You Are Not A Frog

Have you ever felt ashamed or frustrated that you didn't know the answer? Not to a clinical question, but about your own life - what's next, what's wrong, why you feel the way you do?
If you're the one everyone relies on, not knowing can feel like failing at the one thing you're supposed to be good at. This is a replay from 2024 I'm bringing back while I’m writing my book ‘How to Say No When Someone Might Die’. One of the things I keep coming back to in the book is how much of the load we carry isn't about the work at all. It's our ingrained programming that tells us we have to have the answer to feel good enough. And when we don't, it will affect your next decision, and the one after that.
In this episode we revisit what to do when the furniture is shifting, and why wait and see can be a strategy.
We cover:
Why high achievers feel shame when they don't know what's next
Shifting furniture - what to do when life is reconfiguring and you can't see where things will land
Your left brain interpreter - and why it makes up catastrophic stories to feel safe
Zone of Power - what is actually yours to carry, and what isn't
Why wait and see is a valid, proactive strategy, not avoidance
The next best action when you feel discombobulated

This episode is for you if... you are a doctor or professional, a high achiever in a leadership role who has to have the difficult conversation nobody else will, has to make the call someone disagrees with, and lies awake replaying a decision you had to make. If not knowing feels like not being good enough, this one is for you.
You are not a frog.
Mentioned in this episode:
🟦 Beat Stress & Thrive | Live Cohort Starts 13 October

You may think you're fine. You're still performing well at work, still the one people rely on, yet you know something's off.
In this episode - a replay of one of my most important conversations from 2025, I share the question that changed how I think about burnout: What are you borrowing from your life to keep your work looking fine? For many of us, our ingrained programming tells us we have to please everyone all the time to feel good enough, so we protect our work and borrow energy from the rest of our life to do it. We look totally fine on the outside. Inside, the walls are standing but there's nothing left.
I’m chatting with Dr Richard Duggins NHS Psychiatrist and Author of ‘Burnout Free Working’ about why high achievers stay high-performing right up util they burn out, what radiators and drains have to do with it, and what Richard calls the burnout cliff - where one small trigger takes you by surprise. If you go back into the same way of working, carrying the same load in the same way, it will affect your next decision, and the one after that.
This is about burnout not as a personal failing, but as a change in the balance of your energy.
We cover:
Why your performance can stay high while the rest of your life shrinks
Borrowing energy from home, fun, and rest to protect work
Radiators and drains - work intensity, home pressures and culture
The burnout cliff and the plateau before it
Early signs - poor sleep, irritability, detachment, loss of joy
What may help you carry it differently without going back over the edge

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. A doctor or professional who looks capable to everyone else but feels depleted when you get home.
You do not need to collapse to prove you were struggling.
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/
Mentioned in this episode:
🟦 Beat Stress & Thrive | Live Cohort Starts 13 October
The Overwhelm SOS Toolkit

Stop the overwhelm and get back on track, without dropping balls or quitting.

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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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.
Get more episodes and resources by joining FrogXtra
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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