You can understand your patterns perfectly and still keep repeating them.
In this episode, Farya Barlas, a Psychologist, is joined by Sally Davidson for a powerful conversation about why high-functioning, high-achieving women often burn out without ever “falling apart.” This isn’t about mindset or motivation. It’s about what happens when success is built on survival, the body never feels safe enough to slow down, and insight alone stops working.
If you’ve ever:
This episode will speak directly to where you are.
What We Uncover in This Episode:
About the Guest: Sally Davidson
Sally Davidson is a board-certified nurse coach and trauma-informed breathwork facilitator with over 30 years of experience in high-pressure healthcare and clinical leadership. After reaching burnout herself, she shifted her work toward nervous-system and body-based healing, helping high-functioning individuals move out of chronic stress and survival patterns. Today, Sally supports clients through coaching, breathwork, and retreats, guiding them to reconnect with their bodies and create change that feels sustainable and grounded.
Find her at https://sallydavidsoncoach.com/ and on Instagram @sallydavidsoncoach.
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You’ve built the skill. You’ve shown up for everyone. You’re the one people call when things fall apart. So why does the next level still feel impossible to picture?
In this episode, Farya Barlas, a Psychologist, chats with Dr. Nicole Nasr about the invisible rules that keep even the most capable therapists, coaches, and founders operating out of survival. Dr. Nasr is living proof of a different path: a clinician who stepped into founder leadership without trading her ethics or her soul.
If you’ve ever felt blocked by self-doubt, resisted the spotlight, or wondered why your business growth keeps colliding with an invisible ceiling, press play.
Inside this episode, you’ll uncover:
About the guest: Dr. Nicole Nasr
Dr. Nicole Nasr, Psy.D., is a counseling psychologist, entrepreneur, and the founder & CEO of Journey — a practitioner community and platform created to help therapists and coaches scale their impact without sacrificing wellbeing. Trained and practicing in the UK with roots in Montreal and Beirut, Nicole blends clinical expertise with a founder’s sensibility. Through Journey, she builds structures that connect practitioners to clients, training, and community so they can grow their work beyond the therapy room.
Become a journey member at journeystartshere.com and find them on Instagram @_journeystartshere.
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In this first guest episode, Farya Barlas, a Psychologist, sits down with freedom-first leadership and business scaling coach Nata Salvatori, whose work sits right at the intersection of identity, leadership, and sustainable success. Together, they explore the deeper mechanisms behind why high-achieving women struggle to delegate, trust support, or step into true CEO leadership, even when they’re exhausted, burnt out, or quietly resentful of how much they’re holding.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
About Our Guest: Nata Salvatori
Nata Salvatore is a Freedom-First Leadership & Business Scaling Coach and the founder of Accidental CEO. She helps high-capacity entrepreneurs step out of chronic over-responsibility and into leadership grounded in clarity, trust, and ease. A multi-business owner, speaker, educator, and creator of the RETURN Framework, Nata specializes in guiding founders from overwhelmed operator to embodied CEO, without the burnout that usually comes with growth.
Find her at accidentalceo.co/coaching, on Instagram @accidentalceo.co, and on Substack accidentalceoco.
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Some conversations arrive like a hand on your shoulder — quiet, steady, and impossible to ignore.
In this episode, Farya Barlas, a Psychologist, sits down with Fareda Barlas, sister, therapist, and founder of Hadley Wood Practice, for a deeply human conversation about the ways our past shapes not just what we do, but who we become. This is not an interview about techniques. It’s a conversation about the hidden rules we’ve lived by, the layers we keep protected, and the surprising tenderness that shows up when someone truly witnesses you.
Expect a few laughs, honest confessions, and moments that land in the body.
If you’ve ever wondered why success can feel hollow, why asking for help is so hard, or why the same survival patterns keep showing up even after “doing the work,” - this conversation will meet you there.
What You’ll Learn:
About the guest: Fareda Barlas
Fareda Barlas is an integrative, trauma-informed psychotherapist and the founder of Hadley Wood Practice. She is BACP-registered and works across psychodynamic, attachment-based, existential/humanistic, and somatic approaches. Fareda focuses on the whole person, including the nervous system, relational patterns, and lived experience, and is known for bringing intuition, authenticity, and presence into deep trauma work.
Find her at Hadley Wood Practice (website), Instagram @fareda.psychotherapy, Book a session to Work with Fareda.
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In this episode, Farya Barlas, a Psychologist, uncovers why deeply intuitive, highly intelligent, emotionally attuned women consistently underestimate their own brilliance, even when their entire life, career, and community prove otherwise. This episode opens a powerful door into the part of you who learned to hide long before she had language for why.
Inside this episode, you’ll uncover:
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What do you do when you’ve achieved the goals you once dreamed of, but suddenly, none of your next steps feel exciting? What if the lack of motivation you’re blaming on “burnout,” “boredom,” or “maybe I’m just not that kind of person” is actually something far deeper and far more common among high achievers?
In this episode, Farya Barlas, a Psychologist, explores the invisible internal ceiling many successful people hit without realizing it. A ceiling created not by capability, but by what your nervous system believes you're allowed to want.
If you’ve ever hit a career or income milestone only to feel strangely blank, unmotivated, or “done,” this episode will help you see what’s happening underneath and the next steps to overcome it.
Inside this conversation, you’ll uncover:
FREE RESOURCES:
You know those traits people constantly praise you for — your resilience, your strength, your emotional intelligence, your ability to hold everything together? What if those very qualities weren’t things you chose, but things life quietly assigned to you long before you ever thought about success?
In this episode, Farya Barlas, Psychologist, explores the invisible link between childhood dynamics, nervous system survival codes, and the gifts high-achievers are celebrated for, even when those gifts were born from moments they don’t remember or never want to relive.
Inside this episode, you’ll uncover:
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You know those moments when you’re right on the edge of expansion - raising your prices, stepping into visibility, asking for the promotion - and suddenly you go flat, tired, foggy, or strangely unmotivated? What if that shift has nothing to do with mindset or discipline and everything to do with something much older inside you?
If you’ve ever wondered why your body seems to “pull back” right when life is moving forward, this conversation will open a door you didn’t know existed.
You’ll discover:
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In this episode, Farya Barlas, a Psychologist, explores the nervous system patterns high achievers mistake for personality, why high-functioning anxiety often goes unnoticed, and how trauma stored in the body silently shapes your leadership, success, productivity, and self-concept.
If you’ve ever said:
• “I don’t have any major trauma.”
• “I just need a better system.”
• “If I slow down, everything falls apart.”
…this episode is your mirror.
What You’ll Learn:
FREE RESOURCES:
There are episodes that teach you something and episodes that change how you see yourself.
This one is the latter.
In this episode, Farya Barlas, a Psychologist, invites you into the hidden origin of her work, not the degrees, not the titles, not the strategy, but the part of her story that no résumé could ever explain. The part where sensitivity becomes intuition, survival becomes leadership, and something extraordinary begins to grow in the one place no one ever thinks to look.
If you’ve ever felt like your power lives just beneath your pain…
If you’ve ever sensed that who you’ve become wasn’t an accident…
If you’ve ever wondered why people reveal their truth to you without knowing why…
This episode will make sense of things you’ve carried your whole life without language. And it may just help you understand something quietly miraculous about yourself, too.
Inside this episode, you’ll explore:
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What if the very patterns that helped you survive are now holding you back from your full potential? From Trauma to CEO is here to show ambitious, high-achieving people how to transform survival wisdom into conscious, soul-led leadership.
Each week, Farya Barlas, Psychologist, guides you through the deeper psychology of high achievement:
Expect real stories, practical insights, and tools to turn your lived experiences into lasting power, confidence, and alignment. If you’re ready to stop running on survival mode and start leading with your soul, this is where it begins.
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