The Daring Well Podcast - Holistic Health & Wellness, Mindset, and Personal Growth · Rita Mercer, Wellness, Mindset & Mental Health Expert

Why Burnout Hits Women Differently: Nervous System Regulation for High-Achieving Women with Rachel Korb

·25 min·1 clip

Rachel Korb burned out three times despite practicing mindfulness, somatics, and nervous system regulation for 15 years.

1. The Daring Well Podcast episode centers on women’s burnout, nervous system regulation, and Rachel Korb’s approach to holistic wellbeing. 2. Rita Mercer hosts Rachel Korb, a somatic leadership coach who supports high-achieving women, leaders, and startup professionals. 3. The episode asks how women can feel less stressed, less overwhelmed, and less burned out by understanding their nervous systems. 4. Rachel says her work started after three burnout episodes during startup leadership in San Francisco, including insomnia, high-functioning anxiety, shingles, and shortness of breath. 5. She says she had practiced mindfulness, somatics, and nervous system regulation since age 19, but she was not listening to her body. 6. Rita frames leadership as broader than a title and includes home, friendship, and community roles. 7. Rachel responds that leadership is “not a title” and is instead about how a person shows up. 8. Rachel introduces interoception skills as the ability to read internal signals through the senses. 9. She separates interoceptive awareness, or sensing what is happening in the body, from interoceptive accuracy, or trusting the signal. 10. She uses heartbeat counting, thirst, hunger, and muscular tension as examples of internal cues. 11. Rachel explains the first half of the cycle, follicular and ovulation, as a period when interoceptive awareness is often better. 12. She says late luteal phase can reduce trust in body signals even when the sensations are strong, like a “really strong radio connection.” 13. Rachel connects that loss of trust to dysregulation and reactivity when signals are ignored. 14. She outlines the window of tolerance and names hyperarousal as fight-or-flight and hypoarousal as freezer shutdown. 15. She adds that women can also show hyperarousal through “tend and befriend,” including people-pleasing and chronic boundary loss. 16. Rachel says chronic people-pleasing can elevate oxytocin and cortisol at the same time and increase allostatic load. 17. She argues that standard mindfulness can miss the mark because many techniques are built around male physiology or a top-down cognitive model. 18. She says body-first tools matter more when the body is dysregulated because the brain is “offline” until the nervous system settles. 19. Rita and Rachel keep the tone conversational and practical, with Rita asking follow-ups about warning signs, perimenopause, and daily strategies. 20. Women navigating stress, leadership, and cycle-aware self-regulation would get the most from this conversation, while listeners wanting quick fixes or abstract mindset talk may skip it.

As heard by us

A practical look at burnout as a body signal, with concrete tools for noticing stress before it escalates.

This conversation treats burnout as something the body often flags first, before it turns into a productivity issue. Rita Mercer and Rachel Korb center high-achieving women, leaders, and startup professionals, pointing to early signs like raised shoulders, a knot in the chest,…

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You want a calmer read on stress before your body tips into reactivity.

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