What if burnout isn't a sign you're doing too much, but a sign that you're doing it as the wrong version of yourself? Today's guest, Brigitte St. Jean, calls that a frequency mismatch, and she's here to show us why aligned success feels completely different than survival mode success. Welcome to Break Free from the Burnout. I'm your host, Dr. Anastasia Chopelas, physicist turned energy healer, and I'm here to help you make the quantum shifts to release the hidden blocks to your success. Welcome to the show. Brigitte, I'm so happy you're here. Thank you so much for having me today. I'm really glad to be here. Thank you. Yes, and when I saw that your, one of your things, one of your things was alignment, I couldn't wait to have you on the show. Yay. So- That's awesome. Yay. We need so much more of that. Yeah, so tell us a little bit, you are a coach. Tell us a little bit about, in a sentence or two, what your coaching business is about. Okay. well, I am a certified life mastery consultant, life coach, soon to be certified neuroscience coach. I'm certified… I have a few different certifications, but really my coaching is all about, you know, realigning ourselves to our authentic self so we can actually create a life that we love. And underneath… the reason why, my mission in here and my purpose here is really to guide people through this energetic shift that's happening on our planet. So that's the underlying thing. Mm. And why am I coaching and doing this, is because while I have also… Well, I think everybody's going through it, consciously or not, but I myself needed to put a lot of time into my own ascension, my own releasing, and my own finding of who I am, and understanding who I am, but my identity. What formed my identity before caused me to have so many burnout episodes and depression episodes. Yeah. I had four burnouts in my life, so. Yeah. I've had a couple myself. We were just talking about that. So you, you say it's a frequency mismatch. What do you mean by that, and how is it different from the way most people talk about burnout? Well, let me talk about my own experience of that, from burnout. I remember that my first burnout, ex- experience was very young. I was 17, but I'm-- let's, let's jump back to the last episode I talk, I call it, because I think it's gonna be more relevant to women today. And so when I found myself in this position of burnout, really, depressed, n- exhausted mentally, physically, spiritually, my whole self was turning off. And I noticed a lot of things after recovery because, my brain couldn't even function. I… Right? I was so low in depression that I remember, and this is part of my story when I, when I do some workshops and I present my work, I say I remember this time where I was in my basement and I was crying, lying a ball and journaling about everything that was going wrong in my life, and I was so exhausted. I couldn't see a way forward, and I was like, "This is the end." Like, how did I come to this? There's nothing more for me in my life. I can't do anything anymore. How am I gonna get out of this? And so what I realized after is that I was, and that's what I mean about when I talk about, a frequency mismatch, is that I was living my life according to, now I call it old programming, but at the time I didn't see that at all. For me it was, and I wrote this down, it's what I should be doing. That was how I was living my life. This is what I should be doing. I should be performing, at work. And not only I should be performing at work, but my own, unconscious beliefs and identity was, one of the foundation blocks of that was I need to perform. I need to perform because if I don't, I don't have value. I do not have worth. So I overdid it. Like, I performed so much, so much so that I had a hard time to getting new opportunities because people wanted to keep me there 'cause I was doing like three job- three jobs, right? And so that's- How long ago was that? that was in 20- 2012, I think the last episode, and I haven't had any ep- episodes because I've, I've really grown since then. And that's what I mean with the mismatch, right? So it was, I was living my life according to somebody, something that was outside of me, expectations So that for me is the frequency mismatch I can elaborate more on that if you want No, that's okay. So you just told me about your burnout experience and that it was because you were shoulding all over yourself. Right? And so many of us should all over ourself. I should be doing this. I should be doing better. I should be farther along. I should have a better relationship. I should live in a better house. I should live in an environment that I like. And it just, it keeps moving, and you end up losing… Like for me, when that happens to me, I end up losing the joy out of my life because I keep telling myself all the things I don't have instead of looking at all the things I do have, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And so many- And that's, that's at the point, when you, when you're losing that joy, that's the point where actually you're shifting your frequency because you're shifting out of what you are here to do. You're shifting out, you're in autopilot. You're not consciously creating something or living your life. You're just letting something else run it. Yeah. And- I, yeah, I call it static. It's like static or, in the old TVs we used to get snow when the, rabbit ears didn't line up, right? So it was just the static and the snow- Right … obscuring the picture. so many of our listeners look successful on the outside while feeling depleted on the inside. How do they recognize that they're operating from survival when it's disguised as handling it all? I think that, you actually, you don't really recognize that something is necessarily wrong. But you feel exhausted, and you can't, you can't feel any, any other way when you are living on survival mode. We are not, our nervous system is not built to live in survival mode. It's not built for that. So if we're living, in the parts of our brain, the, ganglia, the base, ganglia, oh, I say that in French normally. The basal ganglia. So the base ganglia. Basal ganglia, yes. And the brain stem. So if you're living in that part of your brain all the time, and, you're lighting up your limbic system with emotions, and you're just living in there, That's what's exhausting you because y- it's not meant to be firing all the time. And so your question is how to, how do they recognize they're operating s- for survival mode. Well, the symptom of that is exhaustion. It's a, it's like a cause and effect thing. It's necessarily going to lead to exhaustion, and there's different types of exhaustion, right? Sometimes y- you can re- have real fatigue, real need a rest, a- and that's absolutely normal, and that's good actually. That's a sign. But when you're living in survival mode, it's another sign. It's a sign of something else, and the something else is, a language of the soul. That's what I call it. It's a language of the soul. If you're, if you're feeling this s- exhaustion because you're, the anxiety in the body, the body's breaking down, it's not just rest that you need and then you recover easily. That's, that's the normal part. But if you're not recovering when you're taking some rest, oh, there's a message, and that's what you have- Yeah to look at or look out for. Yeah. That's exactly m- the way I recognized it myself is no matter how much I slept or how much time I took off or how much I read a book I enjoyed or whatever I did, I was still tired. one of the things that I did when I was driving home from work, I just was on the freeway and ready to get off 'cause the house was not very far from the off ramp. And I'm driving down the freeway and I said, "What if I just keep driving out of my life?" Oh my goodness. And when you wanna drive out of your life is, like, the sure sign it's too much. Wow, I can't believe how much of our stories are similar because I remember that so well too. well, I was taking the bus to work, right? So I was taking the bus and I'm like,"Oh, I'm, I don't wanna get out. I just, I'm, I'm just gonna stay on the bus and I'm just gonna…" And I, for me, I was, compensating with, shutting the world out. So if I was on the bus and I could get a seat, I would stay in the seat, close my eyes, not talk to anybody. and sometimes, there was also, some loss earlier in my life. I lost my brother and, and other, And so sometimes I would just close my eyes and cry on the bus and not talk to anybody, just be in that bubble alone, and that really didn't help being alone and staying in that, in that state alone is not helpful. It's not unless you're an introvert And yeah, an introvert can take it so lo- so much. So the difference between an extrovert and introvert is when an extrovert's around people, it energizes them, and when an introvert is around people, it depletes them. And the recovery depends on getting alone time. So- Mm. What, me as a professor getting up in front of, anywhere between 150 and 300 students three to five times a week, depending on what class I was teaching. When I first started teaching it, I needed two hours afterwards to recover from the barrage of their presence. So that's another- There's so much energy in that room. I can totally understand. Yeah. What I meant is more, like, if you want support, like you need support when you're, when you're down like that. Just one person, just one call, just one… But when there's- Yeah … no support, it's really difficult. And as you mentioned in your story, you didn't have support, so it was- I did go to… Yeah, I went to a 12-step group, and I met a lot of wonderful women there, and that's actually where I learned energy healing, was the women in that group were into energy healing. And they invited… One of them invited me to a Reiki class, and that got me started. That's awesome it was, it was a blessing. The… This was in Germany. The 12-step groups are different here. In Germany, we tended to have, Saturday afternoon picnics or, a tea in the afternoon when it was too cold outside. So we got to know each other in a non-threatening way, and were supporting one another outside of the meetings. Where do over responsibility and blurred boundaries usually start for the women you work with? Is there a common origin point? that well, I would say that there's a common mechanism I think that, as I mentioned before, all of the burnout, the real profound exhaustion comes from not being your true self. And, we come here and we live all sorts of experiences, we learn things. through all sorts of conditioning. Mm-hmm … family, social, generational, name it. s- society, cultural, whatever, name it. Mm-hmm. And so, the co- I would say that the common mechanism for the people that I, or the women when I work with is really adaptation. I think that it all starts there. even, we can go back to childhood, we can go, and even further in the womb, right? And all of this, all of these things that we look at. and f- I put that in a basket, let's say it like that, that I call like limiting beliefs and the conditioning. the limiting beliefs, the adaptation leads to, these conclusions that we, that our… Because our brain is made like that. That's how it functions, right? So we just invent or give ourselves conclusions about what's happening and, our, how, the family dynamics or like I said, all sorts of con- different conditionings, experiences. And then, these conclusions become belief because they're repeated. So they become belief, and then they become patterns, and then they become, they're, they're, all these beliefs are in your unconscious mind and in the body and, and patterns. And then that becomes who you think you are. Yeah. And I think the common- It's a pattern… is really the adaptation. Yeah. adaptation is a good way to put it. It's the survival strategy that we use to- Yes our emotional self to survive the brutality of the world around us, is what it is I love how you said that. That's absolutely right. I totally believe that, and that's what we work on, in my coaching as well. It's, it's all about shifting from the survival mode, which is our old conditioning. we are- Yeah … in a paradigm shift right now, and I ma- I should not start talking about that because I won't stop. This is my deepest passion, this paradigm shift. And so, it's shifting- I completely- Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree with you on that point, this paradigm shift that's happening. Like, the upheaval and the disruption that's happening right now, it's like we made, over the last 60 years, made so many strides forward, and now they're getting pulled back one by one, and countries are now even starting to not get along because of certain people that are at the top of some of the big countries, including mine. Mm-hmm. Yes, and, and w- when we look at, the paradigm shifts in history and, and, my example, I always go back, to, like, a simple example because talking about politics right now is really complex. But I mean- Yes if I go back to, let's say Copernicus who comes here and he says, "Hey, wait. Wait a second. Planet Ear- well, not planet Earth, but Earth" because that wasn't the language back then. Is not at the center. Not at the center. What are you talking about? You're crazy. there's, like, destruction and there's, and there's again that word adaptation. There will be s- there's clashing of two different ideologies, well, or different ideologies. and in research, the… What's, what was Thomas S. Kuhn's, his book is, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and he was talking about that, and I think we see that in the world right now, the clash, the destruction because it's making way for new structures to, that are arising. And so we're living through this paradigm shift, and it's showing us outside of our s- but also inside of ourselves. And this is why I think- right now in history, in the world right now, in our, in, on planet Earth, people are asking these questions about themselves. They're looking because they're feeling this new frequency of Earth is saying, "Hey, you have to squeeze out that, squeezing the lemon. This doesn't belong anymore." That, we can't support this frequency of, billing myself and staying in a situation where it's, it's bad for me and for my, and my own, my own burnout. Like, my worthiness. M- my worthiness doesn't belong in somebody else's mind. And- Yeah… the patterns that keep repeating in has their own example, and that's- Yeah a- and, that's what's happening right now. We're all doing this work of shedding the old conditioning because we are shifting into a new type of conditioning. Yeah, that other, that- We are reconfiguring ourselves … that what other people think of us, as, like I always say, what you think of me is none of my business. I love that. I love that. Say that again, please. what other people think of me is none of my business. I love that. H- I had- We should be saying that … I had nothing to do with their thoughts. They developed those thoughts based on their own experiences and not their experience of me Yes, I totally agree. I say I love that you say that, and I ask you to repeat it because I think everybody should hear that every morning when they get up. What other people think has nothing to do with me. It has nothing- Yeah … to do with me. Let me create the life I'm here to create. and I'm not a re- religious person, at all, and I don't mind people being religious. That's their thing. That has nothing to do with me. But you know what I mean? It's like, let me focus on creating and giving my talents and cultivating my own self-worth in this- Yes … world, in this life. Yes, and that we all have inherent worth, that whatever anybody else is thinking doesn't change your value, right? That, so it's kind of like a corollary that it's not what they think is none of my business. But there's a corollary to that is that your self-worth has nothing to do with what they're thinking. Yes, and what comes to mind while d- with what you just said there is, I was talking earlier when my last, my last burnout, which w- has been the last one in my life, and it will always be the last one. There will never be another burnout because I've learned this, and that's exactly what happened in that basement. That's the moment my life changed where there was like a, a m- a miracle happened. So I was crying, and I was like, it hurt so much in my body, and I told myself, this is the end. There's nothing else for me. I've tried everything. I've tried at work. They don't wanna listen. I've tried in my, in my home. Nobody listens. I've … my family doesn't support me." They … Like, ah, I can't do anything else anymore, and I … This is the end. And then I'm like, how did my life come to this? I was an extraordinary person. I have a master's degree, for crying out loud. I can do stuff. I've been through shit. Sorry about for my language. I, I've been through trauma. I, I'm still here, so w- I'm like at, at, at, at a why, path, right? There's, there's, let's say, on the left side, there's … Well, I don't know what there, that is. There's nothing. It's the end, the end of my life. That's it. But on the other side, there's something, but don't know what that something is, but I wish I was there because I don't wanna be here. But then right when thinking it's the end of my life and looking at there's two things, but I don't know. There's just the end. I can't see the other thing. I, I kid you not, I heard a voice in my mind tell me Or bring me ac- actually, I saw an image in my mind, and it brought me back when I was, like, 20 years old. And I was like had the sun in my face, and I was looking outside the horizon, and I was saying to myself, my life is gonna be great." And I felt that feeling. And This was such, like, a dichotomy. How do you say that in English? But it was really different because I was, like, completely depressed, like, at the end of it. And I felt really good for a second there. Wow, where did that come from? It came from me, inside of me. My soul, my me inside that was not ready to end it told myself,"Hey, there's something else. There is the why. There is something else." And then I remember at that moment, I opened my eyes, like, puffed up because I was crying so much and hurting so much that I, I didn't see anything in the room I was. I just saw black, but I saw a little tiny hole at the end. And, and my mind is like, "Oh my God, this is the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm seeing the light at the end of tunnel. It's not the end." And that was- Yeah … the change. That was the beginning of the change in my life. And it started with that. It, it really was something within me that said, "Hey, stop it. There is something else." Yeah, for me, it was a deep well where I was at the bottom, and I could see the light all the way up there, and I had to take the walls down and climb out. Wow. But I knew it was there, right? I knew I wasn't stuck in there. Yeah. I found my way out. But yeah. So we had very similar experiences. Yeah. How does someone tell the difference between genuine calling to change course and just fatigue talking? Well, fatigue, it goes away. fatigue is temporary. But this really, this, this deep, burnout, deep exhaustion is not just in the physical body. It's not just fatigue in your mind, and it doesn't go away. It, it just continues. It like, I'm gonna say it lingers. I don't know if that's the right word in English. And I think that's the- Yeah… difference between the fatigue. It goes away. But exhaustion, it, it lingers and there's a deep, there's deeper work to be done there because it really- Yeah is the inner self that is, the, it's like the soul language. That's what I say. It's the soul language. It's, it's a message. It, it's communication that says you're on a wrong path. You're not, connected to your authentic self. You're running on autopilot. The autopilot stems from expectations, outside things that are creating rules that your brain just obeys. I don't wanna do that anymore, and so I need to make a conscious choice. And to do that, I need to sit with myself and peel the layers most of the times, but really learn who I am. Yeah. I, I- Not what other people think be. Yeah. So one thing that I tell people a lot is, are you doing what you think, feel, and want to do? that's alignment. And as soon as you are in that place where you get up every morning and you go, "I really love doing this. I really love being me. I really love being alive," all of those things just show you're in alignment. And as soon as the stress and the burnout start to happen, it's actually the adrenal glands getting stressed. And when that happens, just as a warning to people who are listening, when the adrenal glands get so stressed out, the body can't function right 'cause you need your adrenal glands to get you up in the morning. You need your adrenal, and if your adrenals are burned out, you can't get up in the morning. You just have no energy. And when that happens, the body is in burnout mode, and that's when most people experience illnesses. Like serious illnesses, chronic illnesses- Mm-hmm … things that take you out. It's like you're telling your body,"I don't wanna be alive." And as soon as you get up in the morning and go, "I really love being alive. I love my life. I'm doing what I want. I'm a- around the people that I want. I am enjoying things that I'm doing." And sometimes I have a business coach, and sometimes I like go off and d- play with AI a little bit 'cause I have fun as a, I'm a techie geek, right? So I play with AI and get it to write some webpages or get, So I had Claude build all my webpages from the beginning to the end now. They look nicer, right? And they're, they're now connected properly. It looks great. Right? So- It looks great, actually. I… Yeah. Thank you. And so I'm going, "Yeah, I'm having fun over here, but I really… Maybe I should go back to, to, to listening to what my coach said 'cause I paid a lot for him." I, I, I love that you're smiling right now and laughing when you're talking about this because it, it, it really just illustrate what you're, what you're talking about, and I totally agree. And, and for me, it was for living so long in, in survival mode and- Yes… and fear. And, and, and I think that fear and everything that was, for me, it was outside things had to give me value. I had to perform. I had to do things because I wanted be loved. I wanted to be valued, right? So I, th- never any calmness. Yeah. And I finally, after that last depression episode, the burnout episode that I was talking about earlier, I finally found I finally, finally found but also felt a feeling of calmness. And I had never felt that before. Like, just being calm, and it's just easy to say it to voice like that, but i- it's just another, a completely different world for me now. like- Yeah, it's being at peace … now I feel, ignited, I'm excited, but it's just able to be calm and, and, and just… Because it's, the feeling of satisfaction for me came when somebody else was saying to me, "Oh, good work," or, "See? Now I have my master's degree," right? So people can be proud of me, right? And, and it was al- you understand what I'm saying, always the exterior that was giving- Yeah … me some value. And in the calmness, I found my own value. Yes. And that was a total awakening for me. Yeah. When people ask me what am I most proud of, I have to sit and think about it because Yeah, so I have a doctorate, I have 50 papers, I've been all over the world talking about stuff, and it's like, yeah, so. It didn't add to my happiness. It didn't add. I loved doing it, and I only did it 'cause I loved doing it. But it didn't add to my happiness or my self-worth or my satisfaction in life, right? It's, it's comes from within, not outside me. Right. So tell us about this soul assessment worksheet that you have. And you're offering also a free coaching session? actually, yes, it's a, it's a coach- coaching conversation. So really we're going to be looking at, the, the, worksheet, right? Because this worksheet, what it is, it's just, it's just a really simple thing. It's five questions, five or six questions, and it's really to sit with yourself and ask yourself some questions. Where do I feel discontent in, in my life? the language is a lot around discontent and what makes me feel alive, what ignites me. So- Mm-hmm … and this I call, again, the language of the soul. the worksheet, the soul assessment, the worksheet is all about these questions. Where do you see in your life this, some discontent? And the goal around after that, like in the coaching session, is really to look at what's underneath that. Because that's only, that's, that's the language of the soul. That's a message. But there's something underneath that. There's a reason why feeling discontent. There's a reason why you, this type of thing ignites you or makes you happy or makes you smile. there's a reason why certain patterns repeat in your life, and maybe they're good patterns. Because, the brain was, will always be an automating machine, let's say like that. I don't like that language, but it's always going to, take the things that repeat and put it in a structure so you don't have to… when you're riding a bicycle, you're not saying,"Okay, I have to lift my foot and w- to lift my foot, I have to, to, Yeah. move my knee-" and all of those things. Habits a- and trainings are there to save brain energy, 'cause decision energy is exhausting. So by- Yes Exactly, and this is why, we're looking at this. There's always something underneath these- Mm-hmm these feelings of discontent and happiness and the patterns that repeat. But like I said, there's, there's good and bad conditioning. I don't, that's not necessarily good or bad, but there's something that is, aligned c- with you, and so you want to shift your old conditioning that is limiting, like we're t- talking about the paradigm shift, old conditioning versus new conditioning, where you want to recondition yourself to love yourself automatically. You want to shift yourself to appreciate yourself and be generous of yourself to others. You wanna, you wanna train yourself and, and condition yourself to not be bothered by a negative opinion of you that somebody else has because it has nothing to do with you. So it's really in that sense that, and that's what we're going to do in, in the free, session. And I'm going to send, I've changed the worksheet a little bit, so I'm gonna send, resend you that, worksheet. Okay. And that will be definitely in the show notes so people will be able to find it really easily. Thank you so much. Yeah, and thank you so much for being here. just to let people know, burnout isn't always a failure to push through. Sometimes it's a signal who you're becoming no longer matches how you've been operating. If that landed for you, take Bridget up on her soul self-assessment worksheet and free coaching session, both linked in the show notes, and let that frequency guide you back into alignment. Thank you for joining us on Break Free From the Burnout. Did today's program resonate with you? Give it a thumbs up or a five-star rating, share it with your friends, and be sure to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any future episodes. When you're ready to bring more harmony and alignment into your relationships, check out my free five-step relationship healing protocol at scientifichealer.com/relationship. Resources and show notes are available at www.breakfreefromtheburnout.com. Until next time, I'm Dr. Anastasia Chopelas, sending you golden healing light and success vibes to becoming aligned, confident, and prosperous. Your gifts are so needed in this world.