About Rachel

Hello - I'm Rachel

I help people who care deeply about their work stop carrying the weight of everyone and everything - so they can work happier and beat burnout without having to walk away from a job that matters to them.

If you’ve ever thought, “If I don’t do it, who else will?” – you’re in the right place.

You Are Not a Frog

You’ll know the old story: drop a frog into a pan of hot water and it leaps straight out. But put it in cold water and warm it up slowly, and it sits there until it’s too late.

That’s how burnout creeps up on capable, conscientious people. The hours get longer, the load gets heavier, the sense that all the responsibility should land on you becomes normal and you stop noticing – until one day you’re running on empty and can’t remember when it first started.

I talk a lot about doctors and healthcare professionals, because they are the extreme example of this – the stakes are high, the consequences are real, so saying no can feel impossible. But this was never really about one profession. It’s about the pattern.

Whether you’re a clinician, a lawyer, a teacher, a leader, or anyone who’s been trained to be the responsible one, if work matters to you and you can’t seem to put it down, or draw boundaries around your time and work, this is for you.

You are not a frog. You don’t have to boil alive, and you don’t have to leap out of a career you love. There are deliberate choices you can make to feel calmer, protect your time, and enjoy your work again – without waiting for the whole system to change first.

My Story

I know what it’s like to feel one crisis away from not coping.

I spent over 20 years as an NHS GP. I loved the work and I was good at it – and I was also exhausted, over-responsible, and convinced that if I didn’t hold everything together, it would all fall apart. So I retrained as a coach, started this podcast, and built a business helping other people beat burnout.

And then I discovered something that changed everything I teach: I still couldn’t do it all myself. I had all the tools, I taught them to thousands of people – and I’d still go home and carry the weight of everyone and everything, unable to put it down.

That’s when it clicked. The problem was never a lack of knowledge, or willpower, or resilience.

It’s that high achievers have been conditioned to automatically pick up responsibility for everyone and everything – including the things they can’t control and were never theirs to carry. I call this the Responsibility Trap. And most wellbeing advice doesn’t touch it, because wellbeing is an outcome of having enough time and headspace – not something you can fit into an already impossible to-do list.

The work I do now – on the podcast, in our live training and online courses, and on stage – is about helping people understand how their identity, and the underlying patterns of over-responsibility, people pleasing and perfectionism are really driving their overwhelm, so they can protect their time and care deeply without carrying it all.

Because here’s what I most want you to know: you are worth it, even if you never did another day’s work in your life.

About The Podcast

You Are Not a Frog is where it all started – a weekly conversation for people in high-stakes, high-pressure roles who feel responsible for everyone and everything, and have forgotten they’re allowed to have limits.

We go deep on the things that actually keep people stuck – fear, guilt, shame, identity, conflict, boundaries, confidence – with a lot of warmth and a fair bit of laughter along the way. Over a million downloads later, it still has the same idea at its heart: you don’t have to burn out to do work that matters.

A little more about me

Beyond the podcast, I’m a Course Creator, Trainer, Executive and Team coach, and the Creator of the Shapes Toolkit® Over the years I’ve been on Faculty at the University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, co-authored and presented Red Whale’s national Lead, Manage, Thrive! course, and worked with organisations across healthcare and beyond.

I also speak. If you’re looking for a keynote speaker for a conference, leadership event or away-day, you can find my talks and speaker pack below.