Lori Montry on Burnout: Why High-Achievers Aren’t Failing, Their Bodies Are

As burnout and workplace disengagement continue making headlines nationwide, Denver-area author and former attorney Lori Montry is offering a fresh perspective: burnout isn’t a personal flaw — it’s a biological stress response.

On April 25, Montry will host a free, 500-person event in Aurora to launch her new book, You’re Not the Problem. The event centers on nervous system literacy and trauma-informed growth for high-achieving, midlife professional women who may look successful on the outside but quietly feel burned out, emotionally maxed out, or stuck in cycles of overworking and self-criticism.

Drawing from neuroscience, trauma research, and somatic healing, Montry’s approach — called the Freedom Formula — teaches practical strategies to regulate stress, rebuild internal safety, and restore energy without relying on sheer willpower. The launch also marks the public debut of the You’re Not the Problem Movement, an initiative aiming to shift the conversation around self-improvement and bring nervous system education into mainstream leadership and personal growth discussions.

We caught up Lori for an insightful interview, below.

Many readers come to You’re Not the Problem feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or ashamed of their patterns. What I most hope they feel after finishing the book is a grounded understanding of why those patterns exist and the confidence that they can adapt again.

Most of us interpret our behaviors through a moral lens. If we overwork, emotionally eat, people-please, procrastinate, or shut down, we assume it reflects a flaw in our character. We believe that if we were more disciplined or more confident, things would be different.

What the book reveals is that these patterns are adaptations. The nervous system learns what feels safe and what feels threatening, and the mind develops thought patterns to support those survival strategies.

When readers understand the function behind both their behaviors and their thinking, shame begins to loosen. Instead of asking, “What is wrong with me?” they begin asking, “What was this protecting me from?”

From that place of understanding, change becomes possible. We can update old adaptations and begin responding to life from who we are now rather than who we had to be. My hope is that readers finish the book feeling clear, compassionate toward themselves, and empowered to move toward authenticity, peace, joy, and wholeness.

You challenge the idea that discipline and willpower are the keys to change. What first led you to question that belief, especially given your background in law and high performance environments?

I do not believe willpower is useless. It is powerful, but it's limited.

Willpower works beautifully when you are moving toward a goal that fits within your capacity. I used tremendous willpower to get through law school and in competitive road racing. I know how to focus, train, push, and execute. In those settings, willpower supported forward movement. It was not fighting against something deeper.

Where it failed me was in behaviors that met emotional needs.

When I tried to use willpower to stop emotional eating, to override my tendency to overextend, or to eliminate patterns that were helping me soothe stress at the end of the day, it did not work. Those behaviors were not random. They were ways my nervous system was trying to calm down, cope, or feel safe.

Willpower does not work well against behaviors that are serving a purpose like that. It also does not work when the nervous system is in survival mode and capacity is depleted. If your system feels unsafe or overextended, pushing harder simply adds more strain.

Willpower can help you execute. It cannot override adaptations that are protecting you. When I shifted from forcing myself to change to understanding what my system actually needed, change became sustainable rather than adversarial.

In the book, you describe many behaviors as intelligent survival adaptations. What is one common pattern people criticize themselves for that actually makes deep biological sense?

One of the most common patterns people criticize themselves for is what I would call coping behaviors. Emotional eating. Drinking more than they intend to. Scrolling late at night. Overworking. People-pleasing. Checking out.

Most people frame these as bad habits or moral failures. Biologically, they often make deep sense.

The nervous system’s primary job is survival. If something feels overwhelming, unpredictable, lonely, or emotionally unsafe, the body looks for regulation. It looks for something that will reduce stress, restore connection, or create a sense of control.

I saw this clearly in my own life. I could use tremendous discipline to excel professionally, yet at night, I would find myself reaching for food to decompress. It was not about hunger. It was about soothing a nervous system that had been running hard all day.

When people understand that their coping behaviors are meeting a need, the conversation changes. Instead of asking, “Why am I so weak?” they can ask, “What is this behavior doing for me?”

That question opens the door to replacing the behavior with healthier forms of regulation, rather than fighting it with shame.

Can you explain the difference between the Adapted Self and the Expansive Self in a way that feels accessible to someone encountering nervous system work for the first time?

I describe the Adapted Self and the Expansive Self as two ways we learn to move through the world.

The Adapted Self develops in response to stress, pressure, and unmet needs. It is the version of us that learned how to cope. It learned how to be good, useful, invisible, impressive, agreeable, productive, or self-sufficient in order to stay safe and connected.

The Expansive Self is who we are when the nervous system feels safe enough to relax its defenses. It is the version of us that is present rather than braced, clear rather than reactive, capable of rest without guilt, capable of saying no without panic. It is not a perfect or elevated version of us. It is simply us without survival running the show.

For someone new to nervous system work, the simplest way to understand it is this: the Adapted Self is who you became to cope. The Expansive Self is who you are when you no longer have to.

The work is not about eliminating the Adapted Self. It is about building enough safety, capacity, and energy so that the Expansive Self can lead more often.

The Freedom Formula focuses on building safety in the body before trying to create change. What does “safety” actually look like in everyday life, not just in theory?

When I talk about building safety in the body, I am not talking about eliminating stress or creating a perfectly calm life. I am talking about helping the nervous system experience enough steadiness that it does not have to stay in defense.

In everyday life, safety looks surprisingly ordinary.

It looks like being able to feel discomfort without immediately needing to escape it. It looks like pausing before reacting. It looks like saying no without spiraling into guilt. It looks like resting without feeling panicked or unproductive.

Safety is not a mood. It is a capacity.

Shame-based self-improvement is deeply embedded in our culture. Where do you think this mindset shows up most powerfully in modern life?

Shame-based self-improvement is woven into modern life so seamlessly that most of us do not even recognize it as shame.

It shows up in the messages we absorbed growing up. Be good. Be impressive. Do not be too much. Do not be too needy. Achieve more. Try harder. Perform well. Those messages are often subtle, and they are rarely framed as shame, but they carry the implication that who you are right now is not quite enough.

It shows up in schools that reward output over emotional well-being, in workplaces that praise overextension, and in productivity culture that equates rest with weakness.

It shows up relentlessly in advertising and social media. When you open an app and see endless promises to fix your off-white teeth, your thinning hair, your not-full-enough lips, your not-flat-enough stomach, it may not say “you should be ashamed.” Yet the underlying message is clear: you are almost acceptable, but not quite.

After a lifetime of these influences, the shame becomes the voice we use with ourselves. It’s the voice that says you should be further along by now and that if you just disciplined yourself more, you would finally be enough.

Until we see how deeply embedded shame is in our improvement culture, we will keep trying to heal ourselves with the very mindset that helped create the strain in the first place.

Many people intellectually understand these ideas but struggle to apply them. What is one small, realistic shift readers can make that tends to create meaningful momentum?

One small shift that creates real momentum is this: replace self-criticism with one curious question.

Most people already understand the concepts intellectually. They know stress affects behavior. They know willpower has limits. Yet when they slip into a familiar pattern, the old reflex kicks in. “What is wrong with me? Why am I like this?”

Instead, I invite readers to ask, “What is this behavior doing for me right now?”

If you are reaching for food at night, what need is being met? Comfort? Relief? Transition?
If you are procrastinating, what feels overwhelming or risky about starting?
If you are overworking, what feels unsafe about slowing down?

This small shift from judgment to curiosity changes the entire internal tone. The body responds differently to curiosity than it does to shame.

How has writing You’re Not the Problem changed the way you relate to your own stress, productivity, and ambition?

Writing You’re Not the Problem required me to take my own relationship with stress, productivity, and ambition to the next level.

Before I began this work over sixteen years ago, I operated from a set of deeply adapted beliefs. My worth was tied to productivity and achievement. What I called ambition was a search for safety. If I do enough, I will finally be enough. That felt like security.

Thankfully, that belief no longer runs my life. Today I operate from a steadier foundation. I am worthy because I exist, not because I produce.

That said, the intensity of a project like You’re Not the Problem put my tools to the test. I was managing a full somatic coaching practice, family life with eight children and a wonderful husband, and occasional legal work. Writing and publishing a book on top of that was the doctoral-level application of everything I teach.

I underestimated how much time, effort, and energy the project would require. In the past, I would have created a rigid schedule and treated it like a boss. I no longer do that. I know where that leads.

Instead, I created structure and then adjusted constantly based on my nervous system’s capacity. I watched for signs of strain. I noticed when I tipped toward survival mode from pushing past my limits, and had to consciously pull back. Nothing is worth my peace now.

Interestingly, my creativity became a compass. When I pushed too hard, it dried up. It reminded me to slow down and regulate before continuing.

There’s no question that this project stretched me. It required real-time application of the principles I was writing about. I was not recalling lessons from the past. I was using them the same day I was drafting the chapters.

In many ways, I was the writer and the reader at the same time.

What surprised you most in the process of writing this book, either about your readers or about yourself?

What surprised me most was how willing I became to tell the truth.

I used to be deeply private. I thought that was simply my personality. In reality, it was protection. For years, no one knew about my self-hatred or my destructive patterns with food and exercise. Not a single person. I carried it quietly into my late thirties because I was too ashamed to let it be seen.

Even when I first decided to share the principles that set me free, I assumed I would do it under a pen name. I wanted the message out there, but I was not sure I wanted my name attached to it. Writing this book changed that.

There were moments during the process when I felt exposed, almost raw. It felt a little like those dreams where you step onto a bus and suddenly realize you forgot to get dressed.

Today, sharing myself feels like alignment. I can tell the truth about who I was, about the adaptations I carried, and about the work it took to unwind them, without collapsing into self-judgment or fearing how you may see me.

If someone could only take one idea or practice from You’re Not the Problem, what do you hope it would be?

If someone could take only one idea from You’re Not the Problem, I hope it would be this: you are not the problem.

Most high-functioning people secretly believe their struggles mean there’s something wrong with them. They think they lack discipline, consistency, or willpower. What the book explains is that what looks like self-sabotage is often adaptation. Your nervous system learned to respond to stress, expectations, and past experiences in ways that once made sense. You’re not broken. You’re adapted.

Discover more via: lorimontry.com/

RSVP for FREE on 4/25 for "You're Not the Problem — A Free Denver Book Launch and Live" Experience: eventbrite.com/e/youre-not-the-problem-a-free-denver-book-launch-and-live-experience-tickets-1983281267660