How my client was able to go back to her high pressure job but ditch the stress and overwhelm

When this client first came to me, she’d been feeling burnt out from her job and dealing with a lot of anxiety.

She’d decided she needed a few months away from her work to recover.

She didn’t want to ditch her job but she did want to ditch the stress she was feeling within it and gain some practical tools to help her regulate her nervous system and reduce her stress levels so she could get back to feeling herself.

By the time we finished working together, her daily experience had completely changed. She was feeling more calm and resilient. She felt renewed. She was no longer battling anxiety and had an array of techniques and practices she could turn to any time whenever anxiety did come up.

So she went back to her job, back into the same high pressure environment.

Yet this time her experience was completely different.

She was no longer feeling stressed or getting burnt out from the work because she was regularly using the practices and techniques I taught her to build her resilience and allow her to hold a higher level of responsibility within her career - without feeling overwhelmed!

Through our time together we did a lot!

What made the biggest impact for her?

→ She learnt somatic safety techniques that allowed her to instantly tap into an internalised source of safety and stability. This gave her the space to hold more of her experience without feeling stressed or overwhelmed so she was able to hold a higher level of responsibility in her career while ditching the stress.

→ She learnt about her nervous system and methods for personalising practices to her experiences of different nervous system states. She learnt to quickly help herself regulate in moments of stress and approach any situation with greater clarity and calm.

From different yoga practices, breathing and pranayama to meditation and nidra. We built up her personal toolkit she could dip into anytime she needed and that she would genuinely enjoy practising every day.

→ We looked at ways of working with emotions. She learnt to really pay attention and sit with her emotions, which allowed her to vocalise her needs more clearly, this both created a healthier dynamic in her relationship but also in her workplace. She now felt comfortable being able to step back and clearly tell people “no, this isn't working for me” so they could recalibrate the situation to allow her to work more effectively.

→ We looked at yogic philosophy and detached her identity from needing to achieve all the time and feeling like she had to constantly prove herself. She’d always been a hard worker, in fact this was one of her values and part of what allowed her to make big strides in her career. Yet through our work she realised her identity had gotten tangled up in this and had been prioritising work over herself.

Together, we recalibrated towards a deeper purpose that allowed her to create joy for herself and share this with those closest to her, to reprioritise herself and as well as her family. She wanted to share her passion, to feel free and fulfilled. This shift in focus allowed her to approach her work with a renewed sense of meaning, one that was aligned with her true self rather than external expectations or societal pressures.

SHE DID NOT:

→ Create a long morning routine.

→ Practice for hours every day.

→ Go through months of trial and error.

In fact, none of these things were necessary.

She learnt exactly what worked for her as an individual so she could easily come back to herself within a short space of time and go back into her high pressure job, without the associated stress.