Nervous System Regulation: Why High Performers Burn Out with Megan McDonald

Nervous system regulation is the missing piece in every burnout recovery conversation, and Soma Q founder Megan McDonald is here to change that.

Megan McDonald spent 13 years as a healthcare technology executive leading through chaos while her own nervous system was quietly collapsing. An emergency hysterectomy, a skin cancer diagnosis, and a health crisis she almost did not survive forced her into the work she now teaches every day. In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Megan joins Natalie Davis and Pamela Cass to break down why high performers burn out, what is happening in the body when stress goes unprocessed, and why the traditional wellness playbook is no longer enough.

Megan introduces the science of somatic intelligence, what she calls SQ, and makes the case that IQ and emotional intelligence are incomplete without nervous system literacy. She traces her own story from a childhood trauma she never told her parents about, through years of workplace bullying, to building a survival identity rooted in masculine energy and relentless proving. She explains how that pattern, while effective in the short term, ultimately produces the exact burnout it was designed to prevent.

This conversation is direct, grounded, and packed with real-world application. You will not find motivational language here. You will find science, lived experience, and a clear framework for understanding why your body is doing what it is doing.

In This Episode:

• Why nervous system dysregulation is the root cause of burnout in high performers, not a symptom
• How unprocessed stress from childhood and workplace trauma creates the patterns that drive overachievement and eventual collapse
• What productivity culture costs your body and why slowing down feels threatening when you are most depleted
• The difference between being tired and being depleted, and why that distinction changes everything
• Why somatic intelligence, SQ, belongs alongside IQ and emotional intelligence in every high performance model

Megan McDonald is the founder and CEO of Soma Q, a neuroscience-informed leadership company. She holds certifications in nervous system regulation, somatic intelligence, and embodied leadership, and works with executives, healthcare professionals, and elite performers. You can connect with Megan and learn more about Soma Q.

Connect with Reignite Resilience: 

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Join us June 27 and 28 for the Reignite Live Mid-Year Success Summit, a virtual event running 9 to 3 Mountain Time. Megan McDonald is one of our featured speakers. 

The Quiet Gift: A Journey of Self Worth and Resilience is now available for download as an audible.  Check it out!

Transcript

0:06

All of us reach a point in time where we are depleted and need to somehow find a way to reignite the fire within. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience, where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. We'll discuss the art of reigniting our passion and strategies to stoke our enthusiasm. And now here are your hosts, Natalie Davis and Pamela Cass. Welcome back to another episode of the Reignite Resilience Podcast. I am your co-host, Natalie Davis, and I'm so excited to be back with all of you. And joining me, of course, is your co-host, Pam Cass. Hello, Pam. How are you? I am good, and I'm just wrestling if I tell you this funny story that just recently happened because you know how between our podcast interviews, I always have some. There's all life that's living. Is this outside of the delivery? There's more. And there's more. So um two weekends ago, I was going to go down to Manateo Springs to do the incline. Yes. On a Sunday. And I was super excited about it. So Saturday night, we're like, oh, let's figure out where we need to park, blah, blah, blah. And we get on, and you're like, oh, you need a reservation for this specific time. And I was like, well, shoot. And then there wasn't anything until like late in the day. So we're like, all right, whatever, we won't do that. So we decided to go to Longmont to the cheese importer. Have you been there? Yes. It is fabulous. Yes, I love it. Yeah. So we went there. There were two of us. We went there and there's a refrigerated section that is like going into a deep freeze. And I had like a short sleeve shirt on. So we opened the door. I'm like, is it a cold in there? And he's like, yeah. And I was like, you know, I'll I'll just be out here. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go in there. And then I noticed he goes in, there's these down coats that you can borrow to go in. And so I put a coat on and I proceeded to go in. My friend was standing on this wall of cheese, and I walk up to him next to him, and there is a package of crumpets, which I will honestly tell you, I didn't know what crumpets actually were. I thought they were like a biscuit or something. And so he stayed, he doesn't see me. I go up and I squeeze the thing of crumpets, and I was like, you know, one of my friends, her safe word is crumpets. And he just walks away. And I'm like, okay, well, that was weird, whatever. And didn't think anything of it. Spent the day there. We went to got coffee in Longmont, get back to Fort Collins. We're sitting at my counter. He's eating cheese, and he's like, gosh, it was so weird. While we were at that cheese place, this random woman walked up and said her friend's safe word is crumpets. And I looked at him like, dude, that was me. And he's like, what? And I'm like, how did you not know that was me? And I was like, I don't know, you had the jacket on. I didn't, I just saw your hand. I was like, you don't know my voice. So anyway. You shouldn't have said anything. Cause like, what great story to have when forever, like, oh, I got randomly approached in the cheese fridge like that. I'm just thinking to myself, he had been carrying that for like the last four hours, not knowing, thinking that just some random person came up and told him about somebody's new crumpets. Did he inquire further or did you that was it? I just I was like, dude, how did you not know that that was I feel just me personally, if someone were to come up to me and make a statement like that, that requires eye contact. Like I'm the looking person that is choosing to say this to me in this moment. That's what I said. I was like, I would have at least turned and said, who is this person that's saying weird things? Yes. Oh my god. That's hilarious. I love that. That's a good one. You know the friend, Natalie. So I do she was part of our girl group community. I I know the safe word friend. Yes, I do. That's what I meant. That's what I meant. That's what I'm saying. I know the safe word person that will forever be ingrained in my mind. Forever. And that story will forever be in my mind because I have not thought about that. But then when I say I'm like, oh, this is what a crumpet is. They're like an English muffin. Yeah. So I digress. So Pam, I feel like you should start to just jot these down and make them little snippets because the things that happen. I mean, anyways, the things that happen in your life. I'm a doctor and I there's always a laugh. There's always a hilarious thing. I swear, like between our podcasts, there's always some point that you make. Always something. Next time we'll talk about the delivery. So that's a whole that will be, yes, because we'll have some progression after I'm excited to hear about it because that's going to be an interesting piece. Anyway. For today. To be continued. All right. Well, I am so excited because I have a dear friend that is our guest today. And I actually got to spend 30 minutes with her yesterday because she does a weekly reset. And it was so needed on that day because my daughter and I have a new rental property, and we've just been having some situations that's been causing my nervous system to be hyper stressed right now. And so it was a perfect thing for the middle of the day. And I know she's going to tell us a little bit more about it today, but let me introduce our guest today. So today we have Megan McDonald. She is the founder and CEO of Soma Q, a neuroscience-informed leadership company helping high-performing leaders reclaim their energy, clarity, and joy before burnout cost them everything. After 13 years as a healthcare technology executive, she became an expert at leading through chaos and complexity while her own nervous system was quietly collapsing. Burnout, chronic stress, and life-altering health crisis forced her into a very the very work she is now doing. Today, Megan helps executives, entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals, and elite performers close the gap between external success and internal depletion through nervous system regulation, somatic intelligence, and embodied leadership. Known for her blend of science, embodiment, and unapologetic truth telling, she teaches that the body isn't separate from leadership performance. It's the infrastructure underneath it. Her message is simple and disruptive. High performance should not require self-abandonment. Welcome, Megan. So excited to have you with us today. Did I write that? That's pretty good. That's good stuff. Not only is it pretty good, it's actually like who you are. So that's awesome. I mean, you know what I mean. Like all of us are in self-promotion, and sometimes you write things and you kind of forget about it. And then when you hear it, so thank you. Thank you for that. Oh I do that. Yeah. And Natalie, and I'm just thrilled to be here. Really am. This is an important, this is an important discussion. Yeah, it's a very important discussion. And so, where would you like to start that you would feel would be the most impactful for our listeners? Do you want to start kind of where you were as far as in the executive role or pre-that? Or I'd like you to kind of go where you think it's going to be. Interesting. Well, you know, as a former salesperson, so I spent my executive career in healthcare inside the health system, doing basically creating clinical programs dealing with technology. So bringing emergent care to the bedside via like Zoom back in the day when nobody really knew what Zoom was. And then I flipped over to the sales side, and that was an interesting experience. And the reason it's relevant is because I have always been someone who is of service, right? I wanted to be of service. And I think I think most everyone would like to leave a mark and operate in a way that they're somehow leaving an imprint, a legacy, right? And so for me in healthcare, that was very important to me to be able to indirectly help people. And so when he flipped over to the sales side, it was still that was interesting because I would sell into the former me's, right? The directors of telehealth, et cetera. And so you ask me where I want to start. And in my sales training, it's never always starting about me. It's always about the other, right? And my personality would also suggest I don't really necessarily want to talk about me. I'd rather just talk about how I can help you. But we're going to be disruptive today. Yes. Okay. So it started my journey in understanding how impactful working with the nervous system is. Had I known this when I was young, meaning if we have this kind of curriculum, you're going to hear some threads here for me and my heart and my passion. Ultimately, if I had all the time and the money in the world, if there's some incredible angel investor that wants to say, yes, I hear you, Megan, I'm going to give you bajillions of dollars to do this. I want to take this work and create a curriculum for the educational system so that we are teaching our youth how to deal with the external because we are always dealing with the external. And the external is always influencing the internal. So when I was five, I promised both of you that I would show it very vulnerably. And I've just over the last six months started to talk about this. But I was my sweet, innocent little self, my parents, Gen X, are go and play. We'll see you five hours later, right? And I came across some neighborhood boys, there being boys being boys, whatever. And somehow they decided to lock me in a dog pen. What I remember being a dog pen. And so our nervous systems, it's really quite extraordinary, but we're designed to survive, right? So when we experience events like that, our stress happens, right? Hormones, our endocrine system fires, and then everything starts to move in our bodies. And if we don't process through that, then our bodies learn, our nervous system learns to start being in those patterns. Okay. So that was terrifying for me. The trauma wasn't the event that happened. Trauma is really what your body, your stress response is for everybody. And, you know, we could talk about trauma all day long. I'm trauma informed, especially via breath. And some, I think this word is starting to become a little bit confusing. I think eventually trauma is gonna be probably there are gonna be layers and who knows what's gonna happen. But anyway, so this thing happens, right? And I got a clear message that I wasn't safe. And what did I do? What do you think I did? Did I go home and tell my parents? Definitely not. No. No. Why? And why do you think I didn't? Fear that you would be blamed. Right. So there's already, I mean, is that interesting? There's already this narrative, like, I did something wrong. Right. It's crazy. So we have this stress body response, right? That's just one example. And then we have this behavior, this thought, like, oh, don't tell anyone. And so, how do we start unwinding that stuff so that we are advocating for ourselves, that we are actually acting from a place of inner authority instead of external authority or the stories? So this is kind of a pretty abstract way of starting this conversation. But anywho, so what ended up happening is pretty sad, but we moved. My pay my dad was a college professor, and we moved to Maryland, and I was, we were kind of, I was in a bubble in Illinois, kind of Midwestern. And we moved to the East Coast, and it was a pretty kind of rough area where I lived. And so my school, my school system was pretty rough too. And so I moved and literally was continued to be bullied. So if you think about that five-year-old experience, that was, I mean, I'm okay, I'm fine, I've dealt with it, but like that was abusive, right? And if that had happened to you, Pam, or you, Natalie, you might not have translated that in your system the same way, right? Right? We're all unique. So somehow I have the fortune to have been bullied all through, literally elementary school. Then I changed to junior high, bullied there. First day I got to junior high school, didn't know this upper class eighth grader. I was walking down the hall and she slammed me against the lockers. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. So there's a lot here. There's what's happening internally, but there's also what's happening as a result of not being fully aligned and working with your physiology, your biology, and neurology. Because as things happen, we start to shrink down, right? And so even though as a sweet kid, there was something about me that was like a target, kind of like in the animal world, right? Yeah. So anyway, and then got to high school, worse, reprieve in college, and then dun dun dun, I get into the workforce, the corporate workforce, and the bullying started again. And so why is this happening, right? So, what did I do? So instead of shrinking and protecting, what do you think I did? You just put up a wall and became super like masculine energy. Yeah. And when we talk about masculine and feminine, you know, certainly we could talk about gender, but we're talking really more about the qualities or the archetypes of the masculine and feminine. So for sure, it was survival for me to say, yeah, well, not only am I going to need to survive because I need to put food on my table, but I'm going to prove to everybody that I'm worth something. Yep. Right. So, I mean, it's funny, it's not funny at all because this is a lot what happens, and then burnout happens because we're leading from a place of patterns that don't really belong to us. They're these antiquated patterns as a result of, you know, our physiological, biological, neurological patterns. So, what happened in, you know, kind of longer story short, is that I got this huge job. Relocated, started to really feel the impacts. Like I was having skin issues, nobody could figure them out. I call it the year of skin, I started developing a bunion. I it's kind of funny to say that. My eyesight started to deteriorate a little bit. I was completely depleted, and there's a big difference between being tired and depleted. So, what do you do when you get into those burnout phases? You don't sleep, you start introducing coping behaviors that typically are numbing. For me, it was the wine and the Netflix, usually a good combination. So you just numb it all, and then you wake up the next day, you do your thing. Do it again. Yeah. You know, so the longer that you do these things and those kind of coping strategies, it's brilliant, really. I'm not here to judge anybody. But those coping strategies, they could be working 14-hour days, did that too. So we have these connections that we're not fully aware of, right? We're making decisions that are unconscious a lot of the time. We have emotions, but we're taught to suppress. We're taught to hold, you know, and it's dangerous. It's dangerous. So this led to ultimately, I actually had I wound up in the hospital. I was a workaholic. I had an emergency hysterectomy. I ended up getting skin cancer. And there's a big, I'm gonna pause here for more questions because I could go on and on about this, but there is a massive body of work now that suggests scientifically that the emotional pain body, emotions will cause physical ailments and physical ailments can cause emotional disturbances, right? Let's say you're in a car accident, you're fine, like you're fine before the accident, you get hit, injured, and then can you imagine emotionally that it's terrifying to think, oh gosh, okay, in the car? And so your nervous system is responding to all of this in real time. So if we don't learn that this is connected, and we don't receive, learn to feel and receive the signals that we're getting from the out there, the external, then we just allow our bodies to process it and digest it and send signals the way that it wants. So wouldn't it be awesome? Like, imagine a world where you're in a really high stressful meeting and your body is starting, you're aware now, and your body's starting to tense, your stomach is clenching, right? You notice your breath, your heart rate's going up, and you can stop and interrupt yourself instead of going up to the story, like, oh no, what's gonna happen? Am I gonna say something wrong? Is this person judging me? We're all the same. We all do this all the time, right? Wouldn't it be amazing if we could interrupt that and just pause? Nobody knows what's going on, surrender to that, allow it to move through, and then come back in. You're much more present. You can perform better, you're not taking all that tension and having it being held in your system. So, anyway, that was a really long question. But I think it's such a good like story to weave to kind of show us what's brought you to where you are today. And I guarantee you that you resonated with probably 98% of the people that are listening to this podcast. Especially, I would say, and I and maybe this is just me thinking this, that in America, I really do feel like we're rewarded for the busy go, go, go, go, go, go all the time. I call that productivity culture. Yeah. And I, you know, when I look at European countries that make sure time off and breaks during the day and all this, and and we just are not wired that way in the United States. And so then we have this weird feeling when we do take time off that oh, I should be doing something. I should be doing something. I can't, I can't be sitting here doing this. I I have a confession, I guess, and maybe even an a question. One of my biggest challenges as the founder of Soma Q is to basically convert the really important serious conversation with prospective clients to actually doing the work because it's actually requiring they know, right? They know that if they continue to move down this path of destruction, right? Where their their relationships are compromised, they're snapping, they're more reactive when they come home to their children, their health is deteriorating in maybe small ways, maybe big ways. They know they need help. They go to the doctors, doctors don't really have an answer or get this a lot. My my body hurts. What's happening? So then there's a solution, but it requires you to slow down, feel. And that is hard, ladies. It's hard to do that when you are in this productivity cycle. So just know I have a ton of compassion and lived experience around that. To sit with yourself in your body and say, I'm not well, this doesn't feel good, and I need, guess what I want? I want that instant nine and wet flicks. I swear this is only positive culture. But you know, and so I think that's I just want to comment on that because I just had a conversation today with someone about productivity culture. He was sharing that he has a new job and he's like, I just, I don't know, I just feel like I'm not really contributing and it's causing me anxiety. And I'm like, but your role, you just got this massive promotion. But your role is to actually be strategic and come in with critical thinking skills. And, you know, he's like, I don't know what to do. So anyway, I'm saying a lot here, but I think question I have, you know, you both are entrepreneurs, you're doing hard things. High performers do hard things. And I want to keep them doing hard things. But in order to keep doing hard things without compromising yourself, we have to figure out how to get you to commit to yourself. Yeah. Well, and I would even say beyond the entrepreneur thing is before that, when I was working a job and had three little kids at home and was doing carpal, dinner, laundry, house. I mean, it was just this con so you don't have to be an entrepreneur to be in this space, whether you're a single parent, a single dad, a single mom, you know, fill in the blank of whatever that is. We just are that constant doing. And what I have learned over this past year, actually, it's since I've met you and been working on the practices that you've shared with me. It's when you stop and reset and get aligned, I am so much more efficient in such a shorter amount of time than I was before when I was just trying to do everything stretched super, super thin. And I actually use this one day this week because I I don't sleep great. Menopause, whatever you want to call it. But I went to bed and I had so much stuff on my mind. Normally I would have tossed and turned for an hour or not more. But I literally just lied in bed and was doing the reset and the breathing. And I did that, I fell asleep and I had a great sleep score. And that doesn't happen very often so great congratulations because you made that choice i made that choice yeah and that choice why don't we choose ourselves right well because sometimes we like to self-forget i'm speaking for a friend there there may or may not be a video that talks about that that feats your fam well yeah we self-forget but we also if think about it again you mentioned the productivity culture yeah and we do love what we do and we want to serve we want to be helpful but again you hear the proverbial you know put your your oxygen mask on first so we hear that but translating that into action that's the number one right like you know God I'm gonna go to the gym I'm gonna go and then of course you're like thank God I went to the gym I feel so much better but when there is the burnout and it's so significant and it's difficult to make decisions even because you're losing your cognitive clarity. So that's why Pam that your story of even just disrupting the mind stuff by coming into your body that's what you did. You came and you connected your nervous system and guess what happened? You quieted your mind and you were able to go to sleep. So it's really simple. But it's so simple. It's simple and I could see how powerful this would be to start at a young age even at like the elementary school age where you're helping children try to regulate their nervous system so that they don't have these patterns throughout it's a lot harder to change when you're my age when you're of a certain age you know that's interesting too because if right when younger children are bilingual or they're learning multiple languages they're picking it up like this. So yet another reason why wouldn't this be wonderful. So I just my one of my taglines is the wellness the traditional wellness playbook needs a rewrite because if we think about it you know in in my corporate experience we have lots of access I mean good on corporations for really creating these programs and pulling in you know the yoga teachers I'm a yoga I have yoga stuff I've got breasts like I'm certified to do those things and they're helpful but you can't like if you think about listen if you've got a lot of mind chatter Natalie all you need to do is just start to repeat some affirmations and just learn how to meditate and everything's gonna be great. Okay. So what happens when you go to Zoom, you know, your company, you click on the thing, you have a little meditation system and an experience and then within 15 minutes, sure, you might be able to really plug in and quiet your system into the parasympathetic nervous state which is where we should be living 80% of the time but most people like I had someone tell me yesterday I was breathing on that reset you talked about Pam, but all the lists just kept coming so this isn't just about hopping into a meditation practice or repeating affirmations every day. It is a whole system right so anyway. Well Megan I love that like as Pam talks about bringing it into like the school system and getting this in the hands of younger people because what I picked up on was from your experience and thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that. But even when we go back to the little girl that or the girl I don't know how the girl in junior high or high school that pushed you against the lockers that too is her responding to the trauma right and so yeah it's not just the shrinking it's it's the lashing out it's however it's showing up for you as that person. It's when you're not regulated. And I think that's an important thing for people to remember because the bullying in the corporate space those individuals they don't know how to regulate right and so they're having a challenge. And so it comes out in the form of attacking you where then you have to respond by saying I am worthy to be here and I'm gonna prove it to you which is not your job by the way that's not your job is to prove you're worth for being there. Obviously you're worthy of being there because you were hired into the position but we see it come out like that when you have the disconnect from regulation, it shows up in a variety of ways. So I think that's the invitation for all of the listeners you may not shrink and hide or go on to this grind hustle proof, but it's showing up one way or another if not physically definitely physiologically it's showing up for you as well. Gosh that's such an important call out Natalie because and thank you for that. And I will say this that this work actually has opened up the spaces of compassion in me for others like I never thought possible. When you are abused in multiple ways how could you possibly think that I would want to go back into the very environment and work with these corporate people that and I kind of joke am I allowed to drop like a little thing? Okay. Yes you may uh yes please go ahead okay so so because that's I'm a little irreverent I'm just gonna be honest okay but in summary some people will ask me well what do you do I said well I basically teach people how not to be assholes. Yeah I like it. Because really what's happening is they don't mean to I mean most people let's just say like broadwash they do not mean to and when there is this reactivity instead of response when there's this initial boom right to your point that girl who pushed me the girl who beat me up in high school like they're dealing with so much pain inside of themselves. And guess what happens? They need to get this out of their bodies because if they don't their bodies are gonna die. Like if that's what happens there's all this energy right has to go somewhere. So it's just interesting to think about in the animal kingdom when there is some kind of a trauma let's just say an event animals will I watch my dog do this all the time I was playing with her and I threw a toy and she hit her body into like the edge of the sofa. She was stunned for a minute and then guess what she did? Shook right she shook it. So if you're in this work and you're starting to go to you know yoga studios things like that, you're probably starting to see a little bit more of what we call somatic shaking. And that is a way to discharge this energy and this thing all of this sensory input that we are receiving in our nervous system. So isn't that interesting for your listeners like if there is some kind of an impact like an accident or something and God forbid don't want that to happen but just really good for you to actually stop for a minute get and shake like literally start shaking your body out of that impact. We can learn a lot from from our animals from the animals. Yeah yeah because your dog very well could have been like afraid of the sofa from that day forward right and not rational. Yeah see Natalie man I'm telling you I love it I love the lines that you're drawing yeah yeah so it's working with the body first and it's the body first somatic sensing is essentially the five senses so I need to become aware of what am I noticing? So can I invite you this is very organic can I invite you into a short practice right now? Yeah check in for all your listeners and if you're driving don't do it do not do that. Thank you for joining us today on the Reignite Resilience podcast. We hope you had some aha moments and learned a few new real life ideas to fuel the flames of passion. Please subscribe on your favorite streaming platform like or download your favorite episodes and of course share with your friends and family we look forward to seeing you again next time on Reignite Resilience