Your brain isn’t broken.
It’s trying to protect you.

When I work with burnout, chronic stress, and trauma — I’m not just looking at “mindset”.
I’m looking at which part of the brain has taken over.

A simple way to understand this is the triune brain model 🧠

We have three main operating systems:

1️⃣ The Survival Brain (Reptilian Brain — brainstem) This is your alarm system. It runs breathing, heart rate, muscle tension and your fight / flight / freeze response.

Under prolonged stress or trauma this part becomes over-sensitive.

This is when you notice:
• constant tension in your body
• shallow breathing
• jaw clenching
• difficulty sleeping
• feeling “on edge” even when nothing is wrong
• sudden overwhelm or shutdown

Your brain is not overreacting.
It has learned the world requires vigilance.

2️⃣ The Mamalian Brain (Limbic System) This is where meaning and emotional memory live.

Burnout often sits here.

You may experience:
• irritability or tearfulness you can’t explain
• loss of motivation
• dread before work
• emotional exhaustion
• over-personalising small things
• feeling rejected or criticised easily

Your nervous system is tired — not weak.

3️⃣ The Human Brain (Prefrontal Cortex) This is your rational, planning, organised, “competent professional” self.

Here’s the important part:

When stress is high, this part goes offline.

Which is why you might notice:

• brain fog
• struggling to prioritise
• simple decisions feel hard
• mistakes you wouldn’t normally make
• procrastinating complex tasks • reading the same email five times

This is not laziness.
It’s neurobiology.

You cannot solve nervous system overwhelm with more pressure, productivity hacks, or self-criticism.

You restore it by helping the brain feel safe again.

That’s why therapy, nervous system work and hypnotherapy help — they don’t just “talk about problems”.

They regulate the survival brain, soothe the emotional brain, and bring the thinking brain back online.

Burnout recovery is not about becoming tougher.

It’s about your brain no longer needing to protect you all the time.