You know that feeling when you're sitting in a meeting and everyone's congratulating you on hitting your target and you're smiling and nodding, but inside you're thinking "I don't care. None of this matters anymore"?
And then you feel guilty for thinking that, because you're supposed to be grateful. You worked hard for this. People would kill for your position. But the truth is, you feel nothing. Or worse, you feel trapped.
That's where I was. For 12 years, I built a successful career in sales. I grew up poor in Romania, so I made myself a promise: work hard, achieve everything, never be vulnerable again.
And I kept that promise. Best student. Top performer. Hit every target. Bought the dream house in the Netherlands. Checked every box.
But achievement was never about the goal. It was about feeling safe. Feeling loved. Feeling like I mattered. In my relationships, I became whoever I thought would make me lovable. The girl with no needs, no expectations. Always performing.
Outside, I had a very good life. Inside, I still lived like my 9-year-old self who was scared.
The relief didn't come from another achievement or a better strategy. It came from learning to sit with myself, actually sit with myself, not distract or optimize or perform my way out of discomfort.
I learned to distinguish between my inner critic and my intuition. My critic was loud and demanding. My intuition was quieter but clearer; it said "this isn't right for you" and when I let myself actually feel that truth, my body responded with relief.
In 2023, I trained as a certified coach while still working in sales. I was trying to do both. I almost burned out trying. So I left sales to build this practice full-time.
Now I work with people who are living the same patterns I was. Most of them don't call it impostor syndrome or pre-burnout when they first reach out. They say things like "I just need to get through this quarter" or "I'll give it one more year." They're taking mental health days that don't actually help. They're living vacation to vacation. They hit their goals but the relief lasts about 30 seconds.
They look successful on paper. Inside, they're running on fumes. And they're starting to realize this isn't a stress problem or a workload problem. It’s something within you, that you’ll cary to every job, every relationship, unless you work on it.
Who I work with
I work with five types of over-achievers. All of them dealing with some version of impostor syndrome, functional exhaustion or both.
The Competent One -you've made competence your identity, so you only do things you know you can do well - which means your life keeps getting smaller, successful but stuck in a shrinking radius of safety.
The High Performer - you've hit every metric, exceeded every goal, but achievements stopped feeling good and now just make you feel empty.
The Provider - you built security for everyone else and now can't prioritize your own needs without guilt.
The Rational One - you've solved every problem with logic and strategy and you're realizing some things can't be optimized away.
The Woman Who Serves - you've spent so long performing caretaking and pleasing that you've lost track of what you actually want. You're so good at reading the room that you've stopped reading yourself.
If any of these feel familiar, here's what's likely happening:
Impostor syndrome: you don't know where your performance ends and you begin.
Functional exhaustion: your body is paying the price of that confusion.
Boundaries you can't set: because you don't know who you are underneath the performance.
You're exhausted from living in your head. You're at a transition point (career, relationship, identity) and you sense something needs to change even if you can't name what.
This isn't for people who want to be handled gently or need someone to validate why things are the way they are. If you're looking for reassurance that your current story is fine, I'm not your person.
How I work
My coaching is awareness-based. This is different from traditional coaching because we're not managing symptoms or setting performance goals. We're working at the level where impostor syndrome and functional exhaustion actually live: your nervous system and your relationship to yourself.
While most coaching starts with goals and solutions, I start one layer deeper: with how your internal system is operating. We slow down first. Not because slowing down is "calming", but because you can't see what you're doing when you're doing it at full speed.
While you're talking, I'm tracking what's happening in your body. You bite your lip, shift in your seat, your voice changes - I notice it and I'll ask about it. Most people perform their answers. Your body tells the truth. When there's a gap between your words and what your body is doing, that's where we go.
I work with awareness, nervous system regulation and your intuition. Sessions are spacious and client-led. You do most of the talking. I listen closely, notice what's happening beneath the words and ask questions that bring you back to yourself.
I'm direct. If I notice you're performing an answer or explaining yourself away from what you're actually feeling, I'll say so. In our sessions, I speak to what I notice in real time - what's happening in your body, your tone, your patterns. If you're thinking instead of feeling, I'll interrupt. If you're telling me the story instead of being present with what's actually happening, I'll redirect you.
This work isn't about fixing you. It's about restoring access to what's already there: the part of you that knows, before your head takes over and explains it away.
Over time, you learn to recognize when decisions come from fear, conditioning or external pressure and when they come from intuition. As that distinction becomes clear, trust returns. The constant internal debate quiets.
This approach wasn't built in theory. It was shaped through my own experience of living disconnected from myself for years.
I know what it's like to be so deep in your own explanations that you can't access what you're actually feeling. I spent years performing competence and telling myself logical stories about why things were fine.
The shift came when I learned to stop explaining and start feeling. To sit with the discomfort instead of thinking my way out of it. To start living my life instead of it living me.
That's what I bring to sessions. I can see the performance because I lived it. And I'll name it, directly, because that's where the real work begins.
When you stop performing and start being present with what's actually happening, everything improves.