Burnout Series- Rest Without Guilt

Burnout rarely looks like a dramatic crash; it’s the slow leak that drains your energy, dulls your joy, and convinces you to push just a little harder. I’m pulling back the curtain on how we quietly sabotage rest—and how to reclaim it with practical, guilt-free tools you can use today. Drawing on a decade in critical care and years coaching women through recovery, I unpack why hustle culture, good-girl conditioning, and constant sensory overload keep the nervous system stuck in overdrive, and why the fix isn’t a weekend reset but gentle, repeatable signals of safety.

We explore three kinds of rest that actually move the needle: micro rest you can take in two minutes before a meeting or text, emotional rest that releases the pressure to fix everything, and sensory rest that softens noise, light, and screen time. You’ll learn how to spot faux-rest habits like late-night scrolling, flip the script on guilt with grounded mantras, and build daily ease rituals—quiet coffee by the window, a twilight walk, or music-led stretching—that feel doable on busy days. I share why “rest is not a reward” matters for nervous system regulation, how gratitude strengthens worthiness, and a simple “pause-before-yes” practice that protects your calendar and capacity.

This is the starting line for sustainable burnout recovery: small, kind repetitions that rebuild energy and self-trust. Try the seven-day experiment with the two-minute pause, notice what shifts, and let your decisions start with capacity instead of obligation. If this resonates, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs the permission slip to rest. What’s the one practice you’ll try this week?

Chapters

• 2:17 Mini-Series On Burnout Announced
• 3:42 Rest Without Guilt As The Starting Point
• 5:36 Hidden Ways We Sabotage Rest
• 7:46 What Burnout Really Is
• 10:42 Culture, Conditioning, And Guilt
• 13:27 The Costs Of Skipping Rest
• 16:12 Rest Is Not A Reward
• 17:47 Three Kinds Of Rest To Practice
• 20:22 Two-Minute Pause And Mindful Checks
• 23:07 Flipping Shame And Guilt Narratives
• 25:12 Daily Ease Moments And Rituals
• 27:12 Gratitude And Saying Yes With Care
• 30:07 Gentle Self-Compassion In Recovery
• 31:17 Guided Breathing And Mantras
• 34:07 Recap, Seven-Day Experiment, And CTA

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:10

Hello and welcome back to Empowered Ease. I'm your host, Jen Olinger. I'm a former ICU nurse and a holistic nurse coach. And usually I have a wonderful guest on that is making a difference in the lives of others, usually wonderful women. This week I'm changing it up a bit. I've got a lot of amazing guests booked for the next upcoming months, but there was a little lag in the schedule. And I thought, you know, I should do a little mini-series on something that comes up a lot on the show, something that's one of that's one of my specialties. And I think that I think a lot of women are struggling with, which is burnout. And so I thought, you know, I'll tackle burnout one little bite size piece at a time, right? Because we're tired, we're overwhelmed with burnout. Like we don't want a bunch of things coming at our plate, right? And really that's how we need to approach change anyway, little bite sipes, pieces at a time. Otherwise, we're setting ourselves up for failure. So that's what I want to do with burnout. And there's a lot of topics to cover, you know, especially when we're doing the bite size, right? Some might not apply to you, and that's fine. Leave those. But if you're feeling burnt out, I encourage you to check out this series. So today we're gonna start with one that I was guilty of today, which is why it inspired me to start here. But letting yourself rest without guilt. So in the Midwest today, there's a snowstorm, and man, I don't even know. There's at least six inches, but there's probably more than that. And so I'm feeling so crazy. My dog's feeling so crazy. I had all these plans to like, I'm doing this like beginner's jujitsu class, and I've been doing these home renovations, and it's bitterly cold. And so I'm just like feeling tired. I wanted to sleep in this morning, but I made myself get up and just dragging all day. And I'm like, I just have this like angst, this burning anxiety that I'm sure a lot of you can relate with. And I'm like, why am I yeah, why can't I just like let myself rest today? Why can't I? And then I decided like I'm gonna. So like I took a bath, I did this, I've been doing this light flash meditation that I would. If you want to hear more about, let me know, but it's amazing. And so I took a bath, I did that, and then I thought, this is the topic, this is what we're gonna cover today. Podcast, this is where we'll start because I think this is a really common problem women face. One many of my clients have been able to relate with. And that's like that sometimes, even when we're letting our bodies rest, our mind is not actually letting us rest because we're shaming ourselves, or we don't understand the all the kinds of rest that we need, right? We need more than just to rest our bodies, we need to rest our emotional selves, we need to rest our sensory selves. So we're gonna dive into some of that today, kind of talk about some of the barriers that get in the way. So let's let's kind of dive in here into resting without guilt. So some of you know, some of you don't. That's kind of what started, kick-started me back into my healing journey as an adult was a major burnout after being a critical care nurse for 10 years. Oh my goodness. I had physical, emotional. I mean, I had to take three months off work. And so um, I can really relate to a lot of this. And some of these I am very guilty of. So, some examples of ways that we can kind of think we're resting, but we're not. So, one thing I used to do all the time was when I was working like a long stint of shifts in a row, you know, they're 12-hour shifts. I would get home after a 12-hour shift and I'm like in the middle of three or four days row in a row, and just like I've been talking to other people all day, focusing on other people, and have had no time to myself. And so I find myself like wanting to stay up late, like watching a mindless show or scrolling on my phone, right? And so I feel like I'm resting, giving myself some form of rest, like time to myself, but that is like working against me. Um, that's a good one. Like I mentioned before, shaming yourself when you are resting your body, like that's not restful if you're in your head talking against yourself. Um oh, another one. This one needs to happen to me too. Um, waking up in the morning and like the first sign that I'm awake, right? My body, my brain has the awareness. Oh, I'm awake. The to-do list for the day starts running in my head. And even though I may have not gotten enough sleep and we have not gotten seven hours that I may be exhausted, I'll pop up and think I gotta keep going on this list, right? So that's what I've gotten to haven't done in a long time. Like I've learned to really let myself rest. But it's one that I feel like I used to do all the time, and a lot of people are guilty of. Let's think of some more. Well, we'll go through them, but I'm just there's a lot of ways which we can kind of sabotage our rest. And we need, like I said before, more than just one kind of rest. So, first let's talk about kind of what burnout really is. You know, they a lot of definitions of burnout talk about like physical, emotional, mental exhaustion caused by work. But I think any of us that actually work in burnout know the truth to that. And the truth is that it's emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion from chronic stress from work, but also with like misaligned things going on in your life. Maybe you have the added pressure of like a sick relative or a relationship in your life is struggling, or you're having financial problems, right? It's like the add up of life and work, it's not a personal failure as much as it is well, it can be a lot of different things, right? It's a lot about mindset shifts that need to happen in order to tackle the things that are causing the burnout. So that's what we'll start to address here. So it's often a combo of I see this in my clients all the time, like nervous systems on overdrive, right? Like this is so common with people who work in healthcare because you're worrying about conditions in other people all day, and then you've so you're heightened, you're thinking about, oh, I've gotta check this, gotta check this, gotta check this, right? You're on your list, and then it uh there, like in the ICU where I work, there's alarms, there's you know, several different kinds of alarms. There's just so much noise going on. So you sensory, your nervous system is just like, ah, in fight or flight, or just all the time, right? It's also that in combination with issues, issues with boundaries, which a lot of us have issues we may think we have really good boundaries with other people. Well, do you hold really good boundaries with yourself? And what other some contexts where you don't hold good boundaries? So boundaries issues sometimes it is boundaries with other people, and we hold really great boundaries with ourselves, and then it's also a combination sometimes of like some identity issue of like it's common for burnout to happen in well, one neurodivergent people because they're masking, so it's extra energy out, they're already using that extra energy, but it's also common, it's certain stages of life, right? Like so it during transitions, like your first year of nursing, um, midlife transitions when we're rearranging our priorities, and it's more about where we see ourselves and our purpose when we talk about identity. It's are we connected to the things we're doing in a meaningful way? So, yeah, very, very different things than I think the typical definition of burnout. So, we're not gonna cover all those things today, but as the series goes on, we will start to address some of these things like boundaries, learning to say no, how to regulate our nervous system, how to build self-trust, how to like create an identity beyond like people pleasing, being productive, how to build healthy communities, sustainable self-care, things like that. So we'll we'll get to it. But this week, our focus rest without guilt, right? This can be a big one, right? There's a lot of cultural things working against us when it comes to this, right? We're kind of in the middle of this internet age of uh hustle culture where we won't need to be everything, do everything to everyone. And busy is equated with our worth, right? So, like the busy you are, the more you get done, the more worth you have in this culture. Being resting or is equated more with being like selfish and lazy, right? I mean, I know that changes a little bit with which socioeconomic status you're in, but generally that's how those things are equated. We have a lot of internalized beliefs that were kind of like programmed into us, especially as women with like good girl conditioning and being like the people pleasing that's just built into our culture, fits right into this, like why burnout would happen, or you know, encourages, or I guess adds to burnout, is what I want to say. Sometimes we have internalized beliefs that are working against us, right? Like if I stop doing all these things, then everything will just fall apart, right? Like I then feel like a lot of moms feel like this. Other people need me more than I need to rest. That's another mom run, right? Like being the martyr, self-sacrificing. A lot of these things are learned in childhood too. So sometimes we need to just flip the script, change the narrative, learn to think about things a little differently, get a little different perspective. What is the cost of this of us, right? Of us not really resting. What cost are we paying when we don't allow ourselves to rest? That's a really good one. Like me personally, oh my gosh. I had high blood pressure, I had like panic attacks, like my heart rate was racing at work, and I was like 80, she was going crazy, brain fog, you know, things like that. Like that's the price I was paying. And who knows long term if I would have let that go on, what that would have developed into brain fog, irritability, resentment, struggles in our relationships. These are some of the costs that we can have with them. It can affect our sleep, it can increase our anxiety, all these things. We could, you know, these are all these classic symptoms of burnout we're hearing here. Disconnection from joy and creativity, right? We just burn out, you just kind of feel numb. So I'm really guilty of this one, but this is an important thing to remember with burnout and rest in general. But you can't mindset, change your mindset without it as a way to fix like a physically and biologically exhausted body. So I'm guilty of trying to constantly like rationalize or intellectualize things. So if I can understand it, I can make a plan and I can start working on the plan. And this is learning more to let be, let it go, right? Which is a hard thing to learn. And I am by no way, in no way mastered it, right? It's it's it's a process, you know, and I don't know if I'll ever stop. I don't know if I'll ever get there to any destination, but it, you know, I'm getting better. So I think what we need to talk about is really then what is rest, right? How can we do things? What kind of rest do we need? So let's start with this. Rest. And you might want to write this down. I'm gonna say it more than once. Rest is not a reward. Rest is not a reward. It is you do not have to be, you do not have to earn rest. You do not have to be productivity, is not a requirement for rest. Rest is not a reward. So if you need to write that down somewhere or make that your new mantra, I think for a lot of us, we need that reminder. Rest is not a reward, right? We don't have to earn rest, and it's not just going on vacations, it's not just taking a nap in the middle of the day, right? So I want to focus on three kinds of rest: micro resting, which is like just like taking five minutes to pause, sometimes two minutes to just pause before you speak, enter a room, say something, maybe just to breathe, to focus on your breathing, right? So micro resting, talking about emotional rest. So not feeling like we need to fix all the problems, do everything, be everything to everyone. That's a hard one. And then we need sensory rest, we need breaks from our phones, we need silence, we need soft lighting, we need to set the tone, we need to give our nervous system a reset. So we want this is about, excuse me, this is about protecting our energy, right? So we want to get in the mindset of thinking about sustainability. We want to sustain our energy. We want it to be this precious thing that we get up every day and we think, first, how do I sustain my energy today? How do I take care of myself so that I can do the things I need to do? And that's a hard shift. And one I'm still working on, but we're gonna get there together, right? So we're not superheroes, right? The older we are, the more rest we need, honestly. The more of these like resets, the more, the more I learn to let go in new areas and find that that's actually the answer to a lot of my problems is learning to let go, right? So let's practice as long as you're not driving. If you're driving, maybe say these things out loud, but do not close your eyes. So obviously, you need to be safe to do this, but let's practice like a two-minute pause here. This is something you can do moving forward once a day, and set a timer, and all I want you to do is breathe and notice your body. So you can listen to my words if you want, but you can listen to music. But the point is to for these two minutes each day to look inward. Notice how you're breathing. Are you breathing past your upper chest? Are you actually taking full breaths? Because that keeps us in fight or flight, keeps our nervous system wired. And if you are, then take a couple deep breaths all the way down into your belly as deep as you can, right? Notice if when you're breathing, you feel tension somewhere, some pain, some discomfort. Maybe stretch it out, breathe into that area, give yourself a little attention. Something I like to do is ask myself, like, what do I what do I need right now? And I took a while to start realizing it, but sometimes it's like water to pee, you know, you know, what if I want body signals in my numbing? Because we learned to do that. So take that two minutes if you can't and do a micro, a micro pause. You know, it's gonna it for some of us who aren't used to this, it actually might be difficult, and your brain may like tell you this is stupid, this is a waste of time, right? And that that's just your conditioning, it's not true. If you have thoughts, which like uh this is a lot of people I hear when we talk about like meditation or being mindful or pausing, it's like I just think the whole time, and that's okay. You know, the goal is to notice the thoughts and try to let them float away, like, oh, I'm thinking right now. That's okay. Bring it back to the breath, right? It's not a failure if if you think the whole time. You're still pausing, you're still getting the benefits, and the more you do it, the better it will get. I said we'll do it right now, but we'll do it in a minute. Um, another thing we can do is oh, okay. So the guilt and the shaming, right? That is an energy sucker. I did this workshop last year about energy blocks, right? And shame, guilt, avoidance, huge energy suckers, right? So we need to learn to like flip the script on our guilt, on our shaming. Sometimes it's hard to to do that. And if you need more help on like understanding how much shame how unhelpful shame is, because I think a lot of us believe that shame is helpful, it's motivating, right? But if you look at Brene Brown, a shame researcher, which I'm sure you've heard of her. I mean, she'll she'll tell you it's actually the opposite, right? It works against us. So resting now helps me help some things you can tell yourself instead of what you're shaming yourself. So if you catch yourself shaming yourself, which is normal, right? We don't like change right away when we are trying to start new practices, right? We catch ourselves, we fall back. So the first part of this is just like I'm doing it, right? I just shame myself, catching yourself doing it. So, and then you want to either like rationalize with it, like that's not very nice, right? Talk, speak back to it. You can challenge it, right? You can say a mantra, like rest is not earned, like it we talked about earlier. You can tell yourself one of these phrases, like resting now helps me show up with more presence later. You could say I'm allowed to be a human being, I'm just a human doing. And this is my favorite. I don't know if they used to read this in like a lot of yoga classes I used to go to, but it's the what is it called? The des oh, I have it written out. It's the I don't want to butcher the name. Des A Deserada poem that's I think it's a very long poem written in like the 20s. To it's like a father wrote it to his daughter as advice on how to have a happy life. And it's long and it's been translated. But one of my favorite parts is you are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. So you have a right to be here. And you should Google the whole thing if you are interested. And maybe I'll put it on the Patreon page if you guys are interested in reading it. It's really beautiful, and I think it's like emerged in popularity around like recently in the last decade, but also like it was really popular in the 70s and I believe the 50s as well. So, like some times of growth, this poem pops up again and is popular. So it's worth the read if you're interested. So, anyway, moving on. So moving forward, we talked about like flipping the script, the two-minute pause. And I think another thing you could do is give yourself, like if you're already doing that, or if those don't seem to appeal to you, is like a non-negotiable daily ease moment. So like maybe you decide to sit and have your coffee or your tea in silence every morning and look out at the birds out your window. The older I get, the more I like birds. I don't know if that's a genetic thing, if that's just what happens when women get old, start liking birds. But I've noticed some of my good friends also really into birds. I have a bird book and I look them up what they are because I have a pond and we live off a lake and love the birds. Okay. Anyway, could go on forever about birds. But so make yourself your coffee, tea. Make it a routine to go for a short walk outside. Maybe take your dog, just like maybe once around the block, right? I used to do that when I was younger and I loved it. I need to do that more. Stretching before bed or the first thing in the morning. That's the one thing I've been doing lately, is getting up and like moving my body. And it's not like traditional stretching. I can't find myself getting into videos. I've just been like turning on music and feeling and moving my body. Learn to frame it in your head differently, as like maybe like water, like a plant to your watering. You're giving, you're maintening yourself. You're not indulging by rent writ by resting. Don't think of this as like a gift. Think this is of this as like required maintenance for your system to keep functioning in a healthy way. So, any way you can say that or flip that to yourself. And if one of these mantras or sayings sticks with you, like write it down. Put it in on your mirror, put it in your car, put it in your wallet, put it around where you're gonna see it. I have like a sticky thing on my mirror in my bathroom that says, You got this. And I love it. So, anyway you can say that or flip that to yourself. And if one of these mantras or sayings sticks with you, like write it down. Put it in on your mirror, put it in your car, put it in your wallet, put it around where you're gonna see it. I have like a sticky thing on my mirror in my bathroom that says, You got this, and I love it. Okay, so the next thing we're getting to okay, so number four, the gratitude at the end of the day, or practicing gratitude in general. So I like it at the end of the day, but you can do it in the morning. Think of one to three things that you're grateful for that happened during the day or that you have in your life or from the previous day. It helps us build well, gratitude helps with a ton of things, but honestly, it helps with a sense of self-worth, which we're this is part of this, right? We're trying, we're trying to shift our mindset into believing we are worthy of taking care of ourselves first so that we can show up for the other things that we care about. Okay, and the fifth and final thing that we can start to practice is a pause or a body check-in before saying yes. So when anyone makes a request of you, instead of just saying yes, because a lot of us like, well, we're people pleep pleasers, we'll say yes, we'll overwhelm ourselves, right? We'll put more on our plate than we can chew, or we'll answer from our best selves. And the truth is we don't show up every day as our best selves, right? So practice a pause. So take one or two breaths before answering. Feel your body. Like, do you do I really have the capacity for this? Think about it. Do you have the time? Like, use that space. And what we're doing is we're trying to change our mindset to one that factors in have we had enough rest? Do we have enough energy for this in our decisions? And not something that is an afterthought after overcommitting ourselves. So we're trying to put rest and prioritizing our energy as a priority. Excuse me, I have a tickle in my throat. Okay. So those are five things: a two-minute pause, flipping the script or changing the narrative or on the shame and the guilt, taking a moment for ourselves each day, whether it's with our morning coffee or a walk, just do something for ourselves where we pause that we enjoy. Practice gratitude and then try to pause before answering a request, right? So those are things that'll also help us as we do more micro sessions. All these little things actually help with other aspects of burnout recovery. So they'll make other parts of like boundary holding easier with a lot of these things. But we always want to remember to be gentle and be kind to ourselves, like failure, setbacks, resistance from others, these things are all normal and bound to happen. So this is where we can practice, you know, we all have that saying that comes up like we're not good enough, or this is stupid, or you know, whatever that thing we say to ourselves is. And when we say the thing in our head, I want us to practice reframing it and you know, telling ourselves, being a little nicer to ourselves, right? So it's not, it's normal, right? It's okay to make mistakes, it's okay to not meet our goals, right? We'll just set a smaller, more achievable goal next time. That's the point, right? We want to win. We're gonna set ourselves up for success. And we're not gonna beat ourselves up because it's normal. We're just doing the best we can. That's what I tell myself a lot. Like, I'm doing the best I can with what I have, and that's enough. And it is. Resistance is part of changing deeply ingrained patterns, and that's where a lot of this work is is in deeply ingrained patterns. Burnout recovery is a process, right? It's not somewhere we just wake up and have arrived, right? It's something we work at, and I think it's something we always work at on some level. Um, it's not a weekend fix. And part of the essentials of burnout recovery is self-compassion. So if that's something you struggle with, you really want to put your focus on being kinder to yourself. And I suggest picking a mantra. I mean, we've talked about a few today. You know, here's some other great ones. I'm learning a new way to be with myself. It's safe for me to slow down. I sometimes, in some moments, when I'm feeling very anxious, I just have to tell myself that I am safe. So yeah, think of something that maybe you can say to yourself in hard moments or when you're being negative or picking on yourself. So if I could suggest anything, it would be the if you pick up one thing, which that's also like start easy, start one thing at a time. Don't put all these things on your plate. But I would say the most powerful would be that two-minute pause a day to yourself. And I will invite you to do it now if you'd like to do the two-minute pause with me. If you're driving, obviously, or not in a safe place to do this, just listen. You can, I will say some things out loud, but I'd like you to pause and I'll just talk you through a little bit of breathing and some. So, yeah. So if you're in a safe place to do so, close your eyes.

SPEAKER_02: 28:53

Take three to five slow breaths. As you exhale, imagine relaxing your shoulders.

SPEAKER_01: 29:17

You can bring your shoulders up to your earlobes and then relax them back down. Try to lengthen each inhale and then lengthen your exhale just a tad bit longer. Relax your jaw. If you have your tongue pressed to the roof of your mouth, maybe relax your tongue. And as you're deepening your inhales and exhales, notice your body. Notice your breath. Are there any areas of tension that you're feeling? Any areas that you don't you're hesitating to breathe into? Can you focus your breath to those spaces? Can you give yourself permission to soften just five percent more, just a little more? So repeat this in your head or out loud. My worth is not measured by my product productivity.

SPEAKER_02: 30:58

My worth is not measured by my productivity. Rest is my birthright, not something I have to earn.

SPEAKER_01: 31:17

Rest is my birthright, not something I have to earn. Beautiful, beautiful. Okay, well, I just want to do a quick recap of all the great things that we've gone over today.

SPEAKER_00: 31:36

And yeah, so burnout is systemic, nervous system-based, not a personal flaw. Resting without guilt is a core element of recovering from burnout. Micro practices like the two-minute pause are enough to begin to shift patterns. If you guys haven't read atomic habits, you should. It's amazing. I am obsessed this year. Offer one simple this week experiment. So try something this week. Choose one small practice from today's episode and just commit to it for seven days. And if you want to take it one step further, journal about your experience. Okay, here's my ask of you. If you loved this episode, if you know someone who is struggling from burnout, share this with them. If you, I would also love to hear how this is going for you, what you're thinking, what's coming up. Share your biggest rest guilt. So you can DM me, you can tag me on social media if you want to do a post. You can find me on Insta, Facebook, Substack, LinkedIn, TikTok. Oh man, I think that's all of them. But it's Jen Olinger. I would love to hear like what your biggest burnout or biggest rest guilt is. I'd love to hear about your personal burnout story. Stay tuned for our next solo episode where we will address another micro part of burnout, and we will slowly bite-sized work our way through burnout recovery and stay burnout recovered together. So if you like this, please like the episode, subscribe, leave a review, share it with your friends, especially if you know anyone who's struggling with burnout, which let's be honest, like every woman out there today. Yeah, follow the show on socials. I would love that. And yeah, stay tuned. Thank you so much for listening. And I look forward to digging into this topic and hearing your feedback.