Burnout Isn't Just Exhaustion - It's Clinical Depression and Anxiety | with THE CORPORATE BURNOUTS PODCAST

Burnout isn't just about being tired - it's a serious mental health condition that mimics depression, anxiety, and even PTSD. In this powerful episode originally aired on Corporate Burnouts, clinical psychologist Lauren Davis joins to reveal what happens beneath the surface of burnout and why we need to take it far more seriously than casual conversation suggests.

Lauren explains that while burnout isn't a clinical diagnosis, its symptoms mirror serious mental health conditions. She breaks down the continuum from mild exhaustion to full-blown burnout, highlighting key signs that go beyond physical fatigue - including mental depletion, inability to focus, decreased productivity, and the emotional toll that makes recovery take 2-5 years, not just a weekend.

The conversation dives into the dangerous cycle where high performers push harder when they notice declining performance, often making burnout worse. Lauren challenges the "resilience" narrative that pushes people to dig deeper and instead advocates for activating the parasympathetic nervous system through micro-pauses and genuine rest.

Key insights include:

• Why burnout symptoms look like depression, anxiety, and PTSD
• The difference between exhaustion (rechargeable) and depletion (not)
• How performance management systems perpetuate burnout through "passion tax"
• Why mental health days should be proactive, not reactive
• The mindset shift: "It's just a job" and separating worth from work
• The courage needed to set boundaries and sit with discomfort

Lauren offers practical strategies for prevention and recovery, emphasizing that true wellbeing requires addressing the underlying templates that connect our self-worth to professional achievement. This episode is essential listening for anyone feeling overwhelmed, overworked, or questioning why their usual strategies aren't working anymore.

Whether you're in early warning signs or deep in burnout territory, Lauren provides the clinical perspective and actionable advice needed to break the cycle and build sustainable work habits that protect your mental health.

Trigger Warning: This episode discusses mental health conditions including depression, anxiety, and workplace trauma.

Follow the Corporate Burnouts podcast for more insights on workplace mental health. 

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Transcript

speaker-0 (00:00)
Hi, I'm Lauren Davis, and this is Beneath the Busy, a podcast where we look at what really causes burnout and how we can learn to live, lead, and work in a sustainable way.

Towards the end of last year, I was a guest on the Corporate Burnouts podcast, where we discussed what burnout really is, how it links with depression and anxiety, and what mindset shifts we need to make in order to stop burnout in its tracks. I'm resharing this episode here today because I think it's important to hear these things earlier on in the year so that potentially you can make one small behavior shift or...

Change your thinking pattern in one small way that can help you live and work more sustainably throughout the year so that you don't end crawling to the deadline. So enjoy and I hope that there's something you can take out of it that can help you live, lead and work more sustainably for the rest of the year.

speaker-1 (01:15)
Welcome to the podcast, Lauren Davis.

speaker-0 (01:18)
Wow, thank you. Thanks so much. And I'm really excited as you can hear from my accent. I'm not from America. I'm from South Africa. And it's really exciting to be here and have the opportunity to talk about a topic that as you can hear is very close to my heart. So just a bit about my background. I'm a clinical psychologist by training ⁓ and have worked in the corporate space for over 20 years. So I combine my

understanding of human behavior, how our unconscious works, what drives our behavior. And I combine that with a deep understanding of the organization, the world of work, the stresses and strains. Yeah, so that's what I'm here to talk about today.

speaker-2 (02:02)
It sounds like you're just the expert that we've been needing to hear from because we know all about burnout and exhaustion and all the things just from that experience. hearing it from the clinical side of things and really understanding not only how to identify what's happening while it's happening, but like what do you do about it and combating it? So I'm excited to have you on.

speaker-0 (02:25)
Thank

you.

speaker-1 (02:26)
Yes, me too. And I think that we have done our best to talk about burnout and let people know that they're not alone in their burnout. And it's not because they have something wrong with them. It's the structure of everything. And we've, again, done our best to try and explain ways that you can avoid it or crush it. But we are not experts at mental health. And we really want

your help today to dig into how burnout really affects your mental health, not just, and we've talked about how it affects your life and how it can make you feel sick and it can, you know, there's so many symptoms, but yeah, we need a clinical psychologist to really explain it to people so that they can know what's going on. really helps to fix it if they actually know what's happening inside of them.

speaker-0 (03:23)
I really appreciate that because I think a lot of the conversation and the literature and even the support that's out there really speaks to, as you say, more the lifestyle impact, the physical side of the exhaustion and those kinds of symptoms. But I think what's not being spoken about enough is actually that it's depression and anxiety. That's if we had to put a clinical diagnosis, because there's no clinical diagnosis of burnout. It doesn't exist in any of our diagnostic codes.

claim from medical aid for burnout, there isn't an official clinical diagnosis. But if we look at the symptoms, what it looks like is depression and or anxiety. And more recently, what we're even adding to it is post-traumatic stress disorder. Because for some people, the way they've burned out, the chronic exposure to what I call the little T's can create a lot of post-traumatic symptoms. And so it has a very clinical picture, but we don't.

necessarily speak about it. There's still some stigma and shame around it's easier to say and it's almost more a badge of honor to say I'm burnt out rather than I'm actually depressed or anxious.

speaker-2 (04:32)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (04:34)
Absolutely. And I think that we joke around about our corporate trauma, you know? But seriously, ⁓ extensive burnout and for a long period of time can create trauma. Your body stores that and remembers it and that's pretty wild to think about.

speaker-2 (04:53)
And even like talking about the symptoms looking and appearing like PTSD sounds really dramatic, but at the same time, it's like really relatable where you're like, yeah, I know. Because when you get triggered by something that kind of takes you back into that place, that's what it feels like. were like, whoa, been here, done this, not going back here again. Like it's, it's a very visceral response. So, I mean, I think calling a spade a spade is exactly what we need to do.

depression and anxiety and PTSD and these types of serious mental health issues is what this is causing. Let's dive in and get to the bottom of this so that people are not experiencing any more of that than they have to because that's rampant already anyway.

speaker-0 (05:40)
Exactly. I think it goes beyond, unfortunately, think we've normalized saying I'm so burnt out or I'm so exhausted. it's just, again, it's just become kind of part of our everyday language. But actually, for somebody that has truly burnt out or is in burnout, it almost feels quite dismissive when people kind of say it quite glibly. Because as you would know, the symptoms are severe, the experience is chronic, and it takes

It can take two to three, sometimes four to five years to recover from full blown burnout. And it's not something that we just say, I'm so burnt out, I need to kind of rest this weekend. There's, and we'll get into it, I'm sure, but later, but there's kind of really deep work that's needed to recover. ⁓ And when you're feeling completely depressed and depleted and tearful and having panic attacks or, you know, chronic generalized anxiety, or as you say, being triggered by these trauma.

It's not a joke and it's not something that we just can get over quickly. And I think if we put it within the mental health category and we look at it from a clinical perspective, then people can really start taking it seriously.

speaker-1 (06:51)
I agree. I agree. It needs to be taken more seriously. And you can be flippant about it. people I mean, Mandy has talked about that she completely shuts down during burnout. And she's like, I can't even I can't get one thing accomplished. And it's that depression. You know, I mean, like, you go into a slight depression and there's no

speaker-2 (07:12)
crawl into a hole and I'm like, I don't want to be here, but I don't know how to not be.

speaker-0 (07:17)
Exactly.

speaker-1 (07:19)
Yep. what are some of the signs and symptoms of that you are going into a depression or ⁓ that this is more than just dabbling in burnout because you had a long week?

speaker-0 (07:34)
question because I think firstly to say that it does exist on a continuum. All the mental health conditions, depression, anxiety, burnout from kind of quite mild to severe. But I think what we really want to do is try and catch it on that mild, mild side. So when we start noticing the symptoms and I think obviously, as I said earlier, we know the physical one quite well. It's that sense of absolute exhaustion. But I think what's really important to take note of is I call it depletion.

because exhaustion, if you're truly just exhausted, you can maybe take the weekend and sleep and you'll wake up and you'll feel recharged or you take some leave and you feel recharged. The physical depletion that happens with burnout is that no matter how long you sleep, you still wake up exhausted. So I think there's that is often a first sign because we notice that we're just constantly tired and drained. But I think that further than that is the mental.

symptoms that we'll see where it's really hard to stay focused and to concentrate. And often it's like, but I'm just distracted or there's so much to do. I've got a million tabs open and that's why. But I think when it becomes burnout is it doesn't matter. Even if you're just focusing on one thing, you just can't, you can't even focus on that one thing. There's also a lot of forgetfulness because your mind is not literally cognitively, you're not firing on all cylinders. So we cannot hold everything in mind. So we forget.

I think the other one, the behavior that really worries people and is concerning is the decreased productivity. Like you just can't get as much done. And let's face it, the people that burn out are typically the high performers, used to being very productive, so got so much capacity to hold so much. And then you're in burnout and you just can't. And what happens with that is instead of saying, I'm burnt out, we say,

there's something wrong with me and I'm clearly not working hard enough, so I've got to push harder. And so we put in longer hours or we push and that just perpetuates the cycle. I'll just pause here. But I mean, there's more, but I just want to kind of any thoughts on those behaviors or symptoms, anything that.

speaker-2 (09:44)
Relatable. So relatable. Yeah, like that moment where you feel like I'm doing everything that I can, but I'm not doing enough. And so you start burning the candle at both ends and you're actually making the problem worse because you're over exhausting yourself when you're already at the point of exhaustion. know, unfortunately, the reality of corporate life is deadlines are deadlines.

speaker-1 (09:45)
Yeah, we felt all of them.

speaker-2 (10:13)
everything's got to get done. So when you're in that moment and you recognize that that's happening, like I've hit a wall, I'm not as productive as I once was, I really still have to get this stuff done, but I also know that if I keep pushing myself like this, it's only going to make matters worse. What is the first thing that you should do? Like to truly take care of yourself and the mental aspect of things to hopefully

steer yourself back to the right track while things are still mild.

speaker-0 (10:44)
So you're not going to like the answer or people won't like the answer, the first step to do is to stop and to walk away from the work and actually rest, like do nothing. Because what we need to do is activate our parasympathetic nervous system. Because in those moments, we're just in that cortisol firefighting mode. And actually, if you push through, you're just getting less and less effective. You're slowing down and you're really not.

doing yourself any favors. And so it sounds so counterproductive, but it is actually to stop and to rest. And so in micro, I talk a lot about using micro pauses. So it could be depending on the situation, but it could be just in that moment when you notice you're exhausted and you're just not being productive is to actually just stop, go and sit outside, take a few deep breaths, have a cup of tea, just focus on the tea.

It's not about going to sit under a tree and meditating for four hours, because we don't have the time and that doesn't always work. But it's literally doing the opposite of what we feel by default to do, which is to push through. A lot of the resilience literature and kind of help out there really frustrates me because it talks about pushing through and digging deep and battening down the hatches and tenacity. And actually, resilience is about recharging.

It's about knowing when to stop so we can recharge so you can come back with renewed energy.

speaker-2 (12:09)
Yeah, hustle culture, I think, is getting the best of us for sure.

speaker-1 (12:13)
And it's problem, I think, that high powered CEOs wrote that literature that you've been reading. They're like, keep going. But I think that when, and I do this, whenever I'm like, I'm getting nothing done, like I'm just spinning my wheels. So I could keep pushing and I would end up getting everything done. why keep pushing if it's going to not be done right or be

take hours and hours of my energy and usually all it takes is a short walk or something like that and you really do reset. Now that's on approaching burnout, right? But when we're actually to that point where you're like, I'm in full burnout and I don't remember the last time that I didn't have a headache. I don't remember the last time that I felt

focused or that I didn't feel sad thinking about going to work or whatever it is. Tell us what you think about mental health days because, you know, sometimes it's just sitting down and getting some sun and some air and, ⁓ you know, cup of coffee, but sometimes it needs to be longer than that.

speaker-0 (13:30)
I'm a huge advocate for mental health days. So just to back up a bit, think firstly, for us to give ourselves permission to take mental health days, we have to firstly understand that mental health is just the same as physical health. So just like you would take the day off if you had flu or diarrhea.

or any physical illness, we often don't feel guilty about phoning in and taking off work because we physically can't show up. ⁓ We need to have the same mindset around mental health. It's really what, the word mental health, the word mental just comes from the Latin word for mind or brain. So we're just talking about brain health and it's seeing the brain as an organ, just like our heart, like our gut, like our liver, like our kidneys.

And so it has health and it gets sick just like any other, know, like your throat would get sick or your lungs. And so I think it starts with that mindset shift firstly of I don't have to be physically sick to take time off. If mentally I'm just exhausted or I'm feeling too anxious today or I'm really depressed, I can't get out of bed or the world just feels like too much. I don't even have to have a clinical diagnosis. But with everything going on in the world, for some people it's

many of us, some days we just want to put that duvet back over our heads and not face the world. And so I think there's a proactive way of using mental health days, which I'm really an advocate for is just, you don't have to be sick. You don't have to be completely overwhelmed. Just take the day like you were saying, where you just, and it's not a day to go and do your banking and your admin and catching up on emails. It's really a day where you do, I'm a big fan of Netflix and chill, just

binge watch a series, read a fictional book, lie in the sun, just do nothing so that your system can reset. And if you do those, it's almost like that's the proactive, ensuring that you stay healthy. But on the other side, when you're completely burnt out and you need a break, one mental health day every now and then is not, it's not enough. I mean, that's when you need to take a proper break. but even in the moment. Yeah.

speaker-2 (15:36)
Yeah. Full vacation.

speaker-0 (15:40)
And even then, I mean, and I know the hustle culture doesn't like me for saying this, but two, three weeks is not enough even to recover from full blown burnout. I mean, there's some European countries where you can get booked off for up to three months for burnout because they realize, you know, how serious it is.

speaker-2 (15:57)
We're doing it all wrong over here.

speaker-1 (15:59)
We

are in mental health is still stigmatized. just is. And, and I think that my biggest question would be, how do you get your corporate boss on board with this? Right? Because I, mean, Mandy, you can tell them like, we have to take mental health days sometimes. And we have to just be okay. Right? Yeah. And this is a small business. There's just three of us.

which I think makes it even harder because there's no one else to pass the work off to. Right. But, I could have Mandy be, you know, unproductive for six weeks if there aren't two mental health days, you know I mean? So I think I am on board with that. But the, the pumping out the work in corporate, they're like,

What the heck? I remember having conversations where I'm like, I can't do this. And it's like, it's so much disappointment, so much disappointment that my mental health is struggling through this. And there's guilt there, right? And it wasn't a specific boss, but it was the whole thing. had a job. know, and I

I don't want people to feel like that. know that work has to get done. You know, we have people who we answer to, everyone has another boss, but how can we have that conversation with a boss to help them understand that they're going to get the best part of me if they let this happen?

speaker-0 (17:41)
I've got to talk numbers and I don't have them offhand, the numbers speak for themselves. mean, I think the latest stat I read was that up to, I think it's about 40 % of all employee turnover at the moment is directly due to people resigning often without another job due to stress, anxiety, burnout, dissatisfaction with their workload, feeling uncared for, under-resourced. 40%, I mean, that is a huge...

I know every business and organ, you you have to have some turnover, but the average range, a healthy range is about 15 to 20%. So this is almost double that people are leaving. Yeah. And so when you start showing them the stats and then the dollar, the actual economic cost, every time somebody leaves, every time there's, we talk about presenteeism where people are at work, but they're not actually performing. And then just the absenteeism costs. mean, the numbers are staggering.

And so that's often what I end up presenting to board members and CEOs to say, it's not a luxury, it's not a nice to have, it's not holding hands and singing Kumbaya together. It's actually a business imperative because you are putting your business at risk if you're not taking care or creating mentally healthy spaces for people to take care of themselves.

speaker-1 (18:56)
I love that. I love that. then I guess that speaking to any bosses out there, this is a big problem. It is. I run a business and I still get burned out because we all have, even if nobody is pressuring me from the top, right, I am still pressuring myself. then we turn it into burnout. now, luckily, I can say,

I'm not going to get anything accomplished. just need to call it a day. But the bosses out there need to really take this seriously, especially for their very valued employees. You know, some people you're like, I mean, if they want to quit, let them quit. But there are people on your teams. Like right now, I would do anything for Mandy and Mallory to not leave me. I have the perfect team exactly how I like it. I would do anything to make sure.

that they weren't like, I just have to be done here. Like there's nothing that can make this better. And, and I'm not saying that I'm perfect at that, but I'm just saying I would do anything. But, but I think that, that bosses are still human and they still have the pressure of the client or the company and, they want to push things through. And so I know that I do that, but at the end of the day, if it's

speaker-2 (20:08)
stay. Thank you.

speaker-1 (20:26)
the difference between having a client yell at us because we didn't get something done or one of them like not be able to function because they're in such burnout, then I'm going to choose and that's not even if they are thinking about leaving me. It's like, that's just not good for your, your body. So I would want to speak to all the bosses out there and let people know that even, you know, you have people stay home when they're sick because they could be contagious.

but it's also so that they can heal their body and they can feel better and then they can be productive. But I think that I was going to say that mental health is not contagious, but it is.

speaker-2 (21:09)
was gonna say, I think it is.

speaker-1 (21:11)
Because

when we got so burned out, I mean, we were just trying to take everyone down with us.

speaker-2 (21:17)
our interactions even with each other became like, became a little bit toxic and we had to, we had to check ourselves on that. And we were rubbing off on each other when, when one of us was, you know, a little more burned out than the others are really going through it. Like as a lifeline, right? Like when you're, when you're drowning and you're scratching and clawing for the person to save you, you're drowning them too, right? So being able to ⁓ take a minute and

get yourself together so that you don't pull down the entire team, that is better for the company than just forcing them through it. I mean, yeah, you probably are gonna make it, but nobody's gonna be 100%.

speaker-1 (21:53)
Yes.

speaker-0 (22:01)
And I think it's contagious, not only in a morale kind of taking people down, but it's actually also contagious in a performance perspective, because I'm not going to be performing at my best and that's going to impact my teammates. Somebody's going to have to step in or I'm going to make mistakes. It's even going to impact my manager because they're going to have to micromanage me. So from a performance perspective, it becomes contagious too. So it's not.

I think what's important to your question, Mandy, I think it's for organizations or senior leaders to see it as not an individual issue. It's not, well, you need to take care of your mental health, Mandy, because you must be, you must care about yourself enough to do all the healthy things. Yes, of course you have to do that. But I think organizations also have a responsibility to say that it's a systemic thing. Because I talk about a...

If you think about it as like a fish tank analogy, if the fish tank is going toxic, like if the, you you haven't cleaned it for a while and the water's murky and there's mold everywhere and moss or whatever, I can take that fish out, clean it up, shiny it up, give it all the best skills, make it the best fish ever. But if I drop it back in there, six weeks, it's going to be a dirty fish. So it's got to be both together. And I think a lot of businesses.

speaker-2 (23:10)
It's gonna be a dirty fish again.

speaker-0 (23:17)
lot of managers, leaders that I work with, they're like, well, I'm giving them yoga sessions and they've got the employee wellness programs and you know, there's all these things that they can make access that are accessible to them. They've just got to make time for it. And I'm like, that's one tiny little piece because how do they make time for it if they're under resourced, if they're overstretched in terms of targets and expectations and there's just no permission to switch off.

And I think that's where the senior leaders really need to start looking at the impact that they have. And the work that I do is really around, they need, for you, the senior leaders out there who are listening to this, you also need to realize you also have mental health. You also have challenges. And there's a stat that I often quote from, it was a McKinsey study, I think in 2023.

that said 69 % of the executives that they interviewed are thinking about quitting because of their own mental health challenges. That's 69 % of our senior executives sitting, running these organizations, but they don't want to talk about it because it's, there's still stigma. They should have it all together.

speaker-2 (24:31)
Yeah. And that's a really powerful thought when you think about the leadership being burnt out. How do you, that's like, I put it in the parenting world, right? Cause I'm a mom. If I don't have my own self together, like you can't take care of somebody else if you haven't taken care of yourself. So I mean, I would think that there's, that's probably a root cause of part of this, right? Is that we have a lot of

leadership out there that is not in the right place when it comes to burnout and mental exhaustion and they don't have, whether it's the skill set or the discipline or whatever that looks like to keep themselves in a healthy place, if you don't know how to do that for yourself, you don't know how to provide it for somebody else.

speaker-0 (25:18)
Exactly. And we're stuck in a culture, and I don't like to stereotype around the generations, but there is kind of a generational thing that most of the people that are leaders are of, if you want to call it like the Gen X boomer, maybe older millennials, but typically the culture is work is everything. You work hard, you dedicate your life to work. You know, if you rest, then you're weak or lazy or you're not ambitious. And so it's that leadership layer.

or culture that's shaping this hustle culture. And it comes from this kind of need to prove ourselves and show how committed we are and ambitious. And that all has to shift and leaders at that level need to do a bit of self-reflection and say, well, what is my shadow? What am I creating in the teams that I lead? And how am I not role modeling well-being actually? I'm role modeling the complete opposite.

speaker-1 (26:15)
We did an episode about what Gen Z is getting right in the workforce because people our age are like, Gen Z is so lazy. And it's like, I think that they've just set the boundaries and they've just decided what they will do. they don't have this toxic work culture in their head of we have to prove ourselves, we have to climb this corporate ladder. They're like, I need to make enough money to live. And I'm going to put my...

friends and family and well-being and happiness ahead of work. We just weren't taught to do that. So we have started to figure it out in the last couple of years, like lifestyle first and then find the job that fits around it. But that's again, that's not what we were taught. And it's not what anyone older than 40 basically once.

the workforce to believe, they want you to believe that you have to just go hard until you're 65 years old. And that's not good for mental health, not for everyone. Some people can handle it way better than others, but I'm not one of those people.

speaker-0 (27:26)
And

I mean, exactly. I think part of it is that for those of us that are in the above 40 range, you know, we we suffered and we struggled and we had to work hard and we had to earn our stripes. know, we didn't get the huge amount of leave days and we, you know, we worked for our position. And so when the younger generation comes in and they're like demanding their leave and they want growth and they want boundaries and it's almost...

There's like this dissonance for us because it's like, well, if they can do that and get away with it, then we've been doing it all wrong. And we've sacrificed so much so we can't admit that they might be right. We have to stick to what we know to almost justify.

speaker-2 (28:11)
They haven't earned it yet. And that's not fair. That's not fair. We should want better for them than what we put ourselves through for sure.

speaker-1 (28:20)
Yep. And we talked about that in either that episode or another one. It's like, we should want better for the next generation of workers because while, I mean, we admittedly think that they do look kind of lazy. You know what mean? Like if you think about everything that you've been taught, they do look kind of lazy, but we admire them and we think that they're getting it right. And we think that there should be a full switch.

for everybody because we'll make this happen. You know, we can make this this switch. At the very least, we can set the boundaries for ourselves because wanting your mental health to be in line with, know, wanting your mental health to be healthy is not too much to ask. and if your boss literally can't understand it, then they're

not the right boss for you. just that company is never going to be in line with what you need to just be healthy.

speaker-2 (29:27)
Yeah, it should be like basic human rights, right? Like I'm not going to ask you to sit at your desk and work all day while you're vomiting. So it should be kind of the same. The hard part about it is that you can't see it, right? You have to accept somebody's word for what's happening inside of them. And I think that's, it's hard for people like, do you just want to go out on the boat today? Or are you really feeling the way that you say you are?

speaker-0 (29:54)
I think one of the frustrations I have when I work, because I run a lot of workshops with leaders around how to create mentally healthy teams. And when we talk about mental health days or, you know, creating a space of openness where people can share their, you know, if they're struggling and they need a bit of support. The first response often from leaders is that little bit of cynicism and mistrust of, but then people take advantage of it. my thing is, why do we have to treat everybody?

with the same treatment just because one or two people might take advantage of it. The majority of people won't. The majority of people, if you've done your hiring well, are committed and loyal and they want to do a good job. And you've got to trust them to not take advantage of it. And the ones that do, then you need a performance manager. But it's also this old school mentality of like, well, we're not going to give anybody any kind of grace because there's one or two people that will mess it up.

It comes back to believing that mental health is a real issue. It's not somebody making it up. Like you say, we would never say to somebody, you know, who runs into the emergency room with their finger cut off, like, oh, come on, if you really wanted to, you could grow your finger back. know, like if you really...

speaker-2 (31:08)
today.

speaker-1 (31:09)
Yeah, yeah.

speaker-0 (31:10)
But we just because it's invisible and often I've worked with so many clients who've said to me I wish I ⁓ could just wear a moon boot or a cast or you know have a bandage or a big plaster on my head something that shows that I am really burnt out. I am actually depressed ⁓ and you know sometimes I'll write a letter to work just to confirm it but then there's the stigma a letter coming from a psychologist or psychiatrist.

then it's like, ⁓ this person's crazy or they can't cut it. And then it affects their promotion opportunities. There's still so much stigma around it.

speaker-2 (31:47)
You don't

want to be seen as like a liability, right? Like, ⁓ this one's fragile. Got to be careful with Mandy. there is a stigma around it for sure. And I don't know what the answer is to get past that other than to say we have to accept the responsibility on our own to prevent it from getting that far so that you don't have to face the other side of it. Right. It's like, it's almost like a burnout is a cancer.

that is not curable and the only cure is to make sure you don't get it.

speaker-0 (32:20)
Yes and no. mean, think, yeah, we need to prevent ourselves. But again, if the system, if the fish tank doesn't support us, it's quite hard not to catch the cancer. Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things, and this is a lot about why I use the word mental health, and I talk about it all the time. And any opportunity to speak about and use the words depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, burnout, mental health.

The more we just use the words and we normalize it as a condition, just like diabetes or cancer, know, high cholesterol, don't, there's no, ⁓ she's a fragile one because she's got diabetes. It's a shame she's got diabetes. She's got to manage it. And so the more we talk about it, the more we also normalize it and we help people see that it's not, it is a lifetime condition for some people, but it's completely manageable with the right support, with the right treatment. And if we keep the stigma up,

then people don't even want to go and get the right treatment. So it gets worse as well.

speaker-1 (33:22)
Yeah.

speaker-2 (33:23)
So

what about those people who are already there? I kind of made the example of it being like an incurable cancer, but I don't think that it really is incurable at all. So if you are already there, like in full-blown burnout, we talked about this a couple of minutes ago. You were like, for some people, like even two to three weeks, sometimes it's not gonna be enough. like, let's say that I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna take the next couple of months and I'm gonna really get myself together.

What do you do? What do you do with that time? What sort of practices should you be putting into place to rewire your brain back to the starting point?

speaker-0 (34:06)
So firstly, you can't do it alone. I think if you're already completely burnt out, you need a support team of mental health professionals. So at least you would need a therapist or a counselor or a coach, somebody because the inner work has to shift, you know, in terms of because often it's my worth is tied to my work. And so until I can unwrap that, I'm not going to recover or I'll keep relapsing.

My approval seeking, my need to prove myself. I've got to unwrap that. There's all these templates that I call and these kind of experiences that have caused us to burn out. Yes, there's the system, but then there's certain kind of personality styles or back, people with certain characters. So the therapeutic or counseling or coaching work is core to start looking internally and saying, what are the messages I've believed to be true?

how are those shaping my behaviour? So I think that's an important piece. I think for some and for many, it might mean some medication to treat the underlying or the depression and the anxiety that is there. And, you know, I know there's a lot of stigma around psychiatric medication, but it's the same. If you had diabetes, you wouldn't say, oh, I'm not going to take insulin. I'm going to try and manage my sugar levels on my own. Yeah. You know, if your brain is suffering from diabetes,

depression, then you want to take the right treatment to start helping the brain parts ⁓ heal. And then there's the lifestyle thing. often when I start coaching people that have now accepted that they are burnt out, it takes me a while for them to realize that. for the first two, three weeks, I literally prescribe a bed rest. I'm like, imagine you are sick or that you've broken your leg and you cannot move and you literally just need to sleep.

And it's the hardest thing for anybody to do, but it's that body needs that absolute rest. And then the hard part is that you never get back to the previous functioning before you burned out. And I don't think that that's a bad thing because what happened, your being is fundamentally changed through the process of recovering from burnout. And I think it's a healthy thing because you start to have a different relationship to yourself, to work. And so you come out of burnout with

different expectation of yourself. But a lot of people keep saying, but I want to be back to who I was. And if you go back there, you're just going to end up being burnt

speaker-2 (36:35)
We're

gonna be back here, right? That would be a cycle. It would be dumb.

speaker-0 (36:40)
I see it all the time because people are like, I'm feeling a little bit better. Now I can get back at it. And then they go at it. And so basically the way I see it is once you burnt out once you are forever in recovery. It's like, it's like an addict. have to realize that you are always, you always have to be cautious around work or around expectations or around how you manage your life because you will relapse. The chance of relapse is very high.

speaker-2 (37:05)
Yeah, I it's very interesting that you're saying that. ⁓ And especially in terms of it not just being about work, it's about how you manage your life. Mandy and I have many conversations about this where it's like, yeah, we definitely felt the burnout in our corporate world, but we also have to like look at ourselves and realize that all of the burnout wasn't coming from corporate. There was, you know, the aspects of the personal pressures.

trying to balance all of those things. And so it was coming from multiple angles at one time. And when you're trying to please everybody in every aspect of your life, sometimes there's like nothing left to give and the burnout comes from multiple places. It's not necessarily always like the company's fault or the culture at the company or whatever that looks like. It's how all of those aspects of your life

are coming together at once and even outside of corporate. And Mandy, I know you know this even in the last year, specifically in this year for me. I don't have to deal with the burnout that comes from working for corporate and the corporate pressures, but life has thrown a whole lot of things my way to the point where it, you know, that's why it resonated so heavily for me when you were talking about PTSD where it's like, it's not the same at all.

But it's triggering those same feelings in me that that same paralysis of I'm shutting down because it's too much and it has nothing to do with ⁓ the corporate culture of it all. Right. It has everything to do with how I let all the things in my life impact each other and what I do with that. So the inevitability of always being in recovery, I think that's

the awareness of that and moving forward with that knowledge and attacking that every day and how you, you know, set up your routines, whether it's getting up at the same time and getting ready or getting a good night's sleep and going to bed on time, putting your phone away, like all those tiny little things that you probably heard a billion times, being strict on yourself and having the boundaries and having the discipline to follow through on those things that you know will make an impact.

and stay in that recovery phase.

speaker-1 (39:22)
Yeah, I love what both of you have just said. I think that one of the hardest parts are the beliefs that you have about yourself and just work in general. I've been doing that class on burnout, right? How to avoid it and how to kind of get past it. And I know that it's not close to your talks, but it's like a 10 minute presentation.

But one of the exercises that they have to do is they have to read through all of these beliefs that people have that lead to burnout and they have to check mark all of them that they believe. And they include things like, if I don't do it, it's not going to get done right. Or, you know, just things like that that are just beliefs that, that if you fundamentally believe those things, you're headed for burnout, especially if it's a lot of them.

because you're not going to ever defer to anyone else. You're always going to because of the way that you view yourself through the lens of work. And it's like some people during those classes check mark a lot of them. And I'm like, if you're not already in burnout, you are so close to being there and you might already be there and you don't even know that you're there.

And some people have done the work, like literally have done the work and you can see they only checkmarked like three things out of the whole list. And I'm like, you're lucky, you know, like you're lucky that you can see it this way now. Because everyone that you checkmarked, you need to start working on because they're destructive thoughts and beliefs that you have, even if it doesn't seem like it. But so many people are like almost like a badge of honor. They're like,

I mean, but blah, blah about that I, if I do it, that's the only way that it can be right, you know? And I don't think that it's a badge of honor, you know? But we've all been there. We're like, well, I just have to be the one to do that. And it's like, trust but verify. Other people can do it. You just check it on its way out. That took you eight less hours and...

You can focus now. It's so huge to actually fix the underlying problem. You can't just do the rest, even though sleep is literally the best medicine that we have. You have to also change your core beliefs. It's the same as if you're an addict. You have to fix the problem that makes you need to do drugs and drink. You have to fix the thoughts that you have.

speaker-0 (42:07)
And that's, mean, that's why for me, you know, my podcast is beneath the busy and all the work I do is looking beneath kind of what is on the surface. So, so much of the stuff around how to take care of your mental health or how to recover from burnout, it's just telling us to do more.

do more exercise, eat well, sleep well, drink your water, you know, do your breathing exercises, do your yoga, do more boundaries, do, it's all do, do, do. And it actually adds to the pressure. And we all know those things. I mean, we all know that we should be doing it. And so for me, it's what gets in our way of doing those things is these core beliefs.

And these beliefs that say, if I take time off, then I'm lazy. Or if I don't work these extra hours, then I'm not committed enough. Or, you know, to prove my worth, I need to take on, say yes to everything. All of those internal dialogues that we're having, those are the things that will keep making you choose work over rest, or work over exercise, or work over pleasure, just joy, because it's always around.

This is the thing that's most important and my mindset, my beliefs are telling me that when I do this thing, when I work hard, when I get the recognition, then I will be good enough. But it's never, we never get good enough. It's never reached because you get there and then you're like, but I need to do that. I need to do that. So it's a constant, it's that hamster wheel that we're on.

speaker-2 (43:33)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (43:33)
So sometimes it's somebody moving the carrot for you, but sometimes you are keep moving that and changing that standard for yourself. And I don't know that you can ever be truly happy if you see it as a destination or feel truly successful if you see that as a destination. And if that is your main goal to be successful, please go and do that. But if you have other priorities in your life, figure out how to not.

base your self-worth on because that's what I see as my biggest problem. And what caused the most burnout for me is that my success was the number one way that I felt self-worth. And I don't feel that anymore. Like I think I got rid of that almost completely.

speaker-0 (44:18)
I wanted to add that I think part of the problem is, is we've got this internal template of our self-worth is tied up to our work and our achievements and then society and corporate validates that. I mean, what are all the rewards and the recognitions are for discretionary effort? I don't know about in the States, but in Europe and here a lot of our performance management systems are like, you only get if it's a one to five rating, you only get a four or five if you've gone above and beyond or...

You know, has an amazing opportunity, take on this extra role for the same salary, but it will be a wonderful growth opportunity and exposure. And so the world we're living in really perpetuates it and rewards it. And so we've got our internal thing that's saying do more, but out there it's also validating it. And there's a concept I learned about last year. They called it passion tax or performance punishment.

It's kind of a similar concept, but it's those people that are so passionate or perform so well, they're the ones that get more work because the manager's like, I know I can give it to Mandy because she'll get it done. Meanwhile, Lauren's sitting in the back doing her bare minimum and getting away with it and not burning out. And we're like, ⁓ I'm getting all the stuff from my manager. I'm the kind of most valued player on the team and I'm getting all the rewards and recognition. Meanwhile, you're actually just being abused.

If you're going to say it like it is. Exactly. They don't want to deal with the poor performer because that's just too difficult. So I'll just keep doing it and Mandy keeps saying yes and I'm to blame. Exactly. Because I just keep saying yes.

speaker-2 (45:46)
for it.

speaker-1 (45:47)
Yeah.

We just had a podcast where we interviewed Macy who used to be on our team at work and she has She had left to get her degree and She's like whenever I get this job she said one of the main things I'm gonna do is not go in guns blazing and asking for all the stuff and putting in a thousand percent because There's nowhere to go

Then down or you have to push yourself beyond what you're actually capable of and that's that caliber Yeah, because even if you said that you could get like a four or a five on a performance review If you go way above and beyond but also the standard that you set You could get a three because you're just meeting expectations now even though you're doing ten times what the rest of the team is doing and while I

don't care about the number that comes on a performance review. I would care more about the feedback of, mean, you're killing it for the team. People do care about that. And those numbers in some corporations go into who can get promoted and then who can end up making more money.

speaker-2 (47:11)
Increases. Yeah

speaker-0 (47:12)
Exactly, and bonus allocations. the numbers are important and I think that's how they perpetuate, they feed into it because as you say, my meeting expectations is going to be different to yours based on how much I've said yes to you.

speaker-1 (47:27)
Yep. All right. Well, I loved this conversation. What is your one bit of advice that you would say everyone who listened to this and went, okay, so I'm burned out and it's affecting my mental health. What is one thing that you would tell them to do first?

speaker-0 (47:45)
distill it to one thing. This is not going to be popular, but I think from a mindset perspective, it's to remember it's just a job. Actually, it's just a transaction where you have agreed to do X and they're going to pay you Y and that's really what it is. you know, to stop putting so much meaning onto work and so much expectation onto what this should fulfill. So that's kind of the first mindset shift. I think, you know,

From there, we're able to then say, okay, well, you know, how much do I need to push? And is this a push just for now because there's a deadline or am I adding on to this push because of my own need to prove myself, to get the recognition? And so it's kind of doing the inner work, I guess, needs to happen. So if you're really in burnout or near burnout or not burnt out and want to prevent it, I guess one of the best things to do is to get support from a coach, a therapist.

even somebody that's already been burnt out and work through those inner templates. Because unless that shifts, I can tell you to take regular breaks and stop work on time and have lunch. I can tell you all of those things, but it's not going to work. It's just a job.

speaker-1 (48:57)
Yeah, you got to

fix more underlying stuff first. I love that advice. I we always say, set your boundaries and all those things. But like you really you have to change your inner mindset, not just set boundaries outside to the people around you. I I would add to that because we've talked about this too. When you change your mindset on something.

It doesn't mean that your boss is going to be okay with your new mindset shift and then the changes that you're going to make. So I would say have some really open communication with your boss and I hope that they are very open to it. I hope that they understand. I think that if we would have went to our bosses and said, I literally am not okay because I don't think that I ever said I'm literally not okay. think that

It should have been a huge red flag whenever I would, you know, go over my schedule with my boss for the quarter and I would cry, you know, like I can't, I can only do this much. I don't know. I'm just over scheduled. And she's like, it's okay. You know, it's like, I should have said.

speaker-2 (50:12)
No, it's not, okay?

speaker-1 (50:14)
It's not, I didn't get my vacation in this year. didn't, you know, like these things are a real problem for me. And I was a martyr all day, every day in that job. And so I, what I would do better is go and talk and be like, how can we make this work? Because what I did is I said, this is killing me. So I'm going to quit. And that's what I did instead of talking and figuring out if we could make it.

Anyway, I could go into that all day. did kind of try and do that, but I think that I might have tried to overcorrect and they were like, no. So then I had to go back to the full load and then it was just too much.

speaker-2 (50:57)
I think it was really hard for me to even identify what the heck was happening. Like, I didn't realize, it was very much like you said earlier, like, what is wrong with me? Like, I don't, I am not on my game. don't know what, like, situations haven't changed. The expectations haven't changed. This is not an environmental thing. Why am I, why do I just suck all of a sudden? I can't seem to get things done the way that I used to. And it took a long time to identify it, but

I had a light bulb moment when you said a ago, have to remember this is just a job. I will tell you that I can almost remember the day that I like took the rose colored glasses off and was like.

speaker-0 (51:42)
This is.

speaker-2 (51:43)
that this is not my whole life. The approval of these people, the success in this realm is not, it's not the most important thing in my life and I don't know why I've made it that way. This is just a job. It's literally just a paycheck to pay for my life, but I've invested in it as though it is my whole life. And that changed everything. And it was from that awareness that I was able to go,

What is the most healthy option for me now? And for me, it did lead to leaving the corporate world. But hopefully for other people that are in corporate, that's not the answer for everyone. We need people to work at corporations and there are people that are built to do that. And we just want to be part of the resource and help that awareness in people to figure out.

how to slow it down before it really ramps up and takes you out.

speaker-0 (52:46)
And I think part of just what you're saying makes me think, you know, the change in doing that, so showing up differently, learning to say no, actually saying this is serious, it's not okay. It is going to cause ripples in the system and it needs to. And part of what we need to do then is be able to sit with the discomfort of other people not being happy with us. Because part of what turns us into, what burns us out is the people pleasing and needing the approval. Now you're saying to somebody,

I can't do it, they're going to get upset. There's going to be discomfort because you're not allowing them to just kind of take advantage of you. so to hold the line. So it's one thing to have the courage to say that, but then the next step is holding the line by saying, they're going to be upset. There's going to be ruffles in the system, but I'm not budging because I'm not wrong. I'm not wrong to try and, it's self-preservation. And so the more we kind of...

learn also to sit with the discomfort of it and sit in those uncomfortable feelings, the more tolerable it is to actually navigate the change. And sometimes you won't be able to actually live out that change in a particular organization because they've known you to be the go-to person. So sometimes what I've kind of worked with people is they've had to leave this corporate job to go to another one and start off differently.

Start off by not, like you said, your ex-colleague, start off by not coming in guns blazing, not being the yes person, starting off with the very clear boundaries. sometimes you have to reinvent yourself elsewhere because you've embedded yourself into a system in a particular way.

speaker-1 (54:25)
We thought that that might be the case. We've talked about that a couple of times, like can you change and stay where you're at? And maybe not, but maybe the next place will be better for your mental health overall. lovely.

speaker-2 (54:38)
Really, really powerful. ⁓ And I hope that we have some listeners out there that my biggest takeaway is try not to do this by yourself. It's not something that you have to face alone. Open communication with your leadership, getting some support, whether it's a therapist, a counselor, professional of sorts. We were very lucky just to have each other. mean, Mandy's been my best therapist my whole life.

speaker-1 (55:06)
Until recently, we both have recently found new therapists who are qualified. Yeah. And then this is not either of our first times doing therapy, but we've found something that works really well in our own areas for ourselves. And I want to unstigmatize, if that's how you would say that. I am a huge proponent for, I think that everybody should have some kind of professional

speaker-2 (55:12)
Real ones. ⁓

speaker-1 (55:35)
helping them through this life because it's freaking complicated and mental health is such a, it's a crazy place. you know, like there's so many things, everything about you is caused by something else. And, and the way that we did this to ourselves, I'll continue to say that in corporate is continuing to be worked out, you know, in therapy.

and it will always be helpful. if you're somebody who is like, just don't, I don't know if therapy is for me, therapy is for everybody. There's different kinds of therapy that are better for different people, but therapy is for everybody and there shouldn't be a single bit of.

speaker-2 (56:23)
There's no shame around it at all.

speaker-1 (56:25)
All

yeah, no, and I just I hope that we get to a time. hope 20 years from now everyone is like I You know and this this this and this is my therapist, know, like because we all have one and just like we have a regular doctor it's It's just as important and I am way more mentally unhealthy than I am physically unhealthy and I don't feel very mentally unhealthy but

We all have stuff, you know, to work out. But I've gone to the doctor one million times and I've gone to the therapist, you know, 25 times. So it's kind of crazy. Anyway, we could go on and on and on about this. Thank you so, so much for joining us. Anybody who loved what Lauren had to say, please, please go and follow her podcast, Beneath the Busy and ⁓ give it a listen.

is very smart and ⁓ it's, you'll always learn something from those episodes. We will put your socials and your podcast links and all that stuff in the show notes. So if you're listening to this, just go and click right in and find her and anything else that you'd like to promote.

speaker-0 (57:43)
Nothing else other than just my favourite final line that I always say to people is it's absolutely okay to not be okay, but it's not okay to stay that way. So we need to reach out and get the support because it's there. You're not alone as you've heard and there's support. There's no shame in getting the support and it's not just about for you. It's about the people that love you and depend on you. We need to take better care of ourselves. So that's just my final thought that I wanted to share.

speaker-2 (58:11)
Well, thank you so much, Lauren, for joining us. And Mandy, I will see you next week. ⁓

speaker-1 (58:20)
Bye.

speaker-0 (58:20)
Thank

you. Hi there, this is Toto. I'm the producer and editor here at LJD headquarters and Beneath a Busy. And I just wanted to leave you with a quick note before you head out into the rest of your day or your week. If you also want to get some more information on Lauren and dive into her work further, which I highly recommend, you can find out ljdwellbeing.com or ljdwellbeing on YouTube and Beneath a Busy podcast on Instagram. Aside from the keynotes and workshops that Lauren's doing and also the one-on-one coachings for leaders in HR.

There's an array of online courses and a free mental health masterclass that you can find on our website as well. Again, that's ljdwellbeing.com. I also want to tell you about a really special episode that's coming up in two weeks. Lauren had a chance to sit down and have a really candid and interesting conversation with the South African Depression and Anxiety Group, also known as SADAC. So yeah, you can look out for that across our social media channels, at Beneath a Busy Podcast or Lauren's newsletter.

website. Thank you so much for your time, enjoy the rest of day or your week, and until next time, be well and take care.