When Leadership Drains Every Fiber of Your Being
Finding your way through depletion: how radical acceptance and real self-care became my survival strategy.
There’s a particular kind of depletion that happens when you’re leading without the right support around you. When the environment is unstructured, accountability is missing, and you’re holding everything together for everyone else, something inside you quietly starts to hollow out. You show up. You keep showing up. But at some point, you realize you’ve been showing up as a shell of yourself—and no one around you has noticed.
People love to say: If the environment is that bad, just leave. Find a new job. And yes, ultimately, that’s true.
But it’s not that simple, and I think we all know it. The job market is brutal right now. Leaving isn’t always an option you can act on immediately, no matter how much you want to. So in the meantime, you have to figure out how to survive the environment you’re in while you work toward something better.
That’s where I found myself. And what got me through were two things: mindset and real self-care—not the kind that gets sold to you, but the raw, unglamorous kind that actually makes a difference.
On mindset — and I’m not talking about drinking the Kool-Aid
I’m not suggesting you abandon your values, pretend things are fine, or convince yourself that a difficult environment is secretly good for you. That’s not what I mean.
What I mean is radical acceptance. I accepted that these were my circumstances—right now, not forever. I accepted that time was going to pass either way. And once I accepted that, I had a choice about what to do with that time. I could continue carrying the weight of it, staying stuck in the misery of what I couldn’t control, watching the days pass without anything changing. Or I could put my energy toward the things that were actually within my reach.
I chose the second one. Not perfectly, not all at once—but I chose it.
On self-care — the version that actually works
I started with food. Not because I had a plan or a program—just because it was something I could touch. I didn’t overhaul everything overnight. I started adding things instead of taking things away: more fruit, more vegetables, swapping regular pasta for chickpea or whole wheat. Small enough that it didn’t feel like deprivation—just like I was slowly adding something better in.
When that felt stable, I removed something: added sugar, mostly. And over time, it got easier—not because I had more willpower, but because I wasn’t shocking my system. I was building something sustainable instead of forcing something dramatic.
I followed the same approach with nervous system regulation—one thing at a time, starting with whatever felt most accessible. For me, that looked like:
- Movement and body-based practices — breathwork, meditation, walking, or dancing around my living room when nothing else felt possible.
- Creative and restorative outlets — painting, reading, writing, scrapbooking, putting LEGO sets together.
- Basic self-tending — showering, brushing my teeth, lotion, nail care, and positive self-talk. Things that sound almost too small to mention, but that matter enormously when you’re depleted.
- Career-focused actions — reworking my résumé, updating my cover letter, researching companies that actually aligned with my values, and taking continuing education courses.
- Therapy. Always therapy.
None of these things fixed the environment I was in, because that wasn’t their purpose. They were meant to keep me intact while I worked toward something better.
The thread running through all of it was the same: focus on what’s within your control.
You can’t always change where you are right now. But you can change what you do while you’re there—and that, over time, is what changes your circumstances.
That’s what I did. It wasn’t clean or linear. But it worked.
Where are you putting your energy right now—toward what you can’t control, or toward what you can?
