Present, but Absent ft. Janet Barrett

You’re there, but not really there.

Janet Barrett shares her lifelong journey with presenteeism, which is when someone shows up for work or life but isn't mentally present.

She used work as a way to escape or to numb herself from her problems.

But after 49 years, she broke. Her husband wanted a divorce and it was that turning point where she realized she had to unpack her giant backpack full of emotional baggage that she kept putting away her entire life.


Key Takeaways

• The key to releasing emotional baggage is to connect the mind and body with the triggering event and find safe ways to express negative emotions.
• Emotions always have a physical embodiment, and if you don’t know how to express it safely, you can trap them inside your body.
• Workaholism can show up in life, not just work. 

Key Moments

{02:23}  “Presenteeism showed up across the board in my life where I would be physically at my kids' game. But mentally I wasn't there. I wasn't really watching, I wasn't really engaged in what was going on. I was thinking about a million other things and I was distracted by things and I was thinking about emotions and whatever.”

{03:36} “I used work to numb all of my emotions. I used work to distract me from problems that were happening in my life. And I was one of the most productive people.”

{07:07} “Prior to my break, I had no awareness that that isn't how life should be. I had no understanding that there could be more, that you could actually really feel an emotional connection with something.”

{20:32} “If you know your warning signs, they can help prevent that break from happening and help prevent some of those stressors from being in the pressure cooker that explodes, or the Pandora box that opens.”


More about Janet

Janet is a proactive mental health advocate, speaker, and writer. She is the Founder and CEO of Cerebral Health, a company focused on eliminating the stigma around mental health and helping individuals learn to thrive. She earned her Master of Arts in Organizational Psychology in 2022. Prior to this, Janet worked for and advised some of the largest retail and wholesale consumer brands on category management, product and consumer segmentation, and merchandising strategy. Janet and her four children reside outside of Boston. When she’s not spending time with her kids, you can find her outside or in the yoga studio working on staying in balance!


Get in touch with Janet

www.StopTheBreak.LIFE


Share your Story

Send it to us at podcast@jennylynnerickson.com


Get Beyond Workaholism

If you’re wondering what you need right now and how to manage your time, take the space test and see for yourself.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to Death of a Workaholic, where other people's stories are a piece of your map. I'm your host Jenny Lynn, and I'm ready to take you on an adventure.

Jenny Lynne: Janet, I am so excited to have you here. 

Janet Barrett: Thank you. I am very excited to be here. 

Jenny Lynne: Janet Barrett is gonna be my first guest where we bust open the connection between mental health and workaholism, and in the conversations I've had to date. Mental health plays a key role for a lot of folks, and either how they developed workaholism in the first place or how they come to terms that it's become, uh, a challenge in their lives, shall we say.

, whether it shows up as panic attacks or anxiety, it's a very real thing, and we're gonna start to break down the stigma. Janet's story's pretty intense. So if at any point you get uncomfortable, please take care of yourself first and, uh, and sign off. We, we will never know. 

 So I read your book, uh, over the weekend actually, and was incredibly touched by your [00:01:00] story and, and what you went through. And as you know, we're gonna start at the beginning. Mm-hmm. Um, but with maybe a little bit of a hindsight is 2020 component to this. one of your breakthrough discoveries was when you recognized that presenteeism had been showing up in your life. 

Janet Barrett: So presenteeism, there is the dictionary definition of it, and then there is the way that I would actually like to define it.

So presenteeism was created. As a variation of absenteeism in the workplace. So if you are absent from work, completely missing work, you can't physically show up that is in that bucket of absenteeism. Presenteeism means that you have shown up for work. You are present and accounted for. However, mentally you're not really there.

You're just dialing it in. And so that was the way that organizations were trying to say, how do we put this bucket out there? Because I can tell you how many missed work days [00:02:00] people have, but I can't tell you how much missed work they have just cuz they aren't mentally present. So the definition is , you know, people that are showing up at work, but they are much less productive.

And I actually want that to not just be at work. I would like that to span. All of life, because for me, presenteeism didn't just show up when I was working. Presenteeism showed up across the board in my life where I would be physically at my kids' game. But mentally I wasn't there. I wasn't really watching, I wasn't really engaged in what was going on.

I was thinking about a million other things and I was distracted by things and I was thinking about emotions and whatever. So that's, that's the definition of presenteeism to me. 

Jenny Lynne: And so dialing it in for life sounds like it can look a lot like actually getting a lot done and being productive and being a workaholic.

 How did that start? Like what was your point where you realized not even where you realized, let's [00:03:00] back up before you realized, when did you start dialing it in? Janet? 

Janet Barrett: So I don't know that I actually know the answer to that because for me it happened very young. So I learned at a very young age to compartmentalize and only show things and really contain myself in a box, if you will.

And, um, I originally, Controlled a lot of that emotion, unfortunately, using alcohol from a very young age. And when I stopped doing that, I started using work. And I used work to numb all of my emotions. I used work to distract me from problems that were happening in my life. And I was one of the most productive people.

, but I wasn't really present at work because I had so many things going on in my personal life and I wasn't really present into my personal life because I was so consumed with trying to do so much at work and not [00:04:00] really being involved or present in anything.

And honestly, I did not know that I was doing that. That was just how I lived life until I was 49 years old. And I kind of slogged through life doing, you know, as much as I could without really being emotionally engaged in anything, just plowing through life, if you will, until I was 49 and found out my husband was having an affair and wanted a divorce.

And that day that I found that out, I broke. And I had plowed through a lot of stuff in my life and that was just, I just could not continue pushing and pushing and pushing and numbing myself. I had to take a beat and say, what in the world is going on? Why can't I just bounce back? And that's when I started dealing with my mental health, dealing with the fact [00:05:00] that I had been numbing and avoiding using various substances or work or my kids or volunteer activities. And once I admitted that and started addressing it, I realized that there was basically my entire life that I had been present at, but not really involved in.

And I didn't even recognize it because, I was very externally validated by people saying, oh my gosh, look at how much you can do, giving you the promotion, giving you the raise, giving you additional opportunity to volunteer. You know, oh, your kids are doing this. You, you get all of this external validation.

And I just, I just kind of thought, oh, this is just how life is and didn't realize what I was missing out on. 

Jenny Lynne: And I wanna pause there because so many people I've talked to. Feel that they, , see their success, but they're not quite connected to their success. It's as if it's separate from them.

[00:06:00] It's like, I've done all this work, I've achieved the success, and yet, , 

Janet Barrett: yes, and that's exactly it. That is exactly presenteeism where you're doing it. I mean, technically it's your body and it's there. Giving the workout and all of that, but you're not really emotionally invested. You're not really emotionally involved, and that is what I don't want to have happen in my life anymore because once I figured that out and understood, it doesn't have to be that way, now I find I get just as much done.

But I get it done in a different way and , what I am willing to do is different. So before it was kind of like, yep, I'll take anything on. I will do anything. I will make it happen. I can check every box that you could possibly want. But now I'm much more selective in it because I want something that matters to me and that is going to be something I enjoy doing and be something that I think will [00:07:00] actually make a difference .And I, I cannot stress enough what you just said, how prior to my break, I had no awareness that that isn't how life should be. I had no understanding that there could be more, that you could actually really feel an emotional connection with something and. A lot of people that I talk to and I tell them my story, 

if they haven't gotten to that point in their life. It's hard for them to completely relate,

Jenny Lynne: Yeah, so I love what you're talking about cuz there is these grades of, um, I'm gonna call it self-awareness. Like awareness of where we're at and how it's impacting us because

 What a lot of the people I've talked to, workaholism shows up in the desire or need to do something, the compulsion to keep moving, to keep themselves busy, regardless of whether or not that's the best thing for them to be putting their energy into in that moment.

So when we look at this grade, [00:08:00] this slope, right? And, and part one is, I'm fine, I'm busy, everything's fine, everything's fine. I got this. We're good. It's all good, right? I got a ton of business coming in. Life is good. My kids are good. Everything's good. So you have that, that kind of phase of being. And then you have the, and I kind of feel like something's off, but I'm not quite sure what it is.

Right. You get that kind of stage and then you go from, okay, we've got some problems here and like, I'm not sure how to get through this. And then it's okay, I kind of know my problem now. How the heck do I, how do I make progress? And then you're like, okay, I'm making progress. Well, the problem is if you don't go through those layers in order, 

that's where the break happens. that's what I took from your book. So how do you move that cycle back? 

Janet Barrett: So before I get into that, the one thing that I wanna say is what I think, adds to that complexity of that spectrum you're talking about and those stages mm-hmm.

Is that people don't realize the potential. Because what I saw [00:09:00] growing up was I pretty much just saw that stage one. Both of my parents pretty much existed in stage one. Mm-hmm. And it wasn't until I was older that I'm like, are you really enjoying life? Are you simply enduring it? Hmm. And that was when I was starting to move into that second stage.

Of having more of the awareness. So your point of how do you not like end up at the very end? And I think part of it is just saying, How do I set a baseline? How do I set, like, where should I be? Because a lot of what I have found is that the reason why people get in that first stage of staying busy 

It's because they don't really wanna deal with the other things in their life, those other emotional events, if I can just keep it behind me and I keep moving forward, I never actually have [00:10:00] to deal with it. But what people don't realize is as you are moving forward and you're putting it behind you, it's not laying in the road behind you, you're putting it in a backpack on your back, and you are still carrying that with you.

And that's the baggage that is not allowing you to really engage and be emotionally invested in what you're doing because you're trying to keep it behind you by moving forward and you don't realize you're carrying it forward with you. So what I want people to do is to take a step back and pause and figure out how do you find those emotional events and how do you deal with them after they've happened?

 How do I learn from it and then actually set it down and not keep it in my backpack? 

Jenny Lynne: So how heavy was your backpack the day that you broke? 

Janet Barrett: I was the biggest [00:11:00] Sherpa you have ever met?

 My backpack was so full of emotional weight that I had never dealt with. I started loading my backpack up when I was in grade school. So trigger warning . I was sexually abused in grade school and I had no idea how to ask for help.

And when I did finally ask for help, I had, , a guidance counselor in seventh grade tell me I was lying. Which just simply validated exactly what my abuser had said, which was Nobody will believe you. And that emotional weight started. And that's actually when I started drinking and it went on. 

 I just kept putting 'em in my backpack and pushing through. By all outward appearances, I was incredibly successful. 

And so all of that external validation kept reinforcing in my mind that I was okay. I was going [00:12:00] forward, even though inside my head it was like just a cacophony of sound, just screaming like, things are wrong, things are wrong. I kept saying, no, the outside world says you're fine.

So you, you just need to put whatever's in there away because that's how you move forward. That's how you are successful. And it literally kept layering on and layering on. Until I got to that very end. 

I could take anything on until I couldn't and realized I actually was not resilient at all. I was just an emotional sherpa that I had that backpack that was huge, and I kept carrying around until finally it completely crushed me. 

Jenny Lynne: It's funny you used the backpack analogy. I used the Pandora's Box analogy, and once it opens, it can't be shut.

It's like things springing out everywhere and it's like, all right, well we're, we're here now. We don't have a choice but to deal with it. Uh, But I wanna comment on something you said, um, about moms. [00:13:00] Yes, moms are workers too. Parents are workers too. Never forget that this workaholism thing doesn't just apply to your work in a professional environment.

You can show up the same way with your family and your kids and carrying the business of the house along, or the business of , your partnership, whatever that looks like for you. And you did, whether you were in the office or whether you were in the home. You are carrying that? 

Janet Barrett: Absolutely. And I find that both as you get advanced in your career, if you have people working for you or if you're at home and you have kids, you end up taking on even more emotional baggage.

Because when you have to present information to your kids or to people that work for you, you want to present it in a way. That is the most palatable for them, so they can take the information in [00:14:00] and keep moving forward without getting derailed by it. So I give the example of a company being acquired by another company.

When you present that information to the people at work, that is a very stressful situation. Mm-hmm. So you're not just gonna go in and say, Hey, yeah, a, B, C is acquiring us. That's gonna happen next Tuesday. So can you make sure you get your deliveries out on Monday? You can't do it that way. You have to figure out an entire communication plan for how you present this information to somebody.

And when you have to go through that, whether you're a parent and you have to say to your kid, you didn't make the hockey team, or you're telling people at work some other change, you take on some of that emotional stress. For them because you don't want them to have to deal with as much so they can continue going through their life and ensure that the company is still successful, that your family isn't falling apart, and adding that stress to your, [00:15:00] you know, backpack into your Pandora's box, shoving it down, whatever it is that you're doing, and never really dealing with it and never really addressing it and truly letting it go.

That's, you know, even more that you add on top of it. 

Jenny Lynne: And so your backpack was extremely heavy, but you did start to let it go. And so your book really, by the way, I highly recommend it. Stop the Break. 

And here's why. Guys. She hacks the hell out of this, pardon my language, but she literally makes something that's very non-linear, which is emotional management to something that's very linear. So for those of us that love to work with our left brain a little bit more, it's a nice transition point.

, all that set aside, I don't wanna go into all the details cuz what I wanna know is what is the one thing, and I know you had a couple of things, but what's the one thing that let you start to release that weight from your backpack? 

Janet Barrett: So the thing that actually really worked for me 

 was how you have to [00:16:00] connect your mind and your body. So emotions always have a physical embodiment.

If somebody tells you a joke, you laugh, you smile. If you get excited, you cheer. If you get sad, you cry. But what do you do if you get angry? And for me, the emotion that I had no idea how to express was anger. I also wasn't really good at sadness, but I really was really, really bad at expressing my anger.

And the key that I came across was this concept of you have to safely express it. When you're in the moment, that's not the right time to express it. But you can't just keep it because it will get trapped inside your body. And I had been trapping emotions for decades and I had no idea that they actually needed to be released.

And once I [00:17:00] started to find safe ways to do that, that's when it actually went away. That's when I was able to start sleeping through the night when I could actually pay attention in conversations without my mind going 50 million different ways. When I was able to start writing this book was when I released all of that because I could actually focus and be more present and I actually have a D H D, so I'm already.

Very scattered and kind of all over the place, and so it takes me a bit to do that anyway, and, , releasing those emotions primarily on the negative side, physically releasing those emotions safely.

That was the absolute key to me. To be able to release those emotions out of my backpack and keep going on. 

Jenny Lynne: And for everyone listening, I mean, who has not had a conversation where you allowed your frustration to show through and you're like, gosh, I wish I hadn't. I love what you're saying. It's [00:18:00] releasing it physically, but not in the moment.

Mm-hmm. Getting to a safe spot where you can do that in a way that doesn't cause damage. We have legitimate feelings, everybody. Absolutely. We have legitimate feelings. And I can tell you that when I approached my kind of break point as well, that was a key indicator for me. As frustration started seeping out, things started seeping out when I couldn't, when I didn't want them to, and I was getting less and less control.

And if we can all avoid that, my gosh, what a great world this would be. 

Janet Barrett: , so your kind of hope for everyone else. What I'm hearing is that they will not wait until their backpack gets so heavy it crushes them. 

Jenny Lynne:  In order to do that, it means stopping and looking and reflecting and doing some of this work before it becomes a problem. And it's a huge thing. People ask me, say, why does podcast Jenny? And I'm gonna tell you a big reason why, is because I want people to hear a whole lot of stories. So that they can start to, number one, stop the left side of their brain a little bit and open up the right side, but number two, so [00:19:00] that they can maybe see a bit of themselves in their story reflected in all of these different stories.

Cuz like you said, they're very unique and in that process, see what they maybe can't see if they were to just keep trucking through, right? Because we get myopic in our view and we just keep trucking through. So your book has a lot of practical suggestions on how to proactively do this, so no one ever has to actually get to the point where they have a, you know, a challenge or a need or a breakdown, which I've had several in my life.

I will fully admit. And then when, if you do get to the break or even before you get to the break, you're say saying that physically releasing that emotion while you're thinking about that thing so you can connect the event and the emotion to physical action is a huge part that we undervalue in our society, but doing it in a way that's safe.

And then ultimately understanding that your workaholism doesn't just apply to work, but it applies to all aspects of your life and you can show up and clock it in and not really be connected and [00:20:00] present. 

Janet Barrett: Jenny, you nailed it.

You absolutely nailed it. I could not have said it better myself. Your summary of the entire thing is spot on. I would love to add one quick thing. Please do. Which is the one slight other. Big nugget that I would love people to understand is I think we all have warning signs. Mm-hmm. And I don't think a lot of people take time to understand that If you know your warning signs, they can help prevent that break from happening and help prevent some of those stressors from being in the pressure cooker that explodes, or the Pandora box that opens.

If you recognize that it's starting, that you can prevent it. Um, so all of those things, being able to physically release, going through life, understanding where you should be if you know your warning signs, that's a really good [00:21:00] step in the process to be able to prevent not even getting to a break, but getting into that second level of overwhelm and wondering what's going on.

Just using those things to help you always stay really in balance.

Jenny Lynne: I love that and I'm gonna say, I interviewed Penny Zeer recently, amazing interview, and she had a similar kind of watch for the warning signs. What I love about your book is you really do dive into how to identify your warning signs, but if you were to give people just like a quick teaser on that, what would you tell them to do to find those warning signs?

Cuz it's one thing to say it, but it's another thing to actually, I don't know, figure it out. 

Janet Barrett: So I think there's kind of two separate buckets of warning signs. One is physical and then one is actions. Mm-hmm. So I, I will give you a couple of my warning signs. Initial warning sign are my shoulders when they get tense.[00:22:00] 

So if you have something that you know when you're getting stressed, your body reacts. Some people it's their stomach. Some people it's their shoulders, some people it's their hips. There's lots of different things. If you know the physical side, you can think about that and as soon as you notice it, there you go.

The second one is, what is it that you do to avoid things? It's really easy to scroll TikTok to be on any social media, to um, watch a TV show. What are those things that you do to avoid something? For some people it's actually exercise. That's another warning sign. Whatever it is you use to fill your time.

You are doing it to probably avoid something else, not always, but a lot of the time. So have those kind of buckets of what are the things you do, and I will tell you what I do with mine. After I've identified mine, I actually have a printout and I'm pointing to it, not that you can see it, but I have a printout of my warning signs and it's taped to my computer because [00:23:00] I'm in front of my computer all day and it keeps it top of mind.

So that when one of those things happens in my life, I automatically have it in my line of sight so that it stays with me and it holds me accountable. So if I'm sitting here with my shoulders like this and I'm all tense and I look over and I see my list and I'm like, oh, darn it, and it makes, it forces me into dealing with whatever it is.

I don't wanna deal with. 

Jenny Lynne: So what I'm hearing is for those, um, workaholics that are listening, which you know of, which I am definitely one, and we love our action items and our homework, right. Uh, it sounds like the homework would be, in addition to reading Stop the Break, um, is also to really just take inventory.

Of the things that, that you do to avoid work, , or avoid things which we all have. And then understand that that's telling you something, that you're trying to avoid something, you're just not sure what, and then the second thing you're recommending is that people understand physically how they respond and react to [00:24:00] stress, whether it's hunting your shoulders or, one of the things you said that resonated with me is The constriction in the throat.

I get that a lot. Um mm-hmm. When I get excited or panic ear, um, basically anxious, it comes up and shows up like constriction in my throat. So really understand how it shows up in your body so that you can see it and say, okay, I'm here. Like, you're not fixing it, you're just recognizing it. Exactly.

That's the first step, because then from there there's a million things that you can do differently once you recognize it and can slow and move into your body and out of your head. 

Janet Barrett: Absolutely. 

Jenny Lynne: Janet, I am so honored to have you here. Janet Barrett is a proactive mental health advocate, speaker and writer.

She is the founder and c e o of Cerebral Health, a company focused on eliminating the stigma around mental health. Would you help us do today? Thank you. And helping individuals learn how to thrive. Janet, thank you so very much for being here. I hope everyone picks up your book and reads it. Like I said, I loved it.

Janet Barrett: Thank you, Jenny. I truly appreciate you having me here and I love [00:25:00] the work that you are doing around this concept because it is so important. So thank you so much. 

. 

Thank you for joining us on Death of a Workaholic, where other people's stories are a piece of your map beyond workaholism. I'm your host, Jenny Lynn, and if this was a valuable addition to your map, then please like, subscribe or follow. Or sign up for my newsletter to get updates when new episodes are dropped.

You can reach out to me at podcast jenny lynn erickson.com, or you can go to my website, death of a workaholic.com. If you have a map that you think would be valuable for other people, then please reach out and see if we can book you on the show. That is podcast@jennylynnerickson.com or death of a workaholic.com, and I can't wait to see you on the next drop.