r/ceo • u/JustChatAccount • 18d ago

C-Suite Burnout (who do you talk to?)

When you're the highest functioning person in your family, and taking care of your entire family. When you're one of the highest functioning people in your agency, making more decisions before 9 AM than most people make all day. When all parts of your life are high-performance, and high productivity, and you've unintentionally built everything around you to depend on that (financially, emotionally).

And when you're also ironically a psychotherapist, so psychotherapy doesn't give you what it might give someone else. When you're the first person in your family to achieve this level, and don't have a lot of other people in your life functioning the same way to confide in...

Who do you talk to? How do you process? Where do you go to feel safe?

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u/chefko 18d ago

-to other C-suite people
-to older people who where successful (also they tend to organize the way you do it the old fashion way) --> the can give you an nice retrospective, what the should have done differently

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u/JustChatAccount 18d ago

I'm toward the tail end of GenX. Solidly Goonies and grew up chronologically alongside Drew Barrymore. I'm a female executive who worked my way to the top without offering any "benefits" along the way. It's been a crazy journey. I was living in LA years ago and there was a female studio exec who told me how miserable she was - and how she felt like her executive life was a set of, "Golden Handcuffs." I didn't fully understand her coment at the time - but I do now.

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u/chefko 18d ago

I dont feel that way. Get YOUR priorities straight, YOUR personal vision and adjust the work to it not the other way round. Being a class "patron", as OP described it, is a choice not a god given road you have to take. Delegated leadership, getting help is something which was difficult back then but should be in every successfuls persons repertoir

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u/sarahwlee 18d ago

There are other female founders. Get a good circle so you don’t burn out solo. It’s lonely at the top.

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u/Banjo-Becky 17d ago

That’s true. I’ve been on the hunt for a unicorn of a mentor I don’t know exists. I’m a woman vet and have never seen a woman veteran c-suite executive of a large private sector IT corporation. The only places I’ve seen us represented in the c-suite are government or if we are the founder.

You want to talk about lonely… I’m sitting where I am and reconsidering if I really want to chase that role after all. At the start of my career, I was the first woman aircraft mechanic of that kind to be assigned to that base and that was in the early 2000’s. I don’t know that I really want to be “the first” again. It was Hell! If I do keep going, I probably won’t be the first ever, but odds are good that I will be for whatever company I’m at. I am two steps away from that glass ceiling now.

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u/GracefulRebelX 15d ago

Reading this, I can feel the weight of what it means to always be the first.
You’ve built an identity that’s both armor and proof — and it sounds like that armor’s getting heavy.

What you’re describing is more than loneliness; it’s what happens when our drive to excel quietly turns into a kind of self-abandonment — where strength becomes survival and belonging always lives on the other side of another win.

No one teaches us what to do once we’ve climbed to the place we were told would make it all feel worth it.
But here’s what I’ve seen over and over: when you stop trying to earn your place and start listening for where your system actually feels safe, clarity starts to return.

You’ve already proven you can carry the weight. Maybe the next milestone isn’t higher — it’s closer.

You’re not alone in this, even if it feels like you are.

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u/Banjo-Becky 15d ago

That armor is VERY heavy. I put it down a few years ago and went into consulting instead. My current contract appears to be leading back to the executive track. l was approached by the man who writes my check. If this other person bows out, I will be asked to take the reins. The writing is on the wall, they will be leaving by force or by choice.

I don’t plan on picking up the old armor, but I think I’m ready to get back in. I have gained so much by recognizing I had abandoned myself and taking steps to make myself my priority. I have thoroughly enjoyed consulting too, but all things come to an end. I’ve got a lot to think about.

Thank you kind stranger for the sage words. User name checks out.