Permitting Myself to Feel: A Journey Through Burnout
We can only bottle up our emotions for so long before they leak out. With Dawn Murden, we look at why the most courageous thing we can do at work is permit ourselves to feel honestly.
Anything can trigger a panic attack. For some, it’s fireworks. For others, crowded places. For Dawn Murden, it was a Slack message.
It was another Tuesday, and Dawn was at home with her dog when that familiar notification tone detonated. All of a sudden, her heart hammered. She needed to see a doctor again. Things had gotten bad.
At the time, she was the VP of Customer Success at a scaling B2B tech company, a “homegrown” leader who had helped grow the business from $0 to $10M ARR.
So what happened?
The leadership dilemma: Job Vs. Self
Dawn was known by some as a Fearless Leader. She found it funny, because inside, she felt anything but fearless. She was caught between a board looking for their return, an exec team looking at revenue results, customers demanding more value, and a team that needed her support.
And for Dawn, providing support meant being an honest leader. One that values transparency and having every answer to every question, without showing a single crack.
But this created a painful problem: In a leadership position, “total honesty” is often seen as a risk. She was frequently privy to important information like budgets and market-sensitive information. She felt that at times this forced her to omit information from people she cared about.
When trying to be in control actually leads to burnout
Since Dawn felt she couldn’t be fully honest, she tried to be fully in control. Having been there since the early days, she felt a massive sense of ownership, which repeatedly meant she stopped delegating.
But carrying an entire department is heavy. Slowly, the pressure began to leak out. She noticed herself “batted down” in discussions. And instead of fighting for her ideas, she stayed quiet.
She tried to fix the problem by stepping down from her VP role to Director, and moving to a four-day work week. She thought a refocus on her Fridays would solve it, but the remedy failed.
It was like trying to patch a sinking ship with sticky tape. The environment hadn’t changed, and more importantly, the impossible expectations she placed on herself hadn’t changed either.
That single Slack message on a random Tuesday was her final straw.
How emotions in leadership impact the team
When Dawn eventually resigned, the news shocked the team. They had no idea she was drowning; she had spent so much energy keeping it all together. One colleague was struck by guilt, unable to understand how they had been so blind to her struggle.
We can only bottle up our emotions for so long before they leak out and poison the very environment we’re trying to stabilize. True leadership is about being real to ourselves first, and then to those we collaborate with.
Building the path forward: Tools that helped Dawn move forward
Dawn’s recovery meant moving beyond quick fixes to build a new foundation. Now an executive coach, she shares the same shifts that helped her find her footing again:
If you’re experiencing a panic attack: Recalibrate in the Moment and use the 5-4-3-2-1 method. This sensory technique pulls your nervous system out of panic and back into the present.
Watch this video to know the how-to:
She also finds Mel Robbins’ Let Them Theory useful. It helps remind us that we can’t control anyone or anything around us. So the lesson is: we should focus on our own reactions to people and situations.
For the longer run, identify your Saboteurs: Name the inner voices (the Judge, the Pleaser, the Avoider) that fuel negative emotions. Combine this with DISC Profiling to realize people are “different,” not “difficult.” This clarity is the key to setting boundaries that actually stick. and revisit these profiling tests, as you will inevitably change as a person over time.
“Keep working on ourselves, and be our true selves” - Dawn Murden
While honesty remains Dawn’s core value, she has learned to navigate it with a more nuanced integrity. She realized that holding back sensitive information is a necessary part of balancing the needs of different stakeholders, and it does not mean dishonesty. By accepting those boundaries, she finally found the space to feel her emotions honestly.
Dawn is an Executive Coach based in the UK. Listen to her podcast, Seasons of Leadership, here, and read more about her work at dawnmurdencoaching.com.
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Really relate to the idea of bottled up emotions leaking out (detrimentally). And it leaks out far more than one realizes. I know since I've done it too often!