Danielle Griffin & Week 1: When Corporate Success Becomes a Trap

Season 5 Special Series | Week 1: When Success Becomes a Trap

What if burnout isn't where the story begins?

Welcome to The Trust Tax Investigation, a four-week special series on UnCeiling You.

Over the next four weeks, we're exploring a question I couldn't stop thinking about after interviewing leaders, physicians, psychologists, researchers, and executives:

Why do capable, caring people quietly become the place unfinished work lands?

This isn't a series about burnout.

It's an investigation into what happens long before burnout appears.

Week 1: When Corporate Success Becomes a Trap

In this episode, Danielle Griffin shares how success can slowly disconnect us from ourselves—and why our bodies often recognize the cost before our minds do.

In this episode you'll discover:

• Why high achievers often miss the earliest warning signs
 • The connection between success and nervous system overload
 • Why burnout is often the last symptom—not the first
 • The first clue in the Trust Tax Investigation

Learn more about Danielle Griffin

🌐 Website: https://www.drdaniellegriff.com/

🎟️ SPECIAL EVENT: Rewrite Your Story

Corporate Burnout Doesn't Have to Be Your Story

If today's conversation resonated with you, join me and bestselling author Merit Kahn for Rewrite Your Story, a transformational one-day experience for high achievers who are ready to release stress, reconnect with themselves, and create what's next.

📍 October 15, 2026
 Troy, Michigan

Learn more and reserve your seat:
 https://RewriteYourStoryEvent.com

Continue the Investigation

⬜ Week 1 – When Success Becomes a Trap (Current Week)
⬜ Week 2 – Why Does This Happen?
⬜ Week 3 – Why Do Organizations Create It?
⬜ Week 4 – How Do We Break the Cycle?

Follow the podcast so you don't miss the next chapter of The Trust Tax Investigation.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Welcome to Unsealing You. I'm Dr. Natalie Luke. Earlier this year, something started happening that I couldn't explain. I finished an interview, closed my notebook, and think, I've heard that before. The test was different, the career was different. The story was different. But underneath it all, the experience was the same. And after a while, I couldn't ignore it, and I started asking more questions. So, instead of 12 unrelated conversations, we're gonna take one journey together. In the first week, we're gonna ask, when does this task become a cross? During week two, we asked, why did this happen? In week three, we asked, why do organizations keep creating crap cross? In week four, we discover how do we break this cycle. Every guest has a different story. But together, I think they're revealing the same hidden pattern that causes burnout. I'm so glad you're here. Today we begin week one. Danielle Griffin. Danielle helps us to recognize the earliest signs that something beneath the surface has started to change. And it's starting to burn us out. Let's begin. Dr. Danielle, thank you so much for being here. I was talking to a friend of mine, and we were talking about being burned out or being super tired at work, and she was uh telling me about how she's realizing that you know, in our mind we are we constantly push, push, push, especially us high-intense women that like to get stuff done. And we we are pushing and we reset so that we can keep pushing. And even though in our head we may feel like we've reset all that pressure, all that that stress gets pushed into our body, and our mind may forget that we're stressed out because we're really looking forward to getting this stuff done, but the pressure of it and the stress still stays in our body. I was really looking forward to talking with you today because I felt like you were the person that we should be talking to about this because you've said the problem was never in our calendar, it's always stored in our body. And I'm wondering if you could take me back to the moment when you actually felt that. Not the theory of it, but the day your body made the argument for you.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Yeah. I remember it was a couple years ago over the summer. I working, um, I'm a part of a few nonprofit organizations. And every time I turned around, somebody wanted to add something to my calendar. Right. It was multiple meetings on top of meetings, back-to-back meetings all throughout the day between work, my business, the nonprofit, um, all the things that had going on. I was also teaching at the time. I was literally triggered anytime somebody said, Let's schedule a meeting. Can we put something on the calendar? Like my body went into overdrive. Either I would emotionally react, like yell. Usually they wouldn't be able to hear me because, you know, I'm looking at my computer screen, right? Reading an email or something, or receiving a meeting invite. Um, or you know, my body would just kind of go into fight or flight mode because I didn't want to attend another meeting. I couldn't be a part of another uh hour meeting, 30-minute, you know, whatever the case may be, and still trying to get all the things done that I had to get done throughout the day because because I'm a part of all these things, I also have all these responsibilities to go with them. Um and eventually, like I couldn't do it anymore. I had to put everything down. I couldn't tell, I struggle telling people no, right? Because I've committed myself to these things. Whether it's um, you know, a board seat and you're, you know, you're obligated, right, and air quotes for a year or whatever the case to fulfill these roles or work obligations or whatever the case may be, things for my kids and family, and like I have to start prioritizing. I'm leaving my toddler to himself because I'm attending all these nighttime meetings when I should be able to, you know, cook a meal, you know, decompressed, you know, ask my kids about their day, all these other things. But literally from the time they get home where I had to pick them up, I was rushing back to my computer, getting on more meetings. And eventually, you know, I'm I had to ask myself, like, why am I reacting this way anytime somebody wants to add something to my calendar? And it was all the stress, even if I felt like I was getting a good night's sleep, the few nights that I would get a good night's sleep, my body literally wasn't recovering from it. I was still had a higher resting heart rate. I know I was able to see that from you know wearing my Fitbit at night. Um, so some interesting metrics that I picked up from there. Like I'm still carrying that stress. Even if I would have got a full night's sleep, you know, six to eight hours, it's like your body was literally fighting itself throughout the night. You know, not being able to decompress, not being able to lower that heart rate like I should, because I would get the the stats to show what my normal resting heart rate is. And on those nights where I was working a lot and doing all the things, it wasn't coming down. So those were some of the signs and signals of like I have to, I have to figure this out. This, you know, between taking a step back and being able to do the work internally so that my body can actually rest and recover.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

That that's pretty powerful, um, especially looking at your overnight resting heart rate and knowing it's you're not getting the rest. And so before that moment, you were the person that everybody in the organization depended on. What did being that person feel like day to day before you had the language for what it was costing you?

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Yeah. Well, I would say at least before being a high achiever, right? Going into it, I thought it felt good, right? Like, oh, I'm a leader, I have all these responsibilities, people depended on me. I thought I liked that feeling. I thought that that's what I wanted. I kept adding more because I thought it was adding to you know my resume or my skill set or positioning me for higher levels of leadership. So I thought I needed to do more. I thought I needed to continue to push and do all the things. Um, but once I started to see that, you know, in a lot of cases, doing all the things really wasn't getting me anything else but more work. You know, people still continuing to come to me because they know I could do it, right? Because I'm willing to do it because I'm a yes person, not a no person. Uh because I'm willing to, you know, train others and show them how to do it, it's you know, it still comes back to me. And so it took me that time to realize I need to prioritize myself and really prioritize, understand what my values are professionally and um you know, my home values are and allow that to align. If I'm picking up all these extra things that aren't adding value to my life, then I don't need to do it.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

It's just I I appreciate you saying all of this because I I remember a time when uh I was thinking to myself, and like the the words that you just used before uh I felt valued. I felt like I was doing something, I was moving things forward, I was growing my career and going, taking it in the direction, and it felt good. And then I realized it wasn't, it was just giving me more work. I felt alone when I felt those very same feelings and the thoughts and what the words that you just use, the exact same words I used on myself, and it feels to me so good to hear someone like you, Dr. Danielle, say the same exact thing.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

Yeah, it it is a lonely, isolating feeling. You know, I was doing some journaling um earlier this week, actually, about those same feelings. Like, how do I go to all of these events, whether it's networking events, social events, meetings, and still feel like I'm the only person in the room or you know, still feel like I came out of it with just nothing, you know, your more work because I didn't get I didn't truly get nurtured and poured into the way that I needed to. Um, and that I've started to try to align myself in that way, align myself with people and organizations, that there's going to be more of that mutual relationship, right? Because we're we're all burned out. Like the data has shown that 50% of the US workforce is burnt out. And leaders in the organization are more burnt out than um the people that work for them.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

I'm looking around my desk because I'm reading a book called The Burnout Epidemic, um, the rise of chronic stress and how we can fix it um here. And going back to your percent, your your it's like you're not doing your job if you're not burned out.

unknown 12:28

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

We definitely want to change that.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Yeah, and the people who have literally forgot what it has what it feels like to not be in a stressed state, because for many of us, that is our lives from day to day. Where there's not an extended period of time where we're not under stress, and chronic stress is you know three months or more, and not saying, okay, I was stressed today and not tomorrow, and then stressed the next day. No, you're still stressed because that's not enough time for your body to recover. So if you're going multiple days and weeks and months in that stress state, it's chronic at that point. And if you felt that, whether it's because of family life or work life, both personal things, health things, we have to start to use the tools, the resources that we have to release some of that because we're not all in the position where we can just go, you know, take a week off, take a month off, go travel. You know, we're caretaking for kids, for parents. Um you know, people have things to do. And most of us are not independently wealthy, right? And so we have to be able to use the tools or resources that we have to eliminate some of the stress so that we can rest and recover, so that we can reduce our cortisol levels, that will help lower our blood pressure, um, you know, other um hormones, putting them in check, right? That's what happens at night. And if we're not in the state where we can actually rest and recover and reset, none of that is happening.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

I want to pause for just a moment. If you've been listening this week, you've probably noticed something. Different people, different careers, different lives. Yet they're describing remarkably similar experiences. That's what fascinated me enough to keep asking questions. Every conversation this season adds another clue. Now let's get back to the conversation. There you go. So um we we started talking about our body, and you one of the things you said is you can't delegate what your body's still holding because your your body's holding it. You showed it, you talked about it at night. Your heart rate is up, your body's holding it. Like you have done your job in like closing your eyes and breathing deep, but your body is still holding it. So, can you unpack that for me? What's happening when someone knows intellectually that they should let it go, but they physically can't?

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Yeah, I found that it starts with awareness. You know, it's first being aware that I'm not getting the restful sleep. You know, sometimes it might come, you know, one of the things that came up for me was the high blood pressure. Like I feel like I'm doing all the things, you know, eating healthy, exercising, drinking water, you know, and I can't get my blood pressure under control. And most days you're waking up still high, even though, like, you know, research says when I sleep, it should come down throughout the day, it might go up, but I should be at my baseline in the morning and I wasn't. Um, and I was struggling, you know, wanting to try to get off of blood pressure medication. Um, and so if we're finding things like that happening, that's some of the triggers like, oh, I'm maybe I have restless leg syndrome. I'm constantly moving at night, you know. I think I'm sleeping, but I'm tossing and turning. Um maybe we have other stress signals like an eye twitch or muscle cramping, um, and we're not finding that relief when we wake up in the morning. We're still feeling that tension, that pressure. So if you're noticing some of those signals, you know, sometimes it takes some time to push pause and start to be aware of how your body feels. What does normal feel like for me? And what are some of the things that are happening in my body that weren't happening before? When did this start? You know, starting to kind of jot some things down, being and like I said, just being aware of I noticed this eye twitch. When did that start? Can I associate that to some sort of event, whether it's work-related, you know, and I have this new project and it started causing my eye twitch, or anytime this happens, it will twitch. Um and once we can become aware of those things, noticing when it starts, when it stops, if it ever starts and stops, which for most people it does, then there's there's a trigger. And so once we're aware of our triggers, we can start to do some work, you know, I call it somatic exercises, mobility-based movements, breath work, um, meditation to calm our central nervous system so that those things are not being stored in our body. And those exercises are usually targeting the areas that are impacted where we're storing them. Sometimes people might feel upset stomach because of the stress, you know. Um we can do some breathwork exercises, um, some you know, twist in our chair, just channeling that energy into the space that we're feeling it to help our body release it. You know, if we just continue to hold it and say, okay, I'm gonna ignore it, it's just gonna go away on its own. It's not, you know, we're just gonna continue, it's gonna get worse, and it could turn into something else that ends up being another chronic disease.

SPEAKER_00 20:50

And we certainly don't want that. A whole lot of achievers here. Um, your nervous system is dysregulated and they think something is wrong with them. How do you help someone hear that um this information isn't about them or a diagnosis? Would it um how do you help them see that there's something in their control, but at the same time, there's not something wrong with them?

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Yeah. Well, I would say, like I said, putting some of these practices in place and starting to become aware of your body is the the first step. Right. And being becoming aware of your triggers. The triggers are going to be an external force that impacts how we feel, impacts our emotional and physical state. And usually it will start as emotional. Like you said before, it's we have that feeling and then we're carrying it, we're holding it. So maybe somebody made us angry and we tense up. Maybe my shoulders get real tight. You know, I had TMJ, so maybe my jaw gets real tight. That's one of my um signals as well. Uh start for my jaw by the end of the day. If I'm not releasing it, my whole neck and shoulder is tight and hurting and tense. Um, my go-to used to be, oh, I just need to go get some ibuprofen. I've been clinching my jaw too much. Like, well, why are you clinching? You even though you have TMJ, right, you don't necessarily have to have um the symptoms all the time. There's something you're doing or experiencing that's causing you to clinch. Clinching your jaw is not a natural state. It's not how your jaw wants to be, especially because, you know, I'm not an expert in dentistry, but I know from talking to my dentist over the years about it, you know, it impacts our bite, you know, how we're biting, um, how our teeth are aligned. So that in itself tells me, okay, how I'm positioning my jaw, how I'm holding this tension is not natural. So what's causing me or making me do that?

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

And so starting to be aware of some of those things. What when am I feeling the most tense? And when can I do some of this work to help relieve it? Maybe I know first thing in the morning I need to start my day with it so I can kind of level set, make sure that my body is in um kind of a calm state going into the day, right? And then once I feel that tension build up, I want to start, you know, doing some extra movement, opening and closing, some neck stretches, kind of relieving the tension throughout the day, not allowing myself to wait till I'm in excruciating pain and I feel like my only option is pain medication.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

And yeah. Um, I can definitely appreciate that. I even feel a lot more calmer around you. Now you work with a lot of type A or high achieving professionals who are afraid that if they don't downregulate, or if they I'm sorry, who are afraid that if they downregulate, they'll lose their edge. What exactly do you see happening in their performance when they actually stop running that pattern?

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Yeah. To most people's surprise that they actually Become more impactful in their work. And one of the main reasons is because when we're under so much stress and pain, you know, that physical pain that we start to carry because of all the stress, we lose our ability to focus. You know, we're our mind is cloudy. You know, a lot of people want to run to drink coffee to give them energy and think that's going to give them focus. But over time, a lot of people stop feeling the effects of coffee. They're just drinking it back to back, hoping that it will work, and it's not. But when we can do some some of this work on our own to give our mind the um endorphin boost that it needs without caffeine or other external things, we can relieve the tension, we can leave relieve the pain that's clouding our mind. We can calm down, calm our nervous system from the thing that's stressing us out, right? It doesn't mean that we're never going to be stressed or that thing isn't going to cause our stress, but now we know how to manage the stress so that we're not carrying it all throughout the day, or it's not impacting us the way that it has previously. And so in starting to incorporate that, we start to realize oh, by the end of the day, you know, I'm not all tensed up. And I realized how much productivity I was losing because of all the pain and tension and stress and all these other things carrying around in migraine that's preventing me from actually getting work done. Um, that's another big one as well. With clients that I work with that suffer from migraines, but when we can start to identify, well, what's what might be causing this? You know, if it's something if it's not hormonal related, you know, is it something else? Stress, tension, and can we manage that throughout the day so that we're not experiencing it?

SPEAKER_00 27:06

So one of the things that you said earlier is that um, you know, it it felt good to um be valued or you know, be delivering the value, but then it was too much because you were getting extra work and it was hard to say no. I'm curious to know as you were um going through this and realizing, hey, somatically I need to pay attention to what I'm feeling, my my jaw, my neck, um, so that I don't have these migraines, so that I could sleep at night. Did you find yourself fine um learning to say no easier through all of that process? It took time.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

You know, and I think I don't know if I was naturally a yes person or if that was a learned behavior. Um, but it definitely took time because I you know was used to being a part of everything, you know, used to doing all the things. And like I said, I was tying that back to my value, what I thought was my value. You know, if I'm not doing these things, I'm not valued. And so that mental work was needed. You know, I I felt I was starting to feel good, and so that helped. That helped me, helped move me in the right direction, because my body was then sending the signals like, hey, you're you're feeling better, you're feeling good. You know that if you add more things back to your plate, more than what you can hold, you're gonna put yourself back in that state. You know that you're still feeling triggered when somebody wants to add a meeting. So let's not add more meetings. Like you're not ready to be back in that state, that environment. So let's let's not reintroduce it. Let's continue on this healthy path, this path of relief, you know, feeling refreshed, feeling happy again, you know, feeling like I'm having more um interpersonal relationships and not just work relationships all the time. Let's continue to move in that direction. So it did take a little bit of a fight from you know what I thought I wanted versus what my body wanted and was telling me that I needed, yeah, which also took some therapy.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

I could see that, and I could see the tension between it because you know, you're used to operating in one way, your body's telling you you need to operate in another. And um, the tension of moving from what was before to now definitely had to have been there.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

Yes. It I said it was challenging, especially because in in some of the cases, like I said, with the the nonprofit, I did just put put things down, you know, in in the middle of my my term as a a chair, like I have to stop and step away, you know, and that was was hard too. I just had to to let it go and figure out what what I needed to let go. Um that's one of the things.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

It's nice to know that you've lived it and that there's a there's another side to it, and the other side is it just fine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Yeah. It it's not overnight, but I will say that most people that I work with within 60 days they'll start to feel the change. And you know, it takes that time. It's not oh, it's not gonna be like, oh yeah, I felt felt it in a week. Like, yeah, you might feel good. You might feel after um a 10-minute session of doing this, the immediate impacts, but after 60 days, you're truly able to look back and like, oh, I went from here to there in that period. You know, I'm really sleeping better, I'm carrying less tension, I feel less emotionally reactive. Um and it's really within that time period where most people, I think about 67%, start to really notice, like, oh yeah, I have a pretty good um you know feel of this, and this is impacting me positively. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

So for someone who's listening right now, who's mid-crisis, recognizing, oh yeah, I wear a Fitbit or a ring, and my heart rate is high in the middle of the night. And and um I've had that problem as well in the past two. And they have back-to-back meetings. They also get triggered when someone says, Oh, well, let's have a meeting or let's put something on the calendar, and there is no time to breathe. What is the one thing they can actually do in the next two minutes that starts to shift and starts that 60 days to recovery?

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Yeah. I like to call it my 90-second pause. And so the somatic work, like I've said, is a combination of the breath work, the meditation, and the movement. And so you're doing each about 30 seconds each to make 90 seconds, so under under two minutes. And so taking a uh those first 30 seconds, and you don't even necessarily have to hit a timer. I'd like to use more of my body awareness to say, how much of this do I need? I'm gonna continue to do this thing until I feel good, until my body's okay, you can move on to the next thing. So learning to take a deep breaths, you know, in through the nose, out through the mouth. You know, you can close your eyes when you do it and just see how that feels, see how the tension just starts to melt. You know, see the shift in your body when you simply just breathe, right? Then a lot of people don't even take the time to just pause and breathe, like really what that really feels like. You'll be breathing is supposed to be the most natural thing, but a lot of us hold our breath, especially during stressful states. You know, I know I'm a culprit of it. And so learning to just take that deep breath to release, otherwise, we're holding on to it. And then, you know, doing that several breaths, like I said, I like to just allow my body to say, okay, I feel good, I feel a shift, you know, from there noticing where did I feel the most shift and where didn't I feel it enough? And then also considering as my body started to relax during that time, did I feel any pain or discomfort? You know, maybe there was an area that didn't really allow me to relieve this tension, like other areas of my body. You know, sometimes that might be, like I said, the neck or jaw, maybe it's the lower back. If you felt like, oh yeah, my shoulders really dropped, but that pain in my back wouldn't really allow me to release the the way that I would have liked to. And so you can just do some simple exercises, you know, twisting, stretching to the side and side, you know, whatever feels good, you know, allowing your body to say, this feels good to me. Um, and doing that for a few movements. I like to call it um breath to movement. So breathing in as you do one half of the movement and exhaling as you do the other, that breathes into that space that you're targeting. And exhale on the exhale, it lets you release the tension from that space. And so when you're doing that breath to movement, that's where you really start to feel some of that impact. And then once you again feel good, you know, and it doesn't have to be like, oh, I'm back to 100%, right? Like just really feeling a difference, like, oh yeah, that that felt good, right? And then just sitting there with it for a moment, noticing the shift throughout your body, noticing how you feel, and then kind of setting your intentions how you want to move forward, carrying that energy into your next meeting, that you either sense of calm where you can mentally energize yourself to you know take the next step, whatever, whatever that may be, to tackle the next meeting, knowing what you're gonna go into, like reflecting on whatever the next task is, and as well as when am I gonna do this again? You know, I clearly needed this. My body felt it, it felt good. I know that this is what I need. So, how am I gonna start to incorporate it?

SPEAKER_00 36:30

Thank you for that. So, for the folks that are listening right now who just recognized their own body and everything that we talked about, um, what do you want them to not do, just know before we close out this? And also, how do they get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_01 36:54

Yeah. The thing that they should know is that they're in full control of their body, right? They can breathe into the space, they can move, they can give themselves some mental encouragement, and all that can impact our overall mental and physical well-being. How we talk to ourselves, how we treat ourselves impacts our daily life. And they can find me at drdaniellegriff.com or on any social media platform looking to work with leaders and organizational leaders to bring the somatic practice to the office space.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Danielle, for being on the Unsealing You podcast. Thanks for having me. Three conversations, three very different stories, one question. When does success become a trap? Next week we move beyond recognizing the pattern and begin asking why it happens. Please like, share, and download so you have this when you need it. I'll see you on the next Unfeeling You episode.