Stephanie Ohannesian went four years without a day off producing events for NBC Universal, until her body froze and she ended up in the ER. The doctors told her to change her life or expect a heart attack. What she found on the other side of that crisis became Triage, a company built around one idea: the subconscious stress patterns running your life are, 95 percent of the time, not your own programming.
Burnout Warning Signs Live in the Body
Stiff shoulders. A clenched gut. Anxiety when the email ping goes off. Stephanie ignored every one of these signs of burnout, and she says that’s the mistake most of us make. The red flags of chronic stress show up in the body long before the brain admits anything is wrong, because we’re taught to override the signal and keep producing. Her advice: treat the physical signs as the headline, not the footnote.
Inherited Stress Patterns and the Science Behind Triage
With a master’s in decision-making sciences and social cognition, Stephanie went back to the research and landed in epigenetics: generational stress responses that get encoded and passed down as survival patterns. We had a good laugh about our shared German need for order, then traced it back to grandparents who rebuilt from ruins. The question she teaches clients to ask is simple: does this pattern even belong to me?
Subconscious Stress Patterns Shape Your Brand Identity
This is where her world and mine collide. Stephanie spent thousands on designers who executed instead of collaborating, and she over-explained her business for years until one clear sentence (“we rewire your stress circuitry”) made a law firm partner ask for the deck on the spot. Clear brand messaging isn’t decoration, it’s regulation: when your brand identity is settled, you stop selling from desperation. That’s exactly the connection we work on with our brand strategy clients.
Not sure where your own brand stands? Take the free Brand Audit Scorecard: ten questions, five minutes.
Audio Production
Huge thanks to Mike at Nielsen Audio Solutions for editing this episode. If you have a podcast and you are doing your own editing because you cannot find someone you trust, Mike is the answer. He has been editing every episode of This Might Get Creative and the difference shows. Reach out to him at nielsenaudiosolutions.com
Not sure if your brand is the thing holding you back?
Take the Brand Audit Scorecard. Ten questions, an honest score, and a clear picture of where your brand is working and where it isn’t. No call required, no sales follow-up. Just the assessment.
Takes about 5 minutes. Built for established businesses ready for a brand that matches where they are.