FRIED. The Burnout Podcast

Winter fear can feel like burnout recovery slipping away but this episode reframes fear and depletion as a natural part of winter rather than a sign of winter burnout or failure.  In this #sarahshares episode, Sarah Vosen speaks directly to the quiet panic that surfaces when low energy and fear return during the darkest part of the year. When light fades and energy pulls inward, burnout recovery c...

Burnout recovery starts when you stop treating self-sufficiency as strength and learn how to ask for help without shame. In this Coaching session, Sarah Vosen sits down with Samira, a longtime listener facing burnout rooted in over-responsibility, financial stress, and a habit of doing everything alone. Rest has started to bring back some energy, yet doubt remains. What if it is still not enough?...

AD: What if you could step into a room filled with the people who hold the keys to the big stages, the book deals, and the most powerful platforms for your voice? The Gateway Gathering Pitch Fest is a visibility accelerator for thought-leaders. Whether you’re ready to pitch or just want to discover what’s possible join us January 13 – 15. Visit https://bit.ly/friedgateway AD: The right support cha...

Many people mistake burnout for personal failure, but the real issue is the quiet mismatch between the energy you actually have and the expectations you keep pushing yourself to meet. Sarah Vosen gets to the core of why so many burned-out high achievers feel defeated: the math of your life stopped working long before you noticed it. When your energy drops but your expectations stay at their old se...

Fall can hit like a quiet emotional landslide as grief, guilt, and old heaviness rise to the surface and ask for release. Sarah Vosen talks about why this season often feels heavier than we expect and how that weight points to emotion that never fully moved through the system. She highlights the way sadness, guilt, and that familiar tightness in the chest show up when the pace naturally shifts and...

Burnout doesn’t end with a mindset shift—it begins when you finally allow grief, emptiness, and small sparks of joy to coexist without needing to fix any of them. Author and speaker Cyndie Spiegel joins Cait to talk about what it means to live inside the gray area, the space where both pain and beauty can exist at once. She shares how walking away from a high-profile fashion career led her to teac...

Most people think they’ve failed at change when they’ve actually just hit the part where being human takes over. Cait Donovan is taking a closer look at why behavior change is so hard to maintain and why relapse isn’t a sign of weakness but proof that your brain is doing exactly what it’s designed to do. She explains how old habits never fully disappear, they just sit quietly, waiting for a moment...

Burnout doesn’t always look like collapse; sometimes it hides in the moments when you’re still performing, but your spark keeps flickering out, and that’s where this honest coaching session begins. In this episode, Sarah Vosen sits down with Jennie, an attorney and mom unsure whether what she’s feeling qualifies as burnout. Together they unpack the World Health Organization’s markers of burnout—ex...

Admitting you’re burnt out can feel like failure, but as Heather learns in this live coaching session, it’s actually the first brave step toward freedom. In this coaching conversation, she opens up about the shame of slowing down and the fear that rest will undo everything she’s worked for. For years, she’s equated effort with worth, believing that if she just pushed a little harder, she’d finally...

Burnout convinces you that rest should be enough, and when it isn’t, you assume you’re broken. In this #straightfromcait episode, Cait shares how a shoulder injury revealed a missing step in her own recovery process. Two months of full rest left her pain-free but not ready. When her physical therapist handed her one-pound weights and she could barely lift them, she realized the injury had healed,...

Burnout hides best inside people who love their work so much they don’t notice it draining the life out of them. PGA coach and RGX founder Will Robins joins Cait to unpack how devotion to service can turn into slow-motion burnout, especially when you’re praised for being endlessly available. He shares how surviving the 2004 tsunami gave him purpose, but years later COVID thrust him into a differen...

Control shows up early in Christy’s story — first as protection, then as identity, and eventually as exhaustion. She has spent years anticipating other people’s needs, convinced that staying ahead of every outcome would keep things safe. Instead, it left her overextended and unsure how to take up space without earning it through service. In this real-time coaching session, Sarah helps Christy noti...

Burnout recovery gets complicated as Sarah sits down with Janine, an anonymous guest who is more than halfway through medical leave but still unable to rest. She loves her team and takes pride in her work, yet the thought of returning to the same boss and culture fills her with dread. Even time away hasn’t quieted the anxious loop of questions: Should she go back? Ask for a different role? Step in...

Grammy Award–winning producer Barry Goldstein joins Cait Donovan to explore burnout and the healing power of music. Barry shares how chasing success in New York’s music scene drained the joy from his craft - until he began composing at the rhythm of a relaxed heart. That experiment sparked “acoustoceuticals,” music designed to calm the nervous system, restore heart-brain coherence, and reignite pa...

What does burnout look like before it takes you all the way down? For Emily Slachetka, it showed up as constant overwhelm, unexpected tears, and the thought of leaving a job she once valued. She joined UnFried hoping for validation that her workplace was toxic. Instead, she discovered her real challenge was over-functioning. Emily shares how she learned to separate capability from capacity, the un...

Toxic bosses don’t only wear people down, they spark the very burnout cycles that drain whole teams. Cait Donovan talks with author and change-maker Mita Mallick about the damage bad leadership leaves behind and the toll it takes on both people and organizations. Mita shares personal stories, including her experience with a boss she nicknamed “Medusa,” whose intimidation and cruelty pushed her int...

Burnout shows up in many ways, but at its core it often signals a life out of alignment. Cait Donovan sits down with executive coach and author Jerry Colonna to explore what happens when outward success hides an inner collapse. Jerry opens up about the years he spent chasing achievement as a venture capitalist and how every new milestone left him feeling worse instead of fulfilled. What does it me...

Burnout recovery gets real as Sarah Vosen sits down with an anonymous guest who feels trapped by perfectionism, people-pleasing, and the voice of an inner critic that makes self-compassion feel out of reach. In this episode, she’s trying something different for the podcast: a real-time coaching session. Her guest “Kate” describes how burnout began with constant illness and eventually knocked her f...

Burnout reaches far beyond the office, touching every layer of health, purpose, and identity, and Dr. Jen Wagner joins Cait Donovan to uncover what true recovery really looks like. As Chief Health and Performance Officer at Canyon Ranch, Dr. Wagner brings both professional expertise and lived experience, sharing how her own burnout as a young physician and mother reshaped her path and deepened her...

Burnout recovery takes more than waiting for time to pass. It asks you to examine who you’ve been, who you want to be, and what kind of life will truly sustain you. In this #straightfromcait episode, Cait Donovan explores one of the questions she hears most often: how long does it take to heal from burnout?  Drawing on her own experience, client stories, and survey results from her community, Cait...

Burnout can make every decision feel impossible. When you’re stuck in fear and second-guessing everything, how are you supposed to move forward in a way that actually feels right? In this episode, Cait Donovan shares a tool she’s used for years to help people get unstuck: the “Worst Case Scenario” exercise. Instead of pushing fear aside, Cait walks you through what it looks like to write it down,...

Burnout thrives in silence. This episode is your reminder that healing often starts with one simple but radical act: asking for help. Sarah Vosen, Director of Coaching at Burn Bold, shares a personal #sarahshares about finding herself stuck in exhaustion despite doing everything she thought she needed to recover. As a coach and acupuncturist, she’s used to helping others untangle their burnout, bu...

Cait Donovan is back with a #straightfromcait episode that gets real about something most of us wrestle with quietly, how we soothe ourselves when things get hard, and what that looks like after burnout. This time, Cait’s digging into her long-standing sugar habit. Not the occasional treat, but the reflex to reach for something sweet when emotions start to build. She thought she’d done the work. A...

If your brain screams ‘lazy’ every time you try to rest, it’s time to stop trusting a bully and start listening to the one part of you that never lies: your body. So many people in burnout recovery hear the same harsh inner dialogue. “You’re lazy.” “You should be doing more.” “You’ll never be enough.” But what if those thoughts aren’t reflections of reality, just echoes of a brain running on exhau...

Imposter syndrome has a way of creeping in when we’ve spent so long meeting everyone else’s expectations that we forget what we actually want for ourselves. In this episode, Cait Donovan reconnects with Nicole Kalil for a conversation about burnout, confidence, and the stories we tell ourselves when we’re doing all the right things but still don’t feel like we belong. Nicole shares what happened w...