I recently hit a wall. Not the kind where you're tired—the kind where you wake up and genuinely don't care anymore. About your business. About your goals. About any of it.

And here's what scared me: I saw it coming. I knew I was running on fumes. I just didn't stop.

In this conversation, burnout expert Cait Donovan helps me understand why. And it's not what I expected. It's not about workload or boundaries or self-care Sundays. It's about shame. It's about not believing you deserve to have needs in the first place. And it's about rebuilding trust with your own body—starting with something as basic as peeing when you need to pee.

In this episode, we cover:

→ Why shame is the first barrier to meeting your own needs (before finances, before time, before anything else)

→ Strategic disappointment: how to practice letting people down in small, safe ways so your nervous system learns you won't die

→ The difference between hyperindependence and strength—and why asking for help feels impossible

→ How foundational self-care builds emotional intelligence automatically

→ Why we mistake alignment with that feeling of having "a firecracker up my ass" and what alignment actually feels like (spoiler: it's a settling, not an urgency)

This episode is for you if:

• You're exhausted but can't seem to stop

• You've ignored your body's signals for so long you don't know what they are anymore

• You feel guilty resting, asking for help, or disappointing people

• You've tried to "fix" your burnout by changing external circumstances and it didn't work

• You suspect the problem isn't your schedule—it's something deeper

If you are ready to get support from a community of women who are co-creating this change with intention and clarity— Click here to BOOK A DISCOVERY CALL.

Do you want help from Colleen with a situation you're struggling with? Click here to submit your question for Colleen's NEW Q&A episodes. Your name will not be mentioned on air!

Find me on:

YouTube: @HangoverWhisperer

TikTok: @hangoverwhisperer

Instagram: @thehangoverwhisperer

X (Twitter) : @NotAboutTheAlc

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