FRIED. The Burnout Podcast
Cait Donovan
Recent Episodes
Your energy and well-being are worth investing in. Explore what recovery could look like for you: https://caitdonovan.com/coaching
Many people mistake burnout for personal failure, but the real issue is the quiet mismatch between the energy you actually have and the expectations you keep pushing yourself to meet.
Sarah Vosen gets to the core of why so many burned-out high achievers feel defeated: the math of your life stopped working long before you noticed it. When your energy drops but your expectations stay at their old setting, even simple days feel impossible. The conversation challenges listeners to ask what they believe they “should” be able to do and where those beliefs came from in the first place. How often are you measuring yourself against a past version of you? And what changes once you base your plans on your real capacity instead of the fantasy of unlimited output?
This episode is an invitation to rebuild self-trust by telling the truth about what you can actually give right now. Recovery begins when you stop assuming your worth hinges on productivity and start giving yourself permission to operate from reality. Sarah offers encouragement, clarity, and accessible next steps for anyone ready to release the shame of falling short and move toward days that feel doable again.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Understanding Burnout and Its Real Impact on High Achievers
02:55 How to Adjust Expectations for Better Burnout Recovery
05:45 Realistic Ways to Assess Your Energy, Time, and Capacity
09:13 Why Consistent Self-Care Supports Burnout Healing
11:54 How to Find the Right Support for Burnout Recovery
Links
If you’re ready to take the next step toward healing, you can explore 1:1 coaching with Sarah Vosen at https://www.bit.ly/unfriedcoach
Download the Web of Causation Exercise to uncover the layers behind your burnout and begin creating your recovery plan: https://www.caitdonovan.com/freebie-web
Connect with Cait:
Your energy and well-being are worth investing in. Explore what recovery could look like for you: https://caitdonovan.com/coaching
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm
You don’t have to walk this road alone. https://caitdonovan.com/coaching connects you with Sarah Vosen, our Director of Coaching, who’s helped countless people reclaim their energy.
Fall can hit like a quiet emotional landslide as grief, guilt, and old heaviness rise to the surface and ask for release.
Sarah Vosen talks about why this season often feels heavier than we expect and how that weight points to emotion that never fully moved through the system. She highlights the way sadness, guilt, and that familiar tightness in the chest show up when the pace naturally shifts and the body finally has room to speak. What if those uncomfortable waves are your body reaching for relief instead of signaling something you did wrong? And how would your days shift if you treated that heaviness as guidance instead of something to outrun?
This episode offers a steady invitation back to release. Sarah focuses on the simple acts that help the body soften and recover its flow: tears that want to be felt, breaths that need more space, warmth when the cold settles in, hydration when everything feels dry, rest when your system begs for it, and the inner clarity that comes from paying attention to what you truly need. Fall isn’t a season for pushing harder; it’s a season for loosening your grip. Sarah gives listeners a grounded, compassionate framework for honoring that rhythm so they can move through this time with more ease and far less judgment.
Episode Breakdown:
00:02 Why Fall Triggers Grief, Guilt, and Emotional Burnout
03:10 How Chinese Medicine Explains Fall Emotions
06:55 How Unprocessed Emotions Create Seasonal Burnout
10:22 Deep Breathing Techniques for Emotional Release in Fall
13:41 Embracing Natural Cycles and Letting Go
Links
Want personalized support? Book an initial consult with Sarah and she’ll help you:
- Name where your energy is leaking and what needs to stop.
- Explore whether a break, a shift, or a redesign is what your next move must be.
- Build the case to your HR or L&D department: Sarah provides a template letter you can customize (yes, she’s got a downloadable version on the website) and present so that you might get partial or full coverage for your coaching through organizational budgeting.
Connect with Cait:
You don’t have to walk this road alone. https://caitdonovan.com/coaching connects you with Sarah Vosen, our Director of Coaching, who’s helped countless people reclaim their energy.
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm
Burnout isn’t the end of your story. With Sarah Vosen’s guidance, recovery becomes not just possible—but sustainable. Learn more: https://caitdonovan.com/coaching
Burnout doesn’t end with a mindset shift—it begins when you finally allow grief, emptiness, and small sparks of joy to coexist without needing to fix any of them.
Author and speaker Cyndie Spiegel joins Cait to talk about what it means to live inside the gray area, the space where both pain and beauty can exist at once. She shares how walking away from a high-profile fashion career led her to teaching, writing, and discovering the idea of microjoys: brief, accessible moments of light that don’t erase hardship but remind us life still holds goodness. Together, they unpack how black-and-white thinking fuels burnout, why forced gratitude doesn’t work, and how simple awareness can shift everything.
What if healing starts with noticing what else is true? What might open up when you stop chasing “better” and start paying attention to what’s already here?
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Introduction
02:00 Cyndie Spiegel’s Burnout Story in the Fashion Industry
08:35 Finding Purpose Through Yoga and Teaching
10:37 Writing A Year of Positive Thinking
16:08 The Birth of Microjoys
18:40 Finding Hope When Life Isn’t Okay
24:30 Living in the Gray: Holding Multiple Truths
32:54 Practicing Microjoys in Daily Life
39:21 Where to Find Cyndie Spiegel and Final Reflections
Connect with Cyndie Spiegel:
Connect with Cyndie on LinkedIn
Sign up to Cyndie’s Email List
Connect with Cait:
Burnout isn’t the end of your story. With Sarah Vosen’s guidance, recovery becomes not just possible—but sustainable. Learn more: https://caitdonovan.com/coaching
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm
Healing happens faster with guidance. Give yourself permission to ask for and receive help: https://caitdonovan.com/coaching
Most people think they’ve failed at change when they’ve actually just hit the part where being human takes over.
Cait Donovan is taking a closer look at why behavior change is so hard to maintain and why relapse isn’t a sign of weakness but proof that your brain is doing exactly what it’s designed to do. She explains how old habits never fully disappear, they just sit quietly, waiting for a moment of stress or fatigue to reappear. Change takes effort, repetition, and compassion for the part of you that’s still learning.
Cait shares how progress depends on context and patience. A new habit might feel strong at home but crumble at work, and that’s normal. The real work isn’t about erasing the old pattern but building trust in your ability to return to the new one again and again. This episode is a reminder that being human is not the problem, it’s the process.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Understanding Why Behavior Change Feels Impossible
01:39 How the Brain Builds and Keeps Old Habits
04:10 Why New Behaviors Don’t Stick in Every Environment
06:20 Relapse as a Normal Part of Behavior Change
09:01 Final Takeaways: Being Human Is the Process
Connect with Cait:
Healing happens faster with guidance. Give yourself permission to ask for and receive help: https://caitdonovan.com/coaching
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm
You don’t have to carry burnout alone. The right support can help you breathe again—start here: https://caitdonovan.com/coaching
Burnout doesn’t always look like collapse; sometimes it hides in the moments when you’re still performing, but your spark keeps flickering out, and that’s where this honest coaching session begins.
In this episode, Sarah Vosen sits down with Jennie, an attorney and mom unsure whether what she’s feeling qualifies as burnout. Together they unpack the World Health Organization’s markers of burnout—exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced efficacy—and what those look like in real life. Is it possible to feel functional yet fried? How do you know when your capacity is shrinking faster than you realize?
As Sarah guides Jennie through a clearer understanding of her patterns, practical steps begin to emerge: protecting space on the calendar, creating buffers between meetings, and rebuilding small habits that restore energy. The conversation also touches on the role of perimenopause in stress and recovery, giving Jennie a compassionate framework for why her old pace no longer fits.
The episode leaves listeners with a grounded reminder: burnout recovery isn’t about doing more, it’s about doing differently, one small boundary at a time.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 What Burnout Really Looks Like
04:10 Understanding the WHO Definition of Burnout
10:06 Small Doable Steps for Burnout Recovery
14:51 Setting Boundaries and Time Blocks That Stick
22:32 Learning to Control What You Can Control
25:14 Dropping Self-Judgment and Reclaiming Energy
34:54 The Connection Between Burnout and Perimenopause
39:36 Building a New Operating System for Sustainable Work
45:07 Grace, Compassion, and Real Recovery
Links
If you’re ready to take the next step toward healing, you can explore 1:1 coaching with Sarah Vosen at bit.ly/unfriedcoach
Download the Web of Causation Exercise to uncover the layers behind your burnout and begin creating your recovery plan: https://www.caitdonovan.com/freebie-web
Connect with Cait:
You don’t have to carry burnout alone. The right support can help you breathe again—start here: https://caitdonovan.com/coaching
Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm