Here’s a photo of me from 10 years ago.
Okay, okay — jokes aside…
That year, I felt dangerous.
Not “lock your doors and call the cops” dangerous…
I’m talking slow-burn, dead-eyed, iced-over soul kinda dangerous.
You know the feeling?
When your barista messes up your order 3 times in a row… and still, you feel nothing?
Not rage.
Not disappointment.
Not even a little passive-aggressive eye roll.
Just a big, fat… emotional void.
(That was me.)
My hair was falling out.
My nervous system was fried.
I was waking up more tired than when I went to bed.
And still?
Everyone around me thought I was “thriving.”
“Wow, you’re so calm under pressure,” they’d say.
(Which is a great compliment to receive when you’re basically Patrick Bateman from American Psycho with an Outlook calendar instead of a chainsaw.)
Now, here’s what I failed to realize back then:
When burnout looks like high performance… Nobody sees the danger.
Not even you.
You’re there smiling. Still hitting deadlines.
Still checking boxes like a productive little robot.
Meanwhile, your capacity for human emotion becomes almost non-existent.
That’s the real face of burnout.
It doesn’t scream, or panic, or even cry…
It just detaches.
Bit by bit.
Until you no longer feel anything.
And that’s the moment you realize:
You may not look like a sociopath… but you sure as hell FEEL like one!
Now, I don’t have a 12-step recovery plan,
Or a cute Instagram carousel with 5 positive affirmations to send you.
But what I do have is the truth.
A hard reset.
A biology-first path back to safety.
A method for healing that doesn’t rely on “positive thinking” while your body begs for mercy.
If you want to see what it looks like?
👉 I lay it all out here
Because the only thing more dangerous than feeling pain…is feeling nothing at all.
In Love and Wisdom,
Pauline
