Burnout, ADHD, and Why Productivity Is Breaking Us with Haley Scruggs
If you have ever found yourself high functioning on the outside while quietly unraveling on the inside, this conversation invites you into a more honest understanding of burnout, productivity, and the intelligence of the body. It is for the woman or man who knows how to perform, achieve, and carry responsibility at a high level, yet feels a growing sense that something in the system is no longer working. Not because you are broken, but because you have been overriding yourself for too long.
So many people have been taught to measure their worth through output. Through responsiveness. Through how much they can carry without collapsing. We normalize exhaustion. We normalize anxiety. We normalize waking up already braced for the day. Somewhere along the way, productivity stops being a tool and becomes an identity. And when that identity begins to crack, the body often speaks first.
This conversation opens a doorway into a different question. Not “What is wrong with me?” but “What is my body trying to tell me?”
In this episode, Erin sits down with coach and former recruiter Haley Scruggs to explore what happens when high performance, ADHD, and chronic stress collide inside a culture that rewards over-functioning and ignores the nervous system entirely. Haley shares her personal breaking point, a period marked by extreme burnout, panic, physical symptoms, and a deep fear that something was fundamentally wrong with her mind. What emerged instead was a clearer truth. Her body was not malfunctioning. It was signaling.
The Body As The Loudest Signal
As the conversation unfolds, we examine how burnout rarely arrives out of nowhere. It builds quietly, beneath ambition and responsibility, fueled by beliefs that tie worth to productivity and safety to constant availability. Haley speaks candidly about how her work environment, combined with internalized pressure to prove herself, pushed her nervous system past its capacity. Insomnia, anxiety, vocal tics, and physical illness were not random events. They were messages.
Erin reflects on this through her own lived experience and the MetaBusiness lens, where the body is understood not as an obstacle to success, but as an essential source of information. We discuss how so many people move from doctor to doctor, diagnosis to diagnosis, seeking relief without ever being taught how to listen inwardly. Medication, labels, and coping strategies can be useful, but when they are used to override rather than understand, the root cause remains untouched.
Burnout, ADHD, And The Productivity Trap
A central thread of this episode is the way ADHD and high performance often coexist in environments that quietly exploit both. We explore how hyper-focus, over-responsibility, and the drive to be indispensable can look like excellence on the surface while eroding health beneath it. Checking messages compulsively. Never fully resting. Measuring safety through responsiveness. These patterns are rarely about discipline. They are about worthiness.
Haley shares how many of her clients experience the same cycle. Burnout is treated as a time management problem, when in reality it is a belief problem. Boundaries fail not because people are weak, but because the identity underneath still believes rest must be earned and value must be proven.
The Shift From Fixing To Listening
One of the most important reframes in this conversation is the move away from self-criticism and toward curiosity. Instead of asking why you cannot handle more, the question becomes what your system actually needs. Instead of forcing another routine, another strategy, another optimization, the invitation is to pause and observe where your energy is leaking and where it is being restored.
This is not a conversation about quitting your job or abandoning ambition. It is an invitation to redefine success in a way that includes the body, the nervous system, and the long arc of sustainability. We talk about how true alignment does not remove effort, but it removes unnecessary suffering. How success built through self-abandonment always comes with a hidden cost. And how listening earlier can prevent the kind of breakdown that forces change later.
What This Conversation Offers You
If you recognize yourself in this episode, if you have ever felt confused by your own exhaustion or ashamed of needing rest, know that nothing has gone wrong. Your system may simply be asking for a different way of relating to work, worth, and self-trust.
This conversation does not offer a quick fix. It offers a deeper orientation. One that honors the wisdom of the body, the reality of neurodivergence, and the possibility of building a life and career that do not require constant self-override.
It is for the person who is tired of surviving on adrenaline. For the high performer whose body has started to whisper, and then shout. For anyone ready to stop proving and start listening.
Because burnout is not the end of your capacity. It is the beginning of a more honest relationship with yourself.
Let’s stay connected! If this conversation resonated with you, make sure to follow along on Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts for more episodes that blend Sol, strategy, and healing. Your support helps us spread these messages even further, and I’d love to keep this journey going with you.