Overwhelmed By Leadership Demands And Health Concerns? Discover A Different Approach To Avoid Burnout
Harness your mind, brain and body to let go of the past, live intentionally, and create an impactful and fulfilling future without losing your sh*t.
Let’s be real: Does work, running a business, or leading a team feel like a one-way ticket to burnout?
You’re running on fumes, yet somehow still pushing forward. Sound familiar? You’re not alone - and it doesn’t have to be this way.
I’m Sabrina - a therapeutic burnout coach, neuroscientist, and art-based practitioner.
I blend science and art to help high achievers like you avoid burnout driven by loss, regain energy, build stress resilience, and achieve leadership goals with practical and creative solutions to become unburnt.
My Mission
With over 25 years in high-pressure leadership roles in financial services, mining and insurance - and running my own business on the side - I know burnout isn’t just being tired. It’s feeling stuck, overwhelmed, and disconnected from yourself and what matters most.
Long hours, relentless deadlines, and the never-ending pressure to perform while leading teams has been my norm on and off for years. I’ve got the battle scars to prove it.
I’ve learned to work with my mind, body, and brain instead of against them (plus I still wobble at times).
I adapted to life’s natural seasons, embraced who I am, and let go of the myth that I had to do it all alone.
My mission is to help you change your story and achieve what matters most. Let’s rebuild your focus, resilience, and energy to create a life that works for you, not against you.
Together, we’ll restore you to peak performance while designing a life that’s not just sustainable but fulfilling too.
Why Build a Better Brain?
Burnout and chronic stress feel like running a marathon with a broken compass - you keep going, but you’re overwhelmed, drained, and unsure why it’s all so hard.
It steals your energy, focus, and joy, affecting everything from your leadership, to how you connect with the people who matter most.
You lose yourself and go blind to the unique contribution you offer the world. Add unprocessed grief and loss to this mix and it's no wonder life feels hard.
That’s where Build a Better Brain comes in. This space isn’t about quick fixes or empty platitudes.
It’s about real, practical, science-backed and creativity tools that work because I’ve researched and used them myself - to recover, grow, and feel excited in the real world again.
Here’s why it matters:
When you Build a Better Brain, you adapt flexibly to your situation and your response to stress, pressure, and change.
You act intentionally when you honestly recognise grief, loss and burnout’s impact on your personal and work life.
You learn to balance peak performance and resilience with sustainable wellbeing.
You develop emotional fitness to regulate in the moment, and get curious instead of avoidant or panicked.
You stop chasing success at the cost of your health and sanity, and instead, redefine what achievement looks like for you.
This isn’t about bouncing back. In fact, I hate that term.
Bounce back to what got you stressed out, disconnected, and sick? No thanks.
This is about moving forward with clarity, confidence, and purpose. Find a new destination you want to get to, not think you want.
We learn from the past and use that self-awareness to take values-based action.
Stop doing what you think you have to do but know what you have to do.
This matters because a life lived in fear is a life half-lived. Wasted potential helps no-one.
What you’ll get here
This is not another fluff-filled wellness space.
The only fluff you’ll get is from personal photos and anecdotes about my cats, urban foxes, and other garden critters.
No one said personal growth and impact had to be dull or sterile…
Build a Better Brain is where neuroscience, psychology, creativity, and practical solutions meet.
I also say the quiet part out loud because this is when real change happens.
I’m not afraid of those weird, intrusive thoughts you spend time and energy holding back.
I’ve heard it all over the years, and we do ourselves a disservice stifling reality.
Trusted help, support and guidance always makes performance improvements and health recovery easier.
In fact, coaching has positive effects on burnout symptoms within 4-8 weeks, and overall reduces burnout recovery time by 30-50%.Â
Sure, you can recover from burnout on your own, but why struggle isolated for longer than you need to?
Quit making things harder for yourself.
Here’s what you’ll find on this Substack and my other digital products, training and coaching offers:
Burnout Recovery Playbook:
My Burnout Recovery Playbook is based on years of first-hand burnout experience, client coaching, and science-based research.
It’s my holistic perspective on burnout and chronic stress recovery, unprocessed grief and loss, personal growth, and intentional living.
I use this to build my content, guides, tools, Masterclasses, and frameworks - there’s so much more to come on this!
Burnout Patterns, Grief and Loss, and Stress Resilience Strategies:
Recognise your common Burnout Patterns in in response to loss, internal and external stressors, and unhelpful coping strategies keeping you burnt out.
Tried-and-tested techniques to help you stay healthy, calm, focused, and on top of things, even when life feels overwhelming and frankly sh*tty.
Wherever you are on the Burnout Risk Spectrum, there’s always a choice to think, feel and act in a more helpful way.
Creative and Science-Based Solutions:
Consider this a space where art meets neuroscience. Explore art-based practices like reflective journalling, visualisation, and self-expression.
From brain-friendly tips to creative expressive exercises, you’ll find tools that inspire and deliver results using a holistic, embodied approach.
Leadership Support:
Let’s ditch the myth that leaders and high achievers can’t admit to burnout. We do when we feel safe and understood because we think, feel and act deeply.
Leadership doesn’t mean you have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders or pretend burnout doesn’t affect you.
It’s time to align your goals with your wellbeing and stop thinking you need to sacrifice one for the other. When you operate at your best, you lead better - it’s that simple.
Whether you're an executive, solopreneur or business owner, being an effective leader is vital to achieve what you want without burnout.
No-Nonsense Tools, Guides and Masterclasses:
Masterclasses, guides, worksheets, and exercises that don’t just look pretty - they actually work and focus on a specific aspect of improvement or growth, plus the why.
I incorporate personal creativity into what I do - feel free to share yours in the comments, chat and other interactive spaces. This makes us human and we’ve been doing it for thousands of years.
Burnout Risk Quiz:
Not sure where you are on the Burnout Risk Spectrum or where to start?
Take the free 2-minute Burnout Risk Quiz to discover your burnout risk level and get personalised tips to kickstart your recovery journey.
Why I do this
I’ve spent years (and years!) juggling corporate leadership roles and personal traumas at the expense of my own health and sanity.
Add a sprinkling of habitual burnout, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for exhaustion, chronic health conditions, and cr*p wellbeing.
When my dad passed away in 2021 due to cancer and COVID, the complex grief only magnified my stress, leaving me feeling completely untethered and devastated.
I drifted for months and detached from the world.
It all felt pointless.
Then I rediscovered acrylic poured art. It was messy, imperfect, and exactly what I needed to break the spell.
It wasn’t just a hobby; it was a lifeline.
It reminded me that recovery is about building forward, with intention, curiosity, and grace.
That’s why I do this and want to help others.
Building this coaching and training business alongside a demanding leadership role hasn’t been easy, but it’s taught me so much about resilience, boundaries, and showing up and doing my best in the moment.
And I’m here to share all of that with you, through personal stories, insights and solutions to experiment with, if you’re willing.
I’m not about perfection - I’m about progress.
I’m not about hacks - I’m about strategies.
I'm not about superficial fixes - I’m about helping you take the next meaningful step.
No matter how small, toward a life that feels doable, sustainable and intentional.
Publication overview
Here’s how to navigate the Build A Better Brain Substack elements to maximise community, personal stories, strategies, and more:
Free subscribers → get access to the full posts archive, free chat and Quarterly Live Art-based Action Board Masterclasses. Discover others who help you feel less alone.
Paid subscribers (annual is 29% cheaper than monthly!) → get the above plus private chat and Q&A, Deep-dive Masterclasses, worksheets, guides, tools and recordings. Benefit from my decades of practical, research and creative experience first-hand for the investment.
Everyone gets daily updates through Notes → mindful animal and nature observations, curiosity prompts, science-backed insights, creative exercises, recovery tips, mindset prompts, and more.
Highlights from the archives
Whether you’re new, or you’ve forgotten, check out these highlights from the archives - pick one thing to experiment with and keep it simple.
Don’t try to do everything at once - I see you Perfectionists out there, so quit it:
What burnout does to your brain and body, and what to do about it?:
How being open and honest about how my dark thoughts set me free:
How creative expression saved my life when I wanted to give up:
How you have more control than you think with unhelpful, mindless habits:
How to stay sane and focus on what really matters:
How unprocessed loss and grief drive your unhelpful burnout patterns and burnout:
P.S. If you are inspired or curious, become a Build A Better Brain subscriber to get the latest news, insights and guidance when released.
Check out all subscription options here.
P.P.S. What’s your story? What’s one thing that’s helped or one challenge you’re facing right now?
Introduce yourself in the comments and let’s build a community to connect, learn, and grow together. Your next chapter starts here!
You have so much wisdom and knowledge about living consciously and intentionally. What a gift you are sharing!
Great post, Sabrina, you have a lot to offer with all your experience, qualifications and wisdom :-)