Women Under Pressure

When you make a defensible decision under pressure but still carry guilt, you might be dealing with moral injury. Kristen examines how female professionals process difficult workplace choices, using the story of Claire during a wildfire emergency response. She clarifies the distinction between moral distress and moral injury so you can evaluate what happened without taking on unearned blame.

Some takeaways:

• Moral conflict leaves you questioning whether your work conditions were acceptable.
• Wishing you prevented an outcome does not mean you could have.
• Living with a hard decision differs from doing something wrong.
• Get support if work experiences affect your sleep, relationships, or performance.
• Write a sentence starting with what felt wrong to me.

Still replaying a hard decision and feeling you let someone down? Join the priority list for Women Under Pressure Coaching to work through it one-on-one with Kristen.

Connect with Kristen:

🌐 Frontline Wellness Group

📋 Free High Pressure Leadership Assessment

↗️ Women Under Pressure Coaching

🎙️ Work with Kristen

📱 Instagram

Chapters:

00:00 Running On Empty

01:07 Claire's Wildfire Emergency Response

02:20 Moral Distress and Moral Injury

04:38 When Something Prevents You

05:59 The Lasting Impact of Moral Injury

07:34 Understand the Distinction

09:01 Wishing You Could Prevent an Outcome

11:40 Working Through Guilt and Grace

12:49 What Felt Wrong to Me

14:09 Coaching and Leadership Assessment

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you learn to value yourself when your workday requires holding space for everyone else's emotional burden? Kristen Plake speaks with hospice social worker Brenda Humphreys about counter-transference and what happens when a patient's story hits too close to home. Together, they unpack how internal emotional awareness and firm boundaries help you stay present without carrying work weight into your personal life.

Some takeaways:

• Assess emotional dynamics first to adjust your response to others.
• Prioritize internal emotional awareness over focusing only on external demands.
• Compartmentalize emotions intentionally to build strength instead of creating internal fog.
• Avoid betraying your own needs while trying to support everyone else.
• Ask yourself what unfinished weight you are still carrying after work.

Connect with Kristen:

🌐 Frontline Wellness Group

📋 Free High Pressure Leadership Assessment

🎙️ Work with Kristen

📱 Instagram

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

00:31 Meet Brenda Humphreys

03:14 Reading Emotional Cues in High Pressure Situations

05:20 When a Patient’s Story Mirrors Your Own Life

08:27 Recognizing When Personal Emotions Affect Your Work

10:25 Understanding Countertransference in Helping Professions

12:05 Processing Emotions You Cannot Address in the Moment

15:44 A Three Minute Practice for Emotional Awareness

17:47 Why Self Worth Must Come Before Self Sacrifice

20:17 Setting Boundaries Without Taking Away Others’ Independence

23:31 Learning to Decompress and Restore Your Emotional Energy

25:50 Working Through Pressure Without Losing Yourself​

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Too tired to relax after work, and too depleted to even know what you need? Kristen answers a listener's question with the recovery paradox: the harder the day, the more recovery you need, and the less capacity you have left to get it. She comes back to last week's hospice social worker and looks at what happens when you leave a job where people depend on you and walk straight into a home where they depend on you again.

Some takeaways:

• The harder the day, the harder it is to decompress
• Even decompressing asks for energy you may not have left
• Most rest advice assumes an after-work you with energy to spare
• Judge the whole day, not the last five minutes at home
• Signs a better transition after work isn't enough on its own
• Decide ahead of time how your first few minutes home go

Tell Kristen on Instagram: what's the hardest part of coming home after a high-pressure day?

Connect with Kristen:

🌐 Frontline Wellness Group

📋 Free High Pressure Leadership Assessment

🎙️ Work with Kristen

📱 Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode unpacks psychological detachment, the ability to mentally leave work once the day is over, and why getting home doesn't always mean you're off duty. Kristen uses a hospice social worker's story to show how caring about someone can look the same as still feeling responsible for them. She keeps the research on work-related rumination separate from her own clinical read, then asks a question worth sitting with: are you still feeling something about what happened, or still trying to take care of it?

Some takeaways:

• What work-related rumination is and why work can keep running in your mind after you've physically left it
• Why psychological detachment, not just being physically home, is linked to better recovery after high-pressure work
• How grief and lingering responsibility can feel the same even though they are different things
• Why your mind doesn't just flip a switch when the workday ends
• A reflection practice to try this week: ask yourself whether you are still feeling something about what happened or still trying to take care of something about it, and if something keeps coming back, ask what you are still trying to do here

Connect with Kristen:

🌐 Frontline Wellness Group

📋 Free High Pressure Leadership Assessment

🎙️ Work with Kristen

📱 Instagram

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

00:38 The Quiet Pressure

01:18 The Switch You Make

04:21 The Unspoken Rules at Work

04:58 Surface Acting vs. Deep Acting

07:26 Suppression and the Body’s Stress Response

09:36 Gendered Expectations at Work

12:55 A Weekly Reflection Practice

13:51 A Clinical Note and Next Steps

15:06 Outro and Free Leadership Assessment

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is about emotional labor and the gap between what you feel and what you actually show when a job requires composure. Kristen looks at why staying steady for others has a cost, even when you look calm on the outside. She separates the research on display rules, surface acting and expressive suppression from her own clinical view, then asks a simple question: did you calm down, or did you just look calm?

Some takeaways:

• What display rules are and how they shape which emotions feel acceptable to show at work
• The difference between surface acting and deep acting, and why surface acting is more consistently linked to exhaustion
• Why hiding your feelings can increase physiological strain even when you appear calm
• Why generic advice to just feel your feelings misses what composure actually costs
• How gendered expectations add pressure, including research on how women's anger gets judged differently depending on whether a reason is given
• A reflection practice to try this week: pick one moment you had to pull yourself together, then ask what you actually felt versus what you showed, and whether you calmed down or just looked calm

Connect with Kristen:

🌐 Frontline Wellness Group

📋 Free High Pressure Leadership Assessment

🎙️ Work with Kristen

📱 Instagram

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

00:38 The Quiet Pressure

01:18 The Switch You Make

04:21 The Unspoken Rules at Work

04:58 Surface Acting vs. Deep Acting

07:26 Suppression and the Body’s Stress Response

09:36 Gendered Expectations at Work

12:55 A Weekly Reflection Practice

13:51 A Clinical Note and Next Steps

15:06 Outro and Free Leadership Assessment

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Kristen talks with Chelsea Ryckis, a business owner, wife, and first-time mom of a one-year-old. She shares how she learned to stay accountable as a leader by deciding where her involvement is necessary.

Some takeaways:

• How becoming the woman who handles everything lead to a physical and mental decline
• The burnout moment that pushed her to a 360 life change that operationalized accountability in her team
• Operating in survival mode and how motherhood impacts mindset
• How to pursue ambition with more deliberate choices about your time and involvement.
• A practical exercise that will help you pause and reflect

Connect with Kristen

🌐 Frontline Wellness Group

🌐 Free High Pressure Leadership Assessment

🎙️ Work with Kristen

📱 Instagram

Conect with Chelsea

📱Instagram

🌐EthoBenefits

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode unpacks why even in the moments when you choose to delegate, you still can't stop yourself from taking the work back. Kristen shares the story of Danielle, an emergency management director who is over-functioning and why this pattern is damaging.

Some takeaways:

• The difference between being accountable for an outcome and personally carrying every action
• How family systems of over-functioning and under-functioning create this pattern
• Why the body feels relieved when you take over and trains the brain to repeat it
• What inflated responsibility is
• A reflection question to ask yourself before stepping in

Connect with Kristen:

🌐Frontline Wellness Group

📋Free High Pressure Leadership Assessment

🎙️Work with Kristen

📱Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode looks at the gap between understanding your patterns and moving towards setting clear boundaries to interrupt them. Kristen introduces her "body first" approach and walks through a real case of a police sergeant to show how taking action can serve you in an emergency but work against you in a low-stakes moment.

Some takeaways:

• Why understanding a pattern and interrupting it in are two different skills
• How urgency can take over before a deliberate decision is made
• The three parts of “body-first” work and how to apply it
• How to use a simple moment of reflection to create real choice
• A mindfulness exercise to buy yourself a pause this week

Connect with Kristen:

🌐 Frontline Wellness Group

🎙️ Work with Kristen

📋 Free High Pressure Leadership Assessment

📱 Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode unpacks everything you need to know about functional freeze, or what happens when women keep performing at a high level while feeling depleted, numb, or disconnected internally. Kristen looks at why this happens, why it can feel so confusing, and why “just resting” or "trying harder" doesn't fix it.

Some takeaways:

• Why functional freeze is a pattern rather than a diagnosis
• How under pressure the body prioritizes what you need to do over what you need to feel
• What happens when you postpone physical and emotional red flags
• What the difference between functional freeze and burnout is
• How the nervous system is trained to deprioritize your needs
• A mindfulness exercise for reconnecting with yourself

Connect with Kristen:

🌐 Frontline Wellness Group

🎙️ Work with Kristen

📋 Free High Pressure Leadership Assessment

📱 Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode unpacks what you need to know about high performance burnout, a pattern in high-achieving women who are quietly running on empty. Kristen introduces the podcast’s focus: the type of burnout women experience that hides in plain sight because they still handle everything. As a licensed clinical social worker, founder of Frontline Wellness Group, and someone who grew up around frontline work as the daughter of a police officer, she is all too familiar with it. Kristen looks at why the body doesn't always get the memo that a crisis is over and why women in high-stakes roles carry a unique type of load.

Some takeaways:

• What the clear signs of high performance burnout are
• How competence can conceal distress
• What the difference between a busy schedule and repeated exposure to crisis, grief, or high-stakes decisions is
• How to identify data that will help in your recovery
• A two-question check-in for the transition between work and home

Connect with Kristen:

🌐 Frontline Wellness Group

📋Free High Pressure Leadership Assessment

🎙️ Work with Kristen

📱 Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are you a high-performing woman working in healthcare, emergency services or another demanding leadership role? Maybe you can handle the crisis, make the difficult decision and be the person everyone relies on, but when the workday ends, you have a much harder time leaving it behind.

Women Under Pressure is a podcast for ambitious women who want to succeed at a high level without sacrificing their mental health, physical health, relationships or the rest of their lives in the process.

Hosted by Kristen Plake, a licensed trauma therapist and founder of Frontline Wellness Group, the show explores what demanding careers ask of women and how to build a life that can sustain both ambition and wellbeing.

Through practical solo episodes and honest conversations with experts and women doing demanding work, Women Under Pressure goes beyond traditional conversations about stress management and self-care. You'll learn more about how your experiences affect you, why it can be so difficult to switch off even when the crisis is over, and what can help you recover without asking you to become less driven or walk away from work that matters to you.

You’ll also hear answers to questions such as:

👉 Why can't I switch off after work?

👉 Why am I exhausted even when I'm still performing well?

👉 How do I stop bringing work home with me?

👉 What are the signs of burnout in high-performing women?

👉 How does trauma exposure affect me over time?

👉 How can I regulate my nervous system after a difficult shift or high-pressure day?

Follow Women Under Pressure wherever you listen to podcasts and learn how to keep pursuing the work and ambitions that matter to you without sacrificing yourself in the process.

Connect with Kristen:

🌐Frontline Wellness Group

📋Free High Pressure Leadership Assessment

🎙️Work with Kristen

📱Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.