Fractured ribs.
Autoimmune illness.
Half her savings — gone. Fraudulent startup.
Expensive executive coaches who changed nothing.
Clothes she never wore. Business ideas she never started.
Stuff in every corner. Can’t sleep. Can’t think.
“I cannot recognize my place.”
“I try to organize a part, and it’s completely scattered the next day.”
That sums up an email I got from a reader last week.
BUT A FEW YEARS AGO?
None of this was happening. In fact, everything in her life was awesome.
Last week I told you about the cascade up. Seven kids. Immaculate playroom. One success leading to another.
This is the cascade down.
Get in the DeLorean. We’re going back to see how all this happened.
WHEN EVERYTHING WORKED
“I knew where everything was. I hosted fun dinner parties and loved having people over. They could come at any time.”
She did the whole KonMari thing.
She read the book. Followed the method. Organized every drawer, every closet, every corner.
And it worked.
(If you missed it: the KonMari method is where you hold each item and ask if it “sparks joy.” I got through half a drawer before giving up and eating my kids’ cheese strings straight from the fridge.)
She was a woman in New York, a tech executive, taking care of her mother. Her life was busy. And believe it or not, her apartment was calm.
Before 2022, she’d taken a three-year sabbatical. Started a podcast. Worked on creative projects she’d always dreamed of.
“I was the happiest and having the most fun I ever did in my life.”
Less money. More alive.
Then her mother and sisters started ringing in her ears. Every day. Very supportive stuff like: “You’re throwing away a 15-year corporate career.”
So she went back.
WHEN IT ALL FELL APART
“After I went back to work in 2022, the job became a nightmare.”
“I completely put my soul in the job and clearly lost my soul and myself.”
She burned out completely. “I didn’t even know that was a real medical diagnosis.” Her body started keeping score. Autoimmune illness. PTSD from the job. Barely sleeping.
She splurged a lot of her paycheck on fancy executive coaches. “I didn’t feel capable, but none of them actually helped me on the job.” Thousands of dollars. Zero change.
Here’s something most people don’t know: burnout doesn’t just make you tired. It literally impairs the part of your brain that weighs consequences. The prefrontal cortex. The part that’s supposed to say “Wait, you don’t need another $3,000 course. You need a nap.”
When you’re depleted, your brain stops asking “is this a good idea?” and starts saying “I’ll figure out the money part later.”
That’s neuroscience.
And then — as if to make the metaphor painfully literal — she fell down the stairs at home. Fractured her ribs.
“I think that’s when my place began getting out of control.”
For two months she couldn’t move. While everything else kept piling up.
AND THEN IT GOT WORSE
Somewhere in the blur, she put more than half her savings into a startup investment.
The kind of opportunity that sounds amazing when you’re running on fumes and desperate for a way out. The kind you’d never touch if you were sleeping.
Two weeks later, she lost her job.
FIVE MONTHS after that, she finally looked at the contract.
“It’s not a contract I would never ever ever have agreed to. I lost the money, and the company seems fraudulent.”
That’s burnout making decisions on your behalf. It happens to the sharpest people I know. And burnout never reads the fine print.
WHAT WAS UNDERNEATH ALL OF IT?
“All the business ideas I started but never continued, and all the dumb investments I made, were all for one purpose, which was to make enough money so I never had to go back to work anymore.”
She was trying to buy her way out of the trap.
But the trap was exhaustion. And exhaustion doesn’t read contracts. Doesn’t think clearly. Doesn’t protect you from yourself.
The spending is never just spending. It’s trying to fix a feeling. Trying to fill something. Trying to buy your way to a version of yourself who has it together.
And the thing that makes it lonelier: Being a high-performer doesn’t protect you from a cascade. It just makes you more ashamed when it happens.
WHY THIS WAS SO HARD TO WRITE
It’s past 8 pm. I’m still in my office. The shadows from the trees are getting long. I’ve been writing this for hours, and it goes out in 39 minutes. This was one of the hardest pieces I’ve ever written.
Because here’s the thing.
She asked me to share her story. To warn people about burnout. To let them see what can happen when you push too hard for too long.
And I wanted to honor that.
But I’m not just a messenger. I’m a financial coach. My job isn’t just to show you the pit — it’s to show you the way back out.
Because warnings without hope just become another reason to freeze. Another confirmation that you’re too far gone to bother trying.
So I kept asking myself: How do I tell this story without leaving you stuck in it?
WHERE THE YOU TURN COMES
Here’s what I’ve noticed about every success story I’ve ever heard: They all have a dark chapter. The climb out always starts in the pit.
We all know the stories:
- Steve Jobs — fired from Apple. Devastated. Later called it the best thing that ever happened to him.
- Brené Brown — breakdown mid-research. She called it a “spiritual awakening.” Her therapist called it a breakdown.
- J.K. Rowling — welfare, depression, 12 rejections. Wrote Harry Potter in cafés because she couldn’t afford heat.
You won’t find these next ones in People Magazine. 🤢 But they’re the ones that keep me doing this work. Real stories of financial redemption — people who trusted me with their before and after:
- Kari — stuck for years, transformed her entire financial life because of one question.
- A client who banked $70,000 by 17 — a natural saver. Then a marriage where she lost herself. It took years to come back. But she did.
- A professional organizer with seven kids and a playroom that looked like a magazine. Except she told me she was naturally a mess. She started with her body. One win. And the rest followed.
The climb out always starts somewhere.
The cascade goes both ways: down, yes. But also up. And the turn is almost always quieter than you’d expect. No fanfare. No dramatic moment. Just one small thing that starts the shift.
TO THE ONE WHO SENT ME THIS EMAIL
I know you’re reading.
Thank you for trusting me with your story.
You asked me to share it so others could see what can happen when you get burned out. But I think you also needed someone to tell you this makes sense.
It makes sense.
Not in a way that lets you off the hook. But in a way that makes it workable. In a way that makes the next step visible.
The fact that you wrote it down, that you asked me to share it — that’s already the beginning. That’s the small shift.
The cascade up is coming.
And when it does, I want to hear about it. So does everyone reading this. 💛
Avraham
Your Financial Coach
P.S. Are you heading somewhere you don’t want to go? The cascade doesn’t have to keep going down. It can turn. Hit reply to this email and tell me what’s going on. That could be the pivot to cascade back up.
Comments are closed.