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How I burned myself out (again)

There’s a certain irony to being a mental health advocate, raising awareness about certain topics and yet somehow managing to burn yourself out. Yet here we are, it’s the start of 2026 and I feel on the fringes of burnout – I definitely ended 2025 burned out and I’m not out of the weeds yet. How did this happen, you might ask? Well, I ask myself the same question and I’ve realized that it seems to be the perfect concotion of my personality that means I have a tendency to push myself too hard. But first, let’s rewind.

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The truth about being a mindful entrepreneur

The path to entrepreneurship

About 6 months ago I decided to re-embark on the path of entrepreneurship by becoming self employed. This isn’t my first time – I did it in 2019 – but back then I had no idea what I was doing and had picked the option by default. Needless to say it was a very stressful period where I couldn’t fully embrace this status. In 2024 it was a completely different scenario: after careful consideration and wondering what I wanted to do next with my career, I decided I would give it another go.

With my 40th birthday on the horizon I asked myself: what do I want for the next 20 years of my career? Do I want to be in a corporate office job? The answer was no. I wanted to give myself a chance of pursuing the things I love and giving it a go – no regrets. Now I realize, 40 is still young and there’s plenty of time to do the things you always wanted to. 😉

With that in mind I decided to pursue my idea of becoming a life coach – something I’d been wanting to do since 2018. I thought that being able to blend my communications and marketing skills as well as being a coach would be the perfect mix. I also wanted the opportunity to pursue my artistic goals related to dance, and thus the journey started.

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Burnout PTSD – what is it?

Not long ago I was talking to a friend who also burned out and she said something to me along the lines of “I didn’t know if I could work anymore, if work was even for me… I was scared of burning out again”. Suddenly a light went off in my brain and I realized – “oh my God she has burnout PTSD, and so do I”.

It really got me reflecting on my own experience and how my burnouts have affected me ever since. Particularly after launching the burnout checklist, it’s a topic I want to continue exploring. After all, you can recover from burnout thankfully, but what happens after that?

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The burnout checklist

The burnout checklist

Burnout remains a key problem in the workplace. Did you know that in the UK, one in four people (24%) said they felt ‘unable to manage stress and pressure in the workplace’? The issue is, we are not yet equipped with the right tools to help us know, and manage ourselves. We are told about “mindfulness”, are asked to meditate and “breathe” but we are not told why and lack context as to why this helps. So how are we supposed to meaningfully implement these tools?

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How I went from burned out to thriving

Or in other words, how my thirties have been the most transformative decade of my life…

A lot is happening right now: I am about to turn 40, I just took a leap of faith and became a freelancer again, and I just started taking my intermediate coaching course with Co-Active coaching. All of this got me reflecting on the past decade and how I essentially turned my life around. I’ve gone from burned out, anxious, depressed, lacking in self-confidence, to someone who is grounded, aligned with her values and living life to the fullest. It’s a beautiful way to close off this decade and enter the next one, honestly I cannot wait to see what it brings. So, let’s jump in and let me tell you more about what happened.

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Myth: burnout is an extreme condition

Extreme burnout

I was recently speaking with a friend who is on sick leave from her job. She’s been through a lot in her personal life and finally her doctor decided she needed to take time off. When we met, she started asking me questions about my burnouts. I could sense she was curious and trying to understand more, perhaps trying to decide if she herself was burned out. And in this conversation several times she said to me “yeah but you were never on sick leave, right”? Or “yes but you never reached the stage where you couldn’t get out of bed, right”? And then it occurred to me: she was trying to check if I’d had a “real burnout”, where real burnout equated with an extreme condition in which you literally can’t get out of bed any more and have to take sick leave.

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Mental health in the workplace – what should your employer do?

Mental health in the workplace: overcome stress and beat burnout

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of being on a panel at work called “Overcome stress and beat burnout” along with 3 other colleagues who are passionate about this topic. We spoke a lot about what you as an individual can do to look after yourself and there were a lot of great tips. We spoke about boundaries, expectations of yourself, and having honest conversations with your colleagues. But someone also asked “what can the employer do for us?”, and I’ve been thinking about this ever since.

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An update on That’s Mental

It’s been a while since I’ve been active on That’s Mental, whether over here on the blog or on my Youtube channel, so I thought it was time to share an honest update and writing felt like the most natural thing to do. So if you’re in the mood for a bit of a natter, read on below. This isn’t about me feeling sorry for myself or complaining, this is about being honest about my mental health which I believe is important.

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Real life mental health stories: totally burnt out

Totally burnt out

Who are you, and why did you decide to share your story?

I am a woman in my mid-thirties and I work in the humanitarian sector. During a recent long-term field assignment, I experienced what I later discovered to be burnout. At the time I had little knowledge about this mental health issue, so for a long time I simply ignored the signals my mind and my body were sending me. 

By sharing my experience, I’d like to shed light on burnout, its symptoms and its consequences. In my sector there is still a lot of stigma around it, so I think that reading about others’ stories may be of help to those going through (or suspecting they are going through) the same experience. 

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12 ways you know you’re in the right job

12 ways you know you're in the right job

While I’ve often talked about the negative circumstances you can encounter in the workplace and how these contribute to mental health problems, it’s also important to talk about the positive experiences to counterbalance that. After all it’s not all doom and gloom and there are plenty of experiences to show there is hope when it comes to finding a workplace that is good for your mental health.

What’s more, it’s important for you to think about what a good place to work might look like for you, when it comes to your mental health. How do you want to feel in the workplace, and more importantly, how will you know it’s “right”?

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Secrecy around mental health at work

Secrecy around mental health at work
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Previously I talked about the idea that mental health is bad for your career, in fact busting the myth wide open. But along with this commonplace myth come a load of other issues. Enter: secrecy around mental health at work.

While the topic is gaining momentum, we’re still not in a place where people openly volunteer information about their mental health in the workplace. Thanks to COVID19 I’ve seen the media and employers paying far more attention to mental health, which means companies are looking for ways to address the issue and bring mental wellbeing to the forefront of their agenda. I couldn’t be more excited!

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Mental health is bad for your career

As always, one of the reasons I write these posts and maintain this blog is to raise awareness around mental health so there are fewer myths and we’re able to talk about it more openly.

One of the main challenges with mental health and people feeling comfortable speaking up is that there is still a lot of stigma around it. We’ve definitely made progress but we’re not yet in a place where you can openly say to your employer “I suffer from depression” without being afraid of getting fired.

So today I want to address this common myth that mental health is bad for your career and break it down. Why do we believe this, what are the fears and most importantly, how do we overcome it?

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Job hunting and mental health

Job hunting and mental health

Long read

The past few months I wrote a few posts revolving around the corona crisis, but there’s one very important topic I haven’t covered yet – you guessed it – job hunting.

This topic is close to my heart as I’ve been unemployed, and have experience with the ups and downs that come with it. Now due to coronavirus things are different: many people have lost their jobs unexpectedly, perhaps overnight or without much warning. This creates difficult conditions in which to be searching for a new job, not to mention the mental health struggles that come with it.

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The emotional damage of working in a toxic environment

Photo by Nathan Cowley from Pexels

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post on the topic of mental health at work. Understandably a lot of other things have happened the past few months, but this remains my core area of interest and where I want to break down barriers. I decided it was time I got back to it, and was listening to Esther Perel’s podcast “How’s work” when this topic came to mind.

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