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Body Burnout, Prolonged Stress & High-Functioning Women in Business with Filipa Bellette

Ros: Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Travel Agent Achievers podcast. Now today's episode is a little bit different, but one that I feel is incredibly important right now. As we're moved into 2026, I am seeing more and more travel advisors and business owners who are incredibly capable. They're very experienced and of course, deeply committed to work, yet are quietly running on empty.

Not because they don't love what they do, but because their bodies are actually carrying years and years of prolonged stress, responsibility and pressure, often without much space to truly reset. Now this conversation isn't about diagnosing, it's not about fixing or giving medical advice. I'm certainly not a health professional and this podcast is still very much about building sustainable businesses. However, sustainable businesses...need sustainable humans behind them, right? And sometimes we need better language, awareness, and of course, permission to listen to what our bodies are actually telling us. So today I am joined by Philippa Ballet or Philly, as you will come to know her, who is the co-founder of Chris and Philly Functional Medicine and the author of Ending Body Burnout, a fantastic read. Filly works with high functioning busy people who often look like they're coping on the outside, which I know you are, and their bodies are quietly signaling that something just isn't quite right. This is a human grounded conversation about body burnout, prolonged stress, and why so many capable people, especially women in business, are feeling this way right now. So my hope is that it helps you feel seen.

It helps you feel less alone and of course, supported to seek the help that you might need if this resonates with you. So Philly, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. To start, I'd love for you to introduce yourself and share how you came to focus on this work.

Filly: It's so...Interesting. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. So yeah, as Ros said earlier, I'm Filly Ballet. Chris and Philly Functional Medicine is my practice. So Chris, the other name in that business is my husband, which has some ups and some downs. It's lovely. It's lovely working with your husband, but it has been a personal growth journey for sure. And marriage. development. So I got into this line of work, mostly because of my own personal health issues, which started, I mean, if I was going to go right back in time, I'd say childhood, but it really came to a head after I had my first baby. So I would have been late twenties.

I'd already been experiencing a lot of chronic stress, running people pleasing, perfectionism, overdoing patterns. I just completed a PhD on the same. Now I got my PhD report back on the same day I gave birth to my first baby. So birthed two things into the world on that day. But yeah, the birth was quite traumatic. Had a lot of really long labor. My bladder had a lot of trauma to it. So they don't really know what happened, but basically I stopped being able to pee. So I lost all nerve sensation, had no physical desire or sensation to pee. So I had to have a catheter up my urethra for about three or four months, which developed a lot of UTIs, infections. I was in and out of hospital. So all of this was happening. then, and I also had a baby that wouldn't sleep. She was crying all the time.

So sleep deprived and instead of bouncing back like some mums do, I was actually just accumulating more and more and more health issues until she turned one and I literally felt like an 80 year old. By this point, I'd stopped working because I really didn't have much capacity to be able to do that. And so then I started looking into holistic health. Because I hit a roadblock with GP medical specialists. they ran all the tests. They said everything is fine, even though I was anxious and heartburny and gut issues and hormone issues and exhausted and chronic body pain. These were all the symptoms that showed up as body burnout. Yeah. And so I took my own health into my own hands and that led me into looking at nutrition, functional medicine, and looking at the body and mind connection. Big piece of that was around how all the chronic stress I had been experiencing was literally burning out my body systems.

Ros: Wow, yeah, that does sound traumatic and that sounds as though it was quite prolonged as well. So it was more than 12 months that you were going through all of these things. And I know that our industry can certainly relate with that. You use the term body burnout rather than just burnout in general. So for people who are coping and capable and they're still showing up every day, which it sounds as though you were as well. You were still showing up. You're still taking care of the child.

How is body burnout different from how we usually think of burnout in general?

Filly: Yeah. So burnout, commonly talked about in corporate or the business world is it often has more of a mental focus or mental cognitive. It's kind of like you've been working too hard for too long. You haven't rested enough. Your brain needs to clock off, go home, go have a rest. Now for some people, if they're just experiencing like an overload of work burnout, they can go on a holiday or maybe have like a really restorative weekend and a good sleep and they come back feeling fine. Body burnout is that next step deeper in terms of burnout in that you're not just mentally burnt out, but your body systems themselves are burnt out now. And that's where we're starting to see a lot more physical symptoms showing up like fatigue, inflammatory issues, gut issues.

Poor marine issues, especially for women in the perimenopause phase. Chronic pain in the body. Rosie's like, no. Yeah, thumbs down. Sleep issues, hot flushes.

Turn on the air conditioning, people!

Yeah. Yeah. And, and generally speaking, that would be like, you know, you have body burnout when you go on a holiday for two weeks, for example, and you, you come back feeling no different, maybe, maybe mentally, emotionally, it's like, that was nice. But it's just like, the moment that I open up my laptop again, or the moment that I'm with my clients or my customers again, my body is sending me all the same signals and they'll usually be some sort of mental emotional.

component to that as well, whether it's full on anxiety, depression, something a bit more subtle like irritability, not being able to cope with stresses like you used to being really fight flight in on high alert is really common.

speaker-0 (07:52.586)
that just sounds like travel professionals globally that, and even a lot of our listeners and the people that I work with as well, what's called a mobile or a home-based travel advisor or travel professional as well. So even going on a holiday is not necessarily a holiday for us where we completely can switch off because we're taking our laptops with them. It's the desire of work from anywhere. And so it is that.

constant, there's still something happening in the background. I still need to check my emails. There's still something there. It's not like as an employee that you can step away and somebody else will take over the work. So the majority of people that I know are going to be carrying this day in and day out. And I hear you with all of those sorts of symptoms. This is something that is coming up and I know a

a big thing for us in the travel industry was certainly the pandemic. And it was that you've got to hang on to potentially the business. saw people leave in droves. We saw some people that were like, no, I'm hanging in there and I'll do everything that I can. It's been a real shift, but there hasn't, I don't think really been an opportunity to stop or to take a break. is that where you're saying that it can show up in different ways? Gut issues.

chronic pain in different things, insomnia and sleep.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It definitely can. if I took a little bit more into the pandemic as well, going back to my personal story, essentially my, my healing journey took 10 years.

speaker-0 (09:32.285)
Okay, so this is gonna be fixed.

No, well, I mean, like it can be a lot quicker than 10 years. I've the method now. Got that down pat. But the reason why it took me so long was I felt all these symptoms and initially I'm like, I just need to physically support my body, which, you know, is important and we can talk a little bit more about that later. But I entered it into clean up my diet, eat healthy, don't eat any sugar.

Take the supplements, do the lab tests. Now all of that is really important, but it wasn't supporting underlying fight flight, unconscious baggage that my whole body had been holding onto since a kid. Now when COVID happened, and I saw this clinically as well, because I was a functional medicine practitioner at that point, feeling better. But when COVID happened, all my symptoms came raging back.

And I was like, what? And it made sense because we had to shut, my husband had a gym at the time. So he had to shut that physical business down. All my clients started disappearing because everyone thought the world was going to end and like, I going to have money? So I had all this stress around money and uncertainty, which I know that like a lot of other business owners did as well, especially in the travel industry, where it's like now no one can travel. And it's like, how do I make an income for my family?

and so, yeah, all the symptoms came raging back, including insomnia, which I hadn't had in the past. And I was seeing that in practice as well, where I had old clients that were like, no, you got better after taking some supplements or cleaning up your diet. But now all the symptoms are back. What's going on? And it is because if you don't resolve your

speaker-1 (11:20.128)
underlying stress response and how you're responding to stress is based on beliefs that you have about yourself, based on past experiences that you've had on programming and patterning, then something like COVID can happen. And it's almost like this pressure cooker is just slowly getting bigger anyway, adding a big event and it can explode. And that's when the body will start showing up with big symptoms as well, because your system is under so much stress.

But also at a deeper level, it's kind of like the deeper part of you that wants the best for you is trying to grab your attention. It's like we cannot continue running like this anymore.

Yeah. So what you're saying is basically willpower isn't going to get you out of it. Mindset alone is also not going to resolve anything that's going to happen in your body, brings us to, well, you know, do we set boundaries, build systems, delegating, like all of those sorts of things that sound as though they're quite practical to a business owner? Do you think we can try something different?

setting.

speaker-1 (12:21.894)
in

speaker-1 (12:26.782)
Yeah.

Okay everybody, listen up!

Listen up. mean, I'm, I'm and my business obviously isn't in the travel industry, but I again, like post COVID we pivoted, you know, we got into the online space and it's like, okay, everyone's on zoom and my husband joined the business at that point as well. And we, yeah, we hired some exceptional business coaches that gave us all the strategies. One of my

patterns that was very unresourcable previously was an overdoer. So it's like, give me the strategies, I'll implement it, I'll stay up all night, not all night, but you know, I'll wake up in the middle of the night because I've had an idea and I'll do it now and like I'm not sleeping anyway. So on

On the surface, like we were winning awards and, you know, getting all the accolades and getting featured in the media and, know, even in places like Forbes and Body and Soul, like big places. Yeah, we weren't making any money. We were still struggling to pay ourselves a wage. And essentially it was because when I was marketing or when I was selling or when I was, you know, even with a client that was paying me.

speaker-1 (13:50.222)
my nervous system was so short. so, and you know, it probably wasn't anything that I said with my words, but people can feel that and it affects your productivity, your creativity, your confidence, your ability to hold space for other people as well. so yeah, when you do the inner work, even though it might not feel like it has anything to do with business, it totally transforms how you're showing up in your business.

and in your work. Like we literally started making $10,000 extra a month initially, which I don't know, like that might sound like a lot or a very little to some people, but for us it made all the difference.

literally, that is a lot of money. So for somebody who's listening and feels not quite right, you know, there are things that are showing up for them, but they may not have necessarily hit breaking point. And I know that there are times for myself where that breaking point is and the tears will come and I just need to release it all. then I'm, OK, cool, I can keep going now. But for somebody who hasn't necessarily hit a breaking point, what would you want them to know about listening to their body?

seeking support rather than just pushing through. Yeah, I mean, what could it look like in that worst case scenario maybe?

You do mean if you don't listen to your body?

speaker-0 (15:11.094)
Well, if you don't listen to your body, you like, all of these things can just get worse?

They absolutely do. They get worse. Now you could band-aid them. and by band-aid that might be, I don't know, getting a medication. Not that medications are bad, but it doesn't necessarily address the root cause issue. And that might be like, I've just taken an antidepressant. Okay, cool. Like am I, I'm feeling a bit more calmer now, but it's going to pop up somewhere else. So it'll be like, all of a sudden now I've got hot flushes. It's like, quick, have some HRT. It's like, okay, yep.

dealt with that and then all of sudden it's like, why am I getting bloating and food sensitivity? So, you know, people...

We just need to have that early action. What are you suggesting like the support here is to recognize those symptoms and actually do something? What would you suggest to do?

Early action

speaker-1 (16:03.564)
Yeah. So I would, I would be honest with yourself first of all. and this is a little practice that can take all of five minutes. go outside, take your shoes off, ground in some grass. Just have a listen in with your body. Like check it from top of the head to the tip of the toe.

Might sound a bit woo woo, but I talk to my body. You know, if I've got something that it wants to tell me through a sensation, it's like, Hey, what's going on? What's up? What do you need? What do you need is a big one. What are you pretending not to know? What needs to change? if someone is like, this feels really weird talking to my body. You could take those questions.

How would we recognise what our body's trying to tell us? Like, does it talk back? Like, what does that look like for you? So if you ask yourself those questions, what does it show up as?

Okay. Well, now because I, you know, I've practiced this, I've been practicing this for many, many years, but if I'm ready to know, I'll know. So it will usually be a thought bubble. It will usually be like, what's something that's happened recently? Last year I got gastro post a barley trip.

It's a possibility, isn't it?

speaker-1 (17:19.47)
I don't know, was weird though. was like a week or two after I got home. So I'm like, is that like a parasite that was nesting in there for a bit? And then it exploded. Like I was okay after 24 or 48 hours, but then my hormones went really out. And so that wasn't very fun for the next cycle or two, but you know, I was just having conversations with that. It's like, knew that physically, you know, I've had a little bit of.

extra stress with whatever the bug was that I had. So what do you need in order to support that? I had some like gut supplements and actually I didn't even change my diet, but you know, I just supported my gut and then with the hormones, that's often, my hormones will talk to me when boundaries are a bit loose. So it's like you have too many clients.

And so your body actually plays up in all of that.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Now that's kind of like more advanced. you're a brand newbie and it's like, am like body burnout essentially means that you've disconnected from your body in order for it to get to that point. And it's now screaming at you. Even if you're still functioning, you're still able to look after the family or run the business, you know, do all those things. It's there's broken rapport with self. There's broken rapport with body. So a simpler answer that might

that you might get is you need to do something about this. And so then it's like, okay, like what? And so, I mean, I've written an amazing book called The Ending Body Burnout Method, which basically has the four steps that help you to end your body burnout. So is it helpful if I go over those four steps?

speaker-1 (19:13.78)
So the first level of inquiry that I find is a lot easier for people because it requires only some specimens from the body is let's do some testing on some body systems. And that might be dependent on what's showing up for someone symptomatically. almost every single client that we work with because we help people end their body burnout is I'll look at their adrenal glands, I'll look at their brain chemicals.

And sometimes they're sex hormones, either straight up or later on. And the reason for that, especially the adrenals and the brain chemicals is because if you've been running, if you've been holding space for a lot of people, if you've been doing a lot of things, if you haven't been able to switch off or haven't allowed yourself to switch off, if there's been chronic stresses in your life, then your adrenal glands, your stress hormones that basically get burnt out when you've been experiencing a lot of stress.

And also we can test for our neurotransmitters, dopamine, serotonin and adrenaline. So serotonin is your lovely peace and joy and happiness and great sleep at night. And dopamine is your get up and go creativity, excitement, mental clarity. So really important for business owners. Again, these, these are usually well, there's a few ways.

Yeah.

speaker-0 (20:35.136)
That's step one. it's the testing is the first.

Testing, yeah. So I get clear on the body systems. That also might look like testing the gut, testing your detox pathways. And then we can actually start creating some therapeutic protocols to help support the healing of the body systems. And that usually looks like some nutritional supplements, some herbs to help kickstart and speed up the healing. But if you only stop there, then you're not really addressing the root causes. And at some point the symptoms will...

pop back again. So then we're looking at the body, mind and environment. So how can you support your physical body through lifestyle? So dialing in your sleep, nutrition, your movement. How can you support your mind? So this is probably most of the work that like clients do if they're working with us inside our ending body burnout method is really getting to the deepest, what we call root root cause belief.

that is causing people pleasing, overdoing perfectionism, fight, flight or freeze patterns that are then causing the body systems to burn out. So getting to a deep fear about self essentially that is not allowing you to be able to switch off and rest and recover. I liken it to a little internal tiger that's constantly chasing you.

And part of that tiger will be past distressing events. So things like COVID where, you know, bad things might've happened either to you or vicariously as a world. experienced a lot of horrible stuff and a lot of uncertainty. And so if you don't process that, it ends up getting stuck in your system, like a broken video tape loop, causing your body to feel like it's happening now. So resolving all of that and then also environment. So,

speaker-1 (22:28.63)
Like, is it toxic? there toxic things in your environment that might be stressing out your system as well? Simple things are like swapping out things like toxic skincare products or cleaning products to something natural and organic, but also looking at relationships and like as business owners, staff, not that we go into like all that business stuff, but it's like bringing awareness that

You can't heal in a toxic pond. Like if you're a little duck swimming around in a toxic pond, you're constantly trying to clean yourself up, but you're going back into that toxic pond. At some point we need to clean up the pond or remove yourself from the pond.

I talk about that with the sum of five. So the five people around you, you know, are they the ones that are lifting you up or bringing you down? How does your body feel about that? the, mean, that's quite deep work though, for a lot of people. So that's step three.

Yeah. And it is usually the make or break. So we've had some beautiful people who have like, they've worked so hard, like from a physical point of view and like what they're putting into their body. They've broken through self-sabotage patterns and they're really nourishing themselves. They've really worked on rewiring their patterns and their beliefs and they've like cleared past trauma. And sometimes when it comes to

tidying up the environment, especially around relationships. is the downfall where it's kind of like, like my marriage is really like all over the place and like, do I have to do that? Well, at some point, your body's going to start speaking to you again. If you're living in a way that is out of alignment and you know, that might be in your relationships, even your business. Like often when my body wants to talk to me, it is around business and marriage.

speaker-0 (24:18.709)
Wow.

Because you know, we're both in business together.

Exactly. Yeah, I hear you with that. And I think that there's a lot of people out there, I mean, in the travel industry, it's often one person, but there are a lot of times that it affects everybody else around them as well, or a partner might have a small part in a business, or they might be doing it together. So relationships are really important and it is work. It is work to do those sorts of things from a business or a

personal perspective. So is that like level 4 then because that's the peak or is there more to do?

No, and then you just repeat the whole cycle again if you need to. Not necessarily, not necessarily like you need to keep doing lab testing for the rest of your life and taking supplements. There's an end date to when you take something therapeutic. It's like now the goal is to maintain, if not just continually evolve and grow. But it's the, it then becomes, you're no longer trying to heal yourself anymore because you're healed. Now.

speaker-0 (25:05.88)
going.

speaker-1 (25:30.83)
that now the game changes to having a beautiful relationship with yourself and treating yourself with love and care and trusting yourself. And when you do that, life will be in alignment for you. Yeah. Because you won't have it any other way. And so then that's what the ending part of ending body burnout is about. It's like, we're not just going to band-aid like with some lovely natural things.

We're going to help you get to the point where far out you love yourself and your body loves you back. And it doesn't need to send, like actually when it sends you signals, it deeply loves you when it's sending you symptoms that you hate on. Um, but when you're, when you have a deep love and trust unconsciously for self, then health is the default. Relationships.

Flourishing is the default. Finances flourish. Business flourishes. Everything flourishes. That's true.

agree with that. When you feel good in yourself then other things around you just tend to happen from a universe perspective. I know that I've experienced that too. So for somebody who's listening to this and saying I'm at that point, I don't know about the heavy work in stage three and four, that could be a bit of a challenge, but it's obviously all in stages for a reason and there's a step by process to it to recognize all of these things and for

For us, it's also about not feeling alone because, mean, you would see this, is this quite a common thing with body burnout? You're seeing it more and more now compared to maybe even pre-pandemic?

speaker-1 (27:15.15)
It's massive. Um, there's stats or 2025 stats. This is for people who are in the workforce. So regardless of whether they're working as an employee or business, but I think it's one third of people are in burnout now. Wow. Which is massive. And that's not including stay at home moms or, you know, parents who are homeschooling or people who are now too sick to even work anymore. So I actually think that it's probably more. terms of like a global world.

in Western world anyway.

So my body's just told me that a headache is about to come on. my gosh, this, feels like a lot. It's not just isolated to a small few that, that feels like, yeah, the world is experiencing this. Something needs to change. I see it as a recognition to say, something needs to change. If I'm feeling these things, I need to.

take action and I know that that will be for so many people out there as well that are listening to this episode or that are across our paths with travel agent achievers or in your worlds too. So what would you suggest is the first step for everybody? Obviously, download the book and read the book, but how can people connect with you or get in touch and find out, how can I make a change? Because I want that to be an action for everybody.

Not just to listen and go, my gosh, that, yeah, I feel that that's what's next. Something to actually change the behavior and patterns.

speaker-1 (28:47.704)
Yeah

speaker-1 (28:51.35)
Awesome. So if you jump on our website, www.chrisandphilly.fm, I'm sure the link will be in the show notes to get the spelling. And Philly.fm. We have heaps of resources on there. So as Roz mentioned, you can actually grab a free physical copy of my book if you would like. Roz will put the link in the show notes.

And that'll get posted to you. So that's a great place to start. If you're not much of a reader or you don't have time to read a book, but you might be able to listen in the shower or you're driving. have our ending Body Burnout Method show podcast as well, which has heaps of different.

resources to help you to become more aware of what's happening in your body, bits of advice as well. And we like to keep those bite-sized as well. So it's like if someone just took something small, they could run with it. We also have some free scorecards as well. So ending body burnout assessment is a great place to start if you want to understand at what rate you are in a burnout and what your three root cause contributors may be. And it gives you a percentage score.

So green is like, you're good, you're fine. Red is... I'm taking them. I'm taking them now. And then we're on socials as well. So you can check out our Facebook page, Instagram, Chris and Philly Functional Medicine.

Chris and Philly Functional Medicine, we will link to all of that in the show notes. I love the sound of the assessment because that feels as though it's an easy end, but to know, hey, am I on the right track here? Is this what it actually is? So the assessment I am definitely going to be linking to and I want everybody to have a listen, have a look out and check it out for yourselves. So thank you, Philly, for being here today. I really appreciate you and everything that you and Chris are doing.

speaker-0 (30:46.286)
for the world to make it a better place and also to be taking care of these humans and those that are challenged, myself included. So thank you so much. really appreciate you and all that you're doing. Thank you for being.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Alright everybody, I am definitely going to be linking to everything in the show notes, but in addition to that, doing the assessment myself and as we spoke about being in the travel industry, you are not alone and what you may have experienced or what you may be going through, what you might be carrying, there is also somebody else out there. So have a look at all of the resources that

Both Chris and Philly have put together for you, listen to their podcast. I will link to everything. And then if you feel like it's the right thing to take the next step, which I highly encourage you to do, reach out to Philly and she'll give you the next steps for you. So thank you for listening today. I appreciate you all. And I will speak to you soon. Bye for now. Thanks for tuning in to the Travel Agent Achievers podcast. I hope that today's episode gave you some more ideas and inspiration to grow your travel business with confidence.

Don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode. And if you've loved what you've heard, share it with another travel professional who could also benefit. Now for resources and links from today's head over to travelagentachievers.com. Until next time, keep building a business and a life that you love in an industry we love together.