I Thought I Was Thriving, But I Was at Breaking Point

Your wellbeing isn’t separate from your career; it’s part of how you sustain it, explains Caroline Marshall

The EA and PA industry is built on absorbing pressure. Anticipating needs. Being the calm in other people’s chaos. We’re praised for being “always on,” for responding instantly, for quietly carrying responsibility without complaint.

In an industry that is overwhelmingly female, this is no accident. Many of us have been conditioned to see rest as something we earn, not something we deserve. To prioritise everyone else’s deadlines, emotions, and crises – whilst systematically deprioritising ourselves.

It was almost 10 years ago when my body first started telling me it wasn’t OK with how I was living and working. I was working at the time in a Virtual Assistant agency, juggling anything between 100 and 200 hours of billable client work as an Assistant each month, sitting on the senior leadership team, building the onboarding team, and being the go-to client fixer. I was working myself into the ground and being promoted quickly because of it. I thought I was thriving.

Then I got pregnant, and the cracks started to show. Early pregnancy fatigue hit hard. Now at a different life stage to my usual circle of friends, I felt isolated, and I found myself working more and more from home simply because I didn’t have the physical capacity to go to the office anymore. At the same time, I was supporting a client through a business acquisition. My billable hours shot up even further and alongside my usual Assistant duties, I was expected to be available for everyone else, but without any real support of my own.

For my 30th birthday, I finally got a break. A weekend in Cornwall. I told myself that was all I needed. A rest and I’ll be fine. I woke up crying every day. I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and so used to handling everything alone, without communicating my needs. I had no capacity to see the friends I so desperately needed at this point.

Two days after my birthday, I was sitting in the doctor’s office. I was terrified but she was brilliant. And for the first time, someone showed me that I didn’t have to be superhuman, and she understood what was happening to me. It wasn’t because I was weak or lazy; I was a soon-to-be mum who desperately wanted to hold on to the career I’d worked so hard for.

Something had to change, and I wish I could say that was the defining moment, but, spoiler alert, it wasn’t. Instead, I put a plaster over it. I blamed the pregnancy. I blamed my overworking on wanting to be prepared. I carried on as usual. What I didn’t realise then was that the problem ran far deeper, and it would take trauma for me to finally face it. For a long time after that doctor’s appointment, I told myself I was fine. On the surface, life carried on. I didn’t even “need” to finish my CBT course. But underneath, I was operating in survival mode. I hadn’t recovered, I’d just learned how to function through it. I returned to work eight weeks after having my baby. I got married four months later. I wanted to show the world that having a baby “hadn’t changed” me.

“You are so resilient. I don’t know how you do it.”

Even being made redundant from the company I had helped build wasn’t enough to stop me. Then came the pandemic. Another pregnancy two weeks in and another job loss. This is the point where people start calling you “amazing” and “resilient.” They tell you how strong you are. But it wasn’t strength. It was survival, and worse was yet to come. In January 2022, I found myself trying to process a traumatic NICU experience after almost losing my second baby in the middle of a global pandemic. I was either numb or angry. Everything else was a performance. 2022 marks the year I realised that surviving something doesn’t mean you’ve healed from it. And until I faced that truth, nothing was really going to change.

Wellbeing Isn’t an Optional Extra

For me, motherhood only magnified what was already there. The expectation to be endlessly capable, endlessly flexible, endlessly grateful to be “managing it all.” The problem is that this kind of functioning is rewarded as high performance right up until it doesn’t perform. What I experienced wasn’t a lack of resilience or ambition. Once I could finally see what survival had cost me, I started noticing how common it was.

Burnout is what happens when capable, conscientious women are rewarded for overextending, until there’s nothing left to give.

And because the system continues to function while you quietly unravel, it’s easy to believe the problem is personal. It isn’t. For a long time, I thought wellbeing was something separate from my career, something I’d get to once work slowed down. Fit it in when my executives were “quiet.” Once I’d reached the next milestone. But what I eventually understood is this: wellbeing isn’t an optional extra. It’s a professional skill. When I was depleted, I wasn’t at my best. I was reactive instead of measured. I over-accommodated. I said yes when I should have paused. I mistook availability for value. That didn’t make me indispensable, it made me inconsistent.

As Assistants, we sit close to pressure. We absorb stress, urgency, and emotion on behalf of the people we support. When our nervous systems are constantly dysregulated, it doesn’t just affect how we feel – it affects how we think, decide, and communicate. But remember this: your executive doesn’t need a martyr; they need consistency, clarity, someone who can hold perspective when everything feels urgent, because chances are, they’re running on empty too.

Wellbeing didn’t make me softer at work. It made me sharper. It allowed me to respond rather than react. To hold boundaries without guilt. To prioritise properly instead of emotionally. To support at a higher level, not just a louder one. This is the difference between coping and performing sustainably. And in a role built on trust, judgement, and long-term partnership, that difference matters.

The word “resilience” gets thrown around a lot in our industry. You might think you’re resilient because you can “power through.” I thought so, too, and it took almost losing a child, and the fallout that followed me into every area of my life, to truly understand how much we are all running on empty. Real resilience isn’t about how much you can endure; it’s about how you manage your capacity so you don’t break.

And please, if you are seeing the signs I lay out here, get help. We should not feel ashamed if we aren’t prioritising wellbeing and we need others to help us get there. These aren’t productivity hacks. They’re nervous-system basics. You don’t need to overhaul your life. You don’t need to earn rest by breaking first. Your wellbeing isn’t separate from your career. It’s part of how you sustain it.