The Hidden Cost of Success: How Nat van Zee Helps High Achieving Women Choose Self Worth Over Burnout

For 25 years, Nat van Zee worked with high performing individuals in some of the world’s most image driven and demanding environments. As an international makeup artist, she collaborated with high profile individuals and creatives across luxury fashion, beauty, music, media, and advertising.

She spent more than a decade working at Paris, New York, and London Fashion Weeks, building a successful career in an industry defined by creativity, exacting standards, and constant pressure to perform.

By most external measures, Nat was thriving. Internally, however, she was relying on achievement, approval, and perfection to feel secure in her own worth.

In 2012, an experience of criticism affected her far more deeply than she expected. She felt misunderstood and resentful, and the experience led to one of the lowest periods of her life. It also forced her to confront a difficult question: why had someone else’s judgment shaken her so profoundly?

As she began looking for answers, Nat recognised patterns that had shaped her life from an early age. She had learned to prioritise other people’s needs, work hard for approval, and hold herself to nearly impossible standards. Criticism did not simply feel like feedback. It felt personal, exposing a deeper fear that she was not enough.

Determined to understand herself and feel better, Nat began exploring health, wellbeing, and the connection between body, mind, and soul. She became more aware of her sensitivity to other people’s emotions and expectations, and of how easily she could lose touch with her own needs while caring for everyone around her.

Her journey initially focused on clean beauty, sustainability, and the effects of lifestyle and environmental toxins on health. Over time, however, she became increasingly interested in a larger question: why were so many people doing everything “right” and still struggling?

That question led her beyond lifestyle factors and into the influence of trauma, unconscious beliefs, emotional patterns, the inner critic, and the nervous system. It also helped her understand why so many sensitive, high achieving women feel exhausted even when they appear capable, accomplished, and in control.

Those insights would eventually shape the work she does today.

The Hidden Reality Behind Image and Success

Working closely with high profile models and talent across luxury fashion, Nat saw something most people outside the industry rarely witness: confidence cannot be painted on.

Even people who are celebrated for their beauty, talent, or success can struggle with self doubt, fear of rejection, and a quiet sense of not being enough.

Nat saw how easily people can hide behind an image of confidence while privately judging themselves, questioning their worth, or changing who they are to gain acceptance. She also recognised those patterns in her own life.

It was here that she began to understand that lasting confidence has to be built from within. Appearance, achievement, and external validation may offer reassurance, but they cannot create a secure relationship with oneself.

Redefining Success

Following another profound personal and spiritual turning point in 2019, Nat deepened her personal development through formal training in integrative therapeutic approaches. In 2021, she launched Vanzee Being.

Today, she is a certified coach through the ICF accredited Institute of Coaching Mastery, with additional training in Internal Family Systems, hypnotherapy, and somatic approaches.

Her work integrates mind, body, and soul to help clients become more aware of the patterns operating beneath stress, burnout, self doubt, and overachievement. She supports them in understanding the beliefs and emotional responses that keep those patterns in place, while developing healthier ways of relating to themselves and others.

For many clients, this means learning to recognise what they feel before automatically overriding it. It can also mean becoming more comfortable expressing emotions, setting boundaries, speaking honestly, and asking for what they need.

Nat has also lectured and mentored on wellbeing, holistic health, and sustainable beauty. She has shared her perspective through media appearances, expert panels, and podcasts.

Her focus is the kind of client she understands through lived experience: high achieving women, empaths, recovering perfectionists, and people pleasers. These are women who appear capable and successful on the outside while privately feeling exhausted, resentful, disconnected, or unfulfilled.

Rather than helping them simply manage symptoms, Nat helps clients explore what may be driving their stress, self doubt, and need for external validation. Through greater self awareness, self acceptance, and authentic self expression, they can begin building success on terms that feel genuinely their own.

Why the Body Says No

Nat’s work is rooted in a simple truth: the body says no when you continually ignore your own needs.

What appears as burnout, anxiety, or exhaustion is not always the result of workload alone. It can build through years of pushing through discomfort, avoiding difficult conversations, prioritising other people’s expectations, and disconnecting from what the body is communicating.

Nat helps clients slow down enough to notice what has been building beneath the surface. Together, they explore the patterns behind overthinking, overachievement, and chronic stress, while helping clients develop a more trusting relationship with themselves.

The goal is not to abandon ambition. It is to pursue meaningful goals without sacrificing health, identity, or connection in the process.

As clients become more aware of their internal signals, they can begin to feel calmer and more confident in expressing what they want. They can make choices that reflect their values, create healthier relationships, and experience achievement without allowing it to determine their worth.

Nat has also brought this message into the wider public conversation, including sharing her perspective on preventing overwhelm and burnout with The Telegraph.

Recognised for the Work

In 2024, Vanzee Being was named Most Innovative Burnout Coach at the SME News Greater London Enterprise Awards. It was also named Best Trauma Informed Coaching and Hypnotherapy Service for South East England at the GHP Mental Health Awards.

Both honours came just three years after Nat launched Vanzee Being, reflecting the recognition of a practice focused on addressing the patterns beneath burnout rather than simply managing its symptoms.

Success on Her Own Terms

Today, Nat helps high achieving women redefine success before their bodies are forced to do it for them.

It is work shaped by lived experience, supported by evidence informed approaches, and guided by a belief that self worth should not depend on achievement, appearance, or external validation.

Nat knows personally how easy it is to build a life that looks successful while feeling disconnected from yourself within it. She also knows that redefining success does not mean giving up ambition. It means understanding what is driving that ambition and choosing a way forward that allows space for health, authenticity, purpose, and connection.

Because true success is not about how much you can accomplish while pushing through. It is about having the courage to be yourself, express what matters to you, and build a life in which you feel seen, connected, and fulfilled.

To work with Nat, visit her at vanzeebeing.com, or book with her on Trova Health.

Join Nat’s upcoming class for practitioners: Burnout and Somatic Healing for High-achieving Women on October 14, 2026.

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Published by Trova Health, a clinician-built global network of mental health and wellness professionals working to make culturally informed care more accessible worldwide. Our Provider Spotlight series shares the stories of providers who bring something exceptional to their work, wherever in the world they practise.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is burnout?

Burnout is a state of physical and emotional exhaustion associated with prolonged stress. The World Health Organization includes burnout in the ICD 11 as an occupational phenomenon characterised by energy depletion, increased mental distance from one’s work, and reduced professional effectiveness.

Nat’s work focuses on helping high performers recognise these signs and explore the patterns contributing to them rather than continuing to push through exhaustion.

What does a burnout coach do?

A burnout coach helps clients recognise patterns of chronic stress and develop more sustainable ways of working and living. Nat works primarily with high achieving and deeply feeling people, using coaching, hypnotherapy, somatic practices, and nervous system tools to help them understand what may be driving their burnout.

What is somatic coaching?

Somatic coaching is a body based approach that considers physical sensations and nervous system responses alongside thoughts and emotions. It can help clients become more aware of how stress appears in the body and recognise internal signals they may have learned to ignore.

Somatic work is one of the approaches Nat incorporates into her practice at Vanzee Being.

What is nervous system regulation?

Nervous system regulation refers to practices that can help the body move from a heightened stress response toward a calmer and more balanced state. Nat helps clients explore regulation practices that can fit into demanding lives without becoming another source of pressure or expectation.

What is trauma informed coaching?

Trauma informed coaching recognises that past experiences can shape present beliefs, behaviours, and stress responses. It prioritises safety, choice, collaboration, and respect for the client’s boundaries.

Nat incorporates trauma informed principles into her work while drawing on her training in coaching, hypnotherapy, Internal Family Systems, and somatic approaches.

Can high achievers experience burnout without realising it?

Yes. High functioning people may continue performing and meeting expectations while privately feeling depleted. Because their outward success can conceal the extent of their stress, burnout may not become visible until it begins affecting their health, sleep, relationships, or sense of fulfilment.

These are often the clients Nat works with: capable and accomplished women who appear fine on the outside while carrying more than others realise.

How is hypnotherapy used for stress and burnout?

Hypnotherapy uses focused relaxation and attention to help clients explore subconscious beliefs, associations, and patterns. Some practitioners combine it with coaching and somatic approaches as part of a broader process for understanding stress responses.

Nat is trained in hypnotherapy and incorporates it into her practice according to each client’s needs and goals.

What is Internal Family Systems?

Internal Family Systems, commonly called IFS, is a therapeutic model that views the mind as containing different parts, each of which may carry particular emotions, beliefs, or protective roles. The approach can help people understand patterns connected to perfectionism, people pleasing, self criticism, and fear of rejection.

Nat has training in IFS and draws on its principles in her work with high achieving clients.