Are You Burnt the Eff Out? ME TOO! Here To Help.

Most of us have bought into the idea that if we aren't performing to our max that we lack motivation. This can start us on a cycle of anxiety-induced over-achievement that ultimately results in us needing weeks of recovery removed from society. This, my friends, is what we call burnout.  And while this cycle might, in fact, get you to your goals, you will not be able to enjoy yourself when you get there. So let me help you identify what burnout might feel like for you and some ways to prevent it and recover once you are there.     

What's in store: 

• What causes burnout. 
• Ways to identify if you are experiencing burnout. 
• What your nervous system has to do with it.  
• Tools to recover from burnout.
• Why thought work is not always your best option.    
• What it means to complete a stress cycle. 

Additional Resources:
Wintering by Katherine May
https://katherine-may.co.uk/wintering

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle
https://www.burnoutbook.net/

Betsy Jensen- Nervous System Modules
https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com/

Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma
https://a.co/d/dvgzYWo

Irene Lyon - Nervous System Expert
https://irenelyon.com/

Episode Webpage

Where to find me:
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Transcript

Welcome to " You need a coach bitch with Chris Hale. I'm your host Chris Hale. I'm a certified life coach that helps queer creatives. Take their passion, turn it into a purpose and get paid. If you are looking to make an impact on the world with your work by dismantling internalized, oppressive thought systems by using coaching spirituality and a lot of cursing, you are in the right place.

So let's get to work.

 Hey friends, how are you? I hope that everybody is having a great week. I'm gonna be honest. I am struggling and so we're just gonna get right into this week's topic because it's the reason why I'm struggling today. We are talking about burnout, and the reason I wanna talk about it is because, well, because I am feeling burnt out, but like it's because.

Even though I can spot it in others, and I've coached many a person on their own burnout, I didn't really realize I was burnt out. So, Even as I'm getting my thoughts together to create this episode today, like I feel a bit of a fog and then I'm working to cut through it, um, and I'm gonna make it happen.

But the reason I'm telling you this is because I wanna sort of normalize this in some way, and not that I want you to be burnt out, but to kind of let you know what it's like and. It's okay to get burnt out, and there are also some things that you can do to manage it. The realization that I'm burnt out actually came from some study that I was doing on.

The nervous system and bringing together information that lived in my brain in kind of a disconnected way. Um, I had watched a webinar on the nervous system, which contained a lot of information I knew, but some I didn't. And that got my curiosity peaked even more, and I wanted to do a. Bigger dive into understanding my own nervous system.

So I reached out to a coach friend who's also a chronic pain specialist and asked for a recommendation on a book that she likes for healing the nervous system. And the one that was suggested is actually on my list, but it was nowhere near the top. I'd kind of forgotten about it. Um, and it's actually called burnout, unlocking the Stress Cycle, and it's by sisters Emily and Amy NIGOs.

And I'd actually seen interviews with the authors like at least a year ago. And I was interested, but really not enough yet, I guess. Um, , I guess it took me sort of getting to this place to want more information about it. Um, but anyway, I started reading it and that's when I realized that I am currently a very much burned out.

So what I was researching. Sort of my tendency to get stuck in like dysregulation, like my nervous system. Like I'll get a trigger and I'll kind of set up in either like a freeze or aaw state and kind of hang out there for a while. And that definitely has like an impact on a lot of things in my life.

Right. So I've been, I've been working on making friends with my trauma and sec and accepting that I get triggered and dissociate sometimes and shut down. And I was really looking for resources to kind of start to do some more of that nervous system work that I'd, I wouldn't say I'd been putting it off, like I've been doing it in pieces, but I was ready to kind of like do a little bit more, um, in a more intentional way instead of it just being like in reaction.

Two being dysregulated, maybe like getting ahead of it a little bit. And as I was doing this work, I was starting to get the hang of sort of being compassionate with myself around it. Um, and then I hit a week where I was just done and I did not make the connection that what I was experiencing was burnout.

Because for me, I always go straight to thinking it's just depression, because that's what my history is. I also am now realizing I have a history of burnout, but that's a whole nother thing, . Um, but, but I noticed that like, this felt different for some reason. Like, I didn't feel depressed. I just felt super emotionally exhausted and just physically exhausted.

I was so tired. Um, I wanted to be doing more, but I really didn't have the bandwidth. Whereas with depression, um, usually I have more of like hopelessness and like extreme coping in the form of wanting to escape. Here I was still desiring to be connected to things and to people and, but I just really didn't feel like it was possible.

So the quality of my thinking was different here. Right. Um, also the, the exhaustion felt different. Depression for me feels more of like a full body sluggishness, like it has this dull ache that kind of makes my chronic pain worse, and the exhaustion from this burnout felt sharper. One night I actually like said to my husband that I feel so tired that it hurts, and I was really stiff all over.

Um, so for me, noticing these nuances is key because how I deal with these two states. Is a bit different, and I'm gonna talk about that later. But, um, for now, if you find yourself thinking that you don't know how you experience things differently, that is okay. Um, I've been trained to notice very slight changes in my body as a dancer, and I'm also very good at ignoring and overriding and misinterpreting those cues.

So don't, don't feel bad if you're like, I don't know. I'm confused. Be confused. It's okay. If anything, what I'm saying is that if this is resonating with you, it could be a sign that talking to like a therapist or a coach that specializes like either in burnout or nervousness or regulation or chronic pain or just any, maybe any of the things that you might have going on that you're wondering if.

Burnout is, is at play. It probably is, but there are resources. Um, I myself have all types of resources for my therapist. I have access to a lot of coaches. I see a lot of body workers. Um, and this whole team sort of makes, helps me make sense of all of what's going on. Um, it's a really, really big part of how I support myself.

Like I just saw, um, this osteopath that I see and they, and they did, it was an osteopath and an acupuncturist that I see, and they did a dual session on me. So this really helped to kind of like, help me regulate in some ways. And that's like, you know, they're a part of my team. There are so many resources out there, like the authors of the book, burnout, um, they have lots of interviews.

There are tons of accounts on Instagram that talk about the nervous system and how to regulate your nervous system. And, um, I'll even link the webinar like the, the. The coach whose webinar that I watched, and um, her name's Betsy Jensen. Um, if you wanna learn more about just like how the nervous system works and kind of get an intro to that, like there's just a lot out there, so don't feel like you have to like, invest a lot of money.

It might be investing time, but there is stuff out there and if you have the resources like financially, then you know, obviously there are more things to help you support yourself. But. Anyway, so if you don't know, let's talk a little bit about what burnout is and what causes it. So it's characterized by exhaustion, um, a decreased sense of accomplishment in your work or your life, and even like a, a sort of a resentment toward your work and responsibilities.

Like you might be like, I hate my job, or fucking done with like, my kids, right? Like, like those thoughts might come through your head. And these might, these are kind of signs, right? That you are experiencing burnout and it's caused by chronic stress that doesn't get resolved. So you kind of get sent into a stress cycle, right?

Your flight, your fight, flight, freeze, or fall response gets activated, but you never quite return to that, like homeostasis of safety. So, um, Emily and Amy, Talk about needing to complete the stress cycle in their book. Right? So after the sympathetic nervous system's activated, um, that we need to actually like, like go through the whole process of.

That stress cycle. So an example might be that you're driving in the car and someone sort of changes lanes in front of you without looking and like almost hits you, right? So then you notice you get that like rush of like hormones and your heart starts beating and maybe you get a little sweaty and like, ah, right.

And. , um, right. You could either like swerve, right? That would kind of be like flying, fleeing, honk, which sort of be a fight response, right? You're like, get outta my way, right? Like, you kind of react in that way, outwardly against it. Or maybe you tenses up and freeze, right? And you're sort of like, oh my God, don't hit me.

This would be like sort of an example of that system being activated, right? Then the moment passes without issue and you keep driving and you just kind of try to put it out of your mind, um, as your body sort of attempts to regulate on its own. But even though right you, you are safe, a lot of times your nervous system doesn't really understand that.

So you need to do something to complete that cycle. And most of us don't ever do this, right? So you might actually notice that you carry that incident around with you all day. You kind of start to cement it into your brain and your body and you like retell the story and you get all reactivated again.

You're like, I can't believe that about like you. Keep it going in your system. So I think we all have a lot of these unresolved stress cycles just hanging out. Um, and what could be more useful, right, to complete that cycle would be like once you're like safe somewhere, right? You get out of your car and maybe you just like shake it off or you could do something physical like jumping jacks to kind of move that energy through your body to help you complete that cycle so that you don't continue to sort of store that event.

And this is really in line, um, with what I teach you about like needing to process emotion and not being afraid of emotion because I think a lot of the reason why we don't do this is because we're afraid to kind of go there. Like we just want to sort of run away from the experience emotionally, um, instead of actually like dealing with.

But what ends up happening is we kind of get stuck in an emotional state. So we don't wanna be stuck in emotional states. We want the fluidity to be able to come in and out of emotional states. And the only way to do that is to like, be able to be with ourselves through difficult emotion. Um, whether it's the thought based kind, right, where it's like I'm making up a story about something, or it's this sort of like more nervous system reaction that I'm detailing here.

We kind of, we need to be able to be with the emotion to be able to like complete the cycle to be able to carry on. And I'm really simplifying this so , like I said, if this, if this is new to you, like if you are like, what is my nervous system? I don't even understand. What are you talking about?

Sympathetic nervous system. Um, fight flight free is like, I feel like a lot of these terms. Are sort of common now, but maybe they aren't for you. Maybe I'm just in my coach bubble a little bit too much . Actually, it wouldn't even be my coach bubble. I would say like, you know, my. Gyrotonic bubble, my dance bubble, my fitness instructor bubble.

Like these kinds of things do come up. Um, my woo woo body work world, right? Like there's a lot of talk about this, but maybe this is not a part of your world. So I'm gonna put a lot of resources in the show notes about this anyway, the car example or any other event. Like that, like a fight with your partner or someone harassing you on the street, right?

Like if you don't clear out those emotional cycles, you can get burnt out from them. But what, what actually most of us are experiencing sort of more. I wouldn't say subtle, but like more consistent low grade forms of stress that accumulate right over time that are leading to our burnout. So one example that we all experienced was during Covid, right?

Our sense of safety was shaken. And for many people who are immunocompromised, like that's still going on. So they're still in that state of stress, of like feeling, and a lot of us still are feeling unsafe around. Virus or you have like a workplace environment that doesn't support your needs. For me and for a lot of my listeners, many of the stresses of living in a white supremacist, capitalist's, hetero dominant ableist society, um, where just living, like just trying to survive as a little bit harder makes it really easy to slip into burnout and not realize it.

And that is largely because. As people who've been marginalized, we've been conditioned to see ourselves as the problem and not our society. And so like for anyone, right? Let's look at productivity culture. Productivity culture is gonna affect anyone. And that's really the belief that we all need to be doing more all the time.

Like we could always be more efficient, we could always get more accomplished, right? But then if you add to that, that black people already have this feeling of like needing to work twice as hard or queer people have learned that being high achievers is one of their safeguards against discrimination.

It can just prime us for a burnout. And we, and we're sort of blind to these ideas. So these are sort of the societal things. Um, and the reason I'm saying all this is because I want to help you see that if you're feeling burnt out, that it's my, it's probably not just some like flaw in your constitution, right?

You're not weak. Um, A lot of people in the coaching world will use like the tools against themselves and therefore end up doing a disservice to their clients along the way because they're not able to recognize some of these real life circumstances that no amount of thought work is going to help. Or they just haven't educated themselves enough on what it actually means to be like a mammal and have these like brilliant mechanisms for safety built in that are physiological and not rela related.

They're not related to conscious thought. So I'm just trying to bring some awareness to some of those factors because I feel like part of my job is bringing awareness to these systems so that my clients. Have a conscious relationship with these protective mechanisms, right? It's a brilliant fail safe that if I'm being chased by a lion and my innate knowing is that I cannot outrun it or fight it, right?

The best option is playing dead. That's a great fail safe, but I'm not a gazelle, so, My inclination will be to use my brain and try to rationalize the situation or quote unquote talk myself down, whereas the g the gazelle, whereas the gazelle is going to like involuntarily shake to complete that stress cycle that got cut short when it dropped to the ground to play dead.

Right as a human with my thinking brain, I stop that from happening. I suppress my emotion and then it lives on in my body. And cause causes a lot of chronic issues like pain and illness. And I wanna highlight that cultural conditioning and systemic inequality because I think it's program that's running in the background that leads us to behaviors that further deplete us.

Because we have this belief that we should be able to just power through. I came up against some like community messaging that I was really using to ignore the signals that my body was giving me recently. It's, it's very popular in the coaching community that I'm in for people to sell you on being like a full.

Full solopreneur, right? Meaning you do it all yourself. You learn how to build your website, write copy, market yourself on socials, master Facebook ads, coach your clients, take care of your family, all with a broom, shoved up your butt so you can clean your house as well, at least in the beginning, right?

Everyone. That Denounces hustle culture will drop this caveat that. , like you'll need to hustle in the beginning, but then they try to reframe that, hustle it, it's fine. Um, . Cause here's the thing, right? There are people that built their businesses even 10 years ago where this actually may have been more necessary because there was very little support and the support that there was cost a shit ton of money.

So running an online business was no way an accessible thing for most people. If you didn't have lots of money, you needed endless energy and like sticktuitiveness to be successful. Also, it's super convenient for coaches to be selling you on mindset issues when they're selling their coaching as the solution to your problem.

I don't fault anyone for that, but if you have grown up thinking that you are the problem. Then you're gonna believe that your money is better spent hiring that coach than it is a va Because again, you're your, this productivity culture and all of the messaging from society is telling you that you can do it all.

And even if you could, I guess the question is for, for me, is like, do you want to, and I was really coming up against like, no, I didn. And I, and I remember feeling this way like when, when I was only a few months into having my own business, and my coach said that a lot of times we're feeling burned out in our businesses because we're doing things that we don't actually want to be doing.

And that was super helpful at first because what it got me to do is sort of design a schedule that works for me, but I was still putting things on my schedule. I was telling myself I should be doing instead of asking myself what I wanted to be doing. And I will say by doing that, I learned what I like and what I don't like, but it was a hard lesson.

So one of the things I'm doing now is getting more clear on what I like doing and creating systems for the things I want to hire someone else to do. It was also really helpful to see that, like I didn't have a motivation issue. So I think that was one of the other ways that like. Kind of using messaging out there against myself and thinking like, if I was really considering like what are the, how am I gonna continue to, to build my business?

And I was thinking like, oh, I need to invest in a mastermind. And not that I don't wanna invest in a mastermind, but a mastermind could be like eight to 15 to $20,000, which is a big investment. And. When I realized that like it wasn't a motivation issue, it was a support issue, it was a systems issue, it was like an action line issue of like getting people to actually like support me.

To have a team that I could work with to kind of hand over some of my work to, it made me realize that like the resources that I have financially would be better spent. On getting help right now and then maybe shift my focus to mindset later,

but in the meantime, I'm already burnt out, so I do need to spend some time recovering. So some ways to combat burnout and help yourself. Out of it are learning how you work best and building an adequate downtime. So I take lots of breaks, um, kind of like a Pomodoro style, like work 15 minute break work, 15 minutes break, right?

Like, but I do it based on how I feel rather than a set time. Like sometimes I can work for 16 minutes straight and other times it's like five. Another thing is getting adequate rest. Um, I do have insomnia, but I make sure. When I wake up in the middle of the night, I allow myself to be awake, but I always try to go back to sleep to make sure I'm getting enough sleep and I take naps during the day.

Nutrition that energizes you and doesn't drain you. So like if you have a lot of allergies and sensitivities, but you keep on eating things that are putting your, that are putting stress on your body, then you're asking it to perform in less than desirable conditions, right? That's gonna put stress on you, social interaction, if that helps.

Right, that's a great thing. Um, the other day I was really dragging and I watched an hour of Graham Norton show clips online and just laughed my ass off, and it felt so good to have that release and just to feel joy like incorporating play and joy or other things that are going to help you not get burnt out, and also combat burnout.

Earlier I talked about the differences between depression and burnout for me, and that's because, um, I need to differentiate between the things I do right to recover. So I do a lot of the same things either way, but it helps to understand where I'm at, so then I can adjust my expectations a bit on how long it's gonna last and what's actually gonna help versus what might actually harm me further.

Or just deciding at which point to apply certain things. So for example, with depression, I know that it's basically gonna pass on its own. I don't really have much control over that. I can ease the symptoms and interact with my brain differently so as to not believe the terrible thoughts, but that's kind of about it.

One day I just wake up and my mind is clear again. Um, so. With that journaling and doing a lot of thought work isn't super useful because I just end up writing down a lot of my shitty thoughts and it makes me even more depressed, so I try to stay away from that. Kind of like over analytical work.

Sleeping helps and exercise actually really does help, and specifically getting my heart rate up. So riding my bike for even as little as 10 minutes can really help when I'm feeling depress. Whereas with this burnout that I've been experiencing, um, dropping into my body, meditating, right, really creating a sense of safety can really help.

And when I do that, thought work actually does wonders for me and not at first, because when we're triggered, rational thinking isn't as access. , but if I take the time to slow down and drop into my body, Then it really does make a difference. I'm also noticing in terms of exercise that slower moving things that keep me more present and embodied, um, so that I can establish that sense of safety with myself or totally necessary.

So I either do that in place of cardio or I do it before I, I do my cardio so that the cardio. Further stress out my nervous system, right overexertion, while already depleted and feeling unsafe, just makes me feel worse. And then in both scenarios, Um, whether it's depression or burnout, compassion is a huge part of the equation.

So I've become very understanding of myself around depression. Um, but I just kept believing that nervous system dysregulation was a problem. Like I had this fantasy that just knowing about my triggers would make them go away. . Um, I actually got really mad when I realized that similarly to depression, wherein I don't have control over my brain chemistry.

At the moment, right? I also don't have control over my nervous system perceiving a threat where there isn't one and putting me into a freeze oron state, right? Freeze Andon are sort of my go-to. I'm rarely ever in a fight or a flight. But having learned to normalize like the dullness that a accompanies depression, I was able to apply that same self-compassion for being triggered, and that's opened the door for me to even be grateful for these defense mechanisms, right?

They were first activated to protect me when I was vulnerable. And then this compassion can extend to easing my expectations of myself and the people around me. So both my husband and I have been really struggling. Like we are on the struggle bus and we didn't make our bed for two days. And that's really big for us.

We're like super, like make the bed every day. People. Um, , but you know, it was more useful for us to focus on necessities, so clean clothes and making food, right? These were like the two top priorities, and if we could do nothing else other than that, that was enough. He actually had some downtime one night and it was trying to figure out like what he should do, and he had like work stuff he could do and he was like, oh, I should fold the laundry.

And I was like, leave the laundry. Just fucking leave. Like, we can live out of laundry baskets for a couple days. It's not gonna kill us. So like these are some ways to kind of like be with yourself, right? How can you like look at all of the shoulds or the unconscious commitments you've made to yourself about what your life is supposed to look like?

That might not only be contributing to your burnout, but also just making things worse. Once you're in that. Seeking support is another good thing to do, like whether it be from friends or a partner or a professional, that's why I'm making this episode right. I want to sort of help other people and support other people and help them kind of have more awareness around things for themselves to like help identify or maybe just even be like, oh my God, it's not just me.

I'm not the only one. Thank fucking God. You know, like just that sense of connection with someone else can be really helpful. And then like the other reason I think this is so important to talk about is that as creatives, we burn ourselves out because we think that we should be able to be constantly prolific.

Like I for one, have always admire people that seem to produce with no limit. But I'm learning about myself more and more that I personally have seasons, and maybe you do too, right? When I ignore this, then I run myself. Into the ground. Um, a book that really helped me with this, um, is wintering by Catherine May, and she talks about like her own personal wintering and the time for going inside and, and just, you know, whatever that means for you.

The book's amazing. I'll link that also, but it helped me see that there are. That I can like be out in the world like planting seeds. And then there are gonna be times when I need to go inside myself and let the seeds I planted do their own thing while I recover and reap the benefit of it. And then lastly, I kind of wanna mention some things that are maybe not helpful when trying to recover from burnout.

So I, it seems obvious, but like scrolling on the socials  is not super helpful. And the reason is not because you shouldn't, but because constant stimulation is not allowing you to rest. And when you're already exhausted, what you need is rest. And if you're constantly putting stimulation in front of you, you get caught up in a dopamine cycle and it depletes you even more.

and then in terms of relaxing, um, over-drinking or substance abuse, right? Like a glass of red wine might lower your blood, your blood pressure initially, but if you over drink, it actually has the opposite effect. It can increase your blood pressure, it can increase your cholesterol. And these are actually some of the physical symptoms of burnout, right?

Increased blood pressure over a long period of time. It can also. Exacerbate GI issues, which surprise is another sign of burnout. So like if you're like me and you sort of, you have like stress related digestion issues, don't ignore a flare up and just take OTCs, like check in and see if you might be overdoing it somewhere in your life.

And then the other reason why we don't wanna just like go to scrolling for the dopamine or other pleasurable things, whether it's like alcohol or sex or um, gaming or what, like whatever is that, those things, right? We've talked about this before, like those things. Have you numb or suppress your emotions?

And what we know now is that when we wanna really work on recovering from burnout, one of the things we need to do is to process emotion, right? We need to complete that stress cycle. So if you are constantly getting dopamine hits or indulging in pleasure, it's like a too much of a good thing situation, right?

So, you know, Sex is a great thing to like regulate, release, connect, all those things. But if you are using it as a way to ignore things that you're feeling that are uncomfortable, right? If we're just, we're trying to suppress uncomfortable emotions and seek pleasure, then this is not going to be the way that we are restored by that activity.

So that's kind of it. Today I threw a lot. There's a lot of information here. Um, a little education, a little personal experience to kind of maybe help you identify what might work for you or what you might need. If you have any questions about this, feel free to DM me. I'm putting lots of resources in the show notes, and if you're feeling like coaching, Might be the answer, like if you've known that it's something that you've wanted to do for a while and in in any way you heard something that made you think like coaching could be it, but you were thinking about holding off for the new year, maybe reconsider that and book a consult because we can help you, especially help you get through the holiday season, which is definitely a high stress time that people don't spend enough time mentally and emotionally preparing for. Often end up feeling burnt out after the holidays because of it. Have an awesome week, my friends. I'll talk to you soon.

If you are loving what you're hearing here on, you need a coach, bitch, please subscribe like and share with your friends. And if you want more information on how you can work with me, one on one. Go to theonlychrishale.com where you can find me on Instagram, theonlychrishale.