Ep 22: Breakdown to Breakthrough: Reclaiming Yourself in Leadership

Do you ever try so hard to get it right - only to feel like it’s never enough?

Do you look outside yourself for answers, believing that others know better than you - even though you’re smart and capable?

In this deeply personal episode of Heal Your Trauma, Find Your Voice, I share the story of an emotional breakdown that became a professional breakthrough. 

What started as a moment of overwhelm while folding laundry became a wake-up call to slow down, listen inward, and reconnect with my true self.

You’ll learn:

• The unexpected metaphor that helped me reconnect with myself (hint: it involves slime!)
• Why self-doubt and burnout might be signs you’re ignoring your own wisdom
• How over-consumption of advice and strategy can slow your progress
• A behind-the-scenes decision to slow down production of this podcast
• A loving reminder that real leadership starts with how you care for you

Whether you lead a team or simply lead yourself, this episode will speak to your heart if you’ve been striving, pushing yourself, and feeling like something's got to give.

If this episode resonates with you, please share it with a friend — or contact us to let me know how it landed.

TRANSCRIPT

Breakdown to Breakthrough: Reclaiming Yourself in Leadership

[00:00:00] Do you ever try so hard to get something right? But no matter what you do, it just never feels like enough? Do you find yourself constantly looking outward for advice even though you're smart and capable? Because deep down you assume that someone else must know better than you. I'm Dr. Annie, trauma-informed Executive Coach, and today we're talking about what happens when the self-doubt hits a wall, tears overflow or your body finally says, this is not working. Most people see that as a bad sign, but what if the breakdown is the beginning of a breakthrough?

Originally I had intended for this week's episode to be about how to hold space for other people in a way that would not draw energy from you or that we would not absorb their energy. And I will do that episode, but I realized I need to do something else.

Normally I'm really even keeled and I can [00:01:00] kind of flow with the ups and downs of the day or of life. But yesterday I had a breakdown.

Sometimes I get so focused on being ready to help others, being ready to clearly communicate, I don't pay attention to the communication that's going on inside of me.

For the past several weeks, I've been feeling more and more anxious from day to day, and I wasn't sure exactly what it was about. I wasn't really listening to myself.

 I decided that one reason why I was feeling anxious in my body was that my body didn't have enough hydration. So I use this hydration powder. It helps me to drink more water. I like the flavor. So for, I don't know, a week or two, whenever I would drink out of that particular stainless steel water bottle, which I cleanse regularly in the dishwasher. I was feeling a little bit like not so great in my [00:02:00] stomach but I'd never had that reaction to this hydration powder, so I was like, "oh, I don't know. That's weird. I wonder why that's happening."

But I didn't pause to investigate kind of like what was happening in every other aspect of my life. so Two days ago, I was having a work meeting, and I took a deep draw off the straw in my water bottle, oh, this is so gross, prepare yourself. I felt my mouth fill with slime.

It was disgusting. I turned away, spat it out, and I just had to stop for a minute and like take in the metaphor because I had been drinking from that water bottle thinking that it would hydrate me and serve my body. While ignoring the subtle cues that something was wrong .

Sometimes [00:03:00] it takes a mouthful of slime to get my attention enough to say, "whoa, Annie, you're missing something here. You gotta take care of something that's affecting you, even though that water bottle doesn't affect anybody else. It's important. You're important."

So then yesterday morning when I was folding laundry with my husband, I had been expressing to him that I was feeling overwhelmed. I was feeling exhausted and kind of disheartened because I've been thinking about how I need to evolve the show, and I've been talking with my podcasting coach and I've been taking in more, education, and there's just so many things that we can do these days . but all of that was leading me to disconnect more and more and more from my intuition and from my deeper self.

So, although Chris had a well-intentioned suggestion for me, I had said I can't take in any more [00:04:00] information. Like I, I finally realized I needed to create space for myself to just feel and just think and not have to conclude anything or decide anything. And in that moment, he needed to complete his thought.

So he wasn't really able to hear me say, I can't hear this. So he completed his thought and I burst into tears and I said, I can't take in one more thing. I'm so grateful for Chris because he rushed over and he just held me.

And I allowed myself to cry To really sob it out, I had to get the energy out.

It did kind of feel like I had been allowing this layer of slime internally, kind of like what had been building up in the water bottle.

Because I was not listening to myself. I just kept assuming, oh, there's one more video I should [00:05:00] watch, or one more checklist I should check off, or one more strategy I should try.

But if I'm doing all of this and I'm not aligned with myself, if I'm not feeling my heart, if I'm not trusting my intuition.

And I'm just thinking about hustle culture. Get the message right. Grab people's attention. Everybody's so busy. No, I'm not gonna sign up for that anymore. What I really crave is connection. And the people who come to me for personal coaching, for individualized executive coaching or personal coaching, they want real connection.

They want something deeper than just goal setting and goal achievement. And if I'm gonna help someone achieve that, I have to do it myself.

So that's why I'm taking this perspective that a breakdown is a [00:06:00] breakthrough and today's episode is very different from all the previous episodes, and i'm telling myself that's okay, because I wanna be honest with you, I wanna build a community around this podcast.

Whether it continues to be called Heal Your Trauma, find your Voice, or if the name changes, I'm still going to be focused on helping all of us recognize when our survival response is active and how we can nurture ourselves back into connection with ourselves and with other people.

So on this note, one of the things I've decided to do is to change the frequency of my episodes for a while. Since I've been publishing every week, I've created this cycle where as soon as I wake up, I start to work on the podcast, and then I do my full-time job, and then I work with private clients, and then I learn some more about marketing, and then I go to bed.

And my anxiety grows as the weekend approaches, and I know, oh gosh, I have to [00:07:00] finish the episode. I spend lots of time, because I want to keep the episodes as short as possible, 15 minutes or less, but packed with value.

That has led to me spending maybe 14 hours to create one 15 minute episode, and I know that's not sustainable. So for the next three months, I'm going to change my cycle to publish once a month and then revisit.

So that I can continue to create episodes that I hope you will experience as interesting and engaging and also giving you something tangible that you can apply to your life that increases your experience of love.

And then I will also have some space to breathe to enjoy a day off with Chris, or to learn more about marketing or to daydream about what this podcast will become.

If you have opinions [00:08:00] about what you'd like to see or hear on the podcast, I would really appreciate hearing from you, whether by putting it into into a review of the podcast or sending me a direct message. You can click a link in today's show notes to send me a message, or you can send me a direct message on Instagram at Dr. Annie Campanile. Or you could send me a message through my website, annie campanile.com.

If I'm going to put in the time and effort to craft the podcast, I want it to serve you. It won't serve everybody. Not everybody will be drawn to it, and that's not my intention.

But my intention is to deeply serve the people who are drawn to the idea that. We can thrive in leadership even if we only lead ourselves. You don't have to have direct reports to be a leader. You are a leader of yourself.

Because of the breakdown yesterday, now I've paused, and I've chosen to give myself permission to trust my intuition. [00:09:00] All the marketing experts would say it is a bad idea to go from publishing weekly to publishing monthly. Well, it's possible the algorithm might forget me, but guess what?

I won't forget me. Finally, I won't forget me.

So if there's a part of you that's been trying to get your attention, if you're feeling overwhelmed or overextended, but when that awareness flashes through your heart or your mind, your instant response is, I don't have time for that. Or you distract yourself with the next to do.

I hope that if you experience a breakdown like I did, folding laundry and bursting into tears, you will feel my arms around you energetically. You'll know you're not alone, and that breakdown can become a breakthrough if you give yourself permission to pause and ask yourself, what is this really about for me?

What do I really want? That might be a question [00:10:00] you never ask yourself.

But once you've broken down, once your heart has burst open and the tears are flowing it creates an opening for you to hear yourself differently, to, to access your intuition and to think more clearly.

 Once your survival response has calmed down just a little bit, if you ask yourself, what do I really want? Or What do I really need right now? Pay attention to what the response is And then once you get your answer, see if you can give yourself even a small amount of what you need.

Don't let your water bottle fill with slime like mine did.

The beauty of all of this is that each of us gets to decide for ourselves what it is that would serve us. This is such a stark departure from looking outward for the advice and for what we should do, that it can feel uncomfortable, but it also feels pretty wonderful once we've given ourselves that courage and that opportunity to hear what we really [00:11:00] need and give it to ourselves even just a little bit.

Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of Heal Your Trauma. Find your voice. Next time We'll look at what happens when a team member comes to you feeling overwhelmed and emotional and you want to support them, but also protect your own wellbeing. I'll share a simple, yet powerful way of giving the gift of empathy without absorbing the other person's emotions or energy.

Until then, I'm Dr. Annie Campanile reminding you that healing is possible and you don't have to do it alone. See you next time.