In this episode, Melissa sits down with Dasha Tcherniakovskaia, a coach for high-achieving women who are exhausted from doing everything for everyone. Dasha shares how chronic burnout, corporate overachievement, and nervous system dysregulation led her to a new way of living and working rooted in energy management.

Together, they explore how energy is quietly drained through everyday habits, thoughts, and emotional patterns, and how reclaiming energy is less about doing more and more about becoming aware of what’s leaking it in the first place. This conversation offers practical, grounded tools for protecting your energy, regulating your nervous system, and creating sustainable success without constant overwhelm.

Takeaways

1. Managing energy is a learnable skill, not a personality trait
2. Most burnout comes from invisible energy leaks, not workload alone
3. Self-criticism, people-pleasing, and perfectionism are major drains
4. Boundaries protect energy more than willpower ever will
5. Forgiveness and emotional processing restore clarity and calm
6. Regulating your nervous system increases capacity and resilience
7. Sustainable success requires both softness and strength

Topics discussed in this episode:

1. energy management vs time management
2. internal bandwidth and energetic “vibe” awareness
3. hidden energetic leaks that drain focus and clarity
4. unfinished tasks and mental load
5. dwelling on the past and emotional replays
6. self-criticism and negative self-talk
7. people-pleasing, boundaries, and guilt
8. perfectionism and shame-based productivity
9. holding grudges and unresolved resentment
10. nervous system regulation for entrepreneurs

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〉Get text updates by texting ALL OUT to +1 704-318-2285

Connect with Dasha:

▶ Freedom Bootcamp

A guided experience to help high-achieving women reclaim energy, boundaries, and inner calm

https://coachingbydasha.thrivecart.com/freedom-bootcamp/

▶ Tune in to Dasha’s Podcast

Conversations on energy, nervous system regulation, boundaries, and sustainable success

👉 https://www.coachingbydasha.com/podcast

▶ Connect on Dasha on LinkedIn

👉 https://www.linkedin.com/in/dashat/

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Burnout to All Out. Fam, I am so excited for you all to get a chance to hear from the cream of the crop. These are our Burnout to All Out Elevate 360 mastermind clients who've been in my master, my high level mastermind all year this year. And we do a summit once a year with our mastermind clients to debut their zone of genius.

What is incredible is that these clients all embody a 360 degree approach to business. They all contribute in one way, or fashion as subject matter experts that contribute to the pillars of Elevate 360, which is truly that we believe that bodies build businesses and that we have to have business strategy and legacy strategy as well. And so what is really cool about these clients is that

through a series of a couple of days of a summit, they were able to highlight and bring value and educate in their fields, whether it was around self leadership, leadership in business, business strategies, energetics and mindset and or legacy and how we take what we're doing and make our money work harder than we did for it to create impact and legacy over time. And so they,

really embody all that represents the 360 degree approach to business and the burnout to all out through line of our mastermind. So over the next couple of episodes, you are gonna hear from all of these experts. You're gonna get the details to their work in the notes section. And hopefully you're inspired as well as to what is possible.

for you as an entrepreneur and scaling your businesses the way these incredible human beings have. So hope you enjoy the series. Dasha, I am so excited to have you here today. Like sister from another mother, your journey has been so beautiful. Just another great example of a journey that has brought you to serve where you are today. So Dasha is a coach for high achieving women.

who are exhausted from doing everything for everyone at work, at home, and in their relationships. She helps them identify the invisible ways they are leaking energy and teaches them how to reclaim their power, peace, and presence. Her work blends psychology, nervous system regulation, and radical self-responsibility to help women create sustainable success on their own terms. Now, Dasha.

Before we get in, I haven't seen your slides. I don't wanna ask you questions that you're gonna cover in the slides, but I'm not sure if you cover them. So are you gonna share a little bit of your backstory in the slides or if not, can I ask you a question? Okay, awesome. So before we get into the slides, and this is where like we're just giving these entrepreneurs permission, like permission to be bold, permission to pivot, permission to launch the business, do the thing.

Sure, absolutely.

And I just love the backstory of your professional journey that has brought you where you are today. So do you mind just before we dive into the radical expert that you are today, take a hot minute to tell everybody a little bit about your journey that brought you to where you are today.

Sure, thank you. That's also one of my slides. So my actually. Yeah, This story. Thank you so much for asking and thank you for the introduction. And I'm sorry I jumped in with my slides, but that's life and that's okay. And I am excited to talk about one of my favorites, favorite topics today. And as a former corporate

Perfect, then you can just cover it in your slides.

burnout survivor and is an overachiever in recovery. I know this really well. And does anyone resonate? Does anyone have the same experience? I would love to hear from you in the chat. And I want to talk to you about the management of energy. It's something that I wish we learned growing up. We all know what it's like to manage our money, right? We may not do it well, but at least we have the skills.

but what we never learn as children and as adults often, and that's how to preserve and budget our energy. And then no wonder so many of us experience burnout and challenges with focus and efficiency. And so if you're constantly drained, running on fumes, feeling flat, often it may not be because you're doing too much or not getting enough sleep. It might be because your energy is...

is how your energy managed or mismanaged. And so I would love to talk about three buckets of strategies that would help us manage our energy. Is this presentation worth your energy? What you'll walk away with is clarity on what's actually draining you and some practical tools to protect your energy. And at the end, I will share a link to a quiz and it will help you figure out exactly what drains you.

and how to replenish yourself. And I am very passionate about this because I grew up in an environment where we talked about energy all the time. I measured my life and my activities in terms of energy units. And then I came to the United States and I wanted to fit in and nobody in college, in law school, in corporate, nobody talked about it. So I had to shut it down.

And after being a corporate lawyer for a few years and getting completely burnt out, I ended my life and became a therapist, went to grad school, became a therapist, and then turned towards coaching because that's exactly how I think we get ahead as opposed to digging into the past. And so that's part of my story. But the part of the story that's related to energy is

I came back to my roots and I learned to manage energy and to look at myself and the world and the relationship with the world from that perspective. And it was really helpful to me. So, because I never want to go to those terrible years of burnout. And so what are we talking about when we talk about energy? And that's two things. One is internal bandwidth, right? That's our physical, emotional and mental energy.

And then the second one is that hard to describe vibe that we all feel when we walk into a room and we know that something is off about this person or a situation or physical space. And so we'll be focusing on these two things. And the first bucket of energy management is energetic leaks. we, you know, we all know what we need to do to feel better.

And that's good nutrition, socialization, sleep, exercise, all of those great things. But if we don't know where we are draining energy, no amount of kale is going to help us feel better. So it's really important to focus on this. And what are energetic leaks? We're not talking about things that we all think about in terms of leaking energy, know, having toxic people around, being around emotional vampires.

I'm actually focusing on the less obvious, the more unnoticed emotions, behaviors, and thoughts that quietly drain our physical, mental, and emotional energy. And when they pile up, they just reduce our productivity, our wellbeing, and our clarity. And so the goal of this short presentation is to reclaim energy by identifying and addressing these hidden drains.

And the first one is unfinished tasks. It's actually not the fact of unfinished tasks. That's fine. I mean, it's not fine. It's stressful, but it's the mental load. It's holding on to those things in our mind. And then when we procrastinate, that just creates the cycle of avoidance and stress. And then it is a major energy leak. And so how do we seal it? How do we plug it? The surface level

fix is break tasks into manageable steps and prioritize based on what's important and urgent. And then focus on progress, not perfection. And because if we berate ourselves, that's not helpful. And that's another big energetic leak. But the real fix is to schedule something and surrender it to your to-do list, rely on it, trust it. If you can't organize your closet until Saturday morning,

Write it down and just let it go until then, because otherwise thinking about it drains your energy completely unnecessarily. And then give yourself grace if it's not fully done. And then the next one is actually a big one. It's dwelling on the past. You know, when we relive old wounds and emotions, they keep us stuck in resentment and in the past and they steal present joy.

I'm sure you've all had an experience where you're talking to someone and they're so animated and so angry and there's so many strong, intense feelings. And then you realize they're talking about something that happened five or 10 years ago, right? What a waste of energy. And so sometimes we also rehash conversations in our head and thinking, this is what we should have done or should have said. Again, it's also a huge waste of our energy.

So what do we do to close it? You know, it's really important to heal old wounds so that we won't be going back to the past. And that's through coaching, journaling, forgiveness practices. And by journaling, I don't mean the diary, my husband was such a jerk this morning, right? That's not what I mean. It's actually processing your feelings. Why do, why am I still holding on to this feeling?

Why do I keep going to that thing in the past? Why do I keep reliving those emotions? Are they old emotions? Are they familiar? Processing all of that so that you could actually heal it and move forward. I'm not saying just drop it, let it go. That's not helpful. It's actually healing the reason why you keep going back to that and moving forward. And then it's also helpful to practice mindfulness. Keep refocusing, making an effort to

refocus on the present and then consciously envision your ideal future. And what's helpful, what I personally find very helpful is Joe Dispenza's work. And he specifically talks about how to stop recreating the same familiar past in your daily life and how to envision and go towards a better future. And if you don't know who Joe Dispenza is, I don't even know what you're doing with your life.

And I'm actually only partially joking there. It's really life-changing for me personally. So the next leak is self-criticism. And we're talking about negative self-talk, including self-deprecating humor, because no confident person, no self-assured person will need to put themselves down even lightly, even jokingly, because any kind of negative self-talk

chips away at our self worth, confidence and our ability to focus. And sometimes we don't even notice it. We forget our keys and then we say, I'm such an idiot. We take one small action and label our whole being for it. How sad is that? This is what we keep doing to ourselves. And so what do we do? It's really important to replace

criticism with self-compassion. And thankfully there is an easy formula for self-compassion. And it goes, even though I did X, I'm still lovable. Meaning even though I just put my foot on my mouth, even though I'm doing this presentation with spinach in my teeth, I'm still lovable. I'm still worthy of acceptance. I'm still worthy of love, right? Instead of cringing and going down into that shame spiral.

We can also rewire our brain and minimize self-criticism by using positive affirmations and reinforce our resilience. And also celebrating small wins and acknowledging our accomplishments, no matter how small, helps our brain see the positive in who we are and we don't need to criticize ourselves. And then also remind yourself that you're doing your best. And please remember, your best is not some unattainable standard.

It's very relative. Today, when you got some sleep and everything is going well, your best is here. Tomorrow, you're having a fight with your partner and your best is here and you're still doing your best. And so the next leak, I only have a few left. The next leak is people pleasing. And what I mean by that is, you when you start taking care of others at your expense and then you neglect your needs, that's people pleasing.

When you don't feel good enough, when you feel shame, when you feel inadequate and you feel like you need to buy someone else's acceptance, love, belonging, approval, and we do it at our expense, that's people pleasing. And also when you commit to others in misalignment with your own needs and values, no matter how much you're trying to convince yourself, you're just a giving, loving person, there is still in the back of your mind, there is...

in the back of your mind, there's still an expectation of reciprocity and there is anger and resentment when it's not met. So it's a huge energetic leak doing things for people and hoping that they will pay you back. And so what do we need to do for that? It's really important to ultimately heal that underlying shame, learn to practice self-acceptance and self-love. That's the deep fix.

And the more superficial, the more behavioral fix is set clear boundaries. Learn how to say no, but without guilt. Because if you feel guilty, you might as well just do that thing. You will probably spend less energy than the energy that's leaking while you're feeling guilty. And learn to protect your time and energy. And remember, saying no is a complete sentence. You don't owe anyone an explanation for your needs and limits.

You don't have to be an unkind person. can say, thank you for thinking of me, but I don't have the bandwidth. That's enough, right? But you don't have to over explain why you can't do something, why you don't want to do something. The next one is perfectionism. It's a huge energetic leak because what we deal with perfectionism is when we feel shame, when we feel not good enough, when we feel inadequate.

We have this fallacy in our mind that if we do things perfectly, nobody will know how defective we will feel inside and nobody will judge us for us. And so we create this unattainable standards of perfectionism. And most of us don't say we're a perfectionist. We actually say, well, I have high standards and I kind of wear it as a badge of honor. And I know I used to be that way in corporate.

And it took me so long to learn that it's so draining not to be able to delegate, not to be able to be done and feel like it's good enough. And so how do you close this leak? First of all, it's again, healing shame, the underlying shame should be healed so that you can eliminate that need for perfectionism so that you would stop avoiding being judged by others and actually could strive for excellence for yourself. You can adopt

a different standard, right? I personally think that good enough is a pretty good standard, even though a lot of my high achieving clients freak out when they hear it because they think that means mediocrity and it's not. And also again, what's underneath all of it is self-love and worthiness. And then if you started feeling that way, if you internalize it, then you don't need to earn love and acceptance and approval through perfectionism.

And the last leak is holding onto grudges, holding onto past hurt and resentment. And the thing with that is we have this illusion in our mind that by punishing, that we are punishing that person by not forgiving them, we're actually punishing them. But it's like that expression taking resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die, right? We are only hurting ourselves and leaking energy through that.

So it's important to process old wounds, maybe write out a list of grievances, and then practice forgiveness. And I personally find forgiveness and self-forgiveness is a really important regular practice. And so if you don't know what that looks like, I have some practices that I've done I'll be happy to share with you. My email is at the end of this presentation, so please email me and I'll share them with you. They're really great.

And also it's important to learn lessons from the situations in which you got hurt. If you were an adult and made choices, how did you contribute to that? You know, if you were in a toxic relationship, how maybe, how did your low self-esteem contribute to that? Right? This is not about blame or fault. This is about what can I do differently in the future so that they can

empower myself, regain control and not put myself in similar situations to work through the same issues. So that was the first bucket was energetic leaks. This one is about actual practical tools for energetic protections. It's really important to ration your energy. Often we don't even know where we end and another person begins.

Are you taking over for others, including your kids or your partners? Are you giving too much of yourself to other people or to tasks? It's really important to budget how much energy a task or an experience requires and give it no more than that. And maybe sometimes you can figure it out after the fact, but it's really helpful to know how you can ration your energy.

And then also protect your physical space. Now we're talking more about that intangible thing, not the internal bandwidth, but the vibe. If you feel uncomfortable around a certain person, give yourself permission to move away from them. Either physically you move your seat or move away from those relationships. Be kind to them, but don't hurt yourself by trying not to offend others.

If you're it down, that's a huge energy leak also. Then the next one is, it sounds obvious, minimize contact with toxic people, but what's also not helpful to you if you surrounded by toxic people is if you keep being shocked by their reaction or by their behavior. If they are being unkind, toxic, obnoxious, in line with who they are or actually in line with their unhealed parts,

Stop being shocked, right? Let them be them until they heal. Have compassion for them, but protect yourself by minimizing contact. And if you can't minimize contact, have some parameters around your interactions. And the last category is actual energy management, such as it's important to plan your day around your peak mental and physical energy. When are you more creative? When do you need to do more analytical tasks?

When do you devote time to self care, exercise, meditation? Is it better to do it before work in the morning or afterwards when you're powering down? What about socialization? Does it recharge you or does it drain your energy? It's all important to take that into consideration. And then know your energy sources. What powers you down? Is it walking, yoga, journaling, breath work?

self-regulation, maybe when you get home, if it's possible, ask for a little space to recharge a little bit and then be social. Or is it living social gatherings early? Is that helpful to you? Same thing with how do you get more energy? Is it exercise, dancing, singing, socializing with positive people, playing with pets or children? What gives you energy? Go for that. Because often,

And this is really important. Often when we feel low, when we feel crummy, we try to steal energy because we don't know how to replenish it in health, in healthful ways. So we steal it by gossiping. You know, sometimes you feel kind of not at your best and you call a friend and you start gossiping, whether it's true or untrue. It doesn't matter. You are stealing their energy. You create drama, pick fights, judge others.

feel superior, feel self-righteously angry. All of that gives us this energy that's not ours, but we feel a little bit more amped up. But sometimes instead of dealing with someone directly, we bring in another person and just talk to them about it, vent about it. There are so many other words to call that. And instead of dealing it directly with that person, right? So please be mindful of all of that.

I know it went through the energy leaks quickly, but if you would like a quiz that where you can figure out what's actually draining you and what you can do about it, please feel free to get this QR code and go to the website. And also if you want to email me with any questions, you're welcome to, if you would like those forgiveness practices, please email me. I'll be happy to share. And I personally strongly believe in this.

And so I have with my clients, I have a one-on-one approach, which is a customized individual approach. And I'm also creating group coaching that's called soft and strong, where it's a combination of masculine and feminine energy. And I'm putting people on a wait list right now so that we can all learn to manage our energy all together.

So good, Dasha, you've got lots of folks commenting over here in the chat. And I love the soft and hard, right? Like, because we need both. Like we need both to run a business and so, so good. Well, so Dasha, how are you embodying and living from a 360 degree approach as the expert in the field that you are? Like, how are you embodying what you preach?

Thank you.

For me, it's actually developing a relationship with my nervous system because in the past I didn't know when my nervous system was freaking out when I was getting out of my comfort zone. And there's nothing like entrepreneurship that gets you out of your comfort zone. And so I didn't recognize, I didn't recognize when I was procrastinating or when I was actually doing other things and in whatever way that my nervous system was letting me know that I was uncomfortable with that.

That's what they got in touch with. That's what they learned to regulate. And it's been the most helpful thing.

Yes. my gosh. So like there's a through current here of just talking about nervous system regulation, right? It is, it is a secret rocket fuel for resilience, for capacity, for scaling relationships, all the things, all the things. Well, I just, love the journey you've been on and I love this like purposeful impact that you have now based off of your own path, right? Dasha, thank you so much.

It's really warm.

And just, it's just been so much fun working with you this year and your, your expertise and the through line of what you do is just so important to professionals out there. I often say if this type of work was available to me, when even when I was in corporate, if I'd even known about it, like I may not have left, you know, so definitely reach out to Dasha.

No, me too.

Thank you.

I hope you found this episode as inspirational and kick ass as I enjoyed interviewing with it. If you love this and you resonated with it, please reach out, reach out to the speakers. Their information is in the notes. Feel free to reach out to us. And as always, if you're curious about mentorship and support and business coaching under the Burnout to All Out umbrella, go to burnouttoallout.

and check out what we have going on in the business mentorship world today, including business coaching and retreats that are live and experiential and take a 360 degree approach to business. We can't wait to see you on the other side, wherever we collide.