Break Through Burnout: Using biology to find workplace freedom
Break Through Burnout: Using biology to find workplace freedom
Last week, I hosted my masterclass Blueprint to Career Freedom — a class designed for women in middle management who are ready to find clarity, energy, and joy again.
One of the most powerful moments came when participants realized that what I was describing — exhaustion, self-doubt, and the relentless pressure to keep up — was exactly what they were living. It was burnout.
The course allowed them to feel seen for the first time in a while, maybe even seeing themselves around their workplace troubles for the first time.
With that validation, they became open to learning about overcoming burnout.
Because once you can name burnout for what it is, you can finally begin to do something about it.
What is burnout?
Burnout is more than overwork. It’s the erosion of self-trust, confidence, and energy — the invisible depletion that happens when your inner resources are used up faster than they can be restored.
It can happen anywhere: at work, in caregiving, in activism, even in friendships or creative pursuits. But the workplace often becomes the epicenter, because that’s where so many of our emotional, physical, and relational stressors converge.
At its core, burnout is a mix of dissatisfaction, disconnection, and depletion.
It looks like this:
You used to perform at a high level, and now every little thing seems hard.
You are no longer excited for your work and engaged with your colleagues.
You take on more work out of fear, don’t ask for help, and put yourself down when you struggle to complete the work perfectly.
You rely on substances to get started in the morning, like caffeine, and substances to wind down at night, like alcohol.
You develop a health struggle like sleep or headaches, that don’t go away no matter what you try.
Eventually, you get to such a point of frustration and/or overwhelm that you just want to walk away from the job altogether.
But burnout isn’t a character flaw or lack of willpower — it’s a biological response to sustained emotional strain. When we can’t process workplace stress because it’s happening so frequently, we fall into survival mode: fight/ flight/ fawn/ freeze.
And, unless we do something about this biological reality, we’ll remain stuck there.
When the Body Speaks First
Our bodies react faster than our minds. They sense threat, tension, and energy shifts long before our rational brain can catch up.
Last week, I was driving down a dirt road near my home in Montana when I saw a wolf — tall, gray, wild, and utterly beautiful. It was stalking deer. As wolf do, because they are the apex predator and they know it, it just stopped and stared at me as I drove by. Instantly, my body froze. My chest tightened. My breath stopped. I didn’t decide to feel fear. My body made that decision for me.
That’s what our nervous systems do. They respond to the environment before our minds even have a chance to narrate what’s happening.
And that same process happens every day in the workplace — when an email feels threatening, when a project feels overwhelming, when feedback feels personal.
We brace. We hold. We pretend things aren’t happening. (Freeze)
Or we get snarky, attack, or gossip. (Fight)
Or, we leave the job with no plan, self-sabotaging along the way. (Flight)
Or, we become such a brown-noser, we lose our authenticity. (Fawn)
Then we call it “stress.”
But really, it’s biology.
You can’t think your way out of it — but you can work with your body to release it.
A Dog Park Lesson
A couple of weeks ago, I was in Great Falls, taking my two dogs to the dog park like I often do.
It was a beautiful day — warm, open, full of the kind of easy energy that makes a dog park what it’s meant to be: a place of joy and play.
But then a woman entered with her two dogs. Her energy was tight, anxious. She tried to control her dogs’ every move. She avoided other owners and stood apart with her son. The dogs mirrored her anxiety — jumpy, uncertain, constantly scanning for threat.
At one point, her puppy approached my older Australian Cattle Dog — a bossy twelve-year-old who’s never been shy about setting boundaries. She gave a quick warning bark, and the puppy backed off immediately. Nothing serious, just dog communication.
But the woman stiffened.
She snapped, “Is your dog aggressive?”
I explained calmly, “No — she’s old and crabby. She’s just letting your puppy know she doesn’t want to play.”
Still, the woman kept muttering loudly enough for everyone to hear — about how someone’s dog had bitten one of hers the day before, how she shouldn’t have to deal with other people’s ‘aggressive’ dogs.
I didn’t engage. But it was clear what was happening:
Her fear was still living in her body. It hadn’t been processed. And because of that, it had spilled out onto everyone else — the dogs, the other owners, even her own child.
Her nervous system was still stuck in defense mode.
This is what unprocessed fear looks like. And it’s also how burnout begins.
Burnout doesn’t always start with overwork — it starts with unresolved emotion.
When we carry stress, fear, or anger without giving it space to move through us, it lodges in our system. Then every new situation that even remotely resembles the old one reignites the same physiological response.
That woman wasn’t just at the dog park. She was reliving the moment her dog was bitten — over and over.
That’s what happens at work, too. One difficult manager, one bad meeting, one betrayal of trust — and suddenly, our body remembers. The anxiety, the guardedness, the exhaustion — they’re all the residue of unprocessed emotion.
And the longer we stay in that loop, the closer we move toward burnout.
The Path Through: Regulation, Not Resistance
The good news: while our bodies store stress, they can also release it.
The women in my Blueprint to Career Freedom masterclass learned firsthand using biology to find workplace freedom. I guided them through easy, direct experiences to calm their nervous system right on the call. Every woman who participated in the exercises felt relief from the negative emotions they associated with their work or career. We used a 1-10 scale to indicate stress levels, with 10 being the most extreme, and every participant’s number dropped in a matter of minutes.
When you calm your body, your mindset shifts.
When your mindset shifts, your options expand.
And when your options expand, you reclaim choice.
That’s the real recovery from burnout — not just rest or boundaries (though those help), but agency.
How to Get Started
If this is resonating, there are some simple, gentle ways to start reconnecting with yourself again.
You don’t need a full overhaul or a dramatic life change — sometimes it starts with small, consistent steps that bring your body back to homeostasis. If you’re a middle management woman professional, the last thing you need is another stressful program to self-improve.
And, that’s why the Swoboda MethodTM is so powerful.
It’s simple, easy, and effective, and takes only minutes a day.
I use The Swoboda MethodTM in all of my programs and sessions. For example, my LinkedIn Lives (“Monday Un-Madness”) are short and accessible — a space where integrate real nervous system regulation with leadership concepts like Executive Presence.
If you’re curious about where burnout might be showing up for you, I’ve developed a quiz based on the Workplace Burnout Assessment Tool by W. B. Shaufeli that can help you determine your burnout level with suggested next steps. Many people tell me just taking it helps them see their situation differently.
And if you’re ready to go a little deeper, I’ve built two different ways to do that — one through group work (like the From Stress to Success Leadership Program) where community plays a huge role in the healing process, and one through private coaching, for those who want a more individualized experience.
Whichever way you choose, my goal is the same: to help you reconnect to yourself, get clear on what the next step of your career journey really is, then build the plan that will get you there.
I know what it’s like to juggle emails on the weekends, deal with naysayers in meetings, and navigate constant double-standard scrutiny because you’re a woman in the working world. I’ve been there.
And, if someone as stubborn and unwilling to take feedback like me can work through this stuff to live a life she loves, so can you.
With love and leadership,
Marissa 💕🌸
