The Life I’m Keeping

Somewhere along the way, self-care got hijacked. It became a 27-step skincare routine, a $90 sound bath, and a sourdough starter you never finished. But real self-care, the kind that actually keeps you functioning, leading, loving, and showing up, is far less glamorous and far more important. In this final episode of the resilience mini-series, therapist and entrepreneur Liz Burgin gets honest about hustle culture, burnout, and the quiet cost of always pushing through. Liz shares her own experience getting caught in the trap of girl boss culture and what it actually cost her, and she lays out what sustainable self-care looks like for a real woman with a full life: a demanding career, a family, bills, and maybe five minutes to herself. This episode is a reality check and a permission slip. If you've been waiting until things slow down to finally take care of yourself, this episode will help you understand why that moment will never come, and what to do instead. Built for women in leadership, entrepreneurship, or any high-demand season of life, this episode closes the mini-series with the most important message of all: you cannot build a resilient life on an empty foundation. Together we will talk about: Why hustle culture is actively shrinking your window of tolerance What self-care actually means for working women, stripped of the consumerism How pushing past your limits makes you worse at everything you care about Why people treat you the way you train them to, and how to change it The real foundation of a sustainable life: sleep, food, water, and quality relationships How to stop performing resilience and start actually building it One line to take away with you: "The only way out is through, and you can't get through running on empty." Connect with Liz at lizburgin.com Keywords: burnout recovery for women, self-care for professional women, hustle culture burnout, sustainable life women leaders, women entrepreneurs burnout, high achieving women self-care, work life balance women, how to recover from burnout, women and overworking, resilience for women, therapist podcast, energy management women

Your relationships, at work, at home, with friends, are either fueling you or draining you. And most of the time, the biggest obstacle isn't the other person. It's not knowing what you actually want, or not having the tools to ask for it clearly. In this episode, therapist and entrepreneur Liz Burgin gets specific about the interpersonal effectiveness skills that help professional women build healthier relationships, communicate with confidence, and stop sacrificing long-term goals for short-term peace-keeping. Drawing from DBT's interpersonal effectiveness framework, Liz walks through how to describe a situation using facts, express your feelings without blame, assert your needs, and reinforce what you're asking for, whether that's a difficult conversation with your partner, a boundary-setting moment with your team, or a long-overdue ask for a promotion. She also covers the real work of making and keeping quality friendships as an adult, why ending destructive relationships is sometimes the most self-respecting thing you can do, and what strong conversational habits actually look like in practice. If you've ever swallowed what you needed, over-explained your feelings, or kept the peace at the cost of your own, this episode is for you. Together we will talk about: The most common barriers that get in the way of healthy relationships for driven women How to describe, express, assert, and reinforce what you need in any relationship Why not knowing what you want is the root of most relationship conflict How to build quality adult friendships, and the conversational habits that make or break them When to repair a relationship and when to walk away How to apply these skills in both personal and professional settings One line to take away with you: "You are the person in charge of your relationships." Connect with Liz at lizburgin.com Keywords: relationship skills for women, assertive communication, how to ask for what you want, DBT interpersonal effectiveness, setting boundaries at work, women and friendships, adult friendships, difficult conversations at work, communication skills women leaders, people pleasing women, how to stop people pleasing, professional women relationships

You're not too emotional. You're under-resourced, and nobody taught you how to name what you're feeling, let alone regulate it. In this episode, therapist and entrepreneur Liz Burgin tackles emotional regulation head-on: what emotions actually do for us, why some women feel things more intensely than others (hint: it's often biology, not weakness), and how to build a practical skill set for managing your emotional responses without suppressing them. This episode is essential listening for professional women who want to lead with clarity, communicate under pressure, and stop letting a hard morning derail an entire day. Rooted in DBT and the work of Dr. Dan Siegel, Liz walks through the full cycle of an emotion, from trigger to physical response to expression to aftermath, and gives you concrete tools to interrupt that cycle before it costs you a relationship, an opportunity, or your own peace of mind. She also covers the wheel of emotions, fact-checking your emotional responses, and why building in more positive experiences is not optional if you want to stay regulated long-term. If you've ever snapped at someone you love, shut down in a meeting, or sat in your car wondering what's wrong with you, nothing is wrong with you. This episode is your starting point. Together we will talk about: What emotions actually do for us, and why there are no good or bad ones The "name it to tame it" technique from Dr. Dan Siegel and why it works How to trace an emotion from trigger to aftermath so you can interrupt the pattern The wheel of emotions and why emotional vocabulary makes you more regulated How to fact-check an intense emotional response before acting on it Why pleasant events and self-care are clinically connected to emotional regulation One line to take away with you: "All emotions are welcome — but regulated emotions are the most helpful." Connect with Liz at lizburgin.com Keywords: emotional regulation for women, managing emotions at work, DBT emotional regulation, name it to tame it, highly sensitive person leadership, women and emotional intelligence, wheel of emotions, how to stop crying at work, emotional intelligence women leaders, stress and emotions professional women, therapist podcast, burnout and emotions

The project is on fire. Your coworker just dropped the ball. Everything is changing at once and your nervous system is in full alarm mode, heart racing, thoughts spiraling, and every instinct telling you to either explode or disappear. Sound familiar? In this episode, therapist and entrepreneur Liz Burgin walks you through exactly what to do when distress hits hard and your whole brain feels offline. Building on the mindfulness skills from the previous episode, Liz dives into a skill set designed specifically for moments when everything feels like it's falling apart and you need to get through it without making it worse. She introduces the STOP skill (the pause between stimulus and response where your real power lives), the TIPP skills for resetting your nervous system fast, grounding techniques using your five senses, and the concept of radical acceptance, one of the most misunderstood and most liberating ideas in modern psychology. This episode is essential for professional women who need to stay functional under pressure, lead through uncertainty, and stop letting a crisis moment turn into a crisis week. Radical acceptance doesn't mean you approve of what's happening. It means you stop fighting reality long enough to actually do something about it. That distinction changes everything. Together we will talk about: The STOP skill — why the pause between stimulus and response is where your power lives TIP skills for resetting your nervous system fast: temperature, intense exercise, and paced breathing The 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique and how your five senses can pull you out of a spiral What radical acceptance actually means — and why it is not the same as approval How suppressing, avoiding, and rejecting reality keeps you stuck and what to do instead Why history informs the future but does not own it — and how acceptance puts you back in control One line to take away with you: "Between stimulus and response there is a pause, and in that pause is your power.-Viktor E. Frankl" Connect with Liz at lizburgin.com Keywords: distress tolerance for women, how to stop spiraling, radical acceptance, DBT distress tolerance, managing stress at work, how to stay calm under pressure, nervous system reset, grounding techniques anxiety, professional women stress, panic attack tools, women in leadership burnout, emotional regulation under pressure, how to handle crisis at work, paced breathing anxiety, resilience skills women

Mindfulness isn't about emptying your mind, sitting in silence, or buying a $400 meditation cushion. It's about building space, between the trigger and the reaction, and that space is where your power lives. In this episode, therapist and entrepreneur Liz Burgin cuts through the noise around mindfulness and gives professional women a clear, practical, judgment-free framework for what it actually is and how to build it into a life that's already full. Whether you lead a team, run a business, raise kids, or all of the above, this episode explains how mindfulness expands your window of tolerance, reduces reactivity, and creates the kind of inner calm that actually makes you more effective at work and at home. Liz covers wise mind (the DBT concept of integrating logic and emotion), breathing techniques, body awareness, and closes the episode with a guided loving kindness meditation you can return to any time. This is not spiritual bypassing. This is a skill. And it builds. Together we will talk about: What mindfulness actually is — and what it isn't — for women who don't have time for fluff Why mindfulness doesn't have to look like meditation and how to find your own version The DBT concept of wise mind — using both logic and emotion to make better decisions How consistent small practice creates massive shifts in how you handle stress and conflict A guided loving kindness meditation to close the episode One line to take away with you: "Feelings are a lot like waves, they come in, they go out, and sometimes they don't mean anything about you." Connect with Liz at lizburgin.com Keywords: mindfulness for professional women, mindfulness at work, how to stop reacting, emotional regulation women, loving kindness meditation, resilience for women in leadership, stress relief for working women, mindfulness podcast, therapist podcast women, women entrepreneurs mental health, burnout recovery

You started the day fine. By 4pm you were snapping at people you love, checked out at dinner, or just completely done, and you don't know why. The answer isn't weakness, poor discipline, or not being cut out for the life you're building. It's your window of tolerance. And once you understand it, you'll never look at your stress response the same way again. In this opening episode of a brand new mini-series on stress, burnout, and resilience, therapist and entrepreneur Liz Burgin introduces the concept that underpins everything: the window of tolerance. She explains what happens to your nervous system when life's daily demands stack up, and why high-achieving women are especially vulnerable to living outside their window without even realizing it. You'll learn the difference between hyper-arousal (fight, flight, freeze, anger, anxiety, panic) and hypo-arousal (shutdown, numbness, emotional blankness), and what it actually looks like when your capacity has been quietly chipped away by a thousand small decisions over the course of one ordinary day. This isn't about doing more. It's about finally understanding what's happening inside you, so the rest of the series can actually help. If you lead people, run a business, manage a household, or simply carry more than you should, this is the episode that explains why it all feels so heavy right now. And it's the beginning of what comes next. Together we will talk about: What the window of tolerance is and why it is the key to understanding stress and burnout How hyper-arousal shows up for professional women, anxiety, anger, overwhelm, and panic What hypo-arousal looks like, numbness, shutdown, disconnection, and emotional blankness Why every small decision across your day quietly shrinks your capacity without you noticing What this mini-series will cover and how it will help you build a more resilient, sustainable life One line to take away with you: "We all have a window, and everything you do either protects it or shrinks it." Connect with Liz at lizburgin.com Keywords: window of tolerance, burnout professional women, stress response women, fight flight freeze, nervous system regulation, hyper arousal, hypo arousal, emotional overwhelm at work, women and burnout, resilience podcast women, how to handle stress at work, therapist podcast, high achieving women mental health, stress and burnout podcast, burnout recovery women

You already know how to solve a problem at work. You're good at it. But what happens when the problem doesn't have a clean solution when it's a relationship, a pattern, or a situation you can't just fix your way out of? In this episode, therapist and entrepreneur Liz Burgin breaks down the four choices you actually have when life presents a problem: solve it, feel better about it, tolerate it, or stay miserable. Yes, miserable is a choice. And most of us have made it. Rooted in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and built for women navigating high-stakes decisions, difficult relationships, and the constant tension between ambition and capacity, this episode introduces one of the most important mindset shifts for high-achieving women: trying to control what isn't yours to control is costing you more energy than the problem itself. Liz introduces the concept of beginner's mind, walks through what skills actually look like in real life, and shares a personal story about mindfulness that will change how you think about your own reactions. This is the episode that sets up the entire resilience skill set to come. Together we will talk about: The four options every person has when facing a problem — and why staying miserable is more common than we admit Why trying to control things outside your control is like pedaling uphill in the wrong gear The concept of beginner's mind and how it changes the way you show up in hard conversations How emotional regulation and mindfulness connect to real-world problem solving What skills actually look like in everyday professional and personal life One line to take away with you: "Do I want to be right, or do I want to make progress?" Connect with Liz at lizburgin.com Keywords: problem solving for women, emotional regulation at work, DBT skills, women in leadership mental health, how to stop being reactive, mindfulness for professionals, burnout and control, resilience skills, therapist podcast, ambitious women podcast, work life balance women, stress management professional women