How Deanna Ended The Burnout And Found Herself Again With THRIVE
My client, Deanna, went from exhausted and at “one of the lowest points in my life” to ditching burnout and “finding myself again”. Here’s how she took a complete 180 in just six months.
When she first reached out to me, Deanna was at a breaking point. She expressed what I’ve heard from too many women: “I can’t go on like this1”
Issues with work, relationships, and family had brought her stress level to a “10 out of 10”. It was so bad that she'd even developed shingles.
“I feel like I live in fight-or-flight mode and almost as if I am losing control of my body.”
Deanna joined THRIVE, my private burnout recovery coaching program for high-achieving women. We came up with a plan, and Deanna committed to taking action.
Six months later she found herself telling friends and family: “THRIVE was the best investment I’ve ever made.”
In this blog post I’m breaking down Deanna’s story in detail. I want you to know that even if it feels like everything in your health, work, and life is out of control, there is a path forward. If Deanna can do it, you can too!
The Problem: Deanna was burnt to a crisp
Meet Deanna.
Driven, focused, ambitious. Loves her work with a major health care organization. Loves being the best at what she does. Loves helping others.
But like so many high-achieving women who are dedicated to their careers, Deanna had found herself exhausted in every sense of the word, and feeling stuck in place.
When Deanna and I first connected, she was at a breaking point.
““I was at one of my lowest points in life both physically and mentally.””
STRESS had caught up with her in more ways than one.
Conditions at work were intense and Deanna constantly worried about her performance and the future. She’d often find herself giving her all to work and - no surprise - lacked work-life balance. Working mostly from home, work life and personal life bled into each other seamlessly.
Beyond work, over the past year Deanna had also gone through a tough breakup and supported a close family member through a health crisis, adding to her anxiety and overwhelm.
All that stress was draining her ENERGY to an extent she’d never before experienced.
For as long as she could remember, exercise had been a source of joy and stress relief for Deanna. She loved lifting weights at the gym, boxing classes, and going on long walks outdoors. But now? She was too depleted to move.
Plus, even though Deanna was perpetually exhausted, she could barely SLEEP.
Like clockwork, she’d wake every night around 3am, stare at the ceiling for 2-3 hours, then get a final 30 minutes of sleep before she had to be up and at her desk to work.
Deanna was EMOTIONALLY drained, too. She found herself retreating from social gatherings. As she put it, “I want to want to hang with friends”. She’d been a socially outgoing person her whole life, but now she just didn’t have the bandwidth for it.
💕 For a long time, Deanna had been coping in the only way she instinctively knew how - with FOOD (or, more accurately, without it).
Stress had killed her appetite, and by her own admission, she’d never had a good relationship with food to begin with. Now, when she did manage to eat, her choices were often less-than-healthy. The result was that she lacked the calories and nutrients her body needed to function optimally.
As a result, HEALTH PROBLEMS were mounting. Her digestion had become so bad for so long that she didn’t even mention it as a problem when we first spoke- IBS just felt like normal life to her. Same with her hair- she’d been losing a lot of hair but had also lost hope that it could be fixed.
But the real breaking point? SHINGLES.
This is a painful skin condition caused by the reactivation of the chickenpox virus (yep, that one you got when you were in 3rd grade). Shingles usually only impacts people with severely compromised immune systems - typically the elderly or someone with a serious health condition (like cancer).
Normally, women in their 30s and 40s don’t get shingles. Unfortunately, Deanna, only 35 years old, did have a severely compromised immune system, due to stress that had piled up on her body for so long.
At this point, she was so worn down that she simply didn’t recognize herself anymore in body, mind, or spirit.
what Did Deanna Truly want?
“I had lost sight of the woman I was and I wanted so badly to find myself again, but struggled with how to do that.” - Deanna B.
In THRIVE, we always begin by creating a plan- identifying your desires and breaking them down into manageable parts. So when Deanna and I had our planning meeting, we clarified what healing burnout would ideally look and feel like for her, and what she really wanted to achieve in her health and life.
Here’s what she came up with:
To not feel “on edge” so much, and instead be more in a calm state.
To not think about work during non-work hours.
To get back my appetite.
To sleep through the night, every night, and wake up feeling rested.
To heal from shingles- and never get it again.
To wake up and be able to say “I feel good today!”
To be able to “give 110% to myself”, not just to work and everyone else.
To feel like I can say YES to friends and really mean it.
To be more present in relationships and in my own life.
In sum…
“I want to get back to a place where I am not always fatigued, truly enjoy the things that have always brought me happiness in life, and feel much less stressed.”
We took all Deanna’s desires and boiled them down to three tangible lines of action:
Sleep Better
Improve Nutrition
Lower Stress
This formed the foundation of her 6-month plan.
Deanna Takes Action!
Before diving into what Deanna did to achieve all those goals, here’s what she did NOT do:
❌ She did not quit her job.
❌ She did not uproot her life.
❌ She did not rely on quick or surface-level fixes.
What she DID do was:
✅ Assume power over her situation - and believe healing was possible.
✅ Accept that burnout recovery would be a journey, with some parts unknown.
✅ Take consistent action, knowing that small steps would add up to big change over time.
Here’s how that looked…
It might sound counterintuitive, but even though STRESS was the thing that sparked Deanna to reach out for help, dealing head-on with her big stressors was not a viable place to start taking action. In her state of absolute exhaustion, she didn’t have the bandwidth for things like boundaries or meditation. Instead, we worked from the inside out.
we began by refueling Deanna’s energy - getting her a good night’s sleep and improving her nutrition.
There were MANY potential action steps Deanna could have taken to eat and sleep better. But to avoid overwhelm - and ensure that any new habits would be sustainable - we started by:
Brainstorming a list of action steps that made logical sense based on her starting point - what she was currently eating, what her sleep routines currently looked like, and what she’d tried in the past.
Narrowing down to a shortlist of action steps would likely have the biggest impact, and that she felt the most motivated to try.
Choosing 1-2 small first steps - and then building on them each week.
⭐️ Deanna’s very first step was to start eating BREAKFAST to give her more energy to get through her day, and eliminate the stress on her body caused by missing meals and depriving it of nutrients.
Since Deanna had been skipping breakfast for nearly 20 years, we took things slowly. The only food that didn't feel nauseating? A pre-made protein shake that she'd been buying by the case. So that's what she committed to eating.
Soon, Deanna was swapping out the pre-made shakes for real, whole, nutritious foods. And within a few months, she was eating 3 meals a day and had expanded her diet to include a variety of nutrient-rich foods: veggies, protein, fruits, whole grains, and more.
⭐️ As she shifted her eating habits, Deanna also shifted her habits around SLEEP.
At first, her only task was to get outside for 15 minutes, first thing in the morning. (Getting natural light outdoors when you wake up boosts daytime energy and makes sleep come more easily- you can read more about that, along with other sleep tips, in THIS blog post).
Over the next few weeks, she built on that initial step by improving her bedroom environment and evening routine, and experimenting with techniques to help her stop ruminating if she wakes up in the middle of the night.
After about a month of focusing solely on refueling her energy, Deanna was ready to begin tackling stress.
In Deanna’s mind, she needed to learn how to manage stress. Her doctor was telling her it was a necessity (and that it was a cause of her shingles) and even suggested anti-anxiety meds, which Deanna did NOT want.
She wanted to learn to deal with stress in a natural and permanent way. We focused on three things:
1️⃣ BOUNDARIES to protect Deanna’s energy and time.
We dug deep into WHAT was adding to her stress load at work and how she could lessen it. It turned out that Deanna was saying “yes” to a lot of requests at work that were fully out of her scope- she wanted to be helpful, but in doing so she was diverting her energy away from her most important projects that were central to her role. Slowly, she experimented with saying “no”. And she also started putting daily routines into place to better separate her “work life” from her “personal life”.
2️⃣ MINDSET shifts.
As with many high-achieving women, much of Deanna’s stress came not just from her taking on too much, but her fears around work. By all accounts, she was excellent at her job, but she worried a lot about…
What people would think if she said “no” to an ask that was beyond her scope.
Being held responsible if and when other people (who didn’t answer to her and weren’t her responsibility) did not do their jobs.
Institutional changes at work that might (or might not) eliminate her position six months down the road.
We worked through these challenges in Deanna’s coaching sessions, but I also gave her some “homework” to do on her own to help bring self-awareness to the stories in her mind and start to change them (specifically, she followed my "flip the script” exercise for dealing with automatic negative thoughts).
3️⃣ NERVOUS SYSTEM REGULATION strategies to retrain her to pause and respond to stressors, instead of reacting on impulse.
This included a couple simple breathwork practices she could use at any time - even while she was at work. But more than that, Deanna built more habits into her daily life that naturally got her nervous system out of constant fight-or-flight. She started practicing yoga again, had daily “me time” outdoors with her morning coffee, began taking walks outside and eventually returned to her gym, and leaned on her evening wind-down routine to help her get into a relaxed state for bedtime.
what did “success” end up looking like for Deanna?
Long story short, by the end of our 6 months together, Deanna felt like a completely new person. She had the emotional energy to be social again. Work stress no longer consumed her. She was excited about life again!
“I feel much more present in my life, in my relationships both with myself and those I love. THRIVE paved the path I needed to walk to find myself again.” -Deanna B.
Improved SLEEP, ENERGY, AND PHYSICAL HEALTH
Within just a few weeks, Deanna was SLEEPING soundly through the night, every night, for the first time in years. Plus, she no longer wakes up in the middle of the night.
This, along with other changes Deanna made, had an enormous impact on her ENERGY. Says Deanna:
“I absolutely feel the difference in my energy and mental capacity on a daily basis - especially on the days where mental gymnastics needed for work are very prevalent haha!”
What’s more, because her energy expanded so much, she’s back to doing her favorite things: going for “power” walks outside, getting back in the gym to strength train, and spending time with friends and family.
Some other “small” physical health problems resolved, too. I say “small” because they weren’t problems that Deanna mentioned when we began working together in THRIVE because she’d grown so accustomed to dealing with them. But the DID impact the quality of her everyday life.
For example, as Deanna improved her diet and lowered her stress load, her DIGESTION improved and normalized.
And then there was the issue of her HAIR. Deanna had been losing hair when we first began working together, but didn't even mention it as a problem because it seemed either normal or insurmountable. But to her surprise, months later her family began commenting on how lustrous her hair looked.
And of course, her case of SHINGLES resolved and never returned - which, for Deanna, was paramount.
Less STRESS AND More BALANCE
Deanna dramatically improved her ability to respond to the pressures and uncertainties in her life, and noticed her overall mood improve. When she began in THRIVE, she’d rated her mood at a 4/10; by the 6-month mark she’d raised that to a 9/10.
The result is that she now has more emotional energy to give to the people she loves the most in her life - her family and close friends.
And remember how Deanna’s doctor suggested anti-anxiety meds? Well, Deanna learned that she wasn’t a naturally “anxious” person. She just needed the right tools to confront stress and anxiety.
For example, a few months into THRIVE, Deanna was dealing with increased challenges at work. But instead of letting it overtake her, she took back her own power over her thoughts, her mood, and her nervous system:
“Last night I sat and thought about all the work coming my way coupled with uncertainly of the job market. But then I flipped the script by reminding myself that I am valuable, the work I do is valuable, I am a hard worker who has worked to prove my dedication to the cause and the programs I manage.”
Deanna also lowered her stress by setting boundaries and reserving her energy only for work tasks and projects that actually advance her career or get her job done. The net result was that she became more productive, was able to spend less time (and mental energy) on work beyond normal work hours, and enjoy greater work-life balance.
✨Deanna is literally shining, both inside and out
“In just 6 short months, I’ve truly turned my life around. I feel much more present in my life, in my relationship both with myself and those I love, and above all recognized the importance of unapologetically putting my own wellbeing first among the stressors life throws our way.”
The thing that’s truly remarkable about Deanna’s transformation?
Nothing- and I mean nothing- changed about her work situation or life circumstances. If anything, her job status became more precarious.
Instead, SHE changed. She changed the way she took care of herself. And she changed the way she chose to RESPOND to the pressures and challenges life was throwing at her.
And that made all the difference.
IF Deanna could do it, so can you
Want to find out how you can get results like Deanna’s- without leaving your job or tearing your life apart? Your first step is to learn more about THRIVE, my 1-1 burnout recovery coaching program for high-achieving women. Click over here for the details ⤵️
When we speak, I’ll help you get absolute clarity on the root causes of your burnout experience and visualize what a life beyond burnout could look and feel like. And if it’s a good fit, I’ll answer all your questions about THRIVE. If not, I’ll point you in the direction of resources I think will help you out. Either way, you’ll walk away with a plan.
