What happens when high-achieving women hit the wall — and how I found my way back
I was someone who had spent years working hard — driven by ambition, yes, but also by something I couldn't quite name.
On a friendly winter Thursday at lunchtime, I left my office in Vienna's Inner City to see my sports physician. I had been training for the Vienna City Half-Marathon — one of those things you take on because high-achievers are supposed to.
The practice was located at a popular address, and I had been there several times before. That day however, I just couldn't find it.
As I got off the tram, I felt strangely removed from reality. My vision was blurred, and I could not make any sense of Google Maps on my phone. So I had to ask three people to show me the way.
I felt quietly embarrassed when I finally arrived and realised that I just had to cross the road and walk a few metres to get there.
At the practice, I completed the running tests, and the physician explained my progress and the updates to my training schedule. But somehow my mind went blank and I had to ask him to repeat the instructions twice, feeling foggy.
After the appointment I somehow managed to get back to my office, determined to continue working. I sat at my desk, stared at my computer screen and read an email over and over again, unable to take in any information. I felt exhausted, depleted, done.
The truth was, I had been running on empty for a long time. Not just from workload — but from something that had been quietly chipping away at me and my confidence for years.
I never quite knew where I stood. Feedback was sparse. If I got any it was focused on what wasn't working — but then no guidance to really understand what I should do differently.
I worked harder to fill that gap, assuming that if I delivered more, did more, achieved more, pushed further, I would eventually make it. That sense of — yes, I am a leader, I am important for this organisation. I have impact. I am good enough. It never came.
Then the promotion I'd been working toward for two years didn't come either. Instead, a restructure stripped me of my expert position and pushed me into a team role. For me this was a significant blow.
I felt I had worked so hard, and still couldn't hold my ground. Others decided, and just like that, everything I'd worked towards went backwards.
On the inside, I felt devastated. I had hit a wall and there was nowhere to go. I had worked so hard, for so long — and it had led me here.
That Thursday evening I packed up my things and went home from work, never to return to that job again.
When I got back home I flopped onto the wooden stairs of my house, tears streaming down my face. I felt like a failure.
After a while the tears slowed. My head became clearer. And then something shifted.
In the weeks that followed I started working with a coach and discovered hypnotherapy. For the first time I understood that what had been driving me — the relentless push to achieve, to prove, to stand out — hadn't started in that office. It had roots much further back than I'd realised.
I had grown up believing that achievement was the price of belonging. That you had to be extraordinary just to be seen. That standard followed me into every job, every performance review, every promotion cycle.
Over the following six months something shifted that I hadn't expected.
Not just recovery — but a shift in identity. I stopped measuring my worth by what I achieved and started recognising my strengths and qualities as a human being, independent from any title or result. A whole new relationship with myself.
I earned my degree in project management and organisational development, retrained as a coach and clinical hypnotherapist, and spent the next nine years in global consulting — working across five countries, leading transformation programs, and coaching leaders through complex organisational change.
But the thread that ran through all of it was this:
So many of the people I worked with were carrying the same doubts I had.
Capable, experienced, respected — but quietly doubting if they were enough. Doubting if they knew enough. Were doing enough. Were successful enough.
That's why I started Turnaround Practice.
To work with women who are already performing, capable and delivering — but grappling with overwhelm and that quiet voice that makes them second-guess what they know, what they say and what they're capable of.
Confidence is something that is learned and built. Based on your personal history, professional experience, skills, and actions.
My work surfaces what's going on in the background and influences how you show up, lead and feel about yourself.
Through an integrated approach of hypnotherapy and coaching, we work first at the level where subconscious drivers are stored — the beliefs and autopilots that shape your behaviour, often without you even knowing.
Then in coaching we work on strategy, action and implementation. To build confidence as a leader, trust yourself, make the next career step you've been holding yourself back from — and create a life that opens up in ways you may not have even considered yet.
If you recognise yourself in any of this — you're in the right place.
And this is where to go from here.
The free 26-minute audio is designed to take the brakes off — to calm the noise, disrupt the patterns of self-doubt that have been running quietly in the background, and open up new ways of thinking and acting from a place of confidence rather than fear.
Clients say they feel lighter and happier after listening. Less stuck. More able to trust themselves and move forward.
About the author
Sabine Lehner is an executive coach and clinical hypnotherapist who works with female leaders and professionals ready to step into confidence and stop managing self-doubt, by changing what's actually driving it.
With a background of more than a decade leading large-scale organisational transformations across Australia, Europe, Asia and the US, and executive coaching since 2014, she brings corporate context from lived experience.
Through Turnaround Practice in Sydney, she combines strategic coaching with deep mindset work that enables the most effective solutions, because you can't think your way out of a subconscious pattern, and mindset work alone won't build your strategy.
