My Story

Hi there, Thanks for stopping by.

My name is Bernie Dancy and I am a Health Coach specialising in coaching people to improve their lifestyle, stress levels and overall health. As most of the people I work with tend to share a similar ‘back story’, personality or love of running as I do, I thought it would be helpful to share my experiences to help you decide if I’m the right coach for you.

I am currently sitting in my office where I spend 10am-2pm every day coaching clients or reading research to support my clients progress. The rest of my time is spent walking the dog, doing the school run, doing homework with my kids, playing family games of cricket and football, as well as moving my body in some way to help my maintain a balanced mood and physical health. I love my current lifestyle it feels like a great balance. But it didn’t come easy.

After the birth of my two sons, I found working, training and parenting completely exhausting. Trying to do it all on top of underlying PTSD caused by some very unfortunate stressful experiences, pushed me to breaking point and I burntout. So I made very intentional choices to leave my career as a Senior Lecturer in Health and Exercise Science, which I’d worked so hard to achieve in order to have a life that allows me maintain an active, low-stress lifestyle and have time with my family. It sounds like an easy path, it was and it wasn’t. It was definitely hard, but it was also made easier by getting support from amazing people along the way including my GP, therapist and lifecoach. A lot of that work involved understanding how I’d ended up where I was and then using my own professional qualifications and understanding of the body I set about rehabilitating myself back from burnout.

So, how did I end up with chronic stress?

I used to be someone who was always taking on challenges in order to be the best that I could be, pushing myself physically, mentally and professionally. This included achieving my PhD by the time I was 28, completing my Masters at Imperial College, running marathons and even pushing myself to do ultra marathons. So you could say I liked to keep busy. However, despite being ‘fit’ and ‘healthy’ this sort of approach to life certainly wasn’t conducive to good mental health. It meant I had little time or consideration for rest, recovery or recuperation so it eventually all caught up with me.

In 2016, I had a one year old, a three year old, I worked 3 days a week at the University lecturing and I ran most days of the week in order to ‘get me time’. But the lack of sleep meant I finally simply wasn’t recovering enough and I started to suffer from exhaustion, low mood and crippling anxiety. I was not sleeping more than 4 hours a night, I was struggling to get out of bed in the morning but I was also wired at night meaning I would sit up doing work into the early hours of the morning. I felt broken. A strange situation to be in because I considered myself to be a fit person, I ran a lot and went to the gym and ate well. But pushing myself physically and mentally to such an extent meant I was eventually diagnosed with chronic stress and adrenal fatigue.

The more I reflected about my situation, the more I realised that I wasn’t feeling like I did due to the odd stressful day or week. I had been metaphorically and literally running myself into the ground in an attempt to manage emotions and stress that had built up for over 10 years. I had created a lifestyle that I thought allowed me to feel ‘in control’. Why did I need control? Well, it’s a common desire we all have, but when we experience bereavement, grief, loss, or trauma of any description the world can feel very much out of our control. And this is exactly what happened to me.

Unfortunately in 2004 whilst I was in the middle of studying for my PhD and training for the London Marathon, my Dad had a very sudden cardiac arrest aged just 47 years old. I was there at the time and despite me, and my now husband, trying in vain to revive him with CPR he didn’t make it. It was traumatic, to say the least. Losing my father in such a shocking way meant that I’d spend the next 14 years with my nervous system on high alert, experiencing flashbacks and dealing with anxiety (otherwise known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD). A few years later I suffered a miscarriage with my first baby and whilst I was lucky to become pregnant quite soon after, let’s just say labour wasn’t kind to me. In fact, the births of both my sons were extremely traumatic leading me to be hospitalised in ‘high dependancy unit’ after each one. Not ideal. So not surprisingly, life felt precarious and fragile. Witnessing my father's death and having pretty scary deliveries for my sons, which almost meant losing them and my own life, was a lot for my body and mind to handle. Anxiety symptoms were debilitating. But, I ‘cracked on’. On the outside no one knew how I was feeling and even though I was feeling how I was, I didn’t really know what it was called. I didn’t know this was ‘anxiety’ and stress. I just leaned into my high achieving nature and did what I knew best to help me get a sense of control and ease. I worked hard, set goals trained as much as I could, and set out to overcome challenges. However, this approach on top of symptoms of anxiety, PTSD, little sleep, rest or recovery led to what I now call ‘the perfect storm’ for burnout to happen.

‘But running and exercise is good for stress, right?’

As a lecturer in health and exercise science teaching the benefits of exercise for physical and mental health I knew, based on research evidence, that exercise and specifically running was incredibly beneficial for tackling low mood anxiety and stress. As a keen runner, I also knew that I felt better when I ran. So I ran - a lot. But here’s the thing (something I learnt the hard way). If your nervous system is chronically activated and on high alert due to chronic stress (which can be something as simple as a house move, financial pressure, a breakup) or trauma (such as an accident, abuse or a bereavement) and you take part in a grueling training regime, you are simply adding training stress to life stress. That is to say - TRAINING or exercising at high intensity/volume increases stress on the body in order to enhance fitness. This excess training stress on top of life stress can be a ticking time bomb that slowly exacerbates poisonous symptoms such as low mood, anxiety, tiredness, respiratory illness as you essentially push your body into overload, over reaching and eventually over training. You know that illness/injury you had that appeared to be unlucky and come out of nowhere? Well, maybe it wasn’t so unlucky! Most illnesses or injuries we get can be tracked back or linked to poor sleep, rest, nutrition, or doing too much exercise at a time when we would be better of resting. I knew I felt tired and overwhelmed and had two bouts of sinusitis that winter, but I was running fairly well setting PBs and adding more distance every week. So I believed what I was doing was helpful and more than that running was a ‘need’. BUT what I failed to acknowledge was that I was essentially at full capacity and kept asking my body and brain to do more on top of the 4-5 hours sleep that my very young children allowed me.

How I recovered from BURNOUT

I asked for help!

This needed me to acknowledge that things needed to change. So I took a hard look at my lifestyle and realised quite quickly that despite being 'fit and healthy' on the surface, I had plenty of room for improvement. With two small children I often ate on the go (so was clearly not eating enough to fuel my running) and got very little sleep.

So, I learnt as much as I could about the impact of this lifestyle on my physiology including my autonomic nervous system, adrenal glands (the glands responsible for releasing stress hormones in the body). I wanted to improve my resilience to stress and repair all of the damage that I had already endured due to stressful work and life circumstances by tackling my lifestyle. I dug deep into the academic literature, read many books on stress, depression and functional medicine. I also signed up to study Nutritional Therapy so I could learn which foods provide the best nutrients to combat poor blood sugar control and inflammation caused by stress. Finally worked closely with a running coach and applied my experience as a Personal Trainer to refine my running plans to include a lot more rest and recovery. I also invested in life coaching and therapy which helped me to realise that yes, my lifestyle need to improve BUT more than anything I needed to change how I expected myself to tolerate stress. Finally, and probably the most significant change I made was to take time off work and incorporate a much better sleep, rest and nutrition into my routine. In time, I felt so much better and within about nine months I was back on my feet and feeling more like my old self again. I had more energy and my mood had significantly improved. I was sleeping better and nourishing my body rather than constantly depleting it and running better than I had ever before - so much so that I managed to train for an two ultra marathons off of just 3-4 runs a week without feeling like crap.

All in all, my experience with stress and burnout was certainly a life lesson.

In many ways I’m glad it happened because it taught me that as a society we value, reward and celebrate overworking but at high cost.

I also learnt that we can be successful and achieve great things whilst also prioritising our health.

Finally, I learnt a lot about myself, my body, my mind and more specifically what I need to do to make sure that I maintain high levels of resilience and energy so that if stress, loss, grief, trauma ever shows up again (and there’s a good chance it will) then I am better prepared for it.

I’ve spent the past 5 years emersed in the science and psychology of stress. I’ve retrained as a stress maagement specialist and work with people (athletes, recreational athletes, and anyone experiencing chronic stress or burnout) using lifestyle interventions to tackle physiological components of stress AND the mindest/psychology.