Performance, pressure,
and what it costs.

Featured · Series: Built Different

Episode 1: The Night I Stopped Reading My Emails

By Terangi · April 2026 · 4 min read

I was receiving one email a minute. I stopped reading them.

I didn't know it then, but this particular project would be the most difficult and most challenging of my career — and would have a lasting effect. What we created was beautiful, something that should have been magical.

Instead I was waking six times a night, firing off task lists in the dark, watching my inbox fill faster than I could empty it. Three hours of broken sleep, maximum.

I felt inadequate. Overwhelmed. Like a failure — on a project I should have been proud of. It took me ten years to feel that pride.

At the time, no one called it burnout. No one even discussed it. You just pushed through, or you broke. And I did.

Here's what nobody told me at the time.

Chronic overload activates the body's threat response, flooding the system with cortisol and adrenaline. Under acute stress, that's useful — it's your brain doing its job.

But when the pressure never lets up, the central nervous system gets stuck. The alarm keeps firing long after it should have stopped.

Over time, the prefrontal cortex — responsible for decision-making, focus, and emotional regulation — changes structure under sustained cortisol exposure. We know persistent alterations in cortisol patterns and inflammatory markers can have a lasting effect once the cause of stress is reduced. The physical symptoms include chronic fatigue, muscle tension, gastrointestinal issues, and sleep disturbances.

If any part of this sounds familiar, I want you to know something: you are not failing. You might just be running on empty.

I spent 25+ years in the events industry before burnout forced me to stop and understand what was actually happening in my body. What I learned changed everything — and it's the reason I do what I do now.

This is the first in a series of posts about performance, pressure, and what it actually takes to build a body and mind that can handle both — without breaking in the process.