The Hidden Cost of Success: From Burnout to Self-Worth
The Hidden Cost of Success: From Burnout to Self-Worth
For 25 years, Nat van Zee has worked with high-profile individuals, A-list celebrities, and leading creative talent across luxury fashion, beauty, music, media, and advertising. As a former international makeup artist, her portfolio includes global campaigns, high-end editorial, film/TV, awards, and private client work.
She spent more than a decade working backstage at Paris, New York, and London Fashion Weeks, building a successful career in an industry defined by creativity, high expectations, and the ability to consistently deliver under pressure at high-profile, highly visible events where reputations are on the line.
A Personal Turning Point
In 2012, what felt like unfair criticism triggered a personal breakdown. She felt misunderstood and resentful. She spiralled into depression and reached the lowest point of her life. She knew something had to change—not only in her circumstances, but in the way she saw herself and the world. Her search for answers transformed her life beyond anything she had imagined.
Coaching and therapy helped her recognise that she had learned early in life to prioritise other people’s needs over her own. Her blueprint had become working harder, trying to be perfect, and chasing success. Eventually, it led to exhaustion. Criticism no longer felt like feedback; it felt like a personal attack.
She also discovered her sensitivity as an empath: how deeply she absorbed other people’s stress, emotions, and moods and how easily she lost touch with her own needs while caring for and fixing others at the expense of her own potential.
To reclaim her energy, she changed her social circle and lifestyle from hedonistic to holistic. She swapped the news for personal growth teachers. She immersed herself in understanding health and wellbeing while exploring the connection between body, mind, and soul.
For ten years, she lectured on the impact of toxins in beauty products on health, hormones, and the planet. Yet she noticed that living toxin-free did not guarantee health. She watched people who seemingly did everything right struggle with physical and mental health symptoms.
This led her to explore the impact of trauma, inherited beliefs, repressed emotions, and the nervous system. It informs her work with high achievers who feel exhausted from carrying too much responsibility, always being in control, and living with constant mental overload, while doubting their ability despite success.
The Hidden Reality Behind Image and Success
Working with high-profile models, celebrities, and talent across luxury fashion, Nat witnessed that even the most beautiful and successful people often struggled with self doubt, fear of rejection, and feeling like an imposter.
She says:
“Confidence is an inside job; it cannot be painted on. In our chase to appear perfect or gain external validation, we judge ourselves, hide who we truly are, and end up feeling alone and disconnected.”
“Often clients find me at breaking point after trying talk therapy, self-help, or medication. They are usually highly self-aware, yet the root cause of their struggle remains hidden in the unconscious. They can’t think their way out of it. The root cause may be hidden or unresolved trauma or decades of pushing through in pursuit of success or caring for others until their body or mind finally says, ‘No more.’
That is when I help them reconnect with their bodies and remember who they really are.”
Redefining Success
Nat’s own spiritual turning point in 2019 inspired her to qualify in therapeutic approaches that support soul-deep transformation by integrating somatic, emotional, mental, behavioural, and subconscious work. In 2021, she founded Vanzee Being.
Today, she is a certified coach through the ICF-accredited Institute of Coaching Mastery. She is trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), hypnotherapy, and transpersonal modalities.
Her work helps high achievers become aware of the blind spots driving stress, burnout, self-doubt, and conflict with themselves and others. She guides clients to release stuck emotions and rewire subconscious patterns so they can change how they think, feel, and act.
For many clients, this means learning to recognise what they are feeling before automatically overriding it. It means cultivating inner safety to express emotions, say what they think, and ask for what they need. As a result, they create healthier, more fulfilling relationships while building a life, career, or business that feels aligned with who they truly are.
Her work is centred on the clients she understands through lived experience: high-achieving women, empaths, recovering perfectionists, and people pleasers. Women who appear capable and successful on the outside while privately feeling exhausted, resentful, disconnected, or unfulfilled.
Why the Body Says No
Nat’s work is rooted in a simple truth: the body says no when you continually ignore your own needs.
What appears as burnout, anxiety, or stress is not always caused by workload alone. It often develops through years of pushing through discomfort, avoiding difficult conversations, prioritising other people’s expectations, and disconnecting from what the body has been trying to communicate. It may be the result of inherited beliefs or unresolved trauma.
Nat helps clients become aware of what drives their behaviour and thinking on autopilot. She guides them to shift from overthinking, self-doubt, indecision, and conflict avoidance into calm, confident self-leadership through inner work with real-life, long-lasting change.
She guides clients to redefine success with aligned action rooted in values and purpose so that health, wellbeing, and meaningful connection are strengthened rather than sacrificed.
Through parts work and somatic approaches, clients begin to feel clear, more decisive, and more confident expressing what they need at home and at work. They develop healthier communication, stronger boundaries, greater trust in themselves, and the confidence to delegate without guilt. As a result, both wellbeing and performance improve.
Many discover they achieve more by doing less because they stop being busy to prove their worth and instead focus on what truly matters.
Recognised for the Work
Nat regularly shares her perspective through podcasts, panel discussions, workshops, and keynote talks. Her insights on preventing overwhelm and burnout have also been featured in The Telegraph.
In 2024, she was named Most Innovative Burnout Coach at the SME News Greater London Enterprise Awards. Vanzee Being also received the Best Trauma-Informed Coaching and Hypnotherapy Service – South East
England award at the GHP Mental Health Awards.
Both honours came just three years after launching Vanzee Being, recognising a practice focused on addressing the root causes of burnout rather than simply managing its symptoms.
Success on Her Own Terms
Today, Nat helps high-achieving women redefine success before their bodies are forced to do it for them.
Her work is shaped by lived experience, supported by evidence-informed approaches, and guided by the belief that self-worth should never depend on achievement, appearance, or external validation.
Nat knows what it feels like when your life looks successful on the outside, but you don’t feel it. She helps clients redefine success in a way that prioritises health, authenticity, purpose, and genuine connection.
Because true success is not about how much you can accomplish while pushing through. It is about having the courage to be yourself, express what matters most, and build a life in which you feel seen, connected, and fulfilled.
To work with Nat, visit her at vanzeebeing.com, or book with her on Trova Health.
Join Nat’s upcoming class for practitioners: Burnout and Somatic Healing for High-achieving Women on October 14, 2026.
Published by Trova Health, a clinician-built global network of mental health and wellness professionals working to make culturally informed care more accessible worldwide. Our Provider Spotlight series shares the stories of providers who bring something exceptional to their work, wherever in the world they practise.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is burnout?
Burnout is a state of physical and emotional exhaustion associated with prolonged stress. The World Health Organization includes burnout in the ICD 11 as an occupational phenomenon characterised by energy depletion, increased mental distance from one’s work, and reduced professional effectiveness.
Nat’s work focuses on helping high performers recognise these signs and explore the patterns contributing to them rather than continuing to push through exhaustion.
What does a burnout coach do?
A burnout coach helps clients recognise patterns of chronic stress and develop more sustainable ways of working and living. Nat works primarily with high achieving and deeply feeling people, using coaching, hypnotherapy, somatic practices, and nervous system tools to help them understand what may be driving their burnout.
What is somatic coaching?
Somatic coaching is a body based approach that considers physical sensations and nervous system responses alongside thoughts and emotions. It can help clients become more aware of how stress appears in the body and recognise internal signals they may have learned to ignore.
Somatic work is one of the approaches Nat incorporates into her practice at Vanzee Being.
What is nervous system regulation?
Nervous system regulation refers to practices that can help the body move from a heightened stress response toward a calmer and more balanced state. Nat helps clients explore regulation practices that can fit into demanding lives without becoming another source of pressure or expectation.
What is trauma informed coaching?
Trauma informed coaching recognises that past experiences can shape present beliefs, behaviours, and stress responses. It prioritises safety, choice, collaboration, and respect for the client’s boundaries.
Nat incorporates trauma informed principles into her work while drawing on her training in coaching, hypnotherapy, Internal Family Systems, and somatic approaches.
Can high achievers experience burnout without realising it?
Yes. High functioning people may continue performing and meeting expectations while privately feeling depleted. Because their outward success can conceal the extent of their stress, burnout may not become visible until it begins affecting their health, sleep, relationships, or sense of fulfilment.
These are often the clients Nat works with: capable and accomplished women who appear fine on the outside while carrying more than others realise.
How is hypnotherapy used for stress and burnout?
Hypnotherapy uses focused relaxation and attention to help clients explore subconscious beliefs, associations, and patterns. Some practitioners combine it with coaching and somatic approaches as part of a broader process for understanding stress responses.
Nat is trained in hypnotherapy and incorporates it into her practice according to each client’s needs and goals.
What is Internal Family Systems?
Internal Family Systems, commonly called IFS, is a therapeutic model that views the mind as containing different parts, each of which may carry particular emotions, beliefs, or protective roles. The approach can help people understand patterns connected to perfectionism, people pleasing, self criticism, and fear of rejection.
Nat has training in IFS and draws on its principles in her work with high achieving clients.