Why You Don’t Feel Like Yourself Anymore | Burnout, Identity Loss & People Pleasing

Why do so many high achievers feel exhausted and burned out — even when they’re doing everything “right”?

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In this episode, we break down why burnout isn’t just about working too much — it’s often the result of living out of alignment with who you really are.

We talk about:

• Why burnout can feel like losing yourself
• How people pleasing turns into chronic self-abandonment
• The hidden cost of being “easy to deal with”
• Why habits like meditation and workouts don’t fix the root problem
• And how your environment, boundaries, and identity all play a role in nervous system dysregulation

If you’ve been feeling disconnected, exhausted, or like you don’t recognize yourself anymore — this episode will give you a different way to look at burnout and what’s actually driving it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the audio version of the weekly recharge. My name is Renee, founder of Wayward Wellness Coaching. And if you found yourself hobbling over here from the Hustle Rebels podcast, I would like to welcome you to subscribe to the weekly recharge newsletter where we dive a little deeper into nervous system regulation, how burnout affects the body, and kind of share a little bit more personal stories about myself through the weekly newsletter. So go ahead and subscribe. The link is in the show notes. Otherwise, let's hop right into it. Sometimes it's not burnout, it is the version of you that stopped speaking. Some of the things that we will cover this week are how a random moment can reveal what you've been avoiding, the version of you that didn't disappear, you just stopped using, how being easy to deal with slowly turns into self-abandonment, why burnout is less about doing too much and more about who you're not being. And I'll give you three simple ways to regulate your system when this starts to hit a little close to home. I wasn't going to pick it up. It was just sitting there on the floor of the hotel. A single penny. Normally I would walk right past it. It's a penny. Maybe make a joke to myself about it being lucky heads up and leave it for a kid. If they still tell them that these days. But something made me stop, lean down and grab it. I turned it over. 2006. I don't know why that stopped me, but I stood there for a second just holding it. Feeling something shift. Because in 2006, I was 16 years old. That little coin stayed with me the rest of the day. I kept pulling it out of my pocket and looking at it. And slowly this thought started building. I'm about to turn 36. That's 20 years. And somewhere in those 20 years, not all at once, but slowly, quietly, I lost a big piece of myself. A piece that was loud. The piece that had opinions and wasn't afraid to say them out loud. The piece that was honestly a little bit of a handful. When I was 16, I was expressive, fiery, outspoken. I stood up for myself and for other people without thinking twice about it. And I've spent the last year or so trying to find my way back to her, to that younger version of me. I got a real reminder who she was when I started thinking about something that happened when I was 13. I had one of the bigger parts in a school musical, once on this island, and I had worked so hard on that solo. The night of the performance, during my moment on stage, a woman in the audience stood up and made it very obvious that she was leaving. Not quietly. She just up, out and done. That week, she wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper, back when local papers still ran those, and she said the school had lost its way in letting students perform a show that involved, in her words, island gods. She had religious objections and she wanted the whole town to know about it. I read that letter, and then I wrote one back. As a 13-year-old, I told her that I was the one she had walked out on. I told her I had worked incredibly hard for that solo. And I told her that regardless of her personal beliefs, she was an adult. And there were a hundred other ways she could have handled her objection that didn't involve walking out of a child's performance in a way that made sure everyone noticed. She responded. She said, When you become an adult, you'll understand. Our back and forth became the talk of the town. And it was a small town. Well, I became an adult, and I agree with my 13-year-old self more now than I did then. But somewhere between the 13-year-old writing letters to the editor and today, I became Renee the Outspoken One, and that title slowly shifted from something I wore like a badge into something I had to manage, tone down, filter, make easier for other people to swallow. I stopped writing the letters. I started staying quiet when I had something to say. I got really good at keeping the peace, at everyone else's expense and eventually at my own. I shrank myself, bit by bit, so slowly that I didn't even know it was happening. Even prided myself as a chameleon. That penny wasn't about nostalgia. It was a little mirror. And that's what I want to say about burnout, because I think we talk about it completely wrong. We treat it like a scheduling problem. Too many hours, too much on the calendar, not enough vacation days. And sure, those things do contribute, but that's not the root of it, not for most of us. Burnout is grief. It's the exhaustion that comes from living out of alignment with who you actually are. It's what happens when you've been abandoning yourself for so long, saying yes when you meant no, staying quiet when you had something to say, performing a version of yourself that's easier for other people to be around. That your system finally goes, we're not doing this anymore. It doesn't usually show up as a dramatic breakdown. It shows up as I don't feel like myself anymore. I don't know what I want. I'm just tired. Yeah, of course you are. You've been working overtime to be someone that you're not. The fix isn't time off. It's not a better morning routine or a planner or a week at the beach, though God knows we could all use one, especially in this cold weather. The fix is honesty. It's getting real about where you've been shrinking and deciding if you're actually done with that. That penny didn't give me an answer, but it asked me a question I've been avoiding. What if she's still in there? The girl who wrote the letter, the one who was 13 years old and looked at an adult's bad behavior and just called it what it was, the one who wasn't subtle, who was a lot to handle, who said what needed to be said, I don't think she went anywhere. I think I just got really, really good at overriding her. There's something kind of poetic about that penny too, because they've basically phased it out, you know. It still exists. You'll find one on a hotel floor, but it doesn't really circulate anymore. It's been quietly set aside. Kind of like that version of me. Still here, just not really in use. That small moment in the hotel, bending down, picking up a coin I normally would have ignored, turned out to be one of the more transformational things that happened to me this year. Not because of magic, but because it made me stop. Made me remember, and it made me ask whether I was actually ready to stop shrinking. And I think I am. What about yourself? And for this week's nervous system regulation, I have three practical steps for you to try this week to help you avoid overwhelm and also connect with yourself. The first one is grounding yourself in your body. I want you to take a breath, not in a deep, performative breath, just a real one. Notice your feet on the floor. Press them down slightly. This is called grounding through physical contact, and it's one of the simplest ways to bring your nervous system back online when a memory or an emotion may pull you sideways. The body needs to know it's safe before the mind can process anything clearly. And if you need some help, I have a regulation triangle video that has a link in the newsletter, and I can also put it in the show notes for you as well. The second one is the physiological sigh. If you feel some tension rising as you read this, it might be because this is hitting close to home. So you can try what researchers call a physiological sigh. Do a double inhale through the nose, short breath, then a second sniff on top of it, followed by a long, slow exhale through the mouth with a sigh. This is the fastest known way to downregulate your nervous system. One or two of these can genuinely shift your state. Your body doesn't distinguish between a past threat and a present one, so if remembering who you used to be feels activating or getting you to an emotional state, this is how you remind your system that you're safe right now. And the third one is a self-compassion pause. I understand this could be seemingly weird for a lot of us, but I want you to place one hand on your chest, feel the warmth of your own hand, take a breath and try saying silently or out loud, this is hard, I am not the only one who feels this way, and I'm allowed to come back to myself. This practice, rooted in self-compassion research by Dr. Kristen Neff's work, activates the care circuitry of the nervous system. It's the same warmth that you would offer a friend. Most of us are dramatically better at offering that to others than to ourselves. And if you try any one of these and they help, feel free to shoot me a message. I love to hear when any of these practices help you guys. And then this week on Hustle Rebels Podcasts, if this topic resonated, you can head over to the Hustle Rebels to catch out the latest episode. This week's episode, I break down why burnout isn't something that you can fix with better habits alone, because you can meditate, breathe, and take care of yourself, and still feel completely drained if you're still going back to the same environments, expectations, and patterns that are keeping your system activated. It also sets the stage for this week's conversation with Wade Simmons, who shares how that kind of prolonged stress and burnout didn't just stay mental for him. It showed up physically in a way that he couldn't ignore. The link is in the newsletter that leads you to why high achievers burn out, even why they're healthy. And then go ahead and subscribe so you don't miss the conversation that Wade and I have. And if you're new here or feeling nostalgic or just want to read some previous newsletters, you can check them out in the previous editions of the weekly recharge. As always, I appreciate you guys and I'm always here if you have questions. If you want to chat, shoot me a message, and then share the weekly recharge with a friend so they can be regulated just like you.