Burnout Recovery

Ep#170 Why you won't recover from burnout

• Dex Randall • Season 4 • Episode 170

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The paradox of burnout is that we try to combat the stress of overwork by working harder to get ahead! Unfortunately, this does not address the root cause of burnout, and at best creates temporary relief. More often, we fail and sink deeper into exhaustion and despair.

This week's episode, then, looks at why people don't recover from burnout - what holds them back?

What can you do when you ARE ready to recover? It's easier than you think!

Talk to me at https://mini.dexrandall.com

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[00:00:00] Hi everyone. My name's Dex Randall, and this is the Burnout to Leadership Podcast where I teach professional men to recover from burnout and get back to passion and reward at work.

[00:00:22] hey, this is Dex. Welcome to this week's episode on why you will not recover from burnout. Because watch out, I'm on a bit of a rant this morning!

[00:00:30] 'cause I woke up just thinking about another person who I can see is in burnout. I can see is needing help and isn't really arriving at that place where they're ready to take it.

[00:00:41] 'cause really what's happening for many of you...

[00:00:44] And this is what I hear a lot from people who come and talk to me, who come and work with me, is the situation at work has gone out of control.

[00:00:52] So you are a very highly professional, highly proficient, well-trained, well-educated. You have lots of skill, lots of ability. You know how to do your job.

[00:01:05] Or at least maybe you did.

[00:01:06] But right now, because the pressures of work have been continuously increasing over the years, the situation has become more complicated. There are varying requirements, there are more competing priorities, there are more challenges. There are more performance targets that you have to hit, and they're all competing.

[00:01:27] And what's happening for a really, a very large number of people is, the situation, it's getting a bit out of hand and it's been getting a bit out of hand for a while. And maybe you're juggling a lot of balls. You've been keeping them all in the air, but you're not really sure that you still can, or that this can continue for you and maybe you feel a little bit out of control, like the situation is beyond your ability to reign it in. And this is very, very common. 

[00:01:56] So, you know that you have skills. But those skills somehow aren't resolving the situation for you. You're waking up in dread every morning. You're anxious about work. Will you get everything done? Can you handle all of the situations that are crowding your plate. 

[00:02:12] At the moment, you are overworked, you are overwhelmed. You're frustrated. People are running like headless chooks around you, but the sense of being out of control, if you are the consummate professional that I imagine you will be if you are heading towards burnout, this sense of being out of control is completely unacceptable because we are the kind of people, the kind of professional, we are very hardworking.

[00:02:38] We are very incented to make things work out, to resolve all the problems. We're the fixers of everything. We want to be the consummate leader who keeps everything running sweetly around us.

[00:02:50] So the idea of being out of control is really anathema to the way that we think. And when we have this sense that we are not really keeping a lid on things, it's a little bit panic inducing.

[00:03:03] We become a little bit fearful, a little bit anxious, worried that people will find out, ashamed that we can't stay on top of every single thing. And then we're becoming exhausted, depleted.

[00:03:15] But still, we don't want to admit defeat. We don't want anyone to know actually, that we are not on top of things. So we keep scrambling. We keep waking up in the morning thinking, okay, right, what do I have to do? What do I have to do? But this is wearing out our morale. It's wearing out our tempers, it's wearing out our motivation, and it's putting us in a place of dread where each day we're scrambling for position, but we don't know if we're gonna be able to keep it up. 

[00:03:42] So really what we're trying to do then is we're trying to protect our own status. We're trying not to look weak, and certainly we are not asking for help. So if this is you, already you can see that if you are burning out, if you've hit the point of overload, the point of no return, where you're just becoming more and more exhausted, more and more depleted, your sense of humor failure is occurring more and more frequently at work. You're just getting home feeling absolutely crushed and frazzled and frustrated every day. 

[00:04:16] You start to realize that this isn't a position that you have recognized is okay for you, that you know that you can work with, that you know that you can overcome. 

[00:04:27] And of course, no one's invincible. We're not designed to be invincible. We're designed to work as a team and everyone really, in these times, it's sensing some loss of control. And quite often that comes with a loss of autonomy, a loss of feeling appreciated and relied upon and trusted, and a loss of sometimes job security. There might be layoffs and political upheavals at work where you are not really certain about your future direction either. 

[00:05:00] So everybody's working their butt off. You look around you and you know that all of the other people around you are overworked and overwhelmed and frustrated and upset and demotivated as well. But they're all probably going round in circles, chasing one priority after another, as they change and change and change and just trying to basically save themselves from ,drowning.

[00:05:24] So here's a couple of examples from a few clients so you can see what's happening for my people is, okay, 

[00:05:30] Dan. He's a very consummate CFO, who was stood down at work with panic attacks for how things were getting away from him. 

[00:05:37] Mike, a hotheaded big four consulting partner, who was really losing control of his team and projects and at the same time watching his own children descend into anxiety.

[00:05:48] Jay, running four medical roles at once to try and get ground under his feet and still failing.

[00:05:56] Jake anxious and depressed at work, on leave, since this has affected his performance to the point of attracting attention.

[00:06:05] Di, overworked and overwhelmed in an editorial position, losing the leadership battle.

[00:06:11] Jay, facing the loss of his family business. 

[00:06:15] Matt worried about signing up for another five years in his role when he feels he's already failing his business, his partner and his team. 

[00:06:25] Nile, on a performance plan at work, amid sweeping layoffs and trying to manage what is essentially unmanageable levels of daily anxiety.

[00:06:35] So I could go on and on. There's all sorts of flavors of this, but really loss of autonomy, loss of invincibility, loss of control, and frustration about the plethora of conflicting demands does place a human under strain and it places a high performance human under even more strain.

[00:06:59] Because for those of us who are type A people, we're very hard driven, high achieving, capable problem solvers. We want to be on top and that's how we know, how to be in our role. We've got everything more or less under control. We know where we're going. We know how to do things, we know how to support the people around us who aren't doing that well.

[00:07:24] But really some of that's gone out the window these days.

[00:07:27] If you look at last year, 2024, two thirds of professionals in the workplace in Australia, where I live, have experienced burnout in the last three months. It's the same in US, Canada, Europe, a lot of the developed world is going in the same direction. 

[00:07:45] Burnout is now normal, for want of a better word.

[00:07:50] It's so widespread, is to be almost endemic. You're in the workforce, you're probably gonna burn out.

[00:07:56] And as we watch the political situation as well, crumbling around us, the economic situation. Really the despair that we feel, the lack of hope, that we can resolve this situation for ourselves, or that it will be resolved for us. That lack of hope, that despair, that loss of motivation, the desire to give up. It results in procrastination, us not getting things done that we are actually capable of doing, and we feel even more helpless. 

[00:08:24] So, in this time, where burnout is so endemic where it's really, I would call it a pandemic in the developed world today, and some of this is about feeling disconnected with the goodness, disconnected from our autonomy, our own power, but disconnected from the fabric, the social fabric that would have in previous generations supported us through difficulties. We would've pulled together. And a lot of us don't have that sense right now. It's become a little bit more every man for himself, every woman for herself.

[00:08:57] So know that now, it really is time for those of us with the strength, with the fortitude. Those of us who are capable of doing this, it's time for us to rise up. It's time for us to resurface to help one another. Because we are capable of supporting a huge network of other people when we ourselves are performing and feeling well.

[00:09:29] So, what is the thing if you are not choosing to recover from burnout, if you sense yourself either going towards burnout or in burnout, or maybe you've been in burnout your whole career and you're just recognizing this. And seeing that as time goes on, it's getting worse. Why are you not choosing to recover?

[00:09:52] Why are you not doing that?

[00:09:54] And really, for most people, it's a status thing. We perceive ourselves as being

[00:10:00] super achievers and we don't want to lose internally that view of ourselves and of course professionally our status and standing in the workplace.

[00:10:12] We don't want to be seen not to have the answer to any questions, and above all, we are super autonomous. Having had a lifetime of being a very capable and high achieving person, we become super autonomous. Because it works, we know we can, we know we can pull it off. Until now, maybe we can't pull it off all the time now. Maybe we're not pulling it off at all. 

[00:10:36] Maybe your job is in jeopardy. Or your whole career is in jeopardy. Your income, perhaps or your family is now in difficulties. You've got difficulties with your relationships at home or with your kids. Your kids are having problems. There's gonna be something, or you've got, illness. Could be anything. Doesn't really matter what the trigger is, but suddenly this sense of loss of invincibility is hitting you.

[00:10:59] So why then would you not reach out for help?

[00:11:02] Really, I think it's shame.

[00:11:06] We've been brought up to solve every problem and we don't want anyone to know that we can't. And certainly in my case, when I was burning out at work, I was in entrepreneurial software leadership at the time, I didn't want anyone to know.

[00:11:21] That was the last thing on my mind. I didn't know who could help me. And I certainly wasn't willing to ask and research that because I didn't want anyone around me to know that I couldn't solve my own problems. I didn't want to be seen to be failing. I didn't want to be seen to be lost, even though I felt quite lost and helpless.

[00:11:39] I was procrastinating. I was pushing things around my plate. I was hoping nobody ever looked at my computer screen 'cause they could see there was nothing really going on. I wasn't really doing any effective work at that stage because I was so anxious.

[00:11:53] I wasn't really capable, and that to me was about the most terrifying thing that could happen. 

[00:11:59] But here's the thing, if you do not reach out for help, then you will never refind your own power.

[00:12:06] If you don't reach out for help, then you can never counteract the shame. Shame thrives in silence and darkness. 

[00:12:14] There will come a point, if you would like to resurface, if you would like to reconnect with the abundant power, skill, ability, leadership that you have natively inside you, then you will need to put your hand up and ask for help, because burnout is, whatever kind of affliction you wanna call it, burnout can't be solved by ourselves. 'cause if we could solve it ourselves, we would never be in burnout in the first place. 

[00:12:45] We are there because we're super achievers who've fallen off the back a little bit and who just didn't know what to do next because our MO is to go harder. And when you are in burnout or approaching burnout, going harder will drive you further downhill.

[00:13:02] You can't rescue yourself from burnout by trying harder, by working harder, by working smarter.

[00:13:10] You can't, because one of the problems with burnout is it's assaulting who we think we are. It's not actually about work. At the end of the day, it's about our self-image. And our self-image doesn't change by working harder.

[00:13:26] We can't slam it and overcome that.

[00:13:29] So really the only way I've ever seen people recover from burnout is to find somebody that they trust to work with who can help them resolve burnout.

[00:13:37] So really, if you don't want to recover from burnout, that's up to you, of course. But if you've seen yourself going downhill, if you've seen yourself suffering, if you think you are losing ground, hope, motivation, mojo, will, efficacy. And if you see your family relationships or your social relationships or your relationships with your children suffering, if you are seeing health factors slide a bit downhill, maybe your digestion, maybe your sleep, maybe you're getting headaches or jaw aches or back aches. Maybe your organs aren't performing quite as well as you'd like. Maybe your heart's got a little bit of a...? 

[00:14:23] If you're seeing all of that why aren't you asking for that help that you need, that will allow you to recover from burnout swiftly, and return to much higher levels of competence, efficacy, leadership, resilience, comfort, enjoyment, passion than you've actually ever had before. 

[00:14:46] Maybe you wanna do it for your family, but I think really you wanna do it for yourself. 

[00:14:52] Because if you are not functioning at this stage, what is your future looking like, if nothing changes?

[00:14:58] If you knew you couldn't change that yourself, and you're gonna keep on this same trajectory, what's gonna happen next?

[00:15:05] Well, I can predict what's gonna happen next for many people, which is their nervous systems are gonna wear out and things are going to start falling apart more than they are now.

[00:15:14] Generally resulting in physical illness as well as mental challenges and emotional challenges that seem harder and harder to resolve. 'cause once you start getting into insomnia, chronic anxiety and all of that, it's a bit of a slippery slope. Burnout doesn't resolve itself. 

[00:15:36] Or circumstantially, if you change job, and you think, right, I won't be burned out now, I've got a new job, actually, burnout tends to recur, and every time you go back into burnout, it tends to be deeper and longer than the previous time because you never fixed the original problem, so you drop back down the same hole. 

[00:15:54] But here's the thing that's available: when you recover from burnout, and burnout recovery is just a predictable step-by-step process. Okay. There's a formula for recovering from burnout. If you are a professional in burnout, you can recover.

[00:16:07] It takes two to three months to get back to a place of passion and efficacy, leadership. Just the place you want to be in terms of being able to apply your skills at work and being successful with that and enjoying it as well so you can recover. Everybody who does recover from burnout becomes a champion for other people. So if you yourself recover from burnout, and you understand the dynamics of burnout, how to transcend those dynamics and remold those dynamics so you can get your mojo back in your career, then you know how to support people around you.

[00:16:49] Then you know how to work with other people who are stressed, anxious, frustrated, pissed off, demotivated, maybe descending into addictive behaviors or procrastination, or maybe failing in their performance. 

[00:17:02] How many people have you seen around you, maybe this does happen in your industry a lot or maybe it doesn't, who are on performance plans or heading that way? How many people have you seen in your team or in your organization who look a little bit like they're drowning, who are withdrawing and isolating, maybe in the same kind of shame that you feel? 

[00:17:24] Well, they're the people that you can support when you recover from burnout.

[00:17:28] Because by that time, you will have a level of resilience that will feel good to you, that will get you much more easily through every day. And you'll be able to see more precisely where other skilled, wonderful human beings are sinking and how you might be able to support them and bring them back up with you. 

[00:17:52] And I think the whole point really of burnout recovery is you change your life and your work for the better. You change your relationships, your family, your relationships with your children, your children's trajectory in this world, and you also become a massive resource for people in your organization. You can bring those up with you.

[00:18:15] You can support them in the ways they're absolutely desperate to be supported. You can recognize their worth because you now recognize your own in a new way. And you can pull people up with you. 

[00:18:27] And your sphere of influence is probably pretty big. You are not some junior at work, right? You've been around a long time. You've seen a lot of things. You know a lot of things.

[00:18:37] Fundamentally, you know how to support people. And the biggest skill in demand in any workplace right now is emotional intelligence. And this is what you develop in burnout recovery. Once you have into emotional intelligence, you know how to resurface. You know how to keep yourself buoyant at work, but you also know how to support the wider community at work around you. And that becomes much, much easier.

[00:19:07] People become infinitely easier to deal with once you've got enough sufficient emotional intelligence to support your own equilibrium. And It becomes a pleasure to support others then. You get a sense of community, the fabric of community returns around you, which is really one of the things that you've probably been missing. and then you get a set a sense of engagement and a sense of autonomy and a sense of being useful and fulfilling your purpose and role in the world beyond just the technicalities of your job spec. 

[00:19:43] Actually, people who have emotional intelligence, they're a bit rare in these days of more or less universal burnout and stress. People with very high emotional intelligence are rare, and they become indispensable in the workplace. Because then you can create a culture around you of higher performance and engagement and retention. You become capable of building a healthy team. And if you are looking at your team around you and thinking that's not as healthy as it could be, you could be the catalyst for helping it become healthy. 

[00:20:22] And also when you've got emotional intelligence and you recover from burnout, you can manage upwards a little bit too. So if you've got a boss or a leadership team that's giving you grief and your influence over them is modest, shall we say, at the moment. It can be massively increased once you recover from burnout. Because the people above you are suffering in the same way that you are. They're probably burning out the same as you. 

[00:20:47] So that was my rant for today. 

[00:20:50] You don't have to recover from burnout if you don't want to. But if you feel willing to ask for the help that can very quickly return you to the place you want to be in your career, and allow the goodness of that to propagate to the people around you. 

[00:21:10] If you want that, you must be willing to ask for help. That's it. I will help you recover from burnout. It takes less than three months normally, and it's complete and it's permanent. So it protects you from burnout in the future. It doesn't just help you recover now. So this is smoothing out your career path for the rest of your career. And actually even afterwards, it'll give you a better retirement. 

[00:21:34] So if you would like that, all you need to do is choose it. Just, hand on heart, okay, I need some help. This is what I do for people. I myself had to overcome my shame in admitting that I needed help. Once I did, and I found people who could help me, the resulting path was actually much more smooth and predictable and enjoyable than I thought it was gonna be. 

[00:21:57] So if you want that, I'm here for you. Come and talk to me.

[00:22:02] Let's talk about what, particular to you, are your problems at work. And let's work out a plan to fix them. But if you don't, if you wanna stay in burnout, if you don't want to admit you've got a problem, good, fine. It's up to you, really.

[00:22:13] You don't have to come and talk to me. But if you want to talk to me, I will help you recover. Alright? That's what I got for you today. 

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Dex Randall

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