Outsmart Burnout: The Podcast for High-Achieving Women with Dr. Zarya Rubin

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The Burden of Being "The Strong One" - with Dr. Nikia Smith

August 05, 2026

Dr. Nikia Smith, board-certified anesthesiologist and founder of She Is Fire Forged, has burned out in medicine not once, but twice — and lived to build a framework for catching it earlier the second time. She and Dr. Zarya dig into the invisible "third shift" (the mental load of kinkeeping that goes beyond housework), the specific toll of being a Black woman in medicine, and why rest without guilt is a skill you have to relearn. It's a candid, funny, and sharply honest conversation for anyon...

The Pattern That Kept You Safe Is The Pattern That's Keeping You Stuck - with Anik Malenfant

July 29, 2026

What if burnout isn't about doing too much, but about invisible subconscious patterns running the show? Anik Malenfant — a former corporate finance branch manager turned inner work strategist — joins Dr. Zarya to unpack how the coping patterns that once kept us safe are often the very things keeping us stuck, exhausted, and stalled beneath an invisible ceiling. They dig into brainwave states, the biology of stress addiction, and why identity itself can become the thing high achievers protect ...

The Bridge to Calm: How Movement Regulates the Nervous System - with Lisa Danahy

July 22, 2026

Lisa Danahy spent years in corporate HR at a law firm, living in a state of hypervigilance she didn't have language for — until her body and her family life forced a reckoning. In this episode, she joins Dr. Zarya to trace her path from corporate burnout to 20 years running an early learning program to founding the nonprofit Create Calm, and to unpack the idea at the center of her book, Creating Calm in Your Classroom: the adult in the room has to regulate first.Lisa and Dr. Zarya go beyond t...