Episode 358: The Hidden Link Between High Achievement, Burnout, and Hormone Imbalance
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If you’re a high-achieving woman who's ever felt like your ambition was leading you straight into burnout, you’re not alone. In this episode, Erin dives deep into the relationship between ambition, burnout, and hormone health.
Guess what? It’s not ambition itself that's the problem, but ambition without rest, support, and self-awareness. She unpacks the hidden patterns of perfectionism, codependency, and over-functioning that so often drive depletion and hormonal dysfunction in high performers, and shares how your mindset and relational patterns may be silently impacting your body’s ability to thrive.
You'll learn why common signs like weight loss resistance, thyroid sluggishness, low cortisol, and persistent fatigue aren’t just “part of the hustle” but major signals from your body that it’s time to make a change. Erin also shares her own story of reaching a tipping point and how she transformed both her business and her well-being.
In This Episode:
Ambition alone ISN’T what leads to burnout - what actually is causing high performers to crash?
How perfectionism and perceived lack sabotage hormone health without you even realizing it
The majorly overlooked signs in hormone labs that reveal your body is running on empty
Erin’s realization about over-functioning and codependency that completely shifted her personal and professional life
The critical role of community and support systems for ambitious women
Why isolation may be your biggest hidden stressor
Resources Mentioned:
Join Your Hormone Revival LIVE - We start May 6th!
Erin’s FREE Hormone Food Guide
Organifi supplement powder (save 20% on your order with code FUNK)
LMNT Electrolyte Replenishing powder (Use code FUNK get a free sample pack with any purchase!)
Qualia Senolytic (get up to 50% off and an extra 15% off your first purchase with link + code FUNKS)
Bon Charge (Use code FUNK to save 15%)
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Erin Holt [00:00:00]:
It's not ambition alone that causes you to burn out. That leads to a depletion state, that leads to hormone imbalance. It's ambition without rest. It's perfectionism disguised as ambition. It's ambition while viewing yourself in perceived lack. It's ambition without allowing yourself to receive support. It's ambition with over functioning. It's ambition with isolation.
Erin Holt [00:00:32]:
That is what's causing us to burn out. I'm Erin Holt and this is the Functional Nutrition podcast where we lean into intuitive functional medicine. We look at how diet, our environment, our emotions and our beliefs all affect our physical health. I've got over a decade of clinical experience and because of that I've got a major bone to pick with diet, culture and the conventional healthcare model. This show is for you. If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health and you're ready to be an active participant in your own healing, I would love for you to follow the show rate, review and share. Because you never know whose life you might change. Hi friends.
Erin Holt [00:01:09]:
Are you a highly ambitious person? Great. This one is for you. Before we get into it, I wanna remind you that your hormone revival is currently open for enrollment. This is our three month hormone program. We, we haven't run it live in two years almost and we're probably not going to do it again. So if you want in, get in now. Seats are filling up fast as they do. This is the last week that you have the opportunity to join, so I wanted to remind you right at the top of the episode, okay? Ambition.
Erin Holt [00:01:39]:
Last March 2024, I released an episode, episode 302 on ambition and adrenals, why highly ambitious people burn out and what we can do about it. Little did I know that episode would become an even deeper invitation for me to sit with some of the things that I discussed. Isn't that fun when that happens? The thing with my ambition, and I'm curious if this is true for you too, it comes with a little sidecar of always wanting to work on myself, a desire to improve and to get to understand myself on deeper levels. So there's always a new invitation, there's always a new opportunity for personal growth in an up level, which is like, honestly kind of annoying sometimes. Don't you just wish you could like twig in a stream? It sometimes, like, let me just coast. I'm not much of a coaster. Anyway. That was a hugely popular episode.
Erin Holt [00:02:36]:
I heard from a lot of you guys and I know that topic really resonated, which is why I decided to write this episode. Some of what I'm going to share today is deeply personal, especially toward the end. My hope is that sharing some of this stuff with you helps in some way shape or form. I know sharing some of my personal stuff and my own stories and my own journey with you guys in the past has definitely helped. And maybe it will invite you to look at some of your own patterns. And your stuff might not look exactly like mine, or maybe it does. Either way, I hope that in me sharing about my stuff, it helps you in some way. Last spring into summer, definitely summer, I started to seriously consider what it would look like to not have this company anymore.
Erin Holt [00:03:23]:
That is not something that I've shared publicly. That is something that I've only shared with a small handful of my inner people, my trust tree, if you will. It was just that the weight and the responsibility of it all started to feel like a lot, a lot, lot, lot. Now I've been doing this for 15 years and never have I ever considered that those are new thoughts. So it really caught my attention. This isn't like something cyclical, like, oh yeah, every February I go through this. This was something altogether caught my attention for that reason. And it really made me question, is my ambition the problem here or is it something else? I've had close to a year now to reflect on that question, to observe my own patterns and where I netted out.
Erin Holt [00:04:06]:
What I realized this year is that it wasn't so much my desire to grow and build. It wasn't my ambitious desire to do more and make a bigger impact that was causing me the distress and the burnout. It was actually my relational patterns that were causing me the most stress. And this is, I want to say this right out of the jump here. Nothing that I'm about to say is finger pointing or blaming. It's not victim consciousness, like, poor me, none of that. I don't like really subscribe to like the energy vampire thing or like people are draining you. It's like it's all a choice.
Erin Holt [00:04:42]:
How you show up in any relationship is all a choice. So this is not about pointing the finger at anybody but myself, observing my own behaviors in my own patterns, and how I showed up in relational dynamics. Okay, just to be super clear, here's the deal with relationships. They are often, almost always maybe the origin story of our wounds. So how we formed relationships with mom, with dad, with caretakers, with people in power, with authority figures in our youth, in our childhood, before the age of seven, oftentimes really can foster some wounds, let's be honest. But Relationships also can be the doorway to our healing and that's a beautiful thing. And this was the big work for me this past year. Now the other reason that I'm sharing all of this with you is because you asked me to.
Erin Holt [00:05:34]:
When I turned 41 on my 41st birthday in March, I shared a post on Instagram of how I was training for perimenopause and I listed out different things that I was doing like food wise, movement wise, exercise, the whole nine yards. And one of the points was evaluating relationships. I said this past year I've had to look at some codependency and over functioning patterns that I bring to relational frameworks. Disclaimer this is not fun work, but it was becoming a significant contributor to my stress. And we know that stress is no bueno, not good for hormones. And this is what everybody wanted to hear the most about. This is where I got the most follow up cues, was this exact thing. So I'm going to weave that into our conversation today.
Erin Holt [00:06:20]:
Ambition and High Performance so chances are if you saw the title of this episode episode and you decided to tune in, you identify as a highly ambitious, high performer, high achiever, whatever you want to call it. And I will tell you, because I work with a lot of you and I have worked with a lot of you over the past 15 years, that can for sure contribute to burnout. Highly ambitious women do have a tendency to struggle with burnout, exhaustion, depletion. We see it a lot in practice and there's almost like this expectation that it's the norm. But I want to tell you, it doesn't have to be. It does not have to be the norm. Running around depleted, exhausted and burnt out all the time ain't it? You know, even for ambitious people, it ain't it. And I think it's easy to blame our burnout on our ambition.
Erin Holt [00:07:10]:
I actually see a lot of content created around this kind of moving into the soft life, moving away from the girl boss movement. And that's all well and good and beautiful if that's your calling and that what feels good in nurturing for you? Like do you think mommy get after it, get after that soft girl life. I love that for you. But there are a lot of us for who Girl boss wasn't a phase for us. It's just like who the fuck we are. And this podcast is for you. It's for us. So I'm going to get into why ambition and burnout can go hand in hand.
Erin Holt [00:07:46]:
Just so you're aware of the tendencies that can show up. I'll talk about patterns that will crush your hormone health and your vibrancy. So, like, let's not do that. And then we'll get into some deeper stuff. Some of what I've navigated over the past year. It was a pretty challenging year for me because of this and how I've arrived at a better place. Typically when I share stuff with you guys, I'm on the other side of it. I've navigated myself through it, and this is no exception.
Erin Holt [00:08:13]:
I'm in a really good headspace, in a really good place with everything that I'm gonna share. So let's talk about hormone issues that we can commonly see in highly ambitious women. I love to run hormone testing on entrepreneurs or high powered, highly ambitious people on, like, busy moms, because I just love to see what your hormones are doing. It's great fun for me. So here's some typical things that we will see. Sometimes it looks like an active stress response. So how there's active stress response picture and then there's a depletion picture. Active stress response is usually high cortisol and high dhea.
Erin Holt [00:08:52]:
These are our adrenal hormones. So when they're revved up, it's pretty obvious that your body's under some stress over time. And this isn't always textbook, but like, this is a pattern that we tend to see over time that can lead to a lower hormone status, a depletion picture. So we can see low cortisol, we can start to see low dhea, we can start to see resiliency drop. You don't really have that bounce back anymore. We can also see low cortisol awakening response, just like, harder to get up and get going in the morning. We can see wonky cortisol patterns where when we're looking at a Dutch test, for example, there's two cortisol dials that we're looking at and they're moving in different directions. They're not matched up.
Erin Holt [00:09:38]:
And that can. Sometimes there's a certain pattern that can be associated with weight gain. So if somebody's saying, like, hey, I'm gaining weight, I have this weight loss resistance, I have no idea what's going on. I like to look at that. We can see low progesterone. I've been talking about that quite a lot. That is pretty common to see if the body's like revved up all the time. We can see low thyroid function and not like outright you have a thyroid disorder.
Erin Holt [00:10:01]:
But thyroid hormones are impacted or can be impacted enough to make you feel not so great. We can see inflammatory markers start to creep up. Autoimmune markers start to creep up. We can see insulin resistance. That high stress can lead to gut issues like an IBS picture, just these ongoing digestive issues. So these are all things that we can see on labs. And that's why I love labs, because they help us see is your approach to your work in life putting you in a catabolic breakdown state? So I think this is crucial for those of us who are high performers, high achievers, ambitious women, because high achievers tend to be high capacity people. Meaning we can do a lot, we can handle a lot, we can withstand a lot of stress.
Erin Holt [00:10:55]:
We maybe have a high tolerance, a high capacity. We have almost like perseverance mentality. And so you may not perceive stress as much. So there can be more of a tendency to overdo. And in addition to that, we kind of like it. Like, I kind of like doing a lot. I like a life without limits. Like, you know, it's kind of like this attitude of like, don't tell us what to do.
Erin Holt [00:11:20]:
And if you tell me something's impossible, I'm going to want to do it anyway. Probably even more so, in fact. So if we want to live this life without limits, that's fine. But that means it's up to us to put limits on ourselves, to know our own limits. And if we don't, our bodies will. Our bodies will put those limitations on us. And maybe some of you have experienced this before in the past. I certainly have.
Erin Holt [00:11:47]:
And so that's why I love a good lab test, because the labs can be so helpful. The data doesn't lie. If we're not always great at listening to our own internal signals or we can override them because of that perseverance mentality. The data doesn't lie. And the data can actually hold us accountable to ourselves. I shared with you guys last week that I recently did hormone labs for myself. And they definitely showcased like, hey, how you're living your life. It's not it, babe.
Erin Holt [00:12:18]:
You're running it into the ground a little bit too much, a little bit too hard. Later in the show, I'll get into why exactly that is. But remember, hormones tell the story of a life lived. And when we're looking at hormone labs for people, that's exactly what we're looking for. It's not just exactly what your body's doing. It's like, how do we get here? How do we get to the point that your body is doing this? That's Honestly, the entire reason I created YHR your hormone revival is to give women insight into this. I love to see high powered women do this program for exactly this reason. I took myself through this process before I ever created the program and made it public.
Erin Holt [00:12:56]:
So I am speaking from experience when I say when I tell you getting your health house in order allows you to achieve those ambitious goals. It's hard to make a really big impact, the impact that you want to make when you feel run down and you feel like crap. And so learning these clues and using the data, the lab data to support us, we start to know when it's time to reign ourselves in and also when it's appropriate to let her rip. Because if you're anything like me, you want to let her rip from time to time. This Paulo Coelho quote, I quote it all the time. I love it so much. He says, I'm enthusiastic about my work. It's something that gives me life, so don't strip that away from me.
Erin Holt [00:13:39]:
Any message that tells me the only path to healing is to not do the very thing that gives me life, I question that. I'm not really here for that. I sometimes feel that a lot of the women's health, hormone and healing conversation is do less, embrace a slower life, which I totally understand. And I've certainly had moments in my life where that actually was the most appropriate thing. And I've shared about that. There are seasons of my life where I had to do less. And that felt good to me at the time. Because the reality, I don't need to tell you this, but I will.
Erin Holt [00:14:13]:
The reality is that constantly pushing yourself in your body past your capacity will lead to health struggles. So you have to learn how to take care of yourself. You have to support your body. You have to put in the appropriate input. But what happens when you're highly ambitious and it's the do more that brings you joy and fulfillment? And this is something that I've grappled with time and time and time again as a highly ambitious person who also has a tendency to burn out. What happens when the creative process is the thing that makes you happy and energized? And for me, finger painting ain't it. It's building new programs, building new offerings, building new ways to educate. That's how my creative process unfolds.
Erin Holt [00:15:00]:
Again, I'm enthusiastic about my work. It's something that gives me life. I love it. I love working, I love my career. I love all of it. And to strip that away from me in an effort to do less. I don't really think that is the answer. So what is the answer then? These are questions that I really had to sit with this whole year.
Erin Holt [00:15:21]:
So if I can acknowledge that my drive and my ambition has the ability to put me in a burnout state, which it does, what is the answer to preventing it? 1. Do the lab testing, get the data, hold myself accountable. And then what? You know, put the appropriate input in. Okay, great. And then what? How do we keep from the pattern repeating itself again? Questions that I was sitting with in and you know, maybe questions you should probs sit with too if you relate to this. So here's where I netted out for myself and these are things that I think are pretty universal, so I'm going to share them with you. It's not ambition alone that causes you to burnout. That leads to a depletion state, that leads to hormone imbalance.
Erin Holt [00:16:10]:
It's ambition without rest. It's perfectionism disguised as ambition. It's ambition while viewing yourself in perceived lack. It's ambition without allowing yourself to receive support. And I intentionally say allowing yourself because sometimes the support is there, you're just not open to receiving it. It's ambition with over functioning. It's ambition with isolation. That is what's causing us to burn out.
Erin Holt [00:16:42]:
So I want to get into and unpack all of this right now and we'll start with ambition without rest because this one is pretty overtly obvious. Okay podcast buddies, I want to take a sec to shout out Organifi green apple juice. Yum. It's like a healthy apple juice with all the benefits of the original green juice. If you don't love the taste of the original green juice, this one is for you. It's made with organic apples that are hand picked. Golden Delicious, Northern Spy, Macintosh, Ida Red and Empire. So real deal apples are up in this blend.
Erin Holt [00:17:24]:
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Erin Holt [00:18:04]:
According to the FDA, 70% of sodium in the American diet processed foods. So if you reduce or eliminate processed foods from your diet strong recommend you may also be reducing essential sodium. Yes, sodium is essential. It's not an optional mineral. Since I eat a whole foods diet, I heavily salt my foods with sea salt. I also drink Element, a tasty and salty electrolyte mix daily. Right now Element is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any drink mix purchase. That's eight single serving packets for free with any drink mix purchase.
Erin Holt [00:18:35]:
It's a great way to try all the different flavors and you can get yours at drinkelement. Forward Slash Funk this deal is only available through this link so you have to go tO-R-I-N K L M-N-T.com forward/ funk element offers a no questions asked refunds so you can try it totally risk free. When the engine is always running and there's no opportunity to unwind, to relax, to rest, to decompress, you can see how that easily leads to burnout and there's different drivers for this tendency. This is a lot of what we talked about in episode 302. A lot of us are overworking as a way to prove our worth, so you might want to tune into that episode if that relates to you. Basically, whatever we did to receive love and belonging when we were a child is probably what we're going to continue to do as an adult. If you are ever praised for working hard or performing well, you can form a belief, an identity, a self image around that. In order for me to be of value or to receive love, I have to work hard and perform well.
Erin Holt [00:19:44]:
The subconscious mind is never going to outperform its own self image. It's always going to seek out ways, situations, people, relationships to reinforce your beliefs about yourself, to reflect them back to you. That is literally what the subconscious mind is doing all day, every day. And so if there's some beliefs that you discover like oh, oh no, this is kind of a self limiting belief. This isn't really getting me where I want to go. You have to actively change those beliefs or change that self influence image. Otherwise you're just going to continue to see more of the same. It's why belief work is really, really important.
Erin Holt [00:20:18]:
If we want to change, we have to first know our beliefs. So the next thing I'm going to bring up is perfectionism. I talk about this because I do see perfectionism as one of the number one Reasons for burnout. One of the number one contributing factors for women and hormone imbalance is perfectionism. We can see this so much in high performers, highly ambitious people. But, but ambition doesn't require perfectionism. You can be highly ambitious without being a perfectionist. I think we just sometimes couple these things up in our mind.
Erin Holt [00:20:51]:
Perfectionism is really more of a coping strategy. Somewhere along the way, we decided that a way to protect ourselves from experiencing hurt was to make ourselves indispensable. So if we can be all the things for all the people, then they won't leave, they won't reject us, we will have value, we will stay lovable. And so we attempt to maintain these essentially impossible standards that we set for ourselves. There's this perpetual quest for perfection that absolutely can and does lead to chronic stress and depletion because you're essentially spending your entire life striving for an ideal that doesn't exist. So of course it makes sense that that will lead to burnout. The other thing about holding ourselves to an impossible standard is that chances are you will probably always feel like you're falling behind, like you can't get ahead, like you can't win. And it becomes challenging to even witness your own success.
Erin Holt [00:21:48]:
So that's what leads to perceived lack. This feeling of never enough, no matter how much I do, it's never enough. That is perceived lack. Perceived because it's your perception, it's how you're seeing the situation. And perceived lack can actually trigger hormone imbalance. Your hormones don't like lack. I think we talked about this in another show. Your hormones love abundance, not lack.
Erin Holt [00:22:15]:
So remember, hormone production starts in your brain. We have the HPA axis, the HPT axis, the HPG axis. All of that starts at the level of the hypothalamus, which is in your brain. So the brain is telling these endocrine organs what to do. What hormones to produce in your mind is influencing all of this. This isn't woo woo. This is science. So the mind doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's imagined.
Erin Holt [00:22:42]:
So perceived lack is real lack according to the mind and then according to the brain, then according to the rest of the body. So if you're imagining worst case scenario all the time, your body's actually in that state. If you are in a hypervigilant state, your body is in that state. Perceived stress is real stress when it comes to your body, when it comes to your hormones. I recently on this show referenced the book the Gap and the Gain. It's the High Achiever's Guide to Happiness, Confidence and Success. Pretty good read. The book really talks about there's two different ways to look at something.
Erin Holt [00:23:16]:
The gap, which is where you are versus where you want to be, or the gain, which is where you are, versus how far you've come. So you can either measure forward, where you're obsessing over the gap gap to where you want to be. I'm here, but I want to be there. Or you can measure backwards, looking at all the gains you've achieved since starting. So if you are focused on the gap, which, hello, a lot of ambitious people are, because we're always looking ahead, right? I'm not looking at you dudes, I'm looking past you. I'm 10 steps ahead. But that's lack, babe. The gap is lack.
Erin Holt [00:23:52]:
So if you're spending all your time in the gap, you're spending a lot of time in perceived. So this is something to really consider. How often is your mind in perceived lack? How often are you saying, are you sort of ignoring the successes and focus on what you want to do and what you still have yet to achieve? Because that constant perceived lack will burn you out. So with highly ambitious people, we want to be constantly building, growing, and evolving. That's not wrong. You don't need to pathologize that. But we also have to make time for rest, in reflection, to look back and reflect on how much you've done, how much you've accomplished, how much you've grown. And I think this is a really important distinction to make.
Erin Holt [00:24:35]:
It is, for me, anyway. There's a difference between reflection and rumination. Reflection is usually helpful. Rumination rarely is. I met with a business advisor last summer and she asked me, where do you see yourself in a year? Where do you want to be in a year? And I proceeded to tell her about all of the things that weren't working, all of the things that hadn't worked in the past. And it was a long list. Okay. And after I stopped talking, she's like, cool.
Erin Holt [00:25:04]:
You just Talked for like 15 minutes and you still didn't answer the question. I was so stuck in the past, ruminating on the past, that I wasn't able to look ahead to what I want to create in the future. So when we do this, we're basically reliving all the stressors from the past. And again, like I told you, the mind doesn't know the difference between real and imagined. So when you're stuck in rumination about what you don't want, what didn't work the stressful times, you are essentially recreating the stress environment in your body in real time right now. So you are perpetuating this stress. Reflection helps you grow and evolve. Rumination tends to keep you stuck.
Erin Holt [00:25:47]:
So if you catch yourself in rumination going over and over and over and over like train tracks, ask yourself this, is there anything useful here? Is there a reason that your mind is stuck on that? Is there any learnings? Is there there any lessons? Is there anything I can take out of this? Is there anything useful here? Reflection alchemizes the past into something useful for the future. So if you catch yourself in the past, say okay, what is something that I can use here? And if there's not anything, you've got to get out, you got to get out of the rumination. And this is what highly successful people do. They unpack what went well and what didn't and then they move on. My business advisor used the football analogy with me once. I'm like, okay, it's maybe not the best audience, but I, I'm gonna do my best to follow you. But essentially she said the team comes off the field and even if they won, they are still unpacking what went wrong so they can improve for the next time. So that's healthy.
Erin Holt [00:26:48]:
Reflection and reflection oftentimes requires rest or pause at the very least. We can't be in survival mode and be reflective usually doesn't work that way. So reflection requires rest. Rest requires support, like true nervous system rest. Unplugging from hyper vigilance, unplugging from that need to always be on that requires support. High capacity requires support. If you want to be running and gunning all the time. If you want to be at a 10 all the time, you gotta be supported or else you're going to burn out.
Erin Holt [00:27:29]:
It's ambition without allowing yourself to receive support that burns out. It's not just ambition by itself. So this is where it starts to get pretty personal for me. All that other shit that I just talked about, I already knew it, I've been living it, I've been teaching it for years. Kind of have that on lock. But what I'm about to share, this is the real deep work that I had to do this year. And so now we're going to shift into over functioning and codependency, which is what you all wanted me to talk about. And those two things can go hand in hand.
Erin Holt [00:27:59]:
Not always, but often. So let's put some working definitions to these two terms. Have you heard of nad? It's A molecule in every cell of your body. And it's critical for energy, mitochondrial health, maintaining healthy DNA and supporting detoxification. Now, it's a really large molecule, so it can struggle to be bioavailable through supplementation. And that's why Qualia NAD supports nad the way by including precursors to boost your body's own NAD production up to 50%. I've been taking it for six weeks now and I've noticed a lot more energy and brain capacity. Experience the science of feeling younger.
Erin Holt [00:28:38]:
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Erin Holt [00:30:07]:
I love Terri Cole's definition of codependency, so I use that one often. She says codependency is being overly invested in the feeling states, the decisions, the outcomes, the circumstances of the people in our life to the detriment of our own internal peace. So codependency essentially says all of that is my responsibility. And so that's why it can oftentimes move us into over functioning over functioning is doing more than is necessary, more than your fair share and more than is appropriate. It's doing things you weren't even asked to do. Ouch. Then there. I always like a little sidecar of resentment with it, with my over functioning.
Erin Holt [00:30:52]:
So like I did all this for them and they didn't even appreciate it. It was like, well they didn't ask you to do it. That's, that's a fun one. It's feeling over responsible for family, friends, colleagues and clients. It's over giving, overdoing and holding space beyond your capacity. It's deriving a sense of value. Listen up, this is important. Deriving a sense of value, purpose and even identity for being all the things to all the people.
Erin Holt [00:31:19]:
So this isn't just people pleasing because it's not just for others. It's also some self fulfilling in a way because you are backing up your own sense of self through over functioning. You're like, this is who I am, this isn't my identity. And I love when people, this was me for until I understood what codependency was, I was like, I'm not codependent. I don't have to depend on anyone. It's like, well that's actually codependency a little bit. So the way that I describe it is like, I need you to be okay so I can be okay. I can't be at peace until I know you're good.
Erin Holt [00:31:56]:
That's codependency in a nutshell. So in that way it can be self fulfilling and it can lead to or maybe even stem from the belief that I have to do everything myself. Like show of hands if that relates or if you resonate with that I have to do everything myself. If you have a belief that you have to do everything yourself, then you will attract relationships that reflect that belief. Your beliefs about yourself will always be reflected back to you in your reality, your life and in your relationships. Your relational patterns will showcase your beliefs and they'll continue to show up until you do the work that you need to do. It's kind of like wash, rinse, repeat until you see the pattern and interrupt the pattern and change the pattern. If you want to change.
Erin Holt [00:32:51]:
If it's working for you, keep going. If it's not, you got to interrupt that pattern. And this is why I say there's no finger pointing here. Not for me, not ever. You can only recreate the same relational patterns over and over and over again before you look inward and say, oh, I'm the common denominator here. If you notice similar patterns in all of your relationships, it's you, babe, it's you. And I say that with so much love. So, like I said earlier, I seriously started to consider what it would look like to not have this company anymore.
Erin Holt [00:33:30]:
And again, unusual for me. So it caught my attention. The weight, the responsibility, it all started to feel so heavy all the time. And there were certain places where I feel like I had to compromise my own standards and I had to say, settle. And I said to a friend, like, I don't understand this because I don't settle in any areas of my life. Like, why am I okay with settling here? And she said to me, you are willing to settle in areas where it involves someone supporting you. And I said, oh, side note, if you don't have the type of friends that are willing to call you out on your own shit, get new friends. Shout out to Sarah Curry.
Erin Holt [00:34:14]:
Because she was very instrumental in helping me unpack a lot of these relationships this year in a very tough love kind of way, which I happen to respond very well to. My other friend, Emily Bean, has been navigating this with me as well, but she's a lot kinder and gentler in her approach. Sarah comes in and she, like, cuts you like a knife, tells you exactly what you need to hear. I. I respect it. There's this term called super autonomous self sufficiency, which is an exaggerated and outsize aversion to asking anything of anyone. And so when she said, I am willing to settle in certain areas where it involves someone supporting me, I knew she was right. I knew she had really struck a nerve with that one.
Erin Holt [00:34:59]:
So remember how I said at the beginning of this? Relationships are oftentimes the origin story of our wounds. Sometimes we have to, like, run it all the way back to childhood to understand why we're acting the way we're acting in real present time right now. Now. So due to certain relationships in childhood, I learned that I couldn't have high expectations of other people because if I did, I would inevitably get disappointed. So I internalized that to mean my needs are too much. If my needs weren't too much, then they would be met by other people. That's not happening. They're not being met.
Erin Holt [00:35:34]:
Ergo, I am asking for too much. And when I set my expectations too high, high, I will be disappointed. So it's best to just do it myself. Anyway. This was a deep seated belief forged in childhood and carried like a backpack right into adulthood. The rub here is that I am a highly ambitious person who has very high expectations of myself. But the belief is I can't extend those high expectations to other people. Because.
Erin Holt [00:36:09]:
Because it's too much. It's too much to ask. But I still want those standards met. So I'm going to over function as a way to make sure those standards are met. So that is what was playing out in real time. And also there was a lot of guilt and self worth tied up into all of this too. There was a guilt associated with, with receiving. I felt like I was doing something wrong when I asked for support.
Erin Holt [00:36:42]:
Because every time I asked for something, I felt like I was asking for too much. Why? Because of those old beliefs forged way back when playing out 40 years later. In order to feel worthy of receiving support, I would over function. That was kind of the exchange. And by the way, all of this was happening subconsciously. I wasn't even aware that this was going on. So the idea was that like, I will do more than my fair share in order to feel okay about receiving. So right away, right there, you can see how that can eventually lead to feelings of burnout.
Erin Holt [00:37:15]:
It's like, bye thyroid. Bye girl. So this played out in a lot of different relational patterns that I had, including company dynamics with team, with employees. And it got to the point where I was working harder, working more, working longer hours, but the company wasn't doing better. So I'm like, okay, something's off here. It got to a point where I was like, this actually feels bad. And it got to the point where I was so depleted that I actually had nothing left to give. It's really, really hard to over function when you have nothing left to give.
Erin Holt [00:37:49]:
I was at capacity. I couldn't over function. And if I couldn't over function, I couldn't open myself up to receive. I was subconsciously blocking support. Because if something doesn't feel safe, subconsciously, if something doesn't feel safe to your subconscious, it won't allow it in. So if, if receiving support without having to over function didn't feel safe to my nervous system, to my subconscious, then it wouldn't allow it in. We all have our own tipping points where we say now, now, now is the time. Now I'm willing to change.
Erin Holt [00:38:24]:
Now I'm willing to do things differently, to see things differently. This was the tipping point for me. The ambitious part of me wanted to keep growing. And I knew that in order to grow, I needed support, I needed more support, I needed to open myself up to the right type of support because I couldn't keep doing it the way That I was doing it. And that made me really see, know and understand that the relational patterns that were playing out were no longer working. And it was time to change that. And I want to point something out right now in this way. My ambition was actually an avenue for human healing.
Erin Holt [00:39:03]:
It wasn't catabolic, it wasn't catastrophic, it wasn't out to get me. My ambition wasn't the problem. My relational patterns were. And I'm saying that so you hear me. Maybe it's not your ambition that is the problem. Even though sometimes the world shouts at us, especially women, that it is, maybe it's something else. The ambition part of me was like, I want to grow this thing. That's what lights me up.
Erin Holt [00:39:30]:
And my higher self was like, cool, great, we're all on board. Hey, in order to do that though, we have to let go of the guilt. We have to elevate our self worth. We have to quit the over functioning and we have to open up to receive. And that's really the true healing work. So let's talk about how that actually looked for me and what helped me overcome some of this stuff and see some of this stuff. I hired a business advisor to put myself in a community with other women just as ambitious as I am. And through that business advisor, I also brought in a fractional COO for my company.
Erin Holt [00:40:03]:
And with all of this, what happened was that there was a level of support modeled to me that I had never experienced anymore. And it was very much so, like, hey, this is what it's actually supposed to feel like. Now obviously I'm talking about being a CEO of a company and team dynamics and that might not exactly apply to you, but think about as I talk, think about different ways that this could apply to your life. So bringing in these outside people taught me like, hey, you deserve to be supported. That was something that they really instilled in me and really taught me. And actually, if you want your work out there in the world, it's imperative that you are. It's imperative that you're supported in a much larger capacity than you currently are. This is the growth limiter for you.
Erin Holt [00:40:54]:
If you do not receive more support, you do not grow peer, period. And your expectations are actually not too high. And you need to see that for yourself first because it's actually your job to seek out people in your life that can meet those expectations. So it's a little tough love. And again, we've already established I do well with this, so it worked really well for me. I heard what they Were telling me I was picking up what they were putting down in feeling. That level of support was shocking to me, quite frankly. I didn't know it that was available to me because I had never experienced it and I had hadn't experienced it because I hadn't expected it.
Erin Holt [00:41:30]:
Anytime I asked for it, I was met with the idea that I was asking for too much because again, remember, that's what I believed. So it kept reinforcing that belief that my needs are too much. And I continued to believe that about myself. I'm too much, my needs are too much. I'm asking for too much, too much, too much, too much. And I kept seeing evidence of that over and over again. And I kept, kept attracting relationships for this dynamic to continue to play out. And you know, I'm kind of saying the same things over and over here, but it's really to reinforce this point.
Erin Holt [00:42:05]:
We have to become so aware of our own patterns and our own beliefs. We have to know ourselves on such a deep and intimate level. So when things stop working for us, we can change. We can look head on at the problem. Be like this is the issue and this is the opportunity to change the other huge thing, huge thing that having this advisor in this fractional coo in this community. What they did for me was to make me feel less alone. And this was a holy moly moment for me. And this is going to be a game changer for some of you too.
Erin Holt [00:42:41]:
I know Wasn't my ambition that was burning me out. It was the isolation I felt about my ambition. It was the feeling of being surrounded by people who didn't really understand and didn't really get it. That was contributing to my stress more than anything we know. It is documented that feelings of isolation are a huge contributor to stress. And I just felt so alone in this all the time. I felt like I was wrong for having the ambition that I did. I looked at it as a design flaw.
Erin Holt [00:43:18]:
I made it mean something wrong about me, like I'm too much. Rather than looking around at my surroundings and realizing it's not actually that I'm too much, it's that this isn't enough for me. I want something different, I want something more and I deserve that. So being surrounded by this community of people, I no longer felt alone. I no longer felt isolated. And I also felt very vindicated in my feeling that it's okay to ask for more. You have to have people who get you. This is the big take home lesson right now.
Erin Holt [00:43:55]:
You have to have people who get you, who Understand you, who make you feel less alone. Not to be in an echo chamber, but so you don't weaponize yourself against yourself as a highly ambitious woman. This is something that can and does high happen. And I'll tell you what, society kind of backs it up. So it's so easy to blame ambition. And for a long time, I did, and now I absolutely refuse to pathologize my ambition because without it, this podcast wouldn't exist, my programs wouldn't exist, FNA wouldn't exist. All of the avenues, all of the vehicles I have built that genuinely help people, that have helped thousands of people, people, they literally wouldn't exist without my ambition, period. Not to mention salaries and 401ks and retirement plans that we get to build for women in this company.
Erin Holt [00:44:50]:
Maternity leave, legally, because we're such a small company, I don't have to do anything for maternity leave. But that's not what we choose to do. We get to provide maternity leave for our employees. Why? Because of ambition. That is what my ambition has allowed us to do. And that is a beautiful thing. It is not. Not a design flaw.
Erin Holt [00:45:11]:
In fact, it is there by design. It's who I am. It's who I get to be. And I'm so done turning against parts of myself. Because we know when we do this, that's when stress kicks in, that's when inflammation kicks up. That's when hormone imbalance sets in. That's when disease states take hold. So I'm done.
Erin Holt [00:45:29]:
It's like new era. Unapologetically ambitious. You can step right on into it too. Okay. And then the other part of this definitely looked like pruning and editing some personal relationships that were predicated on me over functioning in order for the relationship to exist. Setting new expectations, having a lot of really hard conversations. Realize this one was big for me, that not everybody gets access to a hard conversation. You know, like you, I don't have to explain myself to all the people everywhere, all the time.
Erin Holt [00:46:02]:
Sometimes. Sometimes it's a no. And there doesn't need to be an explanation. This also looked like putting people in the right seats that could actually provide the type of support that was required for the company's next steps and feeling worthy of having this. That was kind of the first step, the first crucial step. So we actively sought out people who were ambitious, high performers, high achievers, people that have high standards and high expectations of themselves, themselves. The football players. Right? The people that at the end of a project are able to say, hey, let's celebrate what went really well, but also, let's unpack what didn't go well so we can improve upon it next time.
Erin Holt [00:46:42]:
I realize that I am worthy of being surrounded by people who have similar ambitious hopes, dreams, goals as I do. It's okay to want to be surrounded by that. Kind of like giving myself permission and understanding that there's nothing wrong with me because I desire that there's nothing wrong with me because I desire, desire to be surrounded by highly ambitious people. That actually is what inspires me. That's what makes me come alive. That's what pushes me to want to grow and to be the type of person that I want to be. And it's okay for me to want that. Feeling like you're wrong for being who you are, that's exhausting.
Erin Holt [00:47:22]:
That leads to burnout. Judging yourself for your own desires, that's exhausting. Exhausting. That leads to burnout, worries, fears, scarcity, lack, judging yourself for who you are. All of that can affect your neurotransmitters, your brain chemistry and your hormones. And so my advice to you is don't allow yourself to weaponize your own ambition against yourself. It's not always ambition by itself that's going to burn you out. It's ambition with all the other shit that I just talked about that is really be destructive and causing the depletion and causing the exhaustion, causing the fatigue, causing the burnout, causing the hormone imbalance.
Erin Holt [00:48:03]:
So yeah, like let's talk about hormone supporting foods and liver detox and endocrine disrupting chemicals. And let's also make space to address all of this because you know me, if you've been listening to the show for a while, you know me by now. I want to talk about all of it. Health requires all of it. I think it's all important. It's all all stuff to be looking at and it's part of what we get into in your hormone revival. So you get lab testing, you get support from a practitioner, and you get these bigger conversations too, because that's just what I do, inviting you into a deeper relationship with yourself. Because hey, guess what? Talking about relational patterns, your relationship with yourself is the most important one.
Erin Holt [00:48:46]:
So we are kicking things off in YHR next week. I would love to have you join and and I will see you inside. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Functional Nutrition Podcast. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. If you got something from today's show, don't forget subscribe leave a review, share with a friend and keep coming back for more. Take care of.