Enough, the Podcast

You can run a board meeting after terrible news, and no one would know. Push through and deal with the feelings later. Or not…

But sometimes a situation just takes your knees out from under you, and pushing through isn't an option. Then what?

My guest is Regena Thomashauer – known to thousands as Mama Gena – the New York Times bestselling author of Pussy: A Reclamation, founder of the School of Womanly Arts, where she's taught pleasure for over three decades. Her new book, On Our Knees: Loving Your Life Even When You Hate What's Happening, is out now. This is not an episode about leopard print and bubble baths. It's a real, raw conversation about how to switch gears from pushing through to letting big feelings move through you. Regena shares her own story of how she was on her knees on the wings of a Broadway theatre, feeling broken and weeping at what (from the outside) looked like the apex of her career. The super-successful persona of Mama Gena she'd created had drifted too far from Regena. This conversation is about how she reconciled them.

If you've ever been praised for how well you "held it together" and secretly wondered what'd happen if you didn't, this one's for you.

Links:

Regena Thomashauer's website (and books).

Regena on Instagram

Mandy on Instagram

You can lead the team, close the deal, hold an entire organisation's chaos in your head. And yet somewhere in your kitchen, there's a bag of salad turning into a science experiment. You know it's there. You're not dealing with it today.

This episode is about that gap — and the secret, if-anyone-knew shame that comes with it. Because the more capable you are over here, the more brutal that inner voice gets over there.

My guest is Dr Emma Offord, clinical psychologist and founder of Divergent Life, specialist in high-masking neurodivergence — the people who look completely sorted while paddling like mad underneath. This is not an episode about ADHD. It's about why your nervous system runs on interest, not importance — and why that changes everything about how you get the boring, important things done.

If you've ever nailed something genuinely hard, then sat frozen in front of something tiny — this one's for you.

In this episode: Bore-out, task paralysis, and the interest-based nervous system. Why it's not laziness or a discipline problem. Body doubling, scaffolding, and the accommodations high achievers secretly need. Changing your expectations — not lowering them. And shame as a "starter motor": familiar, effective, and so expensive.

Links: Dr Emma Offord — Divergent LifeInstagram: @divergentlives @mandylehto

How was your day? is the greeting. What follows — the homework, the essay, the spelling test — is the audit. Most of us never hear ourselves make the switch.

Now the research that stopped me mid-sentence: kids raised in high-achieving environments now sit on the same mental-health risk list as kids growing up with poverty and trauma. The tutors, the top schools, the 6am swim squad — same list. Not because of the schools. Because of one specific thing that loving, well-intended parents do without noticing. Yes, I've done it. Probably this week.

My guest is Dr Tara Porter, clinical psychologist and author of Good Enough — she's spent nearly thirty years in the therapy room with the kids from these families, and with the perfectionist adults they grow into. Which is where you come in.

Because this is not a parenting-tips episode. Listen for the double mirror: the kid you were — the one who learned that gold stars meant being loved — and the parent, boss, or relentless self-optimiser you became. Same wiring. Both mirrors.

Also in here: the well-meaning phrases to retire ("we're only pushing you because we believe in you" — I know, I know), the figure skater who quit, came back on her own terms, and won Olympic gold, why your terrifyingly good time management was never the problem, and the story of the toothbrushes. You'll see.

Links: Dr Tara Porter's website and books: taraporterpsychologist.com Good Enough and You Don't Understand Me — wherever books are sold mandylehto.comInstagram: @mandylehto and @drtaraporterpsychologist

What if the thing that's exhausting you isn't the pressure? What if it's the formula you've been using to handle it all these years? It's probably the same formula that built your career, which is now quietly running you into the ground.

In this conversation, leadership researcher Nick Petrie shares what he learned from studying more than 1,000 high performers and the handful who seem to have cracked a code the rest of us missed.

Not because they're tougher. Not because they're better at self-care. And not because they've figured out how to squeeze even more productivity out of an already overstuffed life. Most of them hit the wall too.

This group of "thrivers", as Nick calls them, did something different, and I'm pretty sure you want to know about it.

We go places in this conversation: From Roger Federer to quilting and Argentine tango. Come join us.

LINKS

Nick Petrie's book, Burn Bright: 10 Habits to Sustain High Performance in an Always-on World.

Nick Petrie on LinkedIn

Mandy Lehto on LinkedIn and Instagram

What happens when you finally achieve the thing you wanted… and still feel weirdly unchanged?

In this episode, I'm joined by author, musician and meditation teacher Cory Allen for a conversation about ambition, creativity, overachievement and the strange emotional flatness that can follow success.

We explore why so many high achievers quietly expect achievement to do something it was never designed to do: finally make them feel enough.

In this episode we explore:

• Why achievement often fails to deliver the feeling we expected

• The exhausting cycle of striving, arriving, and immediately moving the goalposts

• Mimetic desire and how we learn what to want by watching other people

• The hidden fear beneath obsessive, brittle overachievement

• Cory's idea of "rotating the prism" — and how changing the way we look at disappointment can completely change our experience of it

LINKS

Cory Allen's website & books

Cory on Instagram

Mandy on Instagram

Meg Josephson episode

You say "yes", and almost immediately your body knows…argh, I've done it again. This episode is about that moment where you override your exhaustion and capacity in favour of taking something on. There are plenty of reasons why we do this, and my guest today helps to explain what might be going on there. Author and clinical psychologist, Dr Claire Plumbly, helps me to unpack a particular pattern of burnout – not the dramatic, can't-get-out-of-bed version, but the high-functioning one. The kind where you push, recover just enough to be convincing, and then go again… until that starts to feel like your personality rather than a pattern. This conversation is less about frenetic burnout, and more about what beliefs might be burning beneath it. We get into why knowing something isn't sustainable rarely translates into doing anything differently. You'll learn how frenetic burnout quietly reinforces itself through reward and identity, and why the very traits that make someone exceptional at work can make it difficult to step back from it.

Claire Plumbly's website and book

Claire on Instagram

Mandy on Instagram

Jo Rodriguez episode

You know about people pleasing. You've heard about the fawn response. You might even recognise it in yourself: the self-silencing, the conflict avoidance, the version of you that keeps the peace while something quietly fumes underneath.

And yet, you still said nothing in that meeting last week.

This episode is about the gap between understanding yourself and actually changing — and it's one of my favourite conversations to date.

My guest is Meg Josephson, psychotherapist and NYT bestselling author of Are You Mad at Me? Rather than explaining the fawn response from a theoretical distance, we do something harder. We take real scenarios apart together, a coach and a therapist, both with skin in this game. We get inside the moments that cost high achievers the most — the freeze that happens in a meeting, the conflict you've been circling for months, the 2am replay — and we pull them apart from two very different angles.

We get into why people pleasing isn't a personality flaw, but a nervous system response learned long before you had the corner office. Why the higher you've climbed, the more sophisticated your self-silencing becomes. And why — this is the bit that stopped me — conflict doesn't have to mean rupture.

If you've ever walked out of a conversation frustrated with yourself for going quiet, this one is for you.

In this episode: The fawn response and why it shows up in high achievers. The link between conflict avoidance and childhood. What's actually happening in your body when you freeze. Practical, somatic tools for staying in the room when everything in you wants to bolt. The difference between reassurance-seeking and validation. And why knowing isn't the same as changing.

Join us. *You might need a note pad – she's that good.

Links:

Meg Josephson's website & book

Meg on Instagram

Mandy on Instagram

You know the moment: you've chosen to be clearer, less accommodating, a bit braver. And it feels good… for about two seconds. Then the wobble comes. That tightening in your chest. That playback in your head. The urge to explain or undo what you just said.

In today's episode, I talk with Jon Prince — former professional poker player, coach, and author of Start Before You're Ready — about exactly that: how to hold your nerve when you raise the stakes, and your nervous system screams for relief.

Poker isn't just about cards. It's about emotional control under pressure. If you make a move to calm yourself down, you lose. The skill is staying in the hand while your body wants to fold.

We dig into what actually happens after you make a brave choice in life: the growth hangover, the inner critic revving up, the post-boundary shake, and the real work of sitting in tension without fixing, rescuing, or smoothing it over.

This episode will resonate if you've ever:

• said something aligned and then questioned it

• chosen a new way of being and felt exposed

• held silence and wanted to fill it

• wondered if holding your ground meant you were too much

Jon's perspective brings both the rawness of real nervous systems and the wisdom of real growth.

If you've ever been braver than usual and then wanted to take it back, this conversation is for you.

LINKS

Jon Prince on Instagram

Jon Prince's Book, Start Before You're Ready

Jon Prince's Website

Christopher Sexton – Instagram (poet of the quote we opened with)

Have you ever thought, If I just fixed that one thing, I'd finally feel OK?

In this episode of Enough, the Podcast, we're talking about body image, shame, and the quiet fix-it logic so many women live inside — especially in midlife.

My guest, Kate Gies, was born without an ear and underwent 14 reconstructive surgeries as a child, each one promising to finally make her whole. What she learned — far earlier than most of us — is that fixing the body rarely delivers the relief it promises.

This conversation isn't about giving up on your appearance. It's about questioning what you're asking your appearance to do for you.

We explore:

• Why the beauty industry relies on low-grade shame to keep us fixing

• How body image becomes a stand-in for deeper questions about worth

• The myth that one more improvement will finally make you feel enough

• What wholeness looks like when it isn't tied to perfection

• How to tell the difference between choice and conditioning

If you've ever negotiated with your reflection… If you care about how you look and resent how much it matters… If you're curious about what changes when appearance stops being proof of your worth…

This episode will land. Press play and consider what might be driving your appearance-related decisions – zero judgment; no fixing (or solutions;) just pure curiosity.

LINKS

Kate Gies's website (and her book, It Must Beautiful To Be Finished).

Kate Gies on Instagram.

Mandy Lehto on Instagram.

Be honest. You secretly love how much you can endure. Like it's a badge of honour that you can take on more, stay longer, push harder, and still (kinda) look put together?

But here's the kicker: What if that "unstoppable drive" isn't grit at all?

What if it's your nervous system running on a decades-old operating system — one that learned, way back when, that proving yourself was the only way to stay safe, loved, or valuable?

That would explain some things, wouldn't it?

Like why you:

• Secretly check emails on holiday… in the bathroom… while everyone else is having fun.

• Stay in jobs, relationships, and projects way past their expiry date because nobody's gonna underestimate you.

• Celebrate big wins by immediately asking, "Cool, what's next?" instead of, you know, celebrating.

If you're nodding (and maybe wincing), this episode is your mirror.

I'm joined by Anna Runkle (aka The Crappy Childhood Fairy, YouTube queen, and new author of Re-Regulated) and Dr Sarah Madigan, psychologist extraordinaire, to ask one big question: What's really driving your drive?

We'll poke at the shiny, high-achiever veneer and ask whether your ambition is actually joy-fuelled — or just a trauma pattern in designer shoes.

You'll learn:

• How over-achievement can be a sneaky trauma response (and why that doesn't make you "broken").

• The surprising body tells that your drive has tipped from energising to dysregulating.

• Why noticing your patterns is the most subversive act of self-preservation you can do.

• How to make your ambition sustainable instead of soul-scorching.

This is not about "fixing" your drive. It's about untangling it, so it stops running you into the ground and starts fuelling the life you actually want.

If you've ever asked yourself, "Why am I like this?" — press play.

LINKS

Anna Runkle's website, book(s), and free resource she mentions

Dr Sarah Madigan's website

Dr Sarah Madigan was a guest on episode 63 of Enough, the Podcast Listen HERE

The Three Circles Model by Paul Gilbert

What's Driving Your Drive QUIZ