Ep 18. The Phoenix Effect: How I Turned Burnout Into Unleashing Power for Women Leaders

Episode Show Notes

In September 2013, I was having the time of my life but burned the most important budget I had; my own health. 

I was project managing a dream project. The idea was my own, and I got to run with it - Spotify style. 

Everything would have been perfect if it wasn’t for my own health. 

At the age of 27, when the project was finished, I just couldn’t get out of bed. I had burned out and was left a wreck. 

I absolutely loved my job, but I had no idea how to take care of myself.

The recovery took many years but eventually, it led me to what I do today. For this, I am incredibly grateful. 

I decided to share my story, to help others not end up where I did, or seek support, for themselves, a colleague, or a loved one if they can relate.

So this episode is all about my own burnout story, the background, the symptoms, the transformation, and the learnings. 

And also how I support my clients today. 

Hi ladies, 

Ok, this is going to be a very personal episode. But I believe in the power of sharing and daring to be vulnerable. 

Sharing is caring, and the more we speak about exhaustion, stress, and mental health issues, the more we can normalize it and reduce stigma. 

So to give you a bit of a back story. 

I come from a family of high-achievers and I always saw being a good girl with high grades as the goal somehow. 

Even if I had quite long periods of rebellion and tried to break free from expectations, I still had this picture of wanting to be perfect. 

Already in upper secondary school, I started getting tension headaches. I was studying a lot and running projects on the side. Everything was just so much fun and the pace was high and my goals even higher.

Then a few years later, when I started studying Business Administration and Marketing at Uppsala University, I started getting severe sleeping problems. 

I absolutely loved being a student and I was involved in all the student unions and organizations.

Life was a big party and work hard, play hard was not an overstatement. But sleeping got more and more difficult. I would lay awake for hours every night with my heart racing, thinking about my exams and all the things I had to do. 

I also started getting sick a lot and constantly had a sore throat. 

Still, I kept pushing because there was just never an end to all the exams, parties, projects, and fun. Coffee, Red Bull and alcohol at the parties helped to get through and not feel so tired.

During this period, I also started getting maniac about exercising. I never felt fit enough and I thought that the only way that I could sleep, was if I exercised very hard. 

I had no idea that I was just making everything worse by doing that. 

And from there, it just went south. 

The sleeping problems continued all through university and my exchange year in Buenos Aires, and at the end of Uni, I was exhausted. 

I was going to handover my responsibilities as a Vice President in the union to someone else, but just couldn’t get my thoughts together and it took me all summer to recover and get some energy back. 

This was probably my first mini-burnout, but being young, I could recover.

And I had landed my first real job in marketing and student relations at a technical consultancy firm. This was also so much fun! And it involved a lot of traveling, project managing, socializing, being on stage and parting with students all over Sweden. 

The sleeping problems just got worse and the tension headaches were insane. 

Less than a year in, I found out that Spotify was looking for someone to head up their student relations for tech students. I pitched myself and got the job! 

I was over the moon. This was 2011 and Spotify only had 300 employees at the time. I just couldn’t believe that I had joined such a cool company. The startup scene was amazing and I felt at home right away.

I got a lot of freedom in my role and could pitch what I wanted to do, so I started student ambassador programs, internship programs and a lot more.

The travelling, mingling with students and project management continued and the sleepless nights as well. Now I also started getting fever, a light fever that wouldn’t go away and a wierd dizziness. 

I seeked the doctor for this but I was just told that I was paying to much attention to myself and how I was feeling. They took tests and everything was looking fine, and they told me that I was healthy. 

And now I also learned what impostor syndrome was. Being in the company of hundreds of the smartest people I had ever met, comparison and not feeling good enough was present all the time. This caused even more anxiety and stress, never feeling on top of things.

And I wasn’t either, because of the sleep deprivation and brain fog.

Ending up in 2013, I was trusted to run with my dream project, a student conference for 2 days at Spotify HQ. The last weeks before the event I was working 90-hour weeks, and it was harder and harder to make decisions. 

Coffee and exercise helped some, but my memory just got worse for every day. No one else pushed me to do this, it was my own ambition and vision that kept me going.

The D-day was just around the corner, and after that, I would get to rest. Or at least I thought I would, but there was just soo much to work that would continue during the fall as well. 

So, 28th of September 2013, we welcomed 101 students to Spotify HQ, and the project was a success! 

We had internal and external speakers, cool artists, and parties. My amazing team of student ambassadors worked so hard and together we pulled it off. 

During the event, I couldn’t really get my thoughts together and I have no idea what I said on stage. 

The project finished with a big bang and I took a taxi home. High on life and adrenaline, but the next day I just couldn’t get out of bed. 

My head and body were extremely heavy and the world was spinning. I had to hold on to the walls to be able to walk. 

It was impossible to go into the office to clean up. A few days later I went in just to end up crying like a baby when my sweet colleague asked how I was doing. 

I saw a doctor and was signed off on sick leave for two weeks due to exhaustion and burnout. 

Somewhere I had a gut feeling that two weeks was not enough. And I was right. 

It took me many years to come back, and to this day, I still have to be careful to not push my limits. 

But here, a looong recovery journey started. 

First, I tried to over-achieve my way out of exhaustion. I was doing my homework from the psychologist like a good girl, studying and faking like I was feeling better than I was and got back to work. 

They had never seen anyone recover this quickly! 

And no, that wasn’t the case for me either. So I had to start all over again, going on sick leave 100% again. 

This time I got into stress rehab. They said, you’re going to work for so many more years, and you have to find ways of doing that in a sustainable way. 

So here the recovery started for real. 

For 6 months I was part of this program and finally, I could put the dots together.

I learned about the physiological and psychological reasons for burning out and took notes but this time for myself, and I also got the feeling that I wanted to support others to not end up where I did. 

Here we got support from all angels through a physio therapist, a doctor, a psychologist and a rehab coordinator. This was a true holistic approach, and that’s usually what’s needed to get out from such a bad state. 

It is not one thing that makes us burnout, and it’s also not one thing that will support to get out of it. 

So I was like an exhausted sponge, wanting to absorb everything at the same time as I was feeling like shit. 

I learned about the energy bucket and what can increase our energy and drain our energy, just like I spoke about last week at the Badass Women Leaders Lunch Club in Stockholm. How meditation and mindfulness can be so healing to our mind and body and the power of our thoughts.

I saw that so much of my stress and anxiety had been created in my head, by my thoughts, my inner critic or bitch like I call her, by the impostor syndrome and comparison, by the behaviors of always doing things in a rush. I’m just going to finish this one thing, then I will rest. Nope, doesn’t work by the way. 

I learned to rest before activities, and also how my maniac exercising (which I was banned from doing from that point) had increased my stress and of course, the reasons for the insomnia. 

I learned how to take care of myself and how to work with rest and relaxation and I started to meditate on a daily basis. 

And the hardest part of all, was to start saying no and setting boundaries. Especially to the fun stuff. I just wanted to be there and take part, but even the smallest things would make me exhausted. 

So I had to pace myself and rest up before activities and set an alarm when it was time to go home, to not use up all the little energy I had. 

This was not a quick fix and even if I slowly felt better, it took me a long time and medication to get my sleep back on track. 

After finishing at Stress Rehab, the self-discovery continued through therapy, coaching, and a lot of reading. And podcasts of course!

Eventually, I was back working 100% but I still wasn’t feeling great. I took some months off to go to India and become a yoga teacher. Like so many before me :)

I realized I wanted to work with health in some way, and found my way to Werlabs and Kry, two health startups in Sweden. 

There I started running projects on Sustainable Worklife, and supporting managers and employees within HR but also within stress, burnout, rehabilitation, and prevention, plus running workshops and lectures. 

This was an area that I loved, and that I knew a lot about! 

Eventually, after having two amazing daughters, I left the corporate world to become a coach and teacher within MBSR, mindfulness-based stress reduction. 

I dove even deeper into the areas of health and wellbeing and the power of our thoughts on our wellbeing. 

The amazing coach that I was seeing then, helped me discover my superpowers and supported me to take the leap to start my own company. The feeling in my belly was just yey!! 

During the years, I have had so many realizations about the reasons for my burning out, and I could see how many of my female friends and ex-colleagues were struggling with stress, inner bitches, not being able to say no or set boundaries, low confidence, not standing up for themselves, not being able to prioritize self-care, not believing in themselves and their value. Even if they were awesome, made loads of money, and had successful careers!

All of the things that I had been struggling with myself. 

I also saw so many balancing on a thin line to exhaustion.

Wanting to do it all and be everything for everyone, while running a household, being a mother and perfect partner and friend and daughter and boss and colleague. 

And I figured that this was my new calling. I wanted to support high-achieving women leaders to find a sustainable way of living and performing, work with their self-critical thoughts, find their true passion and purpose, dare to go after their dreams, boost their confidence, change their mindset and careers if needed, and maybe even start their own companies. 

Humans are complex and not one size fits all. We need to look at wellbeing, confidence, mindset from a holistic perspective, to find the root cause of all the running. And we all have blindspots, we cannot see what we cannot see. 

That’s why we need someone else to support us and hold up a mirror for us. 

I continuously work with at least one coach myself all the time and I have seen firsthand how powerful it is when it comes to getting results and realizing potential. 

And to wrap up;

The name of my VIP program and this podcast is Unleash the Badass Within, because that’s what I see happening with my clients. They peel off the layers of anxiety, and stress and step into their power with a new confidence. 

They get to know and work with their inner bitches and learn how to quiet them and choose what they want to do instead of what they believe others expect them to do. 

They prioritize themselves and their needs and see what thoughts and beliefs that have been holding them back and getting in their ways. 

They make empowered decisions, say no, and set boundaries, so they can excel and advance their careers.

They get promoted or decide to leave companies that are not good for them.

They figure our their zone of genius and how they can leverage their strengths and what they love doing.

And, they get their mental and physical health AND sleep back on track, by learning how to managing their time and energy. And how to insert rest and recovery in a busy day with work, kids, and all the things in between. 

I am so grateful that I get to be a part of these women’s lives and the world needs more women in leadership, and this is one way of supporting equality, diversity, and sustainability at the same time. 

Some of my top values. 

Wow, this has been a long one. 

Thanks for listening to the end, and I would love to hear what you are taking away from this episode. 

Send me a DM on LinkedIn or Instagram or drop me an email. 

As you know if you have been listening to this podcast for a while, I try to cover a lot of different topics, all related to performance and wellbeing. 

And if you want to dive deeper into the topics of How to know when to pull the brake, listen to episode 12 and 13 or tune in to a client story, nr 6. You can also go back to episode 3 on how to insert rest and recovery in a busy day. 

And if you are curious about my VIP program, go to my website, sofiavoncelsing.com. I’ll drop a link in the show notes. 

I also do workshops and lectures on a range of topics.  

I believe that life should and can be sustainable and that you should not live on the edge of surviving. 

Find out what makes you thrive, and take action towards it. This will truly benefit everyone. 

Until next time, take care of yourself and go be a badass!