If you are tired in a way that sleep does not fix, and everything you have tried has worked for about a fortnight, you are not looking for another strategy. You want to feel like yourself again. That is possible, and you do not have to fall apart first.
For leaders, professionals and people accustomed to being the one who copes. Philippa Scott, trauma-informed coach and TRTP practitioner. Sunshine Coast, working across Australia and online.
You are not weak, lazy or losing it. Your body has been running an emergency for a very long time, and it has forgotten how to stop.
Rest, boundaries, breathing, mindset. It helps for a while. Then the exhaustion comes back, because the alarm was never switched off.
The alarm gets switched off at the source. Your body learns the emergency is over, and it stays learned. This is the work I do.
Most burnout advice assumes you have a stress problem, so it hands you stress tools. Rest more. Set boundaries. Breathe. Say no. All sensible, and you have probably tried most of it.
Here is why it keeps wearing off. Your nervous system is the part of you that decides, without asking, whether you are safe or in danger. When it decides you are in danger, it runs you hard: alert, wired, unable to switch off, pushing through. It learned to do this a long time ago, usually because for a while it genuinely had to. The trouble is that nobody ever told it the emergency was over.
So you are not tired from lack of rest. You are tired from being on duty for years. Until that alarm is switched off at the source, every strategy is a bucket under a leak. Switching it off is what I do, and no, it does not take years.
I spent years in high-pressure sales environments. I crushed quota, got promoted into leadership and burnt out. Three times. Not because I wasn't tough enough. Because the culture rewarded the very thing that was breaking me, and I had no idea my body had been in emergency mode for years.
When my children were diagnosed as neurodivergent, the pieces fell into place. I recognised the same things in myself: the relentless drive, the belief that I was only worth what I got done, the complete inability to stop. I had spent my whole career being praised for a stress response.
What finally changed it was not another strategy. It was switching the alarm off. That is now the work I do with the leaders, professionals and parents who come to me, most of whom have already tried everything else.
Much of this work speaks particularly to women in midlife, leadership and high-responsibility roles: the ones carrying the invisible load of family and emotional responsibility on top of the visible one, often while their hormones stop absorbing the shock. The underlying experience is not limited by gender, and neither is this work.
Certified TRTP practitioner (The Richards Trauma Process). Sociologist. Published author and speaker. Women Changing the World Award winner, Overcoming the Odds.
You are not broken. You are worn out from an alarm that should have been switched off years ago.
Getting well is not about becoming a different person. It is about getting back the one you were before you had to cope with all of this. That person is still there. Everything you do for your work, your family and your own life comes out of how much your body has left to give, and right now it is giving from empty. Refill that, and the rest follows.
Four people who came to me tired, wired and out of ideas. This is what they say now. Press play, they are short.
The Burnout Audit is free and takes three minutes. It shows you what is actually driving the exhaustion, which is rarely the thing you think it is, and what to do first. It looks for seven things that keep capable people running on empty.
Quiz not loading? Open the Burnout Audit in a new page.
You do not need to understand your nervous system to begin. Pick the one that matches how much energy you have right now. None of these lock you into anything.
The brain fog, the short fuse, the sudden inability to cope with things you used to manage in your sleep. It is not only hormones, and it is not a medical problem to be fixed. A short digital course that explains what is actually happening to you, in plain language, and why this stage can become the making of you rather than the end of you.
Enter the portalYou feel the overload building and you cannot see it coming until you are in it. Four weeks, at your own pace, that show you what is actually driving it, where it came from, and where you get to choose differently. Many people find this is enough. Others use it as the first step before deeper work.
Explore Reclaim Your EdgeOne-to-one work using TRTP (The Richards Trauma Process), a method that switches the alarm off at its source rather than teaching you to live with it. Not open-ended talking, not coping strategies, and not months of sessions. Most people are done in three to four. It starts with a free conversation to see whether it is right for you.
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Real-time support for the seasons that are heavier than the ones before. Message me when something is live, not three weeks from now. Works on its own or after private work. Three levels, from message access through to a monthly session, all month to month.
Find out about I've Got YouIf you would rather talk than read, book a free consultation. It is a real conversation, not a sales pitch, and if I am not the right person for you I will tell you who is.
Sessions are held online or in person on the Sunshine Coast. For speaking, workplace programs or leadership work, email [email protected].