Disrupting Burnout
Disrupting Burnout with Dr. Patrice Buckner Jackson is dedicated to overworked, undervalued high-achieving servant leaders who give all to serve others and leave very little for yourself. You are an accomplished woman with many responsibilities and you often find yourself overwhelmed, exhausted, and burned out. I’ve been there. As a matter of fact, burnout almost cost me everything. Compassionate work can carry a high price tag: your mind, body, spirit and relationships may be in distress as you serve the needs of others. I am here to equip your hands and refresh your heart so you can serve in purpose and fulfillment and permanently break cycles of burnout.
Disrupting Burnout
130. Riding Out the Storm: Lessons on Burnout and Recovery from Hurricane Helene
Hey Friend,
Have you ever faced a moment so challenging that it transformed your understanding of struggle and recovery? I'm Dr. Patrice Buckner-Jackson, and in this week's episode titled "Riding Out the Storm: Lessons on Burnout and Recovery from Hurricane Helene," I share a deeply personal story of confronting Hurricane Helene—both its literal force and the metaphorical insights it brought into my life about burnout and healing.
Through the fear and deceptive calm of the hurricane, I uncovered profound truths about the underlying damages caused by prolonged stress and how they mirror the storm of burnout. This episode is a reflection on my journey through these physical and emotional storms and a reminder that true recovery requires more than just time—it demands intentional strategies and a commitment to heal.
Join me as we delve into the transformative power of setting boundaries and truly embracing recovery. This isn’t just about surviving; it’s about thriving beyond the habitual cycle of overworking and overachieving. We'll discuss the importance of letting go of emotional baggage and discovering your personal brilliance.
Recovery is an inevitable season of life, and it requires our full engagement and support, often with the aid of coaches or therapists. I'm thrilled to also offer one-on-one sessions designed to help you tap into your unique strengths. Make sure to subscribe to my email list for updates on these transformative opportunities.
Remember, you are powerful, significant, brilliant, and loved. Let’s embrace this journey of recovery together, learning the lessons that life’s storms teach us.
Love Always,
PBJ
Upgrade to Premium Membership to access the Disrupting Burnout audiobook and other bonus content: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1213895/supporters/new
Hey, hey, friends, it's Dr Patrice Buckner-Jackson, but you can call me PBJ, and I am coming to you from our displaced place as a result of Hurricane Helene oh goodness, friends, but there's a burnout lesson in this. I just want to share a little bit with you. I won't be with you long I hope you can hear me me but let's talk about it. Okay, a few disclaimers as we get started. So, first of all, we are fine. We are grateful. We have everything we need. We endured for a while in our home, without water and without electricity, and then we made a decision that it was time to go to another place. So we are in a place close to family and we have what we need. We were so grateful to have a hot meal and a shower and to be able to wash our clothes and all of the things that we take for granted on a daily basis. We are so grateful. So we are fine. Secondly, we may be interrupted at some point. I am trying to record this as my husband went to give little Miss Bella a walk. This has been quite an adventure for her as well, but she traveled well. She's doing pretty good. She's a little freaked out and thinking that we're losing our minds because her routine is disrupted, but she's doing pretty good, so you may hear them come back here in a little bit. So that's number two. Number three and, most importantly, our hearts and our prayers are with those who continue to suffer and struggle. What we experienced was our conveniences taking taken away. We had enough water, we had enough sustainable food. We had what we needed. Even without you know the amenities we're used to in our home. We were fine. There are people who are trapped. There are people who may not have the food or the funds. I recognize that it's a privilege that we could pack up and go to another place. Everybody can't do that. I also recognize that there have been lives lost. So, before I jump into what I've learned through this, I am very aware that there are impacts that are far greater than what I have experienced, and I just want to hold space for those people and those experiences and ask you to help me pray for them. So let's start with that. I do want to give you a little bit of a lesson. Again, I won't hold you long. Today I don't even have my normal microphone, so we are making this thing work, but something really sticks with me as I think about what we've learned over the last weekend. Really, it's only been four days at this point.
Speaker 1:So the night of the hurricane, when it came through and it was in the middle of the night, we were aware, so we weren't sleeping very well anyway, but the sound of it, the rain, the wind, the howling, the cracking, the things, those are things that you don't forget. It was frightening for it to happen at night because you can't really see what's going on. I've been in hurricanes before. I've lived on the East Coast most of my life. So we are, we live hurricane ready, but the area that I live in now is more landlocked and a little further away from the coast, so they're not as prepared. But either way, I've been through hurricane winds before.
Speaker 1:This one was more terrifying because of the time of day it came through, because it was black, pitch dark, and you could see nothing, but you could hear everything. So that's one of the things that sticks with me, as ferocious as it was when we got up the next morning and the sun was out and we could see when. I tell you it was the most beautiful day. It was the most beautiful day. The temperature was beautiful, the sun was shining. I mean, it was almost like if you had mapped out a perfect day. Weather-wise it was a perfect day and I sat there and I thought about how.
Speaker 1:You know, the night before the weather was violent. It was violent when you see the destruction, not just in our city of Augusta, georgia, but when you see the destruction across eight or so states, it blows my mind Even just the sheer size of this monster. I'm hearing our power company and our local officials say that this was the toughest storm on record for our state, and I don't know that, but that's what folks are saying, right? So I compare the ferocious nature of the storm to the calm of the next day, and it just seemed like a normal day until you were able to witness the impacts, until you were able to see the destruction and you realized it was not a normal day. So we went from the violence and the fear and the overwhelm of being in the storm to the calm and the light and the brightness of a calm day after the storm, to the consequences and the impacts of the storm.
Speaker 1:And the reason why I want to bring that up to you is because I've often said that disrupting burnout is not about quickly getting to some new normal. It's not about quickly getting out of the storm, but it takes recovery. It takes recovery when you have lived in burnout for a month or six months or a year or, for me, 20 years, when you've lived in a state or cycles of burnout. It doesn't just go away because you learn a new strategy. Are the strategies impactful? Yes, so that you do not continue falling into the cycle, but the damage from the cycle still needs to be addressed. So let me tell you what I mean.
Speaker 1:Although I have disrupted burnout in my life and I continue to disrupt burnout in my life through the strategies that I teach you, I can still see the impacts of burnout in my life. I'll give you one specific example my health habits and how I'm taking care of my body and some of the I'll call them ailments that I deal with. A lot of that came from living a burnt out life. Right, it's not an example or it's not an excuse. It just is what it is. So just because I've dealt with the burnout doesn't mean the consequences of burnout are gone. I have the responsibility and the need to deal with all of those consequences that came out of my seasons of burnout, even as I continue living my life, not going back into burnout. We have to address the consequences.
Speaker 1:When I look at the impacts of the storm on my city, when I look at the trees being down and the power lines being on the ground, literally traffic lights flew off of the wire that they were hanging on. Not only do we not have working traffic lights, but in many places there are no traffic lights because they blew off. They blew down People who are waiting in long lines to put gas in their car three and four hours. People who are waiting in long lines just to get one case of water for their family, or people who are posting saying help, my child can't endure the heat, or help, you know I don't have baby formula. Or you know I can't get out of town. Or you know it is heartbreaking to see firsthand the impacts of the storm. The storm is gone, the rain has stopped, the wind has stopped, but we cannot pretend that we are normal. We are not normal and it will be at least weeks, maybe months, before my city goes back to some sense of normal.
Speaker 1:Now let me say this we will never be the same normal again. There are spaces in my city where the infrastructure, the landscape, is changed forever. On the Somerville campus of Augusta University, there was a beautiful grove of trees and this grove is iconic for the university and for that campus and this is where people take their graduation photos, and this is what a Christmas celebration is, and you know many, many traditions occurred in this tree grove and most, if not all, of those trees are gone, wiped out, never to return. That it will be a new normal. It will never be the same normal again. As I look at photos of buildings that have been wiped out, or the whole side of a building that was torn off, or a tree in the roof of a building, that building may rebuild, but it will never be the same normal again. It's the same thing when you are disrupting burnout. You will find a new normal, but you will never be the same normal again and you don't want to be. You don't want to be what used to be normal when you normalized living through the cycles of burnout. That's not the normal that you want to live, so don't expect that your life is going to go back. It is time to expect that there's a new normal for you as you're disrupting burnout.
Speaker 1:You know how we do this. We check our baggage. We build boundaries that work not just cute stuff that you hear on social media, but boundaries that work. Effective boundaries, because we keep talking about it but we're not doing it well. And that's why I focus on boundaries, that's why I do workshops on boundaries, because we all talk about it but nobody's really taught you how to build a boundary for real. So you check your baggage, you build your boundaries and then you discover your brilliance. And that's what changes everything, because then you understand the value that you bring. That is beyond any overworking, overachieving all of what used to be normal for you. You understand your new normal is showing up in the fullness of who you were created to be. You will never be the same normal again.
Speaker 1:So there's a period of recovery that you have to honor the recovery of relationships that did not serve well and don't serve you now. The recovery of the impacts on your body physically, mentally, spiritually. The recovery of a life that you built through living in burnout. And now you've got to figure out how to live this new life. There is a season of recovery and you don't get to tell recovery how long recovery? And you don't get to tell recovery how long.
Speaker 1:I always say skipping recovery is just like if I went to one of my neighbors right now and they've got a tree in the roof of their home or maybe they lost someone. Y'all we lost children. There were children who lost their lives, children there were children who lost their lives. To go to those families and say, go back into your broken home and be normal, every human would understand how insensitive that is. Every empathetic person would understand how inappropriate that is. But when people go through major change in their lives, we quickly want them to pretend or act like they are in some form of normal, and that's not how life works.
Speaker 1:So as I transitioned from the storm to the calm of the next day, to becoming aware of the breadth of damage, to witnessing the recovery efforts and all of the teams and people and decisions and money and everything that it takes to recover and money and everything that it takes to recover, it was on my heart to come and remind you that you need to allow recovery into your life. If you have lived your whole life burnt out, you will have to learn how to live differently and that learning process is called recovery. Well, pbj, how do I recover? You get help, friend. Get yourself a coach, a therapist, somebody who can walk you through the process of recovering. You are too accustomed to struggle in order to do it by yourself. You are too comfortable in burnout in order to do it by yourself. And here's the thing if you could, if you could conquer this all alone, you wouldn't still be struggling with it, friend, you would not still be burnt out.
Speaker 1:So I'm here to tell you no one recovers alone. You need help, you need help, you need support in order to recover from the burnt out life that you become accustomed to. New normal is coming, and it's a brighter day and it's a beautiful day. It won't be the same, and it's a brighter day and it's a beautiful day. It won't be the same, and that's okay. It'll never look the same again, and that's okay. But in order to get through recovery, in order to rebuild, in order to set a new foundation, in order to repair the damage, you need somebody to walk with you. You need somebody to walk with you.
Speaker 1:All right, I got to go because my crew is going to come back through busting in the door here soon, as they should, but I didn't want to just let this week go by. I could. I could have said, hey, hurricane can't do it, but I didn't want to miss this lesson, and y'all know that it's my heart's desire to share with you as I learn. So it was important to me to come and share this message with you. It is time to recover and you have to allow time and you have to allow support while you recover.
Speaker 1:Give me a week or so to get back on our feet and I am going to open up a few slots on my calendar to specifically work with people on discovering their brilliance. Specifically work with people on discovering their brilliance. Over the last couple of weeks, I've had the opportunity to do workshops concerning brilliance and it just becomes more and more clear to me that people have just not had a reliable process for identifying their brilliance and who they are and the value that they bring. And it is so clear to me and it's just a clear process and over and over and over, I've had people just have these powerful aha moments and I want more people to have that moment and I want you to know your brilliance so that you can maximize that brilliance in your life and serve the way you were created to serve, and this is not about and serve the way you were created to serve. Friend, this is not about perfection. This is not even about fame or whatever you might think it's about. This is about knowing the value that you bring to the table and being responsible for that value, showing up in that value and understanding that it flows freely from you without you even trying. So give me a little time.
Speaker 1:I'll give you another update on my email list. If you're not on the email list, go to patricebutnerjacksoncom. Get on that email list. You can click subscribe at the bottom of my website, so scroll all the way down, click subscribe and I will open these up to my email list first, because those are the people who've been rocking. They get that weekly email from me, so I'll open up. It's only a handful of spots that I'll have open, but I want to do this one-on-one with you. So if you're open to that, make sure you're on the email list. And as soon as we get settled at home right, so as soon as we get settled at home right, so as soon as we can go back to town, as soon as we have power and water and things reestablished for my family. I'm going to open up those spots and serve you, because I know it's going to be transformational.
Speaker 1:All right, that's all I got for you this week. Continue to pray for folks who need support right now. Continue to pray for folks who are recovering from the storm and make space for your own recovery, friend. If you have lived in burnout all this time, you gonna have to recover in order to get to know your new normal. All right, as always, friend. As always, you know you are powerful, you are significant, you are brilliant and you are loved. Love always, friend. Pbj.
