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Feel like nothing ever goes right at work? High-functioning anxiety and burnout prevention start by recognising that "bad luck" might be your nervous system sending SOS signals. In this episode, Cheryl explores how high-achieving leaders mistake early burnout symptoms for personal failure—and how reframing these patterns through nervous system awareness opens the door to real burnout recovery.

One broken laptop should not feel like a personal disaster, yet when work stress and anxiety have been building for weeks, a single failure can feel like “proof” that everything is collapsing. We start with Emily, a business owner who keeps putting off a replacement because it feels like one expense too many. On the morning she needs to send a proposal to a client, the laptop dies, and panic rushes in, tangled up with missed admin, hard deadlines, poor sleep, and the quiet exhaustion of holding it all together.

From there, we unpack a common trap: mistaking control for safety. When you’re depleted, your mind asks control questions like, “How do I stop anything going wrong?” But agency questions are different and far more useful: “What is still mine to decide?” We talk about how money pressure narrows your options, why “I can’t afford every option I want” is not the same as “I have no options,” and how being responsible for a business is not the same as being personally responsible for every task inside it.

We also borrow perspective from Jane Eyre: you may have limited circumstances, but you can still protect your sense of self and your right to choose. To make it practical, we share a three-minute exercise you can do today with one work problem: Mine, Not Mine, Next. If you want more tools for work stress, burnout prevention, and calmer decision making, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

The contents of this podcast are for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. If you have a specific health concern or condition, please consult a qualified Healthcare professional for more details. Check out herguru dot uk forward slash disclaimers

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Work Stress Anxiety by ABGW is part of HerGuru Hypnotherapy and Coaching™ and grounded in the ABGW Method®.

Calm first. Reality first. Then change.™

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