When Aoife O'Brien is close to burnout, she doesn't want to stop. She wants to do more. One more task. One more thing to get through before she can stop. She says that's how she knows now - not the exhaustion, not the breaking point, but the acceleration. If you recognise that feeling, this conversation names what's actually happening. Not to add to your list. To give you a cleaner way to read what your own system is telling you.

We cover:

• Why the urge to do more work is a signal, not a coping strategy
• Imposter syndrome as a systemic trap - the beliefs you're swimming in so completely you don't know they're there
• The difference between burnout symptoms and burnout drivers
• What happens when a leader decides to go home on time - and what that single act does to the people around them
• How to start reading what your system is actually telling you

This episode is for you if you've been telling yourself you're coping fine - and some part of you knows that story is getting harder to believe. If you're a high achiever in a demanding role who has always mistaken acceleration for resilience. If you've never stopped to ask what the urge to just keep going is actually telling you.

📩 Join 20,000 professionals: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome/

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Aoife can be found here:

https://www.instagram.com/happieratwork.ie/

https://happieratwork.ie/happier-at-work-podcast/

https://thrivingtalentbook.com/

Mentioned in this episode:

🌞 The Summer Reset for Doctors

🌞 [FREE DOWNLOAD] Summer Recharge Checklist for Doctors

You may have been counting down to summer all year, telling yourself that you just need to survive until your next holiday. You may have been looking forward to taking a pause and getting a chance to finally breathe.

But when you get to your holiday, instead of feeling rested, you feel more exhausted, more overwhelmed, and more behind. And somewhere underneath the busyness, you might be thinking: what's wrong with me? Everyone else seems fine.

Nothing is wrong with you - you just fell into the summer Urgency Trap - one of the seven Overwhelm Amplifiers that keeps high achievers stuck in the Responsibility Trap.

In this episode, we break down exactly why summer increases pressure instead of relieving it, why you end up covering everyone else's work while your own recovery gets sacrificed, and the one practical shift that changes everything: time-blocking your rest as if it were as important as your most urgent patient or client.

We cover:

• The Urgency Trap: how "urgent but not important" tasks hijack your recovery
• The long-term fix (the Responsibility Trap) vs. the quick fix you can start today
• How to time-block rest, recovery, and buffer slots into your diary - and treat them as non-negotiable

📩 Join 20,000 professionals: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome/

🐸 Get exclusive episodes and resources by joining FrogXtra: https://youarenotafrog.com/members

Mentioned in this episode:

🌞 The Summer Reset for Doctors

If you've always felt like everyone else got an unwritten handbook about how to behave at work - and you've had to figure it out yourself, one interaction at a time - this episode is for you.

This week, Rachel’s in conversation with Kirstie Pickles: vet, autistic ADHD professional, and EDI advocate. Kirstie was diagnosed as an adult - after years of masking in a high-stakes clinical role, performing competence while running on empty underneath.

We talk about:

• What masking really costs - not just after one hard day, but across a career
• Neurodivergent burnout: why it is different from regular burnout, and why the usual advice doesn't work
• The shame of late diagnosis - and what it means to finally have a name for it
• What colleagues and leaders can do to make workplaces work for everyone

You don't need a diagnosis to recognise yourself here. A lot of us in high-achieving, high-pressure roles have neurodivergent traits we have never had a name for. We just learned to mask through it.

Our ingrained programming tells us to keep performing, keep adapting, keep looking like we're coping fine. But that performance has a cost - and it will affect your next decision, and the one after that.

Different is not defective.

🎙️ Listen to the full podcast: http://youarenotafrog.com/episodes/324

📩 Join 20,000 professionals: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome/

🐸 Get more episodes and resources by joining FrogXtra

Mentioned in this episode:

🌞 [FREE DOWNLOAD] Summer Recharge Checklist for Doctors

🌞 The Summer Reset for Doctors