If work feels like it has become your whole identity, a bad quarter stops feeling disappointing and starts feeling like proof you're failing as a person. That mindset can drain the relationships happening outside the office too, since there's only so much of you to go around. A therapist's take: healing starts with getting curious again about who you were before the scorecard took over, and being honest about whether your drive is actually helping your life or just running it into the ground.

Fertility grief often goes unseen, unfolding without rituals, recognition, or support. Beyond miscarriage, it lives in negative tests, failed cycles, and milestones that never arrive, each leaving real emotional marks. Because these experiences happen privately and are often minimized by well meaning responses, many carry the weight alone. Naming this grief matters. It validates the loss, creates space for compassion, and reminds those experiencing it that their pain is real, significant, and worthy of acknowledgment and deserves care and understanding.

Burnout in high-performing professionals rarely looks like collapse; it presents as sustained functioning under chronic strain. Over time, stress becomes normalized, and early indicators are minimized or overlooked. Performance can remain intact long after the costs begin accumulating. Paying attention to physical cues and protecting recovery boundaries are often the first clinically meaningful steps toward interrupting the burnout cycle.

Featured on LinkedIn and 84.51°’s blog site, below is an article that I wrote in May of 2024 discussing how effective management and effective therapists aren’t as different as you’d think. Written while still working in corporate, I describe an undervalued aspect of being a uniquely effective manager (hint: it’s empathy).