Speaker 3: Hmm. Such important work. And we need more people with strong voices like yours in the world saying these things out loud because I think there are some of us that have maybe entered these spaces and are now. In that and in that chat actively and listening and learning. But if you haven't entered that space yet, it can feel foreign.

And I think we are talking about it more as a [00:50:00] society generally. But certainly we need a lot more of that. So I'm so grateful that you are one of those voices. Same. And we get to see each other next week and I'm so excited. So thank you again. You're amazing, and I will see you soon. 

Speaker 4: Thanks, Kristen. Take care.

Speaker 3: Bye 

bye.



Speaker 5: Thank you so much for listening and spending some of your time with me here. I hope our conversation sparked some new ideas for you. If you enjoyed the episode, please make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss what's next. And if you are ready for even more tools and stories, head on over to belden strategies.com/newsletter.

I share fresh insights, stories, and tools for women leaders every week. Until next time, keep building, keep evolving, and remember that you are kind of a big deal.