I know this woman. I was her. I still meet her every single day.
She wakes up already switched on. Before her eyes are fully open, she reaches for her phone to check messages and remind herself how busy her calendar looks. Her mind is racing through what she didn’t finish yesterday: the school pick-up, the meeting she can’t be late for, the elderly parent she needs to call.
She carries it all: career, children, home, family, friendships. From the outside, she looks like she has it completely together. Inside, she is exhausted in a way that a weekend cannot fix. She scrolls in the evenings to numb a feeling she cannot name. She lies awake at night because there is too much to do, too much to be, too much to hold.
Nobody ever told her it didn’t have to be this way.
The Data Behind Women’s Leadership Burnout
The Mental Health UK Burnout Report 2025 found that 91% of UK adults experienced high or extreme stress in the past year, with women consistently reporting the highest levels. Around 75% of women experience burnout compared to 58% of men, and in early 2024, women accounted for 71% of all mental health-related absences. The statistics are terrifying, but what’s more terrifying is that many women are hiding their burnout, so even these figures don’t tell the full story.
The Weight That Was Handed to Us Before We Could Choose
She grew up being told to be nice. To be good. To be everything for everyone. That pressure was handed to her before she was old enough to question it, from her parents, her community, the culture she was raised in.
I was that woman for many years. Fourteen-hour days and nursery runs. Deadlines and sick children. Always delivering, always on, always the person others relied on. From the outside, it looked like I was managing it all.
But I had constant IBS. I got ill on the first day of every holiday when my body finally slowed down. My patience was short, my evenings tense, and even in sleep, my dreams were a continuation of the working day. I thought this was the price of success. I didn’t realize it was the cost of running an autopilot I hadn’t designed, until I finally stopped, faced it honestly, and understood what was actually driving it.
When I look around at the women I’ve known across different countries, industries, and stages of life, I see the same thing. Different lives. Different countries, the same exhaustion underneath.
Why Everything She Tries Makes It Worse
The guilt of not being enough is everywhere. Not present enough at work when she has to leave for a sick child. Not present enough at home when her mind is still on an unsent email.
So she tries to fix it: healthy eating, exercise, and a pilates class. But every attempt creates more guilt, because where is the time supposed to come from? Self-care becomes another standard she is failing to meet.
As life accelerates and the pace of work and expectations grow, she tries to run faster. She falls more often. She gets up and falls again.
What Actually Changes Everything
This is not a discipline problem. Not a scheduling problem. Not even a workload problem.
It is a nervous system problem.
The urgency she lives with doesn’t come only from what’s on her plate. It comes from a way of operating that became her baseline, so gradually she stopped noticing it. She was rewarded for speed, for always delivering, for never dropping anything. And so her system learned that urgency equals competence. That slowing down is not safe.
She has been living on autopilot for years, driven by values handed to her before she ever chose them. Until she becomes aware of that, with honesty and, crucially, with kindness toward herself, nothing fundamentally changes.
But there is a way out, and it starts much smaller than she expects.
– A pause. One moment of noticing: this is how I have been operating. Not judging, just seeing it clearly. Then asking, with genuine curiosity: Is this how I want to live? Are the things I’m so stressed about even as important as they feel?
That pause creates a gap. That gap gets bigger. And inside it is something she hasn’t had in a very long time: the ability to choose. To regulate her own state. To respond rather than react.
This is the foundation of the Regulated Success Method: awareness and regulation, followed by recalibration and sustainable performance. Not about doing less. About operating differently, from clarity rather than pressure.
One mindful pause can change a life. It changed mine.
Name: Dorota Wasik
Professional Title: Regulated Success Coach
Bio: Dorota Wasik is a risk management professional and mindfulness teacher turned Regulated Success coach. Founder of Boss Up Your Life and creator of the Regulated Success Method, she helps ambitious women perform at a high level without burning out.
