Burnout Before It Breaks You: One Lawyer's Story

She came to me because she was exhausted.

A high-performing woman. A lawyer. Always on. Nights. Weekends. A nervous system that never shut down.

On the outside, she was capable and respected. On the inside, everything felt loud and urgent. She told me she wanted to do work in a new way — though she didn't yet know how. She only knew the current pace wasn't sustainable.

This is what burnout looks like before it breaks you.

Understanding How We Have Our Experience

We didn't start with a strategy.

We started with understanding how we have our experience.

How her mind works. The nature of emotions. The power of her innate intelligence. The power of awareness.

Did she feel safe?

She didn't.

What she discovered was a constant high alert — a readiness that never powered down. Nothing dramatic. Just a hum of vigilance she'd lived inside for so long it felt normal.

And here's the quiet beauty: once she noticed it, something else became possible. The system softened. A new way of being began to emerge.

## The Work: Slowing Down and Listening

Over six months, we slowed.

She listened.

To her body. To the automatic stories she'd been chewing on for years. To what felt true before thought rushed in. To her knowing.

Instead of fixing her experience, she stayed with it. Disappointment didn't need solving. Sadness didn't mean failure. When her thinking quieted, something else appeared — aliveness. Music. Movement. Joy that felt like her own.

What Changed

She came in wanting to change how she worked.

And she did.

But not in the way she expected.

Her mind quieted. Her anxiety shrank. She trusted what she felt.

She made requests that were clean. She set limits without justification. She stopped abandoning herself to meet expectations.

What made this possible was her commitment — and my trust in energy. A shared willingness to listen rather than force.

The Results: Inner Transformation, Outer Shifts

The changes she made inside showed up outside:

Challenging relationships became easier to navigate. She could be with conflict without bracing. Her jaw unclenched. Responsibility landed as freedom. Life simplified. Decisions came from a quieter place.

Watching that happen — watching someone come home to their own intelligence — felt like quiet pride. The kind that doesn't need to announce itself.

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If you're living inside a pace that never turns off, and something in you is asking for another way, there is space to pause.

I'm here when you want a place to listen.