Reframing Stress - Why is talking about stress still a taboo?

In this channel, we explore new ways to see life, identity, craft, and experiences through intimate conversations with women in Copenhagen and beyond. I’m a portrait photographer based in Copenhagen, creating visual stories and the best conversations happen in the studio and now I have found a way to share those conversations with you. Gabriele has spent more than 30 years working across different industries, leading teams, navigating business, and understanding what drives people at work. But what makes her perspective so interesting is that she doesn’t look at performance separately from well-being. She has this grounded way of talking about stress and mental health, not as weakness, not as something abstract, but as part of being human in environments that often ask us to keep pushing. Through her consultancy, HEUN, she works with both Danish and international companies, helping leaders and employees create healthier and more sustainable ways of working. And what I find especially meaningful is that her work is not only about preventing burnout, It’s about reframing the way we think about success, productivity, and resilience in the first place. Because sometimes the problem is not that we are failing, But that we have normalised ways of working that disconnect us from ourselves. We met soon after I arrived in Denmark and we have built a beautiful friendship over the years by doing new activities that help us meet to create memories. She´s always open to my random ideas, even if they are out of her comfort zone. She’s a loving mother of two daughters, a runner, an avid reader and recently, she decided to take up bodybuilding, which I really admire. And today, we’re exploring what it really takes to create a healthier relationship with work, performance, and ourselves. What if the way we think about stress is part of the problem? We live in a culture that has normalised pushing through. That treats exhaustion as a badge of honour and stress as either a weakness or simply the price of ambition. But what if we have been looking at it through the completely wrong frame? In this conversation, we explore what stress really is, why we so often miss the signs until it is too late, and what it actually takes to build a healthier and more sustainable relationship with work and with yourself. We talk about: — The real difference between good stress and harmful stress — The three-stage warning system your body uses before burnout hits — Why stress symptoms and menopause symptoms are so easily confused — The inner goal — and what happens when we quietly stop reaching it — Why our patterns at work almost always trace back to childhood — The generational tension between building resilience and setting boundaries — Why stress is still so taboo — and what it costs us to keep it that way — The one question that can interrupt autopilot and start changing everything "97 to 99% of the time we are running on autopilot — without noticing what our body is actually telling us." This is a conversation for anyone who has ever pushed through when they should have stopped and wondered what it would take to finally do things differently. 0:00 Welcome to the studio — introducing Gabriele. 1:37 What stress actually is — and what it isn't. 5:10 From boredom to burnout — how Gabriele got here. 7:33 Meaning, purpose and the inner goal. 9:32 The warning signs your body sends before burnout. 12:07 Can you work within this frame — or can you not? 15:32 Generational differences — resilience vs. boundaries. 19:33 Individualism vs. collective responsibility at work. 22:44 When you're already in the storm — reaching out for help. 27:33 Making mental health normal — the dentist analogy. 30:04 One thing to pay attention to — starting with the small things. Idea and production Daniela Pacheco Branding www.danielapacheco.com Instagram @danielapachecofineart You can connect with Gabriele here: [email protected] heun.dk linkedin.com/in/gabrieleheun Thanks to Aura Copenhagen for the beautiful flower bouquet. https://auracph.dk/ Instagram @auracph