Zoe Thompson & 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 Success Becomes a Trap

Today, Zoe Thompson explores another piece of the puzzle.

What happens when you're still succeeding on the outside…

…but it no longer feels that way on the inside?

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why external success can hide internal exhaustion
• The emotional cost of always performing
• How identity becomes tied to achievement
• Another clue in the Trust Tax Investigation

Learn more about Zoe Thompson

🌐 Website: https://www.zoethompson.uk/

🎟️ 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'd finish an interview, close my notebook, and think, I've heard that before. The guest 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 success become a trap? During week two, we ask, why did this happen? In week three, we ask, why do organizations keep creating traps for us? 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. Welcome back to week one. Danielle helped us recognize the first clue. Today, Zoe Thompson explores what it feels like when you're still succeeding on the outside, but something inside has shifted. Let's get started. So thank you so much for being on the Unsealing You podcast. You spent 20 years inside one of the most demanding institutions in the UK. You were a senior leader working as a single parent, performing at the highest level. What was that version of success you were building at that time? And when did you first notice it was quietly taking something from you?

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Great question to start off with. I don't know that I saw it at the time. Yeah, and I think that's always the benefit of hindsight, isn't it? And I love the saying, you know, don't give yourself a hard time for the things that only time has taught you. And I do think that I can look back on different chapters of my journey over the years and I can see things very differently. So I don't know that I neck necessarily recognized it at the time. I think I was writing a blog about this this morning, actually. I think for me, I felt like I needed to be a certain person and behave in a certain way for the leadership roles that I was going into. And I was fighting that balance between proving my competency and staying true to who I was at the same time. And because I was younger, female police staff, so a civilian rather than a police officer, I felt almost double the pressure to prove myself in those roles because I was young, because I was female, because I wasn't a police officer. And I think that determination to prove myself as capable and competent meant that I was often showing up performing in those roles of being who I thought I needed to be, looking at what other people were doing and mirroring other people's behaviours, mirroring how other people were leading. And I think that's where I didn't recognise at the time where I was risk, risking losing myself in the process. And it's one of those things that I think the more I got comfortable and the more I relaxed a little bit into those roles, the more of me started to come back through. And the more I recognized, okay, this really isn't me. You know, the shoulder pad jackets and the heeled shoes, that's that's not me. That's not who I am. And I think I was very lucky that in different parts and in different roles, I was seeing other people who were showing up authentically, who were leading in a way that was much more authentic to them. And that gave me some reassurance, but I was still very young and still learning that for myself. So I think I can look back on it now and see it very clearly. I don't know that I saw it at the time, and I think it was more circumstance that pushed me in different directions than necessarily me waking up one morning going, okay, this is enough. This isn't working for me, and choosing to do something differently.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

I love that, and I hope that we're catching young women and well, it doesn't even have to be a young woman, it could be a woman at any age at that early stage. Um, I talked to some women who just literally pass out from burnout, and I I'm so sad for them. But for someone to, I hope that we're catching people very early on looking and saying, wait, this isn't me. Because the most dangerous version of burnout doesn't look like burnout, it doesn't look like someone passed out on the floor, it looks like success. You're delivering, you're showing up, and still the person that everybody calls on until something inside you says, wait. Um, so for you, um, before the re redundancy, before anything broke, what were the early signs you maybe almost talked yourself out of noticing? The ones that when you looked back were telling you something that um the rest of your life wasn't really ready to hear yet.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

I think for me it was that drain, that emotional drain. So I think life at the time was incredibly busy and and at times from a personal perspective was also quite complicated. And I think that I just thought, okay, it's long hours, it's shift work, it's a demanding job, you've all you're also trying to parent and juggling the balance and the of trying to be a good parent and a good boss and all of the things to all of the people all of the time. I don't know that I recognise that difference between the physical tired and that emotional drain. And I often talk to clients about it now and say it feels very different. It's a different level of fatigue, it's more fatigue than tiredness. And it's like uh, you know, when you've got an app on your phone that drains the battery really quickly and you're not quite sure what it's doing. For me, that's how I describe it's that emotional drain that you know you've had a good night's sleep, you've had a nice weekend off, you've had your week's holiday, you're feeling rested, and then straight back that energy is has gone. It's very like that depletion of energy. And I think that was the challenge for me is not yeah, it was so easy to put it down to other things and not recognize that actually there is a mismatch of values or there's a mismatch of how I want to show up and how I want to work that's gonna work really well for me, and being pulled in those different directions that weren't aligned with who I was and what was important to me, and recognizing that that's what was draining the batteries. It wasn't just a combination of everything else, it was that one specific thing, and that was really what I needed to recognize to be able to do things differently.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

I really love that analogy of um an app draining your phone. Uh, and I think to look inside and find what it is that's draining you is so freeing. And you work with leaders on identity also at the core. So sometimes um, as women who are feeling starting to feel that burnout, there is this identity, their job is their identity, their role as a mom is their identity. Um, and and so you also work with identity as a core pillar of your framework. And what I'm curious about is for women who's built their entire professional identity as being reliable, capable, unshakeable, how does the exact identity become the thing that actually keeps her from asking for help, setting limits, or even admitting to something? And after working with you, how does her identity change?

SPEAKER_01 11:44

I think this is why people who are high performers, people who are very successful, really struggle with burnout because of that identity of I am somebody who's capable, I am somebody who's able to juggle all of the balls and keep them all in the air, I am somebody who's able to show up even under pressure. I do think that that is why we're, and and especially women, there's a there's a societal expectation that we're able to do all of the things all of the time, be everybody, everything to everybody all of the time, that it's um it's that feeling of failure when we do that. And it is that, well, that's not who I am, that's not what I do, because we push through and we keep going, and that is part of our identity. And we're so used to wearing all of these different hats that actually that fear of that hat coming off is almost bigger than the fear of what burnout might lead to. And I think because people don't see burnout coming, that fear is a very silent, unseen fear because we don't know it's coming, we don't know how close that is. And so we hang on to what we know, what's familiar. And I've said the same, I'm great under pressure, I love pressure, I thrive under pressure. Burnout is not that, it's not the weight of pressure. Burnout is something else completely, and so pushing through, keeping going doesn't help because you're not overcoming something. It it's uh it's that misalignment. And I think that is the biggest challenge. I mean, identity for me was huge. I was 18 when I started working for the police, so it's all of my adult years. I really shaped my identity as a human, as a growing, evolving adult human in that environment. And there was so much when I left that environment that I really started to question, okay, who am I? And I did have like this uh identity crisis when I left of a good six months to a year of thinking, who am I when I'm not 8952 Thompson? Who is this person when you're not in this organization and a part of big part of the cog of that big wheel? And that that is a challenge, especially if there are parts of you that don't identify with that organization anymore. It's a big challenge.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yeah, um, I can definitely identify with that for sure. So you help leaders go home on time, take guilt-free time off, but there's a stage in this where rest, and you talked about rest because you have this gap in your emotionally, you're somewhere in that emotional drain is zapping that person's energy. So there's a stage where rest doesn't actually feel like rest anymore. The um, you know, the meeting ends and the next one starts before the last one proceeds, and and your person, my person, wakes up at 2 a.m. not because something went wrong, but but because something might go wrong. So what's happening at this stage and why does a long weekend not fix it?

SPEAKER_01 15:23

I think this leads back to what you were saying at the beginning, when success looks good for everybody else, but it doesn't feel good for you. And that's often the what my clients are telling me when they come to me. They're like, it looks great on paper, I'm doing really well. Like you said, the high performance, but it just doesn't feel great. I'm waking up in the early hours, I'm staying late, I'm working weekends because I'm logging on Saturday mornings to catch up, I'm logging on Sunday evenings to try and get ahead. And even when I go off on holiday, I'm getting emails, I'm getting messages, or I'm not getting messages, but I'm still thinking about the messages that I'm not getting. They're like, make it make sense because I can't switch it off. And I think that for me, that especially when it comes to leaders, is recognizing how you're showing up as a leader and how that influences how your team then show up for you. And if we show up 24-7, we're always available, we're always accessible, then we train our teams to need us all of the time. And shifting that identity for me, especially with leaders, and especially those who've been very successful in that technical role. So they're the especially those leaders who are promoted because they're great at their job. And especially for leaders who are moving from that team leader role into a more senior manager role, because our brains have registered that being available, being accessible, having all of the answers, doing all of the things all the time, working really well under pressure is what good looks like. And that's how we've built our success. And we have to let go of some of that to work at those more senior positions. So we're almost torn between those two identities of the person who is the high performer, who is really good at what they do, who's available, who's accessible, who has all of the information. And we're then torn between wanting to be that strategic leader that is able to take the step back and look at the big picture and make the decisions that are further down the road. And I went through that myself. So my first few years, probably the first third uh, or if not half of my time with the police was in a very similar department. So I'd worked my way in from that entry-level role into that team leader role. I knew that role inside and out. And people used to call me the oracle, and I used to love being called that. I used to love the fact that I was the one that everyone came to when they had questions like, go see Zoe, Zoe will know. And I loved that. And then I went into a different department, one I hadn't worked in before, went into that senior leadership role, and I suddenly did not know the detail. And I had to let go of that old identity and then work out okay, who do I need to be in this role? How do I need to show up in this role? How do I lead well with this new hat on and take the old hat off and not layer up those hats because those hats aren't helpful to me anymore. I need to find a new hat to put on to show up how I want to show up and lead how I want to lead in this role, because otherwise it's going to drain that battery really, really quickly. And I think that for me is why identity is so important, because there's a lot of people that I speak to that are stuck between those two identities and they're now wearing two hats and they're wondering why it's not working and why they're getting pulled in different directions. And I think we have to challenge who we've been in the past to help that evolution of who we, you know, who have we been, who are we now, and who do we want to become next? And that's a life question as much as it is a leadership question of letting go of those old versions of us that are no longer helpful and become that weight extra weight to carry. And my head went to you when when you asked the question.

SPEAKER_00 19:46

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. And I I I know I saw myself having that same struggle. And actually, um, as I I feel like as a leader, it's my obligation to help people become that expert so that they can grow their career. And when you actually see that person do that role really well, even better than you did, there's a little bit of insecurity that I end up having to fight. But at the same time, I'm super proud of myself for helping that person grow.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

You speak to people who talk about great leaders that they've had. That's one of the key and most common things people will talk about is they saw my potential and they helped me achieve it. And sometimes that does mean that you have individuals in your team who surpass what you've achieved and go on to bigger and better things for them. That doesn't mean that it would be bigger and better for you. And that's why really understanding what success looks like for you is so important. And I have this conversation now where people like talk about the business and where do you want the business to go? And do you want to grow it to this? And do you want it to like no? I've had that career, I've had the long days and waking up in the early hours thinking about what needs to be done and who's doing what. I don't want to do that anymore. Success for me now looks very different to what success looked like for me in my 20s and in my 30s, and and now in my later 40s, I want success to look and feel very different. And again, that comes into the identity of okay, how do I want it to look? How do I want it to feel? And it's not a one size fits all, but I think great leaders identify potential, they support growth and development and show up for the individuals on their team. It's just finding a way to balance that so that it's not at the detriment of your own health and energy. So it's that balance of I'm okay, you're okay. It's the kindness to others whilst still being kind to yourself in the process, because that element of people pleasing will also burn out very, very quickly. So having those boundaries in place that means I am gonna support other people, I'm gonna be kind, I'm gonna be helpful, I'm gonna be compassionate, but in a way that still means that I'm kind, compassionate, and supportive to me and what's important to me too. So it's that that continual balance of I'm I'm okay, you're okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Yes. Um, and I like that growth. Now, one of the things that you did um to grow yourself is you lost six stones, which I'll have to figure out in what that means in pounds, and you competed internationally in a strong woman in strong woman. I maybe you can explain what strong women is, but you built a business from nothing as a single parent, and I want to make it you know careful, I want to be careful not to make that sound like a highlight reel. Because let's take this slowly, because none of that was effortless. What was actually happening in you to rebuild the life that you've rebuilt, success as it looks today, in your definition.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

I mean, none of it was planned. That's the that's the first and honest answer. A lot of it has been a case of showing up, giving it 100%, and things have happened. So I think if anybody takes anything away from certainly my journey, I have always tried to stay true to what's important to me. I've always tried to balance, but still I am that person that will want everything. So you know, and people said to me over the years, well, you know, you you can't do that and do this. Like, but why not? Like, why can't I? Other people do it. Why why can't I? You know, you can't have a career if you're a single parent, you can't compete. Heat if you're working full time. You can't do this if it's that. Um, well, why not? I will let go of certain things that are less important to me to make space, time, and energy for the things that are. But that's always been evolving. And I make sure that every year I sit down and ask myself that question: is success feeling as good as it looks? Is what I have what I want? And over the next 12 months, what do I want that to look like? So for me, it has been a health journey of recognising that I was not in a healthy body, actually, from a mindset mental health, emotional health perspective wasn't great either. And actually, I did find that working on my physical health was a great way to actually improve my mental health as well. And I think with that came a certain check-in of seeing myself differently, valuing myself differently. And very, I mean, when I look at the time it felt very strange, it didn't feel connected. Looking back on it now, I can see why that confidence through the gym gave me the confidence outside of the gym. And strength training is very much around challenging what you believe is possible. And that for me really just untapped probably something that was always there, but something that had laid dormant for quite a while. And I found being in a gym environment, you know, and I did go in there with the intention of losing weight and found that working with a personal trainer was actually quite strong. And that challenge and that push from somebody else who says, Well, I think you can, when you're saying, I don't, I know, I can't, having somebody there that says, actually, I think you can, and challenging you and pushing you. I mean, that's what great goes back to what we were saying about great leaders, isn't it? Is that so often we don't know what's possible until somebody in front of us shows us that we can. And that's what the PT did for me. And that's what led to the strong woman. I never planned to compete. I had an opportunity, somebody that I was training with at the gym said, they're doing an open day, let's go down and take a look. Strong Man here is very much something that people watch at Christmas. It's very much, you know, one of those Christmas things. Uh, it's big in the States, it's big here. Um, not necessarily for women at that time, though. It wasn't a sport that people necessarily connected with women. I mean, we're talking 10 years ago, so this was very much a time when women and strength training weren't common. There were people who were strength training, but it wasn't like we see now with lots of TikTok and Instagram accounts of women that are really promoting strong bodies and strong minds. So that that was a challenge in itself. But we, you know, uh for me, those opportunities just kept coming. And it was a case of seeing what was possible, having a plan, and thinking, okay, let's let's you know follow a plan and see what happens. And yeah, those the happenings just kept getting bigger. And within a year of doing a local amateur competition, I was competing at Europe's strongest woman. And this is why I always say to people, I give it a hundred percent because you don't know what's going to happen, but choose where you are investing your 100%. We cannot be all things to all people all of the time. So choose. It's your energy, it's your effort, it's your enthusiasm, it's your choices. So choose where you want that energy, effort, and enthusiasm to go, and then give it a hundred percent. And that for me is what led to competing at an international level in a very short space of time. Um, so but it was the same, the same in work as well, you know, choose what it is that you want and then go for it. You you can't hesitate and hold back because you'll never really know what's possible until you give that 100% with that. There's uh always a risk of failure, failure. But that's what strength training taught me is that you keep pushing to failure, and then sometimes it's failure, and sometimes it's a new personal best, and now you're pushing for the next bit as well. But I think for me it's choosing where you're putting your effort and your energy and being okay with saying, actually, that's not a priority for me right now, or actually that's not really what I want to do. And one of the things that you will hear me say is just because you can doesn't mean that you have to. And I think there are a lot of us out there who are good at lots of different things, and so we try to do lots of different things, and actually sometimes it's really challenging ourselves to say, okay, I can't do all of it, but I can choose all of the things that I want to do that are important to me, and invest my time and energy into that, and that will change. There'll be different seasons where different things are important and you have different priorities, and that's okay too. But I think for me, what's important is I check in every year and say, okay, where my time and energy is going, is it aligned with what is important to me right now? And as my son's got older, that's changed. Uh he's 24 now. So as a parent, he needs me a lot less. He needs me very differently. So that has shifted. Work, I'm now self-employed, running my own business, so that has shifted. And so what I have time for and to invest in, that has shifted. And so if I was still trying to do all of the things that I was doing a couple of years ago, it definitely wouldn't be in alignment. So for me, it's keep it in check, keep asking those questions, and just because you can doesn't mean that you have to. And I think that's that's a big thing for me, is learning how to say, actually, no, that's not for me right now, but thank you. Come back to me, but thank you.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Yeah. So you have a PIPS framework that moves from plan, identity, intention, and performance and structure. For some um, someone who's still in it, they're recognizing that, hey, I'm a uh I'm starting to get a little bit burned out here. They're still showing up, they're still performing, pleasing everyone, but quietly going through the motions. What do you think that they need to do with one actual thing right now that can move the needle?

SPEAKER_01 32:02

I think the first thing is to really take some time to understand or identify what is out of alignment, what's the mismatch? But if you can get to the understand what the core root of that mismatch is, you will understand what it is that's draining your battery. And until you do that, you're always going to be working on surface level fixes that we know don't work. You have to get to the root cause of what is draining your energy so quickly. Once you've identified that, that's where I think the framework can be really useful. So have a really clear plan. What does good look like? What will it feel like? What needs to be different? Because as hard as it can be for people to think further ahead, I'm I'm definitely not a five-year plan, 10-year plan kind of girl. I'm like, oh, I know what direction I'm going in, and let's see what happens. Like that's more, that's more my energy. But you still need to know what direction you're going in. And you need to know what good looks like and feels like, what success looks like and feels like. So that will help you with the plan. A lot of people will focus on the logics of that plan, like the the steps that need to be in place. The questions that I ask my clients is to get very, very clear on what needs to look different, feel different, and be different. And that then helps the plan come together. The intention behind it is really important. And I think a lot of people skip over that compelling purpose or the intention of why they're making this change. And change needs that refocus, it needs a lot of energy. Doing things differently needs a lot of energy. And if we're moving out of something that's not in alignment, that is going to take a lot of energy. And remember, we're already depleted of energy at this moment in time as well. So we have to be really, really clear on what's the purpose for this in a similar way to the comfort zone. You've got the comfort zone, the fear zone, and then the growth and learning zone. And for us to push past and through that fear zone, we have to understand what's on the other side. And that for me is what the intention and purpose is. Is like, okay, this is going to be difficult, but this is what's on the other side of that discomfort and that difficulty. And this is why I'm doing it. Being very, very clear, very intentional. The identity piece, we've talked lots about that. Who do I need to be? What do I know about myself that's going to help me overcome this? Your internal resources, what do I bring to the table? What do I know about my character, my attributes, my previous experience, my skills? What do I know that about me that tells me that I'm going to be okay? I'm going to come out of the other side of this. Because knowing who we are in those most challenging moments is often what pulls us through. What everybody else says is that external validation and reassurance. Because until we see that we are the person that is going to come out of the other side, doesn't really matter what anyone else tells us. So it's that digging deep of, okay, I've not been through this before, but I've been through this, this, and this, and it's all transferable, and I'm going to pull in. So for me, it's stubbornness all the time. Like I know that when things get really tough, it is my stubbornness that gets me through every time, especially if somebody's told me that I can't do it because now I'm like, watch me. So I know that that part of my identity, whilst it gets me into trouble on other occasions, I know that that's the bit that it I'm gonna hang on to, knowing that this is what's gonna get me through. And the performance is the discipline, it's what we need to be consistent with, it's how we show up, what we know works for us, not what works for everybody else, but what do we know works for us? What have we used before that's worked really well for us? And then the final one is the structure because it's all very well having a really good plan and it's all very well having this step-by-step process that we're going to follow. But a lot of people don't put a structure in place to support that. They don't have that, they don't look at the routine, they don't look at what needs to be in place to hold all of this together. So a lot of people that I speak to, they'll have elements of the five pillars covered, but they don't have all of those five pillars covered. And when they go through them in that way and ask themselves those different questions, quite often that's what brings to the surface the missing elements of why things aren't moving in the way that they want them to.

SPEAKER_00 37:06

Nice. And so a lot of women are listening to the podcast on the way to work or while on the job, maybe at lunch, or right before the meeting, and she's not sure if she's ready to leave, or you know, what's what's the smallest thing she should do today? Not a strategy, not a framework, just one small thing she should do today.

SPEAKER_01 37:35

I'm not gonna show a small thing as such. I'm gonna ask them to think about what that small thing needs to be. Is it a domino or is it a small stone that creates the biggest ripple effect? Because for me, and certainly the conversations that I have with clients, people find that first step, identifying that first step the biggest challenge. So, firstly, the first step needs to feel so small you could almost fall into it because that makes it much easier. But your small step is going to be either a domino, so it needs to be that one thing that you need to knock down for everything else to fall into place. Because unless you knock that one domino down, everything stays standing. Or it's the smallest stone that you would throw into the pond that would have the biggest ripple effect across everything. So I'm not gonna give them the one thing. I'm gonna ask them to think what would the domino be and what would the stone be? And that might help them to identify what that step is for them.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Wonderful visual. How do people discover you? And we'll also have links in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

If you head to the website, zoehompson.uk, the socials that I am on are linked in there. There are also free resources in terms of the blog, podcast, YouTube videos. There's uh I put free content out every week. So people are very welcome to connect with me. And if they've got questions based on what we've talked about today, I'm more than happy for people to reach out and ask questions and I will answer and share resources where I can.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Fantastic. Thank you so much for being on the Unseiling Zone. Really appreciate your story. Thank you so much for having me. It's been really, really lovely to talk to you. 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 Unsealing You episode.