How High-Achieving Women Can Get Out of Survival Mode & Burnout

Samantha Rae
2 hours ago
3 min read

If you’re a high-achieving, high-masking woman, you’ve likely experienced the familiar cycle of high performance and success, followed by burnout and overwhelm — only to rest, recover just enough, and then return to performing at high levels again.

When you've been operating in survival mode—making choices from emotional scarcity, performing for recognition, striving to be the 'best' within systems that don't value you—you develop a version of yourself that's rooted in constant performance, and become disconnected from who you are beneath the performance.

Soul Activation™ was designed to address this fundamental disconnection.

Soul Activation™

The Soul Activation Model™ is a process I developed to help high-achieving, high-masking individuals move from survival-based decision-making to soul-aligned power and existence. It's the pathway out of High-Functioning Survival Mode™, which most often shows up as chronic burnout for high-functioning, high-masking people.

How It Works In Practice

Most approaches to burnout focus on one-dimensional, surface-level fixes — better time management, more self-care routines, or productivity strategies.

Soul Activation™ is the core methodology I use in my private practice and cohort work. It combines:

Nervous system regulation and embodiment practices
Strategic business consulting for those building aligned businesses/professional endeavors
Integrative spiritual tools (Human Design, astrology, and intuitive practices) used as reflective frameworks rather than diagnostic systems
Timeline resetting based on Timeline Anchor Theory™
Intersectional frameworks that honor your full identity (cultural context, neurodivergence, lived experiences, and systemic oppression)

This model asks, “What kind of life would support the real me?” because the goal is to build a life from alignment rather than continuing to perform within structures that were never designed to hold the full version of you.

The model guides you through four distinct phases of transformation. Each phase requires specific types of support and has its own timeline. Each phase is designed to meet you exactly where you are and adjusts as you move through the work and come back home to yourself. At a high level, the model guides people through a structured process of:

awareness
unlearning
integration
re-emergence into alignment

This process isn't linear. But it is intentional, structured, and grounded in both research and lived experience.

Who It’s Designed For

I created this framework for women like me—high-achieving, high-masking individuals who have spent their entire lives striving for excellence to justify their worth. We need a very specific type of care and support, spaces where we get to exist, be seen, and be held without performance. That is the foundation of Soul Activation™. This work is especially powerful for people who:

are high achieving but deeply exhausted
feel successful on paper but misaligned internally
struggle to rest without guilt
sense that something is off but can’t name it
want systems that create sustainable, long-lasting change beyond recovery

Understanding Where You Are

I've developed a free Soul Activation™ Assessment to help you identify which phase you're currently in and what type of support would serve you best. Take the Soul Activation™ Assessment today.

Ways to Engage With This Work

The Soul Activation Cohort is an intimate, highly personalized container for high-achieving women ready to move from survival mode to soul-aligned power. You can join the waitlist to be a part of the next cohort.

Learn About The Cohort

You can also work with me 1:1 for a more personalized and in-depth Soul Activation™ experience where we go beyond mindset and nervous system rewiring into lifestyle and work redesign. Learn more here.

Learn More About 1:1 Work

About the Research & What's Next

This framework is based on my phenomenological and grounded theory research, 15+ years of Fortune 500 consulting experience, and my own lived experience navigating autistic burnout and complex trauma. I am currently writing a comprehensive white paper that details the full High-Functioning Survival Mode Framework™, Timeline Anchor Theory™, and Soul Activation Model™.

Learn More About My Work

Developed by Dr. Samantha-Rae Dickenson, EdD, MPH | Founder of DSRD Consulting & SSR Co.