The Reframe
I thought this was just what ambition felt like
Spoiler alert – I was completely wrong
For a long time, I thought I was just a go-getter…
High energy, highly driven, always on. I wore it like a badge of honour – the person who could hold the most, perpetually push forwards, and keep all the plates spinning without letting a single one drop.
A jaw that was perma-clenched. Shoulders that lived somewhere around my ears. A mind that struggled to switch off, and recurrent burnouts where I’d be forced to stop for a while. A low hum of anxiety that I’d normalised so completely I’d stopped noticing it was there, alongside the inability to actually chill out.
What I didn’t realise was that my body had been trying to tell me something for years. Not loudly, at first. Just whispers.
I thought this was just what ambition felt like, but I was totally wrong.
What was actually happening was that my nervous system had been stuck in a state of chronic activation for so long that it had forgotten there was another way to be. I would oscillate between fight/flight and freeze. These states can be so helpful when you’re faced with acute danger, but are incredibly detrimental when they’re chronically switched on. My body and mind were perpetually braced for impact.
And here’s the thing about living in this way: you can absolutely still function. You can build businesses, raise children, show up for the people who need you, achieve remarkable things. At least for a while.
But at some point – and for most of the people I work with, there’s a very specific moment – the cost becomes impossible to ignore.
For me, it was motherhood. I hadn’t anticipated being a full time mum but, for various reasons, there I was. At least prior to that I’d had a lot of self-care to lean on and offset all the heavy lifting my nervous system was doing. I suddenly found myself with zero time to do anything for me – even a daily shower was a stretch for the first few months. It was the straw (albeit not exactly a little one) that broke this camel’s back.
The Healing
After a year of mental freefall, I decided something had to change. I found ways to support my nervous system singlehandedly (often literally, thanks to a Velcro toddler). It took time, patience and consistency, but I stopped being a yoga teacher who occasionally referred to nervous system regulation, and started becoming someone who had wholeheartedly done the work herself.
It wasn’t a quick fix or a 30-day reset. It was a slow, deeply personal process of learning to honestly respect what my body was telling me, rather than ignoring and overriding it. I learned why I’d been wired this way in the first place, and built practices and structures that deeply nourished me.
Things really shifted. The clenched jaw loosened and those shoulders dropped. The anxiety disappeared. And I started to feel, for the first time in a long time, like someone who was living their life rather than just managing it.
FREE RESOURCE
The Burnout Blueprint
This is the work I’m passionate about helping you do too. Not because I have all the answers, but because I’ve walked this path myself, and I know exactly where the footholds are.
I made a free downloadable audit so that you can clearly see how stress is showing in your body, mind and life – and tools that you can implement today to start feeling better.
