Is It Burnout or Perimenopause? How to Tell (and What to Do About It) with Erin Ayala, PhD (Episode 254)

Hit Play Not Pause

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement, Mental Health

4.9 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 10 December 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Are you burned out? Or just in a rough patch? Is it perimenopause, depression, or some messy mix of well, everything? In this episode, we’re joined by sports psychologist and endurance athlete Dr. Erin Ayala to unpack athletic burnout in midlife women—what it is, how it shows up, how it overlaps with perimenopause and mood changes, and how to tell it apart from being overreached, under-fueled, or just end-of-season tired. Erin also serves up some practical advice for what to do when every workout feels like a slog, how to talk to your coach, why rest, recovery, and carbs matter more than ever, and how to build a support team that actually communicates. We also dig into the grief of changing performance and body composition in midlife—and how to pivot without losing your identity as an athlete.

Erin Ayala, PhD, LP, CMPC is a Licensed Psychologist and Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC) offering virtual mental health therapy for athletes aged 14 and above. She provides one-on-one performance coaching, CMPC mentorship, clinical supervision, and group workshops for teams and sport organizations. She supports athletes in injury recovery, managing performance anxiety, depression, pre-competition stress, confidence, and self-criticism. Located in Minnesota, she is licensed to work with athletes in 40 states. You can learn more about Dr. Ayala and her work at www.skadisportpsychology.com

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to Hit Play, Not Pause, a feisty menopause podcast for active performance-minded women.
0:14.6	I am your host, Celine Yeager. Each week, I bring you advice from athletes, scientists, researchers, and other experts to help
0:21.2	you feel and perform you best, no matter what your hormones are doing. This show is a production
0:26.2	of Live Feisty Media.
0:30.4	Hello, strong feisty women. I hope you all are well. So this week's show is one that is near and dear to my heart. It is about
0:41.6	burnout, which is something I dance around the edges of a lot in pretty much every aspect of my
0:49.4	life. I love doing this show, but I'll tell you, there are many times where the pressure I feel to do a good job here and to do a good job on my newsletter, and a good job on the book projects I'm working on, and a good job still riding my bike and running and literally walking my talk, all on top of wanting to show up in my personal life, and all while navigating the social media
1:13.1	space where everyone seems to be yelling at each other and taking shots at each other around the
1:17.8	clock. There are many days that I feel like throwing it all in the ocean and riding off
1:25.3	into the sunset, where I'm not sure I can do it anymore.
1:30.1	And if I'm honest, as I record this, I'm sitting high up on the precarious edge of one of
1:37.7	those times when it all just feels like too much.
1:43.1	And thankfully, I have been here enough times that I know the questions
1:48.6	to ask myself as I sit on this edge, about how I'm taking care of myself, about my why, and if that
1:58.3	why or those whys have changed, and so what are they now and what's real
2:04.6	and what are the stories that are being played out in my very very rich theater of my mind and i'm able
2:14.6	to gently walk back from the edge and find my way again.
2:19.6	But it's been a process for me.
2:22.0	It's always been a process for me, and I imagine it always will be a process for me.
2:28.1	Because as a goal-oriented person, I'm always pushing out the goalposts and raising the bar and seeing what's possible
2:35.9	until it comes close to breaking me. And I know I need to reevaluate that process too because
2:42.7	I keep thinking one of these times that it just might break me. And that's not what life is
	...

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