You Are Not A Frog

You tell yourself that never letting anyone down is how you protect the people you love. But our ingrained programming tells us we have to please everyone all the time to feel good enough - and the people you love are the people who suffer most when you're stuck in the Responsibility Trap. They get the tired, thin version of you. If you lie awake worried you've upset someone, or feel guilty for saying no to something small like a dinner you can't make until November, this 20-minute Quick Dip will show you why that guilt isn't telling the truth, and what changes when you let the load go back to whose it actually was.
We cover:
The November dinner — and why answering honestly can feel like a failing
Why for us a request arrives as an obligation with our name on it
What over 600 professionals told us about lying awake worried they've upset someone
The identity underneath it: I'm not the sort of person who lets people down
What that identity costs at home and at work
The village cricket team — guilt for saying no to a sport I don't even like
The question that proves you already let people down every day — and the world kept turning
If I'm not the woman who never lets anyone down, then who am I? And who says?
What happens at home and at work when you stop carrying it all — including the reception team who stopped asking her first
Two futures — and phrases to reach for when the guilt fires

This episode is for you if... you are a high achiever in a leadership role who has to have the conversation nobody else will, has to make the call someone disagrees with, and lies awake replaying a decision you had to make. You are the one who copes, steps up, notices what needs doing — and you feel guilty even doing the work that matters most.
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🟦 [FREE WEBINAR] How to Beat Burnout and Escape Burnout on Repeat

Do you lie awake replaying a decision you had to make? That work anxiety loop where you can't stop thinking about work even when you are home? Maybe you've told yourself burnout is just the occupational hazard of this job.
You've tried to put things in place — to leave on time, to say no more often — and you just can't seem to hold them. What if you are solving the wrong problem? It's not a work stress problem, but an identity one.
Our ingrained programming tells us we have to tie who we are to how we perform to feel good enough, so when work dips, we dip. That pattern will affect your next decision, and the one after that.
In this conversation we put clean language on what keeps you fused to work, and what real burnout recovery has to start with instead. I spoke to Nick Petrie, author of Burn Bright, about why the usual advice has not touched it for you, and what may help you carry it differently.
We cover:
Why burnout can feel like an occupational hazard — and why you may be solving the wrong problem
What happens when you fuse your identity with work — you don't have a job, you are the job
What he calls the Karman Line — the deliberate slow down between work and home that stops you crash landing
Uncontrolled re-entry — why you walk through your own front door still in work mode
Rumination vs reflection — why a patient or client complaint stays with you when you are emotionally fused to it
Perform mode vs grow mode — why staying too long in perform mode leaves you exhausted. And bored.
How to get more comfortable disappointing people you care about — and why that matters for recovery

This episode is for you if...
You are a doctor, senior healthcare professional or high achiever in a leadership role - someone who has to have the conversation nobody else will, who has to make the call someone will disagree with, who lies awake replaying a decision you had to make.
If you have ever thought, what is wrong with me, why can I not cope, maybe I am not good enough — this episode is for you.
Nick Petrie is a leadership coach, Burnout Researcher and author of Burn Bright. In this interview he shares practical ideas from working with high performers on identity, boundaries, and getting out of perform mode.
Listen to You Are Not a Frog wherever you get your podcasts. For workshop and event details, see the links on the channel page.
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🟦 [FREE WEBINAR] How to Beat Burnout and Escape Burnout on Repeat

Note: This is a re-release of one of our most-listened to episodes — originally recorded Autumn 2025. We've given it a new edit because it's more relevant than ever.
If you know you need to do something about how you're feeling — but you keep telling yourself "not yet" — this is for you. We are very good at spotting danger in other people. Sepsis, red flags, a patient or client deteriorating. We act fast. With ourselves, we don't. We wait until it becomes catastrophic — a patient or client complaint, an error because our brain isn't working properly, our health going — before we give ourselves permission to act. This episode is about why doing nothing feels safer, why it isn't, and how to make the next step small enough you can actually take it. Not handing in your notice. One doable thing.
Download the free Burnout Self-Assessment Toolkit — work through it as you listen: https://youarenotafrog.com/toolkit/
We cover:
• Why we spot burnout and overwhelm in everyone else but not in ourselves
• The three psychological traps that keep high achievers stuck: status quo bias, loss aversion, and sunk cost — including the thought "I've given 10 or 20 years to this, I can't stop now"
• Why our ingrained programming tells us the misery we know is safer than the uncertainty we don't — and how that will affect your next decision, and the one after that
• Why waiting has a cost too — your health, your relationships, your character — and why that cost keeps going up and can be devastating
• How to decide your line before burnout decides it for you — your "kill criteria" — so you don't wait for catastrophe
• How to make the next step small enough you can actually take it: one conversation you've been avoiding, one boundary, one phone call to a trusted person — shame shrinks when you speak it
This episode is for you if you are a high achiever in a leadership role who has to have the conversation nobody else will, has to make the call someone disagrees with, or lies awake replaying a decision you had to make — and you can feel the heat building, but you keep telling yourself to keep going.
Hosted by Rachel Morris | You Are Not a Frog - for high achievers who want to care deeply and carry less.
Get weekly tools and episode notes by email: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome
More resources: https://youarenotafrog.com/
Burnout Self-Assessment Toolkit: https://youarenotafrog.com/toolkit/
#burnout #burnoutrecovery #highachievers
Mentioned in this episode:
🟦 [FREE WEBINAR] How to Beat Burnout and Escape Burnout on Repeat

Every high-achieving leader has a to-do list that doesn't end — it just refills. And the only response most of us were ever handed for that is push harder. Grip tighter. Muscle through. In this episode, Rachel talks to Ellen Coomber, co-founder of the Softness Revolution, about why that instinct — the one we were trained into from exams onward — stops working, and what she does instead. Ellen has a genetics degree from Cambridge; she is not someone who arrived at this by avoiding rigour. She arrived at it because pushing harder had genuinely stopped working, and she had to find something else. This conversation is about that something else: working with less effort, not more, and learning to tell the difference between an instinct worth trusting and fear wearing an instinct's clothes. Getting that distinction wrong is how we end up saying yes to the thing that breaks us, and it will affect the next decision too, and the one after that.
We cover:
Why "work harder" is the only tool most high achievers were ever handed for pressure — and where that training actually started
The Softness Revolution: what "soft" means when it isn't the opposite of capable
What solo-sailing a 40-foot boat taught Ellen about the difference between soft and weak
What horses know about force that most leadership training never mentions
How to tell your actual instinct apart from fear when they feel identical
Why more effort is not always the effective option, and what to do with the effort you're not using

This episode is for you if...
...you're looking at a to-do list that never actually shrinks, and your automatic response is to push harder, focus more, try again — even though that's the exact same plan you had last week, and the week before. If some part of you already suspects that working harder isn't the answer but you don't yet have a working alternative, or a language for it, this one's for you.
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🐸 Learn more about Ellen: https://thepowerofsoftness.com
Mentioned in this episode:
🟦 Permission to Thrive
⭐️ Book Your FrogFest Ticket Now

Nearly one in three people who take time off for burnout are off again within a year - and over half of them work in healthcare. This episode is about why that keeps happening, and it isn't because anyone's weak.
You go back to the same poisoned water, you carry the same responsibility you carried before, and now there's something extra on top of it - a shame tax, the pressure to prove you're fine, to prove the time off wasn't a mark against you. Rachel walks through the Bent Tent Pole - why the same load bends you faster the second time round - and makes the case that the fix was never more resilience. It's changing what you believe is actually yours to carry.
We cover:
Why nearly 3 in 10 people relapse into burnout within a year of returning
The poisoned water analogy - why rest alone can't fix a toxic system
Why dropping hours or changing roles often doesn't touch the real problem
The Responsibility Trap: picking up what everyone else drops
The Bent Tent Pole - why the same weight bends you faster the second time
The Shame Tax: the extra load you carry just for having needed the break
Why waiting for the system to fix itself keeps you stuck
The Performance Zone - what boundaries actually look like in practice

This episode is for you if...
You're a high achiever in a leadership role who's been back at work for a while now and can feel it building again - the same tightness, the same countdown to the next break. You're the one who has to pick up what someone else dropped, who has to say yes because no one else has the whole picture, who lies awake replaying whether you're actually cut out for this. Hard as that is to admit, it's not a character flaw. It's physics, and there's a different way to carry it.
The tent pole bent because of the load, not because you were weak. You can do the work without being responsible for all of it.
📩 Join 20,000 professionals: https://youarenotafrog.com/welcome/
🐸 Get exclusive episodes and resources by joining FrogXtra: https://youarenotafrog.com/members
Mentioned in this episode:
⭐️ Book Your FrogFest Ticket Now