Signs You're Burned Out (Even If You Think You're Fine)

You've been ignoring your body's warning signs for so long they don't even register as warnings anymore — they just feel like Tuesday. In this solo episode, I break down why "pushing through" is the exact habit that turns a manageable problem into a full-blown crash, using my own story of ignoring pain until my leg went dead on a ladder in the middle of a fire.

I'm also calling out the trap so many burned-out overachievers fall into: believing the only fix is to quit the job, end the relationship, or blow up the whole life. That's often avoidance dressed up as decisiveness. Real change starts with asking the harder question underneath it — which is exactly what Brainspotting is built for.

Haven't heard last week's conversation with Ryan Syverson on functional healing and burnout recovery? Start there — this episode picks up right where it left off.

New episodes of Hustle Rebels drop weekly for people who still want to win, but are starting to question the cost.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So my leg went dead. I was halfway up a ladder in the middle of a fire, chainsaw in one hand, a different tool in another, and a breathing pack cinched around my hips. And the second that the pain hit, my first thought was, I fucked. And then I'm like, dude, I can't show weakness. I'm the only woman on this department. I cannot say anything about this. So I just had to hope for the best and pray we didn't get any more calls that night. This is Hustle Rebels, the podcast for people who still want to win but are starting to question the cost. I'm Renee, your host and burnout recovery expert. I help overachievers get out from under-the-grind culture, stop sacrificing themselves to a system that literally never gives back, and actually live a life that they worked so hard for, like they deserve. Before retirement takes their decrepit body. Because you didn't want to look weak, or you told yourself that you would deal with it later, I need to stick with me because by the end of this, you're gonna understand why you can ignore your body for years, and it still doesn't feel like a warning. It just feels normal to you. And also why pushing through isn't the big flex that everyone tells you that it is. It's actually what turns something manageable into a full-blown crash. And why finally breaking down doesn't mean that you failed. It means that you finally stopped pretending that you were fine. And it's actually your hidden breakthrough. Just real quick, if this is already landing, make sure you're subscribed. This is how we start to dismantle the hustle culture without asking you to opt out of your own ambition as well. So this week's solo episode is pulled directly from last week's conversation with Ryan Seberson. If you haven't listened to that one yet, I highly recommend you go over and listen to that after this because everything I'm about to say is basically the thread running underneath what he had shared. It's a pattern that once you notice it, you really can't stop noticing it. I've noticed it in my clients, in my conversations, and honestly in my own body. And before we really get into the nitty-gritty of what it is, I want to take you back to that ladder moment that I first talked about. Now, this call wasn't supposed to be a big deal. It was just a normal routine chimney fire. I was just carrying some tools, like a chainsaw, another tool, up the ladder with my breathing pack cinched around my hips. And as I was halfway up there, my left leg just literally went dead. It was so much pain, I can't even really describe it to you. And I remember thinking, this is not good. This isn't a hip issue. This is my back. And I think I am fucked. And before I could even process that, the next thought that came in even faster and louder is that I am the only woman in this department, the first and only woman. I cannot say anything about this. I just have to pretend that everything is okay. I cannot show weakness. And I was actually driving the ladder that shift, which thank goodness, because at least I could just get through it without having to do a lot of the manual stuff. And I just kept telling myself, just get through it, just get through it, just get through it. Take a bunch of neproxen and pray to the heavens above that we just don't get any more calls. And just

Ignoring Pain for Months

SPEAKER_00 3:43

don't give yourself an ulcer with all the neproxin that I'm taking. That moment on the ladder didn't come out of nowhere. Before that, I had hip pain for months. I told myself that it was from deadlifting because I was pushing myself hard in the gym, and I figured that I was just working out wrong. I had had a very minor surgery before that, and I just must have gotten too deep into it too quickly because I was deadlifting pretty heavily, like 300 pounds. And so I just think I started too much too fast after this minor surgery. But instead of fixing my form, I just thought I could stretch it out. And then as I thought I could stretch it out, I just kept adding more weight. And I just kept ignoring it. I kept taking more neprexin. I kept stretching out a little more, more, more, and more, until the day that my leg just stopped working entirely in the middle of a fire, on

Hustle Culture Costs

SPEAKER_00 4:41

a ladder with a chainsaw in my hand. And the culture I was in didn't exactly discourage that. Our chief used to say, you can sleep when you're dead, like stop bitching and complaining. We'd work 24, 36, 48 hour shifts and wear it like a badge of honor. Nobody could say that they would outwork us because then we'd have another reason why we outwork them. That was the whole identity. And it didn't stop with my back because I was still a product of the diet culture as well. And what I thought was a clean, healthy diet, I ended up eating these keto noodles and thinking that I was doing everything right by the rules that I had been taught, except it wasn't right for me. It was processed food dressed up as health food, and it triggered a chain reaction that led to a string of surgeries, and my body just started shutting down very rapidly. Everything that I had thought I had built, my identity as the strong, reliant one, the firefighter, the person who never needed help, all of it just started falling and failing. My body just started failing all at once. And then I just lost my career. From the outside, that looks like

Check Engine Light Lesson

SPEAKER_00 5:52

total collapse. It looked like one from the inside, too, for a very long time. And so I want to tell you a quick story about my cousin and my Nani's car with a 96 Taurus. It had a check engine light, which turned out to be the catalytic converter. Which to him, my cousin, it was not a big deal. So instead of actually fixing it, he just slapped a nice big old piece of tape on it. Problem solved. In his mind, my nani couldn't see it anymore, so she'd stop asking him about it. Stopped bugging him about it. The catalytic converter was still broken. She just couldn't see the warning signs anymore. That's exactly what I did with my own body. The hip pain wasn't a warning to me. It was an inconvenience. And I was managing it with more neproxin and more stretching. My leg going dead in the middle of a fire on the ladder. It wasn't stop. It was let's figure out how to still get through the shift. I didn't fix the check engine light. I taped over it. Just like my cousin did with my Nani's Taurus. It just kept driving. And it's not just a me thing. It's literally what a lot of us are trained to do. Literally trained in my case, in a firehouse, where the whole job depends on being able to perform through the pain instead of stopping for it. Nobody hands us a manual that says, ignore your body, you'll be fine forever. But the culture teaches you the same lessons anyway. The version of you that keeps going no matter what is the one that gets respected. The version that stops and says something's wrong, gets left behind, or worse, gets doubted. You don't stop. You just get better at hiding it. Really until you can't. So this is the big takeaway. This is what

Run Diagnostics Not Panic

SPEAKER_00 7:45

really matters most about all of this. And I want to make it really practical for you guys. If you're sitting here and just thinking to yourself, the only way to fix your life is to quit your job, leave your relationship, blow the whole thing the fuck up. And you can't do that right now because there's mortgage or kids or you're just not there yet. I need you to hear this. The check engine light doesn't mean scrap the car. It means get it looked at. My cousin's fix wasn't buy Naughty a new car. It was cover the light so she'd stop asking. But a lot of us do the flip side and make a different mistake in the same way. We see the light and we decide the only way to fix it is just getting rid of the whole car. Quit the whole job, leave the relationship, burn it the fuck down and start over. But sometimes that's not the fix either. It's not one side or the other. Sometimes the fix is just figuring out what's actually broken. Is it the job? Or is it that you've never once said no at the job? Is it the relationship? Or is it that you've been micromanaging everyone else's feelings and calling it love? You don't get clarity by staring at the light and panicking. You get it by popping the hood and actually looking. So if you're feeling stuck, like you know something's wrong, but you can't make a big dramatic exit right now, you're not actually stuck. You've just been skipping the diagnostics and jumping straight to a panic decision, one side or the other. But you can just start smaller. Find out what's actually broken before you decide that things need to go. And here's the thing about the diagnostic set: you don't need to blow the whole thing up just to do it. You just need to be vulnerable and open enough to ask yourself the tough questions. And I know that's hard because we overachievers are professionals at avoidance. We will do anything to avoid. Pick up another project, chase another goal, stay busy enough that we never even have to sit long enough to ask the one question that actually matters. Why the fuck am I even burnt out? Because here's what I actually know to be true. If you feel stuck, like you can't actually change your job or your relationship or your particular circumstance right now, you can still change the lens that you're looking through at it. But that only happens if you're willing to ask yourself the hard questions instead of avoiding them. And this is honestly what brain spotting is so good for. It's one of the tools that I use quite often with people that I work with. And it gets past the surface level answer straight to what's actually underneath. I mean, I had a session today with someone that came in wanting some clarity and some things. And by the end, he was actually surprised to land on a core belief that he didn't even know that he had been carrying for so long, that he has felt broken. And you don't get there by staying busy. You get there by finally being willing to look and being vulnerable enough to know that the answer is there. And a lot of people miss a warning sign from your body, your job, your relationship. And it's not a test of how tough you are. It's information. If you treat it like a character test instead of data, a manageable problem turns into a total system failure. But you don't get to ignore these things forever. The longer you wait, the less say that you get in how it plays out. Right now, you get to choose how you respond to the warning. But if you wait too long, like I had, it makes the decision for you. And if

Let Go and Rebuild

SPEAKER_00 11:35

you learned anything from my experience, it won't ask nicely. And this is what took me the longest to accept. The identity that got you to that breaking point, the one that prided itself on outworking everyone, on never needing help, on pretending. That version of you was never meant to be revived. You don't need bioacking, another productivity hack, another routine to get to your old self. That old self got you exactly as far as it could, and as it needed to. And the collapse isn't proof that you failed. It's the hidden breakthrough that you didn't know that you needed. So let's pull this check engine light off to the side for a second. We have the pattern, which is we treat our body's warning signs as an inconvenience to push through instead of information to act on. Because in hustle culture, ignoring the signal is treated like proof of strength, a badge of honor. But there's a cost to that. Every single compound, the hip pain becomes more in a proxin, becomes the moment your leg goes dead on a ladder. And by the time the body forces the stop, it takes way more than it would have if you had just listened early. And then you have a shift. The goal isn't to muscle through the signal or to shame yourself for missing it for so long, it's to start treating your body's data as information that you're allowed to act on before it becomes mandatory, before you start losing control, and let go of the identity that needed to prove it can survive without doing that. So if any part of this hits something in you, and if you're sitting on your own version of that ladder moment right now, either bracing for it or just already living inside of it, this is exactly the type of work that I do with those I work with inside of Burn the Blueprint. We rebuilt deliberately on your terms instead of waiting for your body to make the decision for you. The link is in the description and show notes below. I've also created a new school account, a space where we'll not only go deeper on burnout recovery and nervous system regulation techniques, but it's also a community that you can have shared experiences with others. Plus, I'm really excited about this. I'll be doing a weekly live session called the regulation room, where you'll have the opportunity to ask questions and we can just chat about this shit together. The link to join is going to also be in the description show notes. And as always, if you haven't already, please subscribe, follow along on socials, and if you want this kind of thing in your inbox too, the weekly recharge newsletter is linked below, which comes out every Wednesday. You're not weak for finally listening. You're just done being the only one that never got to. And if you haven't listened to my conversation with Ryan Severson yet, go do that next. It is such a great conversation, and it's exactly what it looks like when someone finally lets the crash happen instead of just bracing yourself through it. So, see you guys next time.