Why You Aren't Failing: The 6 Energy Leaks That Are Secretly Taking You Off Your Game

A lot of women walk through life thinking they should be able to do life ‘better’, but the truth is much simpler: you are feeling so defeated because your energy is being drained in patterns that you just can’t see yet. This isn’t a random phenomenon; it is part of the hidden mental load we carry.

When you are a mid-career woman with a family and home established, these responsibilities layer on top of each other to create significant energy leaks. Once you understand what is draining you most, you can stop feeling overwhelmed by the sense that “this will never end” and start taking action to make the right shifts. But, first, there is no way around it – we have to figure out what is actually causing the energy drain.

How Is Your Energy Leaking?

I have identified six specific patterns of energy drains that most women in this space are carrying. See if you recognize yourself in one (or more) of these:

The Default Brain Drain: You are the person who is always planning, coordinating, remembering, and preventing collapse. You are tracking calendars, birthdays, work fires, and dinner plans before you’ve even left the house.
The Losing Me Drain: You have become so reachable and needed that you have lost touch with your own wants and needs. Others have constant access to you and can interrupt you at any time, leaving you with nothing left for yourself at the end of the day.
The “This Can’t Be It” Drain: Life feels repetitive, bored, and slightly numb. You feel disconnected from the meaning of it all and may feel stuck in a job or a routine that feels purposeless.
The Always Needed Drain: Being helpful has become your entire identity and your exhaustion trap. You are the go-to person for the group chat, the office, and the family, but you eventually get buried under the weight of everyone else’s reliance on you.
The “Should Success Feel This Hard?” Drain: On paper, your life looks great—the raise, the promotion, the family—but it feels heavy and exhausting. You feel discontented and secretly wonder why success doesn’t feel the way you imagined it would.
The Weight of the Mental World Drain: You carry the big life worries—safety, security, and the emotions of the entire household or workplace. You are constantly replaying conversations and taking responsibility for everyone else’s heaviness so they don’t have to be bothered by it.

Awareness is How We Get Control Back

It is important to remember that you cannot shift what you keep calling “just life” or “just how it has to be”. When we stop just assuming the high load must exist in our life, we also start seeing beliefs and patterns that we can decide whether we still want them. In other words, we gain autonomy.

For instance, these two statements just hit differently, don’t they?

“Overwhelm is a part of life” is very different than “I control what I let overwhelm me.”
When we believe something is just part of life, we don’t even look for how we can change, adjust, or manipulate it.

The goal isn’t to be tougher or to always say no. The goal is to identify where the energy is leaking so you can stop being over-attached to the idea that your current way of living is the only option.

Try a “Small Experiment” Today

You are not bad at life; you are just carrying a pattern of overload you can’t see yet. Trust me, I know this stuff is hard to get your head around but begin to just notice where frustration and disappointment keep showing up and which of our 6 energy drains might be doing you in.

To help sort through the differences, I created a quick quiz for you to try out.

Take the Free Mental Load Quiz

This quiz will give you the language and clarity you need to see exactly where your energy is leaking and provide a starting place for getting your life back. Grab a spot on my calendar for us to review them together when you are done!

Sarah Rose is a workplace well-being coach, recovering over-worker, married mother of 2, and founder of Fresh Rise Group. She helps maxed-out mid-career women who are juggling approximately 47 roles (but only getting paid for one or two) reclaim their energy, boundaries, and confidence without quitting their entire lives. A former “good girl” turned possibility pusher, Sarah challenges long-held beliefs about productivity and being good, but also teaches quick, doable strategies that work even on days when your brain feels like mush.