Hey, Dr. Jess Reynolds here and welcome to the Conscious Practitioner. Now, this is the audio version of my newsletter, which is made for wellness practitioners who love the work but are maybe tired of feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, and you just want to build a practice you love. If you'd rather get the email version, you can find the link in these show notes. So this is the story of something that happened earlier this year. I was sitting on stage during the Jane b Well Summit. I was part of a panel and I was sitting beside three absolutely brilliant women, and we were talking about burnout, things like how to spot and how to prevent it, and how to stay grounded in the chaos of being a wellness practitioner and a wellness business owner. Now, on the outside, I look calm, cool, professional. I look like I had it all together, but on the inside. I was genuinely mid free fall. Now, right in the middle of a sentence, I felt my heart kick into overdrive. I genuinely got tunnel vision. My mouth went bone dry. I. And it felt like every single pore on my body had turned into a fire hose of sweat. Then came one of the weirdest parts, the sensation of falling out of my own body. Now, honestly, I don't remember what I said or even what I was talking about, but I do remember being deeply grateful that I was sitting at the time and I was gripping the mic so tightly. My knuckles were genuinely white. I was in. It burnt out. That sneaky bastard had crept in again. And the irony, I was literally teaching people about how to avoid it. Now shame it showed up pretty damn fast. I felt like a fraud, like I had no right to be up there talking about business boundaries and sustainable energy when not too terribly long after the Be Well Summit, I found myself crawling into bed by 3:00 PM most days. Not for a nap, I mean going to bed because I literally could not stay awake. My body was done. Everything felt too loud, too fast, too much. My brain was basically a potato by noon. I was too wiped out to even do the basic things I knew that kept me grounded, like eating quality food and going for a walk or getting some exercise. The simplest decisions felt genuinely impossible. And then once those routines started slipping, the spiral picked up speed. I ignored the signs until my body said enough. Honestly, the last few newsletters. Was as much to myself as to you if they felt a little heavier than my usual tone. More raw than usual. Well, that's why now, recovery. It's been slow and honestly, it's been pretty frustrating. I've been journaling, taking long walks with friends, longer walks with Benny, letting go of some projects that I felt I should be doing, and trying not to make my burnout. Another thing to optimize. Now, only recently, maybe in the last few weeks have I genuinely felt a shift, like there's actually fuel in the tank again, like my vision is finally starting to clear. I'm starting to feel a little bit more like myself, which is so nice. Now what took me the longest to understand is how much courage it actually takes to admit this. And as I'm speaking this now, I'm feeling a little bit nervous because I've been talking about burnout and burnout prevention for a long time. So it feels super vulnerable for me to say, Hey, listen, I'm there. So it does take courage, at least for me it does. As a practitioner, as a leader, as a teacher, I often feel like I have to have it all figured out, like admitting I'm struggling somehow discredits everything that I have to say. And maybe, maybe you feel the same. Maybe you feel you've been holding it together on the outside while everything inside is just screaming for a break. Maybe you're worried that if people knew how hard things really are for you, then they stopped trusting your expertise because you are the professional after all. So here's what I've learned. Our vulnerability doesn't diminish our wisdom. It deepens it. What's super interesting is as I've been becoming a little bit more vulnerable and open about these experiences in my newsletter and this podcast, the number of people who have reached out to me with emails and messages has, has been outstanding. In my entire five years of owning aim, my wellness education company, I have never felt this close and connected to not only my work, but very importantly to the people that I'm doing all of this for. Burnout. It isn't a personal failure. It's not a character flaw, and it's not something that you can white knuckle your way out of. Trust me now, especially for wellness practitioners and small business owners, because we're the ones who carry the invisible load, the ones who are used to being the strong one, the grounded one, the one who holds it all together. Burnout doesn't care how many self-care strategies you've memorized. It'll sneak in the back door if the systems in your life aren't built to protect you. And this is, I believe, where hope lives. It's absolutely manageable and it's absolutely reversible, but it doesn't happen by accident. It takes intention and it takes systems. And most of all, it's the thing I'm learning, it takes real community. Not just networking on the surface level, but deep, honest conversations with people who really and truly get it. The kind where someone looks you in the eye and says, listen, I've been there and I'm here for you. So if you are there in it, close to it, this isn't a pep talk, it's a hand on your shoulder. You're not alone. And you don't have to keep doing it by yourself. Systems can help. People can help. And when you start to feel even a flicker of your old self returning, protect it like it matters because it does. So if this does hit home for you, send me a message, send me an email. Seriously, I read everyone. I reply to everyone, and I love receiving messages. My email is jess@aimonline.com. I'd love to hear what this brought up for you. Now before we wrap up, just a heads up, the podcast and the newsletters. Honestly, it's been my way of processing healing and hopefully helping you as well. But they're also a reminder that I'm working on something new, a course about building a sustainable business. You actually love one that doesn't require you to sacrifice your wellbeing for success because we need to model what we teach and that starts with building a business that supports us, not drain us. More details on that coming soon. In the meantime, if you enjoy this type of content, subscribe to the conscious practitioner, wherever you listen to your podcasts and like always be well, my friend.