Hi, I’m Kelly…
I nearly died from my second burnout.
The first time, I was working with a skilled, well-qualified coach. For seven months, I was in chronic, debilitating pain. I kept passing out, first on a train, my friend found me and took me to A&E. Then from the top of the escalator at Liverpool Street station. I landed at the bottom, tights ripped, got back on the tube and went to my meeting. I didn't take one day off.
Seven months after the pain started, I had two surgeries in 48 hours. The consultants told me it was burnout. Burnout was harming my body from the inside out. I didn't believe them. High performers, people like me, don't reach burnout.
The second time, I couldn't leave the sofa for six months. I was still working. I almost didn't survive Christmas. My coach was trained to coach for performance and goal achievement.
She missed it entirely.
Neither of those coaches was negligent. They were doing exactly what their training had equipped them to do. The problem wasn't their skill. It was that burnout removes the three conditions standard coaching assumes are present: capacity, sense of self, and a regulated nervous system.
Goal-setting reinforced the performance pressure that contributed to the burnout in the first place. Strengths-based work felt invalidating when I couldn't access my strengths. Actionfocused conversations created another to-do list for someone already beyond capacity.
The frameworks weren't designed for what burnout actually does. So they couldn't work
I spent twelve years and over £250,000 trying to find the training that would close the gap
I kept seeing in my own burnout and in the 700 leaders I coached through theirs. I stacked qualifications. Psychology. Executive coaching. Neuroscience. Psychotherapy. Hypnotherapy. Gestalt. Systemic team coaching. Trauma. Breathwork. Ayurveda. Holosomatic bodywork. I kept searching for the thing that would explain what I'd lived and what I was seeing in my clients.
It didn't exist.
Every existing approach treated burnout as stress, or a discipline problem, or a productivity issue. The interventions were stress management, habits, time management. None of them addressed what burnout actually is: the outcome of chronic toxicity exceeding sense of self.
The WHO definition and the 12 stages originated in psychology. That lens explains the cognitive and emotional experience of burnout. It doesn't explain the chronic pain, the passing out, the surgeries, the body being destroyed from the inside.
Without the full picture, cognitive, somatic, and neurological, people don't understand burnout. They read a blog, rehash the WHO and the 12 stages, and position themselves as experts.
So I built what didn’t exist.
Not another burnout awareness programme. Not an adapted resilience model. A discipline, built from the inside out, from what I experienced, from what 700 leaders taught me, and from over a decade of trying to find the training that would explain it.
The result is Burnoutology: the discipline of understanding how burnout presents and why it develops, simultaneously, across the whole person and their environment.
The Burnout Equation:
Toxicity − Sense of Self = Burnoutt
Standard coaching assumes the client is ready for strategy. Burnoutology begins where the client actually is, in their state, building safety first, recovering self second, and only then engaging strategy.
The 4 S's: State → Safety → Self → Strategy
This is the applied coaching pathway that makes burnout work safe, ethical, and effective at depth.
Credentials.
I'm now completing my PhD on the long-term cognitive impact of burnout, research that isn't yet in published literature, and how coaching needs to evolve as burnout evolves.
I've coached over 700 leaders through burnout and trained over 150 coaches across 15 countries to work in this field. I've written six books on burnout, leadership, and change. I'm a TEDx speaker. I've been featured in The Times, The Guardian, BBC, Sky News, Psychologies Magazine, and Waitrose Health. I've worked with organisations including Waitrose, John Lewis, LUSH, the NHS, NatWest, Barclays, Visa, Tesco, and M&S as coach, advisor, consultant, and keynote speaker.
I was named the UK's Youngest HR Director by the CIPD. I reached board-level by 30. And then burnout nearly killed me.
I’ve gained qualifications in:
PhD (neuroscience of burnout), ongoing
BSc Psychology (2007)
MSc Organisational Change and Development (2017)
AoEC (Academy of Executive Coaching), accredited by the AC (Association for Coaching),
EMCC and ICF:
• Diploma in Executive Coaching (2011)
• Systemic Team Coaching (2018)
• Certificate in Executive Coaching Supervision (2019)
• Gestalt Coaching Techniques (2022)
MCIPD (2008)
Plus certificates and diplomas in Neuroscience, Psychotherapy, Hypnotherapy, Firewalking,
Facilitation, Training Design, Holosomatic Bodywork, Yoga Teaching, Meditation, Pranayama,
Breathwork, Holotropic Breathwork, Ayurveda, Empowerment and Breakthrough Coaching,
and numerous psychometric tests and personality profiling tools.
The science of burnout combined with a whole lot of woo.
I made the mistakes so you don't need to.
Coaching is no longer safe unless it’s burnout-informed.
Your lived experience doesn't make you qualified to coach burnout.
If you're a coach who knows how to coach but is hesitating to call yourself a burnout coach because you know the gap between lived experience and disciplinary authority, the Burnout-Informed Coach (BIC) training gives you that foundation in two days.
If you're ready to build your entire practice around Burnoutology and become the go-to burnout coach in your niche, the Master Burnout Coach (MBC) is the deepest burnout coaching qualification in the world.
I'm still learning. I'm still going deeper. This work doesn't end.
And if you're still reading and you want more ...
I live in Cambridgeshire with my partner Mick, my twin sons, my step-sons, and our rescue dog. I'm an undefeated Mario Kart champion, a neuroscience geek, and a yoga and meditation teacher in my spare time. I practice yoga daily, at least once, and I love my weight training. I can currently leg press 300kg.
I'm also AuDHD, diagnosed at 43, along with bipolar and two chronic physical health conditions (thanks burnout) . It's shaped how I understand masking, identity, and the physiological cost of performing a version of yourself that isn't true. It's in the work.
I'm curious, direct, and I care about doing the right thing even when nobody's watching. That's in the work too.