Heather Laing ran a company-wide layoff the same day her son was admitted to a pediatric psychiatric unit. She was eligible for FMLA. She didn't take it. That story is the center of everything she's building now.

Bridget Carney has seen burnout from every angle — as a family member of first responders, a former Fortune 25 executive, and a therapist who knows that being trauma-informed and being culturally competent are not the same thing. Her advice for everyone: say the hard thing out loud.

Tom O'Reilly has burned out in law school, in tech, and in a nervous system that was never built for either. He talks about what ADHD actually looks like from the inside — and why the problem is structural, not personal.

There's a version of burnout that hides inside competence. As a licensed clinical social worker and former tech startup insider, I developed the SYSTEMS Framework™ — a 7-part burnout prevention model built from lived experience and clinical practice. This episode breaks down every component and how to actually implement it in your daily life.

Charity O'Reilly is a trauma therapist, practice owner, and author with over 20 years of experience specializing in complex PTSD. She runs an intensive therapy retreat practice and helps high achievers understand why leaving a bad situation isn't always enough — and what actually breaks the cycle.

Dr. Mickey Fitch Collins — human skills facilitator at Learnit and doctoral researcher who spent years interviewing middle managers about their lived experiences — to talk about what her research actually found, why the burnout hiding in that layer is so hard to see, and what one practical tool can help any high achiever start to draw a real line between work and the rest of their life.

Integrations engineer Nischal Rana joins Systems Check to talk burnout in DevOps culture — why the grind gets normalized, what it really costs over time, and the one mindset shift that changes everything: stop optimizing for your best days and start building for your average ones.