Podcast Summary: "High-Functioning Burnout Exposed: The Perpetual Chase"

The BossBabe Podcast – Episode 481, September 10, 2025
Host: Natalie Ellis with Guests Alexi and Em

Episode Overview

In this episode, Natalie Ellis and her guests have an honest, vulnerable conversation about a phenomenon many ambitious women experience but rarely address: the Perpetual Chase. This is the cycle where achievement becomes identity, and the feeling of being “enough” always seems out of reach, no matter what milestone is checked off. Exploring high-functioning burnout, the hosts unpack the root causes that keep women striving for more at the expense of their own fulfillment and presence. Their discussion provides deep insights and practical suggestions for redefining success, feeling genuinely alive, and reclaiming personal power by reconnecting with body, values, and self-worth.

Key Discussion Points

1. The Perpetual Chase – What Is It?

• Problem Statement: Many high-achieving women find that external success doesn’t bring the satisfaction they expected. Natalie introduces the “Perpetual Chase,” a pattern where “enough” is always just out of reach.
  • “Achievement becomes your identity. And enough is always somewhere outside of yourself or somewhere in the future.”
    – Natalie Ellis [00:51]
• Personal Story: Natalie describes returning to work after having her daughter, Noemi, and realizing she was “avoiding the fact that you have everything you’ve ever wanted in pursuit of moreness.” [01:37]
  • She traces her own drive to a childhood shaped by scarcity and a need to prove her worth through constant achievement.

2. Personal Experiences with Burnout and Chasing More

• Alexi’s Story: Despite huge professional success and “checking all the boxes” (multiple businesses, wealth, fulfilling relationship), the feeling of satisfaction and arrival remained elusive.
  • “I’m proud of her... but I don’t like how she feels. If I don’t like how I feel, what is the point of my life?”
    – Alexi [05:15]
• Cycle of Achievement: The hosts discuss how new launches and business wins fail to bring lasting fulfillment. Instead, the “chase” just continues, fueling ongoing dissatisfaction.

3. Conditioning and Cultural Programming

• Women’s Value and Self-Sacrifice: The group explores how societal messaging celebrates women for self-sacrifice, multitasking, and putting everyone else first (the “martyr” identity).
  • “The perfect woman is self-sacrificing. Puts everyone before herself and people praise her for that...”
    – Natalie Ellis [10:10]
• Personal Pressure: Alexi shares the duality of her upbringing—with both traditional and modern role models—and how this produced an impossible standard of womanhood.
  • “Four of us couldn’t do the job that one of us is trying to do...”
    – Alexi [12:15]

4. Reprioritizing and Reconditioning

• Internal Value System: The hosts highlight the need to reclaim value in “non-productive” activities (rest, pleasure, play) and redefine what makes life meaningful.
  • “We are conditioned into feeling like our output is what makes us valuable... but it actually has a lot of value. It's just the conditioning we have to create a new relationship with.”
    – Em [08:35]
• Sovereignty and Wholeness: The journey to satisfaction involves becoming “self-sourced” – meaning, deciding what success looks and feels like, independent of external markers.
  • “My experience of my life is... I am thriving in the deepest felt sense of the word. The quality of my life is a 10 out of 10.”
    – Em [13:16]

5. Ambition Without Burnout

• Different Source of Drive: Ambition isn’t the enemy—but the source of it determines whether it brings vitality or burnout.
  • “Are you climbing the mountain to be seen at the top? Or are you climbing the mountain to see the view from the top? Same action, totally different come from.”
    – Alexi [14:58]
• Living Big Lives: Alexi describes how, with intention and internal alignment, her busy life (4 kids, multiple businesses) feels energizing, not draining.
  • “I have more space than I’ve ever had because it’s not more from scarcity... It’s more from like what would feel really fun to do.”
    – Alexi [18:30]

6. Expanding Capacity, Not Just Doing More

• Quality vs. Quantity: Using the analogy of fast food vs. a gourmet meal, Em illustrates how true presence and capacity mean we need less external stimulation to feel full.
  • “You need more when you have less capacity to feel what's present...”
    – Em [25:10]
• Beyoncé Principle: It’s not about working more hours, but having a greater internal capacity to receive and hold abundance, vision, and impact.
  • “Beyoncé... She doesn't have more hours in the day, but there's something within her vessel that said, I can hold more, I can become more.”
    – Em [22:06]

7. The Role of Nervous System and Somatic Work

• Internal Safety as Superpower: Real transformation comes from developing a relationship with the body and creating a sense of internal safety. When this is present, a woman’s capacity expands exponentially.
  • “When we gift ourselves the gift of internal safety... we literally unlock our superpowers as a human... all my faculties turn on because I’m not in survival mode.”
    – Alexi [23:28]
• Felt Experience vs. Concepts: It’s not enough to understand these principles intellectually; embodiment and practice are essential.
  • “The distinction between concept and felt experience is so major... You might feel numb... but staying with the practice to build that muscle is huge.”
    – Em [33:18]

8. Practical Tools and First Steps

• Journaling Practice: Natalie suggests journaling from the perspective of already having what you seek—writing out how your day, relationships, and work would feel if you were already “there.” [36:24]
• Reflection Questions:
  • Where am I chasing enoughness?
  • What would shift if I believed I’ve already won?
  • How do I want my ambition to feel in my body?

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–03:00 – Natalie’s story of the “Perpetual Chase” and childhood roots of achievement
• 03:38–08:00 – Alexi’s “crunchy” moment, the hamster wheel of chasing more
• 10:00–13:00 – The blueprint of womanhood: self-sacrifice and impossible standards
• 14:58 – “Are you climbing the mountain to be seen or to see?”
• 16:26–20:22 – Living big lives on your own terms; abundance and enoughness
• 22:06 – On expanding capacity (e.g., Beyoncé as an archetype)
• 23:28–25:11 – Nervous system work and building internal safety
• 33:18 – Felt experience vs. conceptual understanding
• 36:24 – Journaling exercise: “I already have…”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The goal post is always moving. This episode is for you… the woman who looks like she’s crushing it, but never actually feels deep down like she’s arrived.”
  – Natalie Ellis [00:18]
• “I was searching for more of myself, and I didn’t quite fully get it at that moment, but I got that what I was doing wasn’t working.”
  – Alexi [05:59]
• “Everything in my life came crumbling down that year. All of these thoughts, these beliefs, these unconscious patterns. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.”
  – Natalie Ellis [03:10]
• “It’s not about doing less to balance more, it’s about learning to lead from alignment, not urgency—to feel like you’ve already arrived without losing your edge.”
  – Natalie Ellis [36:52]

Episode Takeaways

• You are not alone: If outward success hasn’t brought inner peace, you are living a very common—yet unspoken—struggle.
• Chasing more will never fill the void; only deep reconnection with yourself will.
• Ambition can—and should—be life-giving, not depleting. The key is sourcing it from wholeness, not lack.
• Building a new foundation of internal safety and redefining value is the path to sustainable success and aliveness.
• The work is simple, but not always easy: It requires reconditioning, nervous system regulation, embodiment, and courage.

Action Step

After the episode, try the journaling exercise:

• Write as if you already possess what you’re chasing—describe your day, your feelings, your choices from that place of fulfillment and wholeness.
• Reflect on what would truly change, and how you’d show up if you already felt “enough.”

This episode is a must-listen for any woman ready to break free from the endless treadmill of achievement and redefine what genuine, sustainable success feels like—starting from within.