You may think you're fine. You're still performing well at work, still the one people rely on, yet you know something's off.

In this episode - a replay of one of my most important conversations from 2025, I share the question that changed how I think about burnout: What are you borrowing from your life to keep your work looking fine? For many of us, our ingrained programming tells us we have to please everyone all the time to feel good enough, so we protect our work and borrow energy from the rest of our life to do it. We look totally fine on the outside. Inside, the walls are standing but there's nothing left.

I’m chatting with Dr Richard Duggins NHS Psychiatrist and Author of ‘Burnout Free Working’ about why high achievers stay high-performing right up util they burn out, what radiators and drains have to do with it, and what Richard calls the burnout cliff - where one small trigger takes you by surprise. If you go back into the same way of working, carrying the same load in the same way, it will affect your next decision, and the one after that.

This is about burnout not as a personal failing, but as a change in the balance of your energy.

We cover:

• Why your performance can stay high while the rest of your life shrinks
• Borrowing energy from home, fun, and rest to protect work
• Radiators and drains - work intensity, home pressures and culture
• The burnout cliff and the plateau before it
• Early signs - poor sleep, irritability, detachment, loss of joy
• What may help you carry it differently without going back over the edge

This episode is for you if... you are a high achiever in a leadership role who has to have the conversation nobody else will, has to make the call someone disagrees with, and lies awake replaying a decision you had to make. A doctor or professional who looks capable to everyone else but feels depleted when you get home.

You do not need to collapse to prove you were struggling.

Get weekly tools and episode notes by email: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome

More resources: https://youarenotafrog.com/

Burnout Self-Assessment Toolkit: https://youarenotafrog.com/toolkit/

Mentioned in this episode:

🟦 Beat Stress & Thrive | Live Cohort Starts 13 October

The Overwhelm SOS Toolkit
Stop the overwhelm and get back on track, without dropping balls or quitting.

Have you ever felt ashamed or frustrated that you didn't know the answer? Not to a clinical question, but about your own life - what's next, what's wrong, why you feel the way you do?

If you're the one everyone relies on, not knowing can feel like failing at the one thing you're supposed to be good at. This is a replay from 2024 I'm bringing back while I’m writing my book ‘How to Say No When Someone Might Die’. One of the things I keep coming back to in the book is how much of the load we carry isn't about the work at all. It's our ingrained programming that tells us we have to have the answer to feel good enough. And when we don't, it will affect your next decision, and the one after that.

In this episode we revisit what to do when the furniture is shifting, and why wait and see can be a strategy.

We cover:

• Why high achievers feel shame when they don't know what's next
• Shifting furniture - what to do when life is reconfiguring and you can't see where things will land
• Your left brain interpreter - and why it makes up catastrophic stories to feel safe
• Zone of Power - what is actually yours to carry, and what isn't
• Why wait and see is a valid, proactive strategy, not avoidance
• The next best action when you feel discombobulated

This episode is for you if... you are a doctor or professional, a high achiever in a leadership role who has to have the difficult conversation nobody else will, has to make the call someone disagrees with, and lies awake replaying a decision you had to make. If not knowing feels like not being good enough, this one is for you.

You are not a frog.

Mentioned in this episode:

🟦 Beat Stress & Thrive | Live Cohort Starts 13 October

You tell yourself that never letting anyone down is how you protect the people you love. But our ingrained programming tells us we have to please everyone all the time to feel good enough - and the people you love are the people who suffer most when you're stuck in the Responsibility Trap. They get the tired, thin version of you. If you lie awake worried you've upset someone, or feel guilty for saying no to something small like a dinner you can't make until November, this 20-minute Quick Dip will show you why that guilt isn't telling the truth, and what changes when you let the load go back to whose it actually was.

We cover:

• The November dinner — and why answering honestly can feel like a failing
• Why for us a request arrives as an obligation with our name on it
• What over 600 professionals told us about lying awake worried they've upset someone
• The identity underneath it: I'm not the sort of person who lets people down
• What that identity costs at home and at work
• The village cricket team — guilt for saying no to a sport I don't even like
• The question that proves you already let people down every day — and the world kept turning
• If I'm not the woman who never lets anyone down, then who am I? And who says?
• What happens at home and at work when you stop carrying it all — including the reception team who stopped asking her first
• Two futures — and phrases to reach for when the guilt fires

This episode is for you if... you are a high achiever in a leadership role who has to have the conversation nobody else will, has to make the call someone disagrees with, and lies awake replaying a decision you had to make. You are the one who copes, steps up, notices what needs doing — and you feel guilty even doing the work that matters most.

📩 Join 20,000 professionals: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome/

🐸 Get exclusive episodes and resources by joining FrogXtra: https://youarenotafrog.com/members

Mentioned in this episode:

🟦 [FREE WEBINAR] How to Beat Burnout and Escape Burnout on Repeat