The “Atlas” trap of overgiving, and why kindness is the antidote

Atlas and his Stone

You can handle things that other people can’t.  Operate at speed. You pride yourself on giving more than you receive.  You are known for saying “yes” whenever someone is in need – at work, at home, in your community. You care deeply about being excellent and effective in all the spheres of your life.

And slowly but surely, your zest and desire and joy and energy are draining away under the Atlas Stone of everyone else’s needs and expectations.

You know you “should” be looking after yourself better – but you’ve got nothing left in the tank.

Your confidence is at a low ebb, and you are starting to wonder if maybe you’re at a dead end. You watch as you keep saying yes when you mean no, stay in situations long past their use-by date, and keep your dreams quietly on the back burner until “it’s the right time”.

How did I get here?

This is the plight of the super capable, super competent, super-coper.

And she was me.  A lifetime of chasing academic and professional achievement, always focused on the next goal, a “do-gooder” identity that led me into juggling caregiving at home with a 24/7 on call profession as a midwife, always reaching for the next thing where I would finally “fulfil my potential”.

At 45, the scaffolding came down all at once — the big job that wasn’t fulfilling me, the long “happy” marriage that had run its course, a body that was tired and sore, a brain that was overactive, hypercritical and sad, and a spirit quietly, insistently, yearning for more.

Only when everything fell apart could I see that my super-coper super-capable story was covering up a deep sense of feeling “not good enough”, and it was costing me my emotional and physical wellbeing and my sense of self.

The high cost of over-giving and self-neglect

We talk about stress as though it’s an inconvenient but necessary fact of life of the high achiever. The research tells a different story.

Chronic psychosocial stress — the kind that builds slowly over years of over-giving and self-neglect — is now recognised as a significant driver of cardiovascular disease in women. A landmark 2024 review by the American College of Cardiology identified caregiving stress as one of the psychosocial stressors most specifically common to women, with consequences that begin early and persist across the life course. The body keeps score, even when the mind insists it’s fine.

Sleep is one of the first casualties. Women are 40% more likely than men to experience insomnia, and nearly half of all women get less than the recommended seven hours per night. Women are 13% more likely than men to lose sleep specifically to caregiving and household responsibilities. Chronic sleep deprivation doesn’t just make us tired — research shows it impairs decision-making, increases emotional reactivity, and deepens anxiety and depression.

Then there’s the internal weather — the worry that loops, the rumination that settles in at 3am, the hypercritical inner voice that never fully quietens. Research consistently shows women are more prone to brooding — a self-critical form of rumination — than men, and that it is one of the strongest predictors of depression.

And then there are the relationships. When we are running on empty — emotionally depleted, physically exhausted, disconnected from ourselves — we cannot show up fully for the people we love. The very people we have been sacrificing ourselves for. This is the cruel irony of chronic self-neglect: it doesn’t protect our relationships. It quietly hollows them out.

Why we keep giving even when our cup is empty

Because the giving is rewarded.

When you are capable, reliable, self-sufficient and endlessly giving, people depend on you. You are praised. You are promoted. Nobody asks what it is costing you — and you have learned not to ask yourself.

The “not good enough” feeling doesn’t disappear. It gets buried under the next achievement, the next responsibility, the next person to take care of. And the inner critic — that quiet, reasonable voice that says not yet, not quite, a little more first — keeps you in a permanent state of preparation for a life you never quite get around to living.

Stopping the self-abandonment takes two things.

The kind courage to see clearly what is happening.

And the brave compassion to care enough about yourself to start tending yourself differently.

Not one or the other. Both. Because courage without compassion becomes self-punishment — and compassion without courage becomes avoidance. Together, they are what makes real change possible.

This is what getting brave and getting kind means. Not as a slogan. As a practice. As the two movements that, repeated over time, bring you back to yourself.

Self-compassion offers the deep support you need to reset your relationship with yourself

Most approaches to stress or burnout offer tactics. Do less – rest better.  Do more – exercise or eat better. These are not wrong — but they are surface-level responses to a deeper pattern.

Self-compassion is an evidence-backed approach to move from a self-critical inner voice with an endless list of “shoulds”, to aligning your behaviour with what you desire and value.  The inner critic becomes an inner coach, and you move from self-doubt to deep trust.

Self-compassion is associated with lower perceived stress, attenuated physiological responses to stress, the practice of health-promoting behaviours, and better physical health. Across multiple studies it is linked to improved physical and psychological outcomes, including reduced distress in people living with chronic illness. It doesn’t just change how we feel — it changes how we function, physically and relationally.

Self-compassion has two faces — soft and firm. The soft face is warmth and acknowledgement of pain. The firm face is the willingness to tell the truth, to make hard decisions, to stop abandoning yourself in the name of not letting others down. Both are necessary.

Where to begin: six ways to start getting brave and getting kind

1. Notice the “not yet” voice — and don’t automatically believe it. When the inner critic says not quite ready, a little more first, notice that you are putting on the brakes. Then look for the small signs of growth – the evidence that you are in the midst of getting ready. Ask yourself, what could a brave next step look like?

2. Do the yes/no audit. Look at your week. Find one yes that was actually a no. You don’t have to act on it yet — just notice it honestly. Naming the pattern is the first act of courage. You can’t change what you can’t see.

3. Try the “best friend” reframe. When something goes wrong or you’re being hard on yourself, place a hand on your heart and ask: what would I say to someone I love who felt this way right now? Then speak to yourself in that “best friend” voice..

4. Make one act of self-tending non-negotiable — starting today. Not earned. Not contingent on getting everything else done first. One thing — a proper meal, a walk, eight hours of sleep, ten minutes of stillness — that you give to yourself because you matter. Not as a reward. As a right.

5. Ask yourself the question you’ve been avoiding. What am I yearning for? Write it down. You don’t have to act on it yet. But you need to invite the answer — because you can’t go after a life you haven’t admitted you want.

6. Build your evidence. At the end of today, write down one thing you did that took courage. A hard conversation. A boundary held. A small step toward something that scared you. Register it. This is how real self-trust is built — not through affirmations, but through noticing what you actually do and letting it count.

If this is landing

The answer isn’t to stop caring. It’s to finally turn toward yourself with the same courage and compassion you’ve been giving to everyone else.

That is what getting brave and getting kind with yourself actually means.

If you’re ready to put down your Atlas Stone — I’d love to talk.

That’s what BRAVEKind is built for.

Heather Bailey is the founder of BRAVEKind — coaching and community for deeply capable women learning to get brave and get kind — with themselves — so they can step boldly into what’s next.

THE STEADY — ISSUE 02 Field notes for wholehearted leaders

I'm developing an allergy to "resilience."

There. I said it.

Not because resilience isn't real, or because wellbeing doesn't matter. But because I keep watching organisations pour money into programmes, workshops, apps and initiatives — and quietly ignore the thing that's actually making their people unwell.

The leadership.

You can't wellness your way out of a leadership problem. Resilience is not a substitute for safety. And no amount of fruit in the kitchen undoes the damage of a leader operating from fear, ego or chronic stress — often without even knowing it.

But here's what I want to talk about this issue. Not the problem. The level beneath it.

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The idea: Embodied leadership — values you live, not laminate

Most leadership development works from the outside in. Better communication skills. Stronger strategic thinking. More effective feedback frameworks.

These things have their place. But they sit on top of something. And if that something isn't steady, we're essentially painting the walls of a house with shaky foundations.

The leaders I most admire — and the ones whose teams genuinely thrive — aren't the most polished or the most impressive in a room. They're the ones where what you see is what you get. Where their values aren't on a wall, they're in the room with them. Where the way they treat themselves is reflected in the way they treat their people.

They don't perform composure while privately unravelling. They've done enough inner work to actually be steady — and the difference is felt by everyone around them.

This is what I call embodied leadership. And it can't be bolted on through a better morning routine or a new communication model.

It's reset from the inside.

At the nervous system level. The self-awareness level. The level where you stop white-knuckling your way through difficult conversations and start meeting them with genuine curiosity. Where your boundaries come from values rather than exhaustion. Where you stop tolerating the gap between who you know you are and how you actually show up under pressure.

When leaders do this work, something changes in the whole system around them.

They don't just talk about psychological safety — they create it, because they're not threatening to anyone. They don't just put wellbeing on the agenda — they reward it, genuinely, because they've learned to value it in themselves. They don't perform their values — they embody them, because those values are no longer in tension with how they're actually operating.

That's not soft leadership. That's the most sophisticated leadership there is.

Try this week: The values gap check

Here's a quiet but revealing practice.

Think of one value you hold as a leader — something you'd name if someone asked. Courage. Kindness. Integrity. Choose the one that matters most to you right now.

Then ask yourself honestly:

In the last week, where did I live this value — and where did I not?

Not to judge yourself. Not to add to the pile of things you're getting wrong. Just to notice. Because the gap between our stated values and our lived experience is always information. It usually points directly at where the pressure is, where the fear is, or where we've been running on empty.

That gap is where the real work is.

And closing it — even a little — is what embodied leadership actually looks like in practice.

The Values Gap self-reflection tool

A quiet invitation

If this issue landed somewhere real for you, it might be time for a conversation.

Leadership Mentoring is a thinking partnership for leaders ready to do the deeper work — not just lead better, but lead from a place that's genuinely sustainable and true to who they are.

If you’ve gotten this as an email, just hit reply - I read everything. (Or reach out on heather.bailey@thinkfresh.nz)

Warmly, Heather

When we thrive, the mission thrives too.

Welcome to The Steady

The Steady is a fortnightly letter — a short one, by design — for leaders in values-led organisations. Government. NGOs. Health. Community. The places where the work is meaningful and the load is heavy, and the people at the helm tend to be the ones quietly skipping lunch.

Each issue will be the same simple shape:

•      One idea worth sitting with

•      One thing to try this week

•      A quiet invitation if you want to go deeper

That is it. No hustle, no hacks, no ten-things-highly-effective-leaders-do. Just a steady companion for the work of leading well, and staying well while you do it.

The Idea: Lead from overflow, not overwhelm

Here is the thing about running on empty: it does not just make us tired. It makes us worse at our jobs.

When your nervous system is in sustained stress — the low-grade, weeks-and-months kind that most leaders I work with have normalised — your body prioritises survival. It is brilliant at this. Blood moves to the large muscles. Cortisol sharpens your attention to threats. Your prefrontal cortex, the part that does nuanced thinking, dials down.

Which is exactly the opposite of what leadership asks of you.

Leadership asks for discernment. For empathy. For the patience to ask a second question before jumping to a solution. For the creative problem-solving that sees a third option when everyone else is stuck between two. None of these are available to a nervous system that thinks it is being chased by a tiger.

So when we push through — when we skip the walk, work through the lunch, answer the email at 10pm — we are not being more dedicated. We are quietly becoming less capable of the exact leadership our teams need from us.

This is the reframe I want to offer, and it is the idea everything else in The Steady will build on:

Reframe self-care

The small acts of self-tending — the proper breakfast, the ten-minute walk, the hard no to the 5pm meeting — are not distractions from your leadership. They ARE your leadership. They are what allows you to show up on Tuesday morning with the clarity and kindness that your team, your clients, and your own integrity deserve.

Leading from overflow means there is something in the cup to give. Leading from overwhelm means scraping the bottom of a cup that has been empty for months, and wondering why everything feels harder than it should.

Most of the leaders I work with are not short on commitment. They are short on a way to sustain it.

Try this week: The Energy Audit

Notice what gives you energy, and what drains it

Here is the small experiment. It takes about two minutes a day for three days.

At the end of the day — on your commute home, or before you close your laptop — write down two things:

•      What gave me energy today?

•      What drained me today?

That is the whole practice. Do not try to change anything yet. Do not problem-solve. Do not make a spreadsheet.

Just notice.

By the third day, patterns start to show up. You will see which meetings leave you lighter and which ones leave you flattened. Which interactions restore you. Which ones you brace for. You will probably notice something that surprises you — something you thought was fine, that actually isn’t, or something small you had dismissed, that is quietly keeping you going.

That noticing is the beginning. It is the data your leadership is currently running without.

One more thing: if nothing ended up in the “gave me energy” column on a given day, that is important information too. Do not rush past it.

A quiet invitation

If this issue found its way to you at the right moment, you might be curious about going deeper.

Leadership Mentoring offers a trusted thinking partnership for leaders in complex roles to grow their leadership capacity. You will grow your confidence and steadiness with new skills and ways of thinking and relating.

The Wholehearted Leadership Programme is a six-session programme for teams in values-led organisations who want to lead with more clarity, courage and sustainability — without sacrificing the parts of themselves that got them into this work in the first place.

If you would like to know more, just hit reply. I read everything.

Warmly,

Heather

When we thrive, the mission thrives too