#64 - Burnout and School Can't: Telltale Signs, Myths to Unlearn, What Helps

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This episode takes a different shape from our usual format. Rather than a single guest, it draws together voices from more than a dozen past guests and lived experience parents to build a fuller picture of burnout.

At its centre is a reframe: burnout isn't a medical disorder or a character flaw, it's a nervous system response to chronic stress, closer to smoke from a fire than the fire itself. Once that's understood, so much of what looks like laziness, manipulation or misbehaviour starts to make sense as something else entirely: a loss of spark, a slow withdrawal as masking becomes unsustainable, a body and brain that have simply run out of capacity to keep going.

The episode doesn't shy away from one of the most damaging patterns in this space — the well-meaning advice, often from professionals, to make home less comfortable in order to push a young person back into school. 

Several families share what happened when they followed that advice, and the outcomes are genuinely heartbreaking. This section briefly touches on self-harm and suicidal ideation — please take care while listening.

From there, the focus shifts to recovery: what it actually looks like, why following a young person's passions matters more than any formal program, why progress is rarely a straight line, and why parent burnout is just as real and just as deserving of compassion as the burnout experienced by young people themselves. 

The episode closes with a metaphor that's stayed with many of our listeners — the caterpillar dissolving in the chrysalis before it can become a butterfly — a reminder that transformation is often happening even when it's invisible.

Voices featured in this episode include Dr Naomi Fisher, Tiffany Westphal, Tanya Valentin, Laura Hellfeld, Eliza Fricker,  and lived experience parents Mark, Jessica, Jennie, Emma, Diana, Wendy and Jodie.

Content warning: this episode includes discussion of self-harm and suicidal ideation.

Relevant resources: (available in your podcast app)

Episode 60 — Why School Can't Young People Struggle with Self-Care and Hygiene, with Laura Hellfeld 

Episode 55 — Jodie's Lived Experience

Episode 51 — Jessica's Lived Experience

Episode 43 — Wendy's Lived Experience

Episode 42 — Tanya Valentin on School Can't, Parental Grief and Transformation

Episode 28 — Dr Naomi Fisher on Parental Burnout

Episode 27 — Diana's Lived Experience

Episode 23 — Eliza's Lived Experience

Episode 18 — Lived Experience with Mark Thompson

Episode 9 — Jennie's Lived Experience

Episode 8 — Understanding Burnout in Our Young People with Dr Naomi Fisher

Episode 7 — Emma G's Lived Experience

Transcript

Dr Naomi Fisher 0:00

I think the really key thing that I say to parents to look out for is a loss of excitement about doing anything, even the things they used to enjoy. So there's kind of just sense of apathy and lethargy that spreads to everything. I think that is a really key sign that this is something quite serious. That sort of spark. When that's not there, then I think that's a sign that you are either in burnout or that they are heading quite quickly towards that.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 0:32

Hello, and welcome to the School Can't Experience Podcast. I'm Leisa Reichelt, and this podcast is brought to you by the School Can't Australia community. Caring for a young person who's struggling to attend school can be a stressful and isolating experience, but you are not alone. Thousands of parents across Australia, and many more around the world, face similar challenges and experiences every day. We were just listening to Dr. Naomi Fisher, a clinical psychologist who speaks regularly about School Can't and burnout, and that is our topic for today. But rather than a single conversation with just one guest, today we are drawing on the voices of more than a dozen people who have joined us on the podcast here before to help us understand more about burnout. What it looks like, why we often get well-meaning but incorrect advice, and what genuinely helps. We have just passed the winter solstice here in Australia, so the darkest days of the year are behind us in theory. But for many of us, burnout is something that remains present in our lives. Perhaps that's something you suspect but are not quite sure. I hope you'll find today's episode helpful no matter what your situation. One thing before you begin, as our families describe just how serious burnout can become, there is some mention of self-harm and suicidal ideation. Please take care while listening, and if you need support, links to resources are in the show notes. Okay, let's get started.

Dr Naomi Fisher 1:59

Yeah, so burnout is really interesting because it's not in the diagnostic manual that we use as psychologists and psychiatrists to diagnose what would be called mental disorders is the manual. That isn't the terminology I'd use, but that's the terminology. Because it's defined as an occupational phenomena rather than a medical problem. I like that. The fact that it's like that because basically what it's saying is burnout isn't actually a problem in the person. It's a problem of the environment of chronic stress. So essentially when you're in an environment of chronic stress for a long time, you feel trapped in that environment. At some point, your body and brain goes, no more can't do it anymore. I'm just cutting out effectively. And I do think it's related to this kind of hopelessness. It's like, there's no way out of this for me.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 2:43

So we know that School Can't isn't a child who's not trying hard enough. It's not a young person who's choosing not to engage. And burnout is in a similar vein. It's a nervous system that's saying enough is enough. Tiffany Westphal of School Can't Australia puts it this way.

Tiffany Westphal 3:00

One of the things we say at School Can't Australia is that we need to look upstream of mental ill health. Because mental ill health is like smoke in relation to a fire. It's what's caused the house to catch fire. What's going on for that kid? What are the stressors? Often mental ill health is. Like physical ill health. If you are stressed for long enough, you become mentally unwell. You become eventually physically unwell, and that's what's happening to our kids.

Tanya Valentin 3:28

So two years of being at home, eventually dropping out of school and us trying to figure out how to help her. Didn't know anything about burnout back then. Eventually I came across, I think it was Dr. Anna Neff's work around burnout and started piecing bits together. And then once we had the language of burnout and low demand parenting and just being able to support her in a different way, we started to see some recovery happening.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 4:05

That was Tanya Valentin, a neuro affirming family coach whose own daughter experienced burnout. So how do we piece things together to recognise what we're seeing is burnout, not misbehaviour, and not laziness?

Dr Naomi Fisher 4:18

These things are signs, not causes. So I think there's a, there's a picture from one of my other books where a child holding up semaphore flags and they say on them things like self harm, meltdowns and controlling behaviour. They're all signs that things aren't going right in this child's life. Signs of distress. Yeah, signs of distress. Exactly. And people show their distress in different ways, people develop depression. Some become very anxious, some go into burnout, some develop eating disorders or OCD. There are all sorts of different ways to respond to distress and we can get overly fixated on which bit of distress is you and how do we deal with that rather than what's going on upstream to cause so many distressed young people. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt 5:02

So we have a child, we think to ourselves. It's quite possible that they're not being lazy, that they're actually having a reaction to an environment, and this is what I'm seeing here is some burnout.

Jennie 5:16

She stopped all her out of school activities like she was into dance. She refused. Well, she said, I don't want to do that anymore. She was playing in a hockey team since she was tiny. She wouldn't go back to that. And eventually she wouldn't leave her bedroom and she wouldn't have the blinds open. She had to stay in the dark. She'd only leave to go to the toilet. She wouldn't shower, she wouldn't clean her teeth and would only eat in her bedroom. And her sleep patterns reversed. She was awake all night and asleep all day.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 5:52

That was Jennie. Her daughter Bethany showed all of these signs and more before anyone started to connect the dots to burnout. People around them generally blamed Jennie's parenting and urged her to use more discipline. But this loss of interest and spark that Dr. Fisher described for us, as well as the self-care losses Laura Hellfield describes in episode 60, these are critical signs of a child who does not need more discipline, but more connection and more support.

Laura Hellfeld 6:21

So whenever there's a parent or carer starts to talk about, "You know, they seem to be not taking on as many snacks," or it seems like the amount of time they're sleeping seems to get smaller and smaller. Or I notice their hygiene's... You know, these skills that they used to be able to access are going away. That to me is often that, like, flag that the young person is waving of, "I'm not okay." Mm. and often I think it happens, people, forget to bring down so many things that we have been trying to say socially about adults of when people aren't well. You know, they're often trying to show it in a way to other people. But with kids, we tend to just tell them like, "Get on with it. Keep pushing through." you know, we add to their plate. We're like, "Well, then now they're gonna have detentions. Now they're gonna have extra homework that follows them through. Now they have to do all..." like, and therapy can be great, so it's always that balance. but might be lots and lots of therapy hours when in actuality that person just needed more rest.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 7:17

So often what is happening unseen and beneath the surface is masking, years of masking, trying to appear to be fine, holding everything together at school as best they can, sometimes incredibly well, until they simply can't anymore. Eliza Fricker describes how her child gradually faded out of the classroom

Eliza Fricker 7:38

what happens is often these children are very well behaved in the beginning. They might even be seen as high achievers or gifted and talented. They're doing really good work. But over time for many of these children, my own included is that it's not sustainable. So some things got to give, and over time my child became less able to do that stuff in class. So, the masking, if you like, became harder to do. So, schoolwork could be harder for them to do. Putting pen to paper was harder to do. Eventually they were sort of withdrawing from the classroom and being out of the classroom So over time they became less active in that space. They were more and more withdrawn, but not doing anything. That kind of withdrawnness was seen as just being still quite placid.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 8:31

And Mark describes how a day at school would cost his autistic daughter two days of recovery due to the social and sensory demands and the masking

Mark Thompson 8:40

Whenever I picked my daughter up, she'd say, yeah, today was a great day and I did this and I did that with this person and what, and then the next morning it would be taken so much out that, that she was just so tired that any demand would just be impossible, you know? So one day at school would lead to two days of burnout. It was just too big for her.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 9:01

One observation we've heard many times on the podcast is that our children with burnout are often diagnosed with depression. Now there may often be an element of depression alongside the burnout, but only treating for depression at best ignores the root cause of the problem, and at worst can make things more difficult for the child and can cause damage to the trust and the important relationship between the young person and their parent

Dr Naomi Fisher 9:25

So I think the main problem with a diagnosis of depression is that basically, again, puts the problem back into the child. Yeah. So it says we need to change their reactions to this environment, which is, why you've got the medication or the CBT and I think the absolutely key thing is that people need to be thinking, so what's going on in this child's life that isn't working for them? Rather than, what's wrong with this child right now? And that should be the first port of call. Because even if a child's depressed, the first question should be, so why are they depressed? It isn't just something that arises out of nowhere. Yeah, a lot. Depression is about reaction to life circumstances in the same way as burnout can be. So let's think about what's going on in their life before we think about how to change them.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 10:11

And now here's Emma. She's describing the situation that arose for her daughter Ushi

Emma 10:16

She really started to deteriorate in 22 to the point where she became bedbound. So everyone's like, oh, she's depressed. And they were trying to you know, tell us oh, you need to get her out and you need to get her to do more. Um, and you believe people 'cause you think, well these are the professionals. They know what they're doing. I mean, this is people in places that call themselves neuro affirming, diagnosing PDA kids. What we now know is autistic burnout, chronic fatigue, and saying that they need to push through, do more, get out and get some exercise and some fresh air.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 10:46

Diana's son, James, also received a depression diagnosis, plus the suggestion of many more incorrect diagnoses that all failed to explain the root cause of his distress

Diana Keyes 10:57

I suggested autism and they were like, no, no, no. They started suggesting things like Cluster B Personality Type, which is like the whole BPD, bipolar, schizophrenia, or severe depression. I look back on my notes now and I can see myself going, no, no, that doesn't feel right. But course we were treating it like severe depression. So that's the other thing. You look back and you go, we were trying to heavily medicate James. And for some kids that's helpful. I don't ever think it was for James.

Leisa Reichelt 11:30

The other thing with depression too is it's always like get outside and do things and engage with the world and that's how you help with depression. And I'm sure it does help a lot with depression, but it adds all the pressure onto the kids and for you to get them out as well, doesn't it?

Diana Keyes 11:44

exactly.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 11:46

Now, Emma did a lot of her own research, and she eventually realized that her daughter was experiencing burnout. But she also recognized that many of the professionals she sought help from were working from a completely different and incorrect framework to understand the problem

Emma 12:03

She really wanted to do well. But it actually set us back because what happened towards the end we couldn't make it through each week we got less and there was this, we'd get calls, You know, if you don't attend, it's not going to work. Making us the problem, if it was a trying issue. I'm like, this is where we are. She's not sat at home like dancing around she's bedridden., and they just couldn't. And I was giving them all these books by Eliza Flicker and they were lapping them up. They were like, this is so interesting. And I'm thinking, am I the first person to be here with this? Maybe I was, I don't know. But, it seems strange. The people were good, but they were working on the wrong paradigm. The paradigm that they're working under is different to the paradigm that our children are living.

Tanya Valentin 12:45

None of the professionals that we had even knew about burnout. They all looked at us through the anxiety and depression lens. Their approach was, let's just get her back to school as quick as possible. Nobody was saying, Hey, you know, actually she's just really exhausted. Her system is just burnt out. This is a nervous system thing, not a mental health thing. And I know that they can overlap, SSRIs that we give kids for depression or anxiety, none of them had an impact. They actually made things worse.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 13:25

I wanna say very clearly now that if your child has depression, then taking medication may be a very helpful thing for them to do. We certainly don't wanna suggest you abandon medication if that is working. But the trouble with treating a nervous system problem as though it is purely depression is that professionals can and do give advice that can really create a lot of damage

Dr Naomi Fisher 13:48

it is a recipe for burnout. If we tell parents you've got to make home less pleasant, you must not allow them to do things that they enjoy at home. Well, that's going to go well. And you must force them to go into school by whatever means possible. I've heard parents told things like, you should take them in their pajamas, put the clothes in the car, take them in. I've had people say, the head teacher said they would come and pick them up from home so that you wouldn't have to get them in the car.

Tiffany Westphal 14:14

Or give them a special job before school, feeding the school pets.

Dr Naomi Fisher 14:17

Absolutely. Yes. Get them in. Yeah. And then if you just think about that with adults, if you thought about an adult who was saying, I'm really struggling with this job, it really isn't making me feel good. I've had jobs like that. I really don't like being there. Would we say, well, the answer is to do less nice things at home and to keep going no matter what.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 14:40

Being told to make your home less comfortable, to make the young person's safe space feel less safe is advice that has been and is still given to so many parents and carers in the School Can't community. We want everyone to know that this is not okay. This is some of the worst and most damaging advice that can be given. We're gonna hear from three parents now, Wendy, Diana, and Jodie, who were all given this advice by professionals, and this is what happened when they tried to implement that advice in their homes. And I need to warn you, this can be distressing to hear because the impact for their young people was heartbreaking

Wendy 15:22

The rhetoric started from then, that my son was addicted to gaming. And home was, and I know everyone can relate to this was too comfortable. So, well, he did have a TV and a PlayStation in his bedroom that was removed. Then, there was an application made to turn the internet off until he had done what he was asked to do every day. And it breaks my heart to think of this again. My son then dumped a whole bunch of technology in the pool As I said, this is a boy in crisis.

Diana Keyes 15:57

This is where the whole, you need to make home really uncomfortable for them came in. And so we tried to make home really uncomfortable. We said to James, if you don't go to school, you have to leave the house for the day. You can't be in the house. You can't have the comfort of the house.

Leisa Reichelt 16:16

And the school and the psychologists were okay with that.

Diana Keyes 16:19

think they really knew, if I'm honest, because this is the whole thing, when they go make the home really uncomfortable, it's like, what do you mean by that? And they don't really know what they mean. Well, do you just offer what? not, nothing to eat, but I suppose you make them their school lunch and you put that out and there's nothing else. How do you control that when your two parents who are working and out of the house? Well, I suppose you get to the point where you switch the modem off and you carry it to work with you. Highly impractical. But these are all the things you're forced into. And then, you know, many of us have also experienced some of the violence that comes with that. When, with boys, I'm taking the modem and switching it off and taking it to bed with me. Then parents end up having to call the police because there can be violence as a result. I feel like when professionals say make the home uncomfortable, they don't know what they're saying. And, and, and look, maybe there are examples of some people saying, yes, I did do that and it worked But we, I feel like, took it to the extreme and we then ended up with James basically making a suicide threat because he felt so cornered by us that he, he felt like he had no way out. And I think we feel very ashamed about that and very, yeah, that was really, really hard. And we ended up at the local hospital in the emergency ward. And I just remember sitting there with James and I just said, let's just get the heck outta here. And we just discharged him and got home and I just thought, I'm going to drive my son to a suicide attempt. And needless to say, my husband and I were not coping at all, and we see that all the time on the School Can't Facebook page, people are literally at the end of their tethers because you're trying to satisfy the school, and keep up with society, I suppose.

Jodie 18:35

I was just getting this message of like, you are making home too comfortable. You need to be doing this. Don't make home so comfortable for her. And so as this is going on, she's getting progressively worse. She's running away.

Leisa Reichelt 18:49

And its your fault.

Jodie 18:51

And it's my fault. She's manipulating the situation. She's manipulating me.

Leisa Reichelt 18:59

That's what you are being told?

Jodie 19:00

That's what I'm being told by all the experts. She's coming home and, making me hide the knives. She's making me cut the basketball hoop off the trampoline because she's having visions of doing really bad things to herself, but at home I need to make home more difficult. So I'm just like looking at these people going what on earth are you talking about? And the school psychologist particularly, like, she would say things to her, like if you don't come to school, if you don't come in the gates, when you are older, you will never be able to walk out the door. You'll be stuck inside. You'll never be able to do anything. So you're telling a really dysregulated kid who's highly, highly anxious that that's what her future's going to be. Then you're telling me that the problem is home is way too comfortable. We're months in, and at this point I'm completely tapped out and I'm just like, what? What are you guys talking about? It's just that pressure of like you're in the system and like this is what you have to do. And the psychologist outside and she's lovely and they're all great, but they're trained in a certain way, and no one knows your kid like you do, and I'm very hands on, very tuned into my daughter. So it was really an interesting experience just to kind of have all of this noise in my head. While my child is absolutely on the darkest, the darkest road she could ever possibly be. She was running away every day. From the school gate she would bolt. So I had one girlfriend who was helping me, and that was it. Like I was the only person that could deal with that. 'cause it was scary, it was dangerous. And then home too, if something triggered her, it was just like she'd run. So thankfully she didn't go too far or nothing bad happened, but it was getting dangerous. Outside of that, I'm hearing still from the school, she's gotta be at the door. This is gotta happen. She needs to be learning. I'm just like, who cares about grades? Like, what are you talking about? Its absolutely mind blowing.

Leisa Reichelt 21:13

Where you're worried about your child's survival and they're worried about her math grade.

Jodie 21:17

Yeah. And at the same time worried about her survival. But no, she's manipulating you. And I'm just like, you guys are completely, you have no idea what you're talking about. Its dangerous. And you need to stop.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 21:32

Eventually, all of these parents decided to trust their own instincts and to seek out professionals who really did appreciate the challenges their young people were experiencing. And they discovered, as Tanya Valentin describes, the real work doesn't start with fixing behaviour, but often with repairing relationships.

Tanya Valentin 21:51

I think this is the hard thing for a lot of parents. I find this in my work with families as well, that we as parents want to fix the behaviour or we're wanting to fix the symptom of what we're seeing. And a lot of the work is actually about repairing relationships. So it's incredibly frustrating and worrying because you're seeing all this really, sometimes damaging behaviour like self harm or restrictive eating or just wanting to go into their room and not come out. And you've been told as a parent, well, you need to go and fix that behaviour. And if you're not doing something about the behaviour, you've been neglectful as a parent and you're not doing your job. I know for my children, a lot of what I needed to do was just repair my relationship with them because we'd gotten to a point they saw me as part of the problem.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 22:49

So if the usual interventions are making things worse, then what does actually help? Naomi Fisher's answer is both simple and very hard. Stop, breathe, and don't look for solutions yet

Dr Naomi Fisher 23:05

I think often what parents want and what young people want as well, actually, and certainly what schools want is a solution. Let's fix this, let's put this in place so that they'll be able to carry on. I think the first stage of recovering from burnout is just to stop for a bit and say, let's just breathe. Let's just take some time without thinking about solutions right now, and just think about reconnection. Try to build a relationship with your child that isn't to do with school, because when school is going wrong for a child, everything in that child's life can become about school and how it's not going well because parents are drawn in, aren't they? The parent needs to be saying, I'm sorry that I did these things. I was told that I had to. I did it out of good intentions

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 23:50

So what does that reconnection look like in practice? Well, for Emma's daughter, Ushi, it was ice skating and Russian. For Jenny's daughter, Bethany, it was horses. In both cases, the recovery didn't come from school. It came from following what the young person was passionate about.

Emma 24:06

She just got really passionate about ice skating and gymnastics, which was her thing. and what I learned from listening to people like Viv Dawes and Eliza Fricker, was that look, follow their passion, low demand, and follow the passion and let the passion lead. And what Viv talks about a lot in her work and her, her books have been really helpful to me, was this idea of, you know, letting that passion lead and what that's led us to- and it's been absolutely the right strategy, and even when I convince myself sometimes that it's not. This year she started ice skating, and she started studying Russian because she loves ice skating. So she's going to Victorian Languages School on Saturday morning to study Russian from nine til 12.20, which to me is an incredibly long time, but she comes out of it absolutely buzzing 'cause relational safety. The teachers are really nice. She's passionate about the subject .That relational safety gives her energy,

Dr Naomi Fisher 25:03

I talked to one mother who said her 14-year-old came out of school and for a while, she was just literally in her room. Didn't do anything. And then I saw her 'wants' coming back and I liked that little thing of her 'wants', you know, that she wanted to do something again. And I think that's when you start to see the tiny signs of emergence from burnout. But young people rarely get to that point until they're confident that that will not mean that they're quickly forced back into school.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 25:29

Now, Jodie's daughter recovered from burnout in a relatively short time, but Jodie's really careful to say she believes it would have gone on for much longer if she'd kept listening to the wrong advice. And the turning point for her was to be able to sit in that darkness with her daughter rather than running from it or being scared of it

Jodie 25:47

Rather than panicking, rather than, oh my gosh, like just being okay with, her pain. And so that was a really interesting process, just personal process to be able to go through that for that many months. Very taxing, very exhausting. But needed to happen. And I do believe looking back that you know, that was part of her being able to heal, was being able to be in that darkness rather than just run away or suppress it, which is, you know what we mostly do in society.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 26:22

Now, recovery from burnout, a bit like grief, is not a straight line. Sometimes it feels like two steps forward, and then a bunch of steps back. And one of the trickiest moments can be when things start to get better. You'll hear in the next few clips how this seems to have been a particular struggle in my journey.

Dr Naomi Fisher 26:41

Because the, the dilemma that you have as a young person who's not attending school 'cause you're in burnout, is the moment you start to look at all better. People will say, great, let's get a plan back in place for you to go back to school. It's an impossible situation. And it's not consciously impossible, they're not consciously thinking, I mustn't get better. It is literally impossible to get better if you know that's just going to mean a quick return to the place that made you so unwell in the first place.

Leisa Reichelt 27:06

How do we not let ourselves do exactly what you described. How do we stop ourselves from going, oh look, they're getting better now we can do things and not feel guilty as a parent, you're just constantly feel like you're walking the line of being negligent in one way or negligent in another way. Right? How do we make sure when we are looking after our young people in burnout that we're not actually being negligent parents by just giving them all the time and space to do whatever they want to do, even if that's absolutely nothing except sitting in front of a screen watching YouTube.

Dr Naomi Fisher 27:38

Isn't it funny how with children, we are always kind of in these dichotomies as well? 'cause I get told this all the time. You mean you just do nothing or we just do nothing? No, basically, I think it's a, it's a, needs to be a conscious shift in direction because we are all told that the way to a happy, healthy, functioning child is through school. That is the only way, and that if we can channel them through school, then all the other stuff will follow. And I've been told that actually, I've been told that by teachers, when I say wellbeing is really important, they'll say, well, when they're doing well at school, then they'll feel good about themselves. That's the root to wellbeing and the problem is if you are a child who isn't doing well and who isn't thriving, then that route isn't working for you. That route of you must do well at school and then you will be allowed to be happy. I have to say I don't think it works for those who do do well at school as well, particularly, but that is what we're told. So I think as the parent, you need to effectively take a really conscious shift the other direction and go, we are going to focus on wellbeing first. Because actually that's the foundation of growing up to be a fully functioning adult, that right at the base we have to have wellbeing. That might mean making some controversial decisions. It might mean saying, actually yes, we might be out of school for a bit, because actually wellbeing is more important at this stage. And do you know what? Academics can come later? You don't have to do it when everybody else does it. It is possible and actually sometimes easier to come back and do those things in your late teens or even your early twenties. But the wellbeing part, once that's gone, that's really hard to get back.

Jennie 29:22

So it's interesting when you back off what happens.

Leisa Reichelt 29:26

It really is, isn't it really is.

Jennie 29:28

i really strict with her, I was just encouraging, but that was enough to put her off and stress her.

Leisa Reichelt 29:36

Well, that's the thing, isn't it? Sometimes it is even the positive reinforcement that can become pressure. I know if my son's had a good week and I talk about, oh, it's such a good week, is like pressure for him to make sure that next week weighs up to the same as this week and then that can make the wheels fall off.

Jennie 29:52

Exactly. And even with pleasure activities, I can ruin that in a second,

Leisa Reichelt 29:58

I completely ruined a movie yesterday. Like really badly.

Jennie 30:03

Yeah,

Leisa Reichelt 30:04

Accidentally. Yeah,

Jennie 30:05

That it, it's a constant thing with us, but I'm learning too, I've changed my parenting approach completely now.

Leisa Reichelt 30:12

My son does tell me. I'm a very slow learner at this stuff though.

Jennie 30:15

but my daughter, I'm really proud that she can advocate for herself now. Before she wouldn't be brave enough to speak up. Now, she'll tell you.

Laura Highgate 30:26

She started school this term with a bang. Started so well, and then as soon as we hit last week or this week, just gone and she wasn't able to go. It literally, is, and It's this, back to how I used to feel it's this horrible memory, guts ripped out.

Leisa Reichelt 30:47

Yeah, You let yourself think. we've turned the corner now and it's going to be okay from now on,

Laura Highgate 30:51

I've gotta manage that expectation because me going flat after that happens is not going to help her. It's not going to help me. So what I have to work on is just staying a bit neutral about all these things.

Leisa Reichelt 31:05

I know you gotta be neutral about the wins as well, don't you? You can't get excited.

Laura Highgate 31:09

So neutral. Neutral. Yeah, I think, and again, that's been a big thing for me to work on is, my reactions, my expectations, and remembering this is not actually about me. This is 100% them. And my goal is just to try and, scaffold to try and support moving through this period of their lives.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 31:31

And even for Jessica, who's an occupational therapist, has worked with School Can't families, and has her own lived experience, even knowing the theory didn't protect against accidentally causing burnout by building up too quickly

Jessica (OT) 31:44

And so, we homeschooled them for the whole of the, the next year and we built up their activities and experiences. We did hit burnout. Because, the goal was that we would build up their activities until they said, oh, that's enough. My kid didn't know when enough was. So we've done lots of interoceptive work over the last couple of years,

Leisa Reichelt 32:06

Happens to the best of us. Let's be fair.

Jessica (OT) 32:08

We can all push ourselves too hard. And we did have a bit of a burnout phase and we did have to drop everything back again. My young person is the young person you can push till they break. And we inadvertently did this to them at least twice. And so we have to have learned and have to hold it for them and go, Hey, I'm actually gonna make this decision. That's too much for you. And sometimes that's not well received and other times they go, yeah, thanks. But, it's been collaborative and it's been years of work.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 32:36

Naomi Fisher calls this a rollercoaster, and I know this is a ride that many of us have been on.

Dr Naomi Fisher 32:43

Well, I think it's often this feeling of being in perpetual crisis. So it's this feeling that there's always something going on which you have to worry about. And particularly if your child has been through years of school not going well, then you often will have been on this kind of rollercoaster of, well, we'll just try this. Let's just give this a go. And it's almost like you take a deep breath in, you cross all your fingers and toes, you hope it's gonna work out, it doesn't work out, and then it's another one. So you're kind of in this perpetual state of adrenaline, basically this perpetual state of emergency response. Gotta marshal my resources for this big push. But then it's just another big push and another big push. So I hear a lot about that.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 33:27

Yeah, or something goes for a while and stops. That sort of unpredictability, that kind of holding one's breath. How long is this gonna last, until the next...

Dr Naomi Fisher 33:37

Yes. absolutely. that's part of the rollercoaster, isn't it It's that, oh my goodness, it seems to be working well. There's a honeymoon period. Oh no, here we are back again. I think that's a really destructive cycle for us as parents to go through because contributes to this feeling, we can never relax. We can never stop. We can never not worry because it always might go wrong.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 33:58

We've focused a lot on what's happening for our young people, but unsurprisingly, parents and carers experience burnout too. On top of the rollercoaster, we often experience social isolation, and we have a lot of grief to process

Dr Naomi Fisher 34:11

And actually that's something else I wanted to talk about with relation to parent burnout, which is that the major thing I start with when I'm working with a parent who I think is in burnout or about to, go into burnout, is their own inner voice. Their own self-criticism because it's pretty well ubiquitous.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 34:28

Yeah, it's really hard in the context of so many of our families report you know, impact on mental health. But also impact on physical health. In that context, they also experience this really negative sense of themselves as parents. Their efficacy as parents If it was just one of those things, I think it would be easier.

Dr Naomi Fisher 34:52

No, it's so difficult and there are so many different things going on, and I think one of the other things that I suggest to parents sometimes is thinking about the story that you are telling about your life. And the story that you tell yourself about your life, because there are many, many different stories that we tell ourselves about our lives and some of them are, I'm a terrible parent and I've done all these things wrong. And those ones, our brains selectively attend to that kind of information. Our brains have evolved to selectively attend to negative information and threat because our brains wanna keep us alive. So, we have to deliberately try and access those other bits of ourselves, those other stories. And sometimes I say to parents, how about if you write a story and it probably not about you, because actually, if it's about you, that will bring in all kinds of inhibitions. But how about another parent who makes the same choices that you have made and write a story. It doesn't have to be very long about their life from a positive perspective

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 35:54

Mm-hmm.

Dr Naomi Fisher 35:55

Not because that's the only story, not because you've gotta get that one right, but just because you are not making that kind of connection. So for example, there was a mother whose child was really unhappy at school and she tried really hard to help that child manage to be happier at school. She did all these things to try and make her child happier at school and none of it was working. And so that mother made the brave decision to take her child out of school and everybody said she was doing the wrong thing. So, do you know what I mean? So actually write that narrative, kind of connect up the dots for yourself. When I got parents to do this, they sometimes, often they avoid it initially. They say, no, no, no, that won't make any difference. I'm not gonna do that. And I push them a little bit and sometimes we'll actually write the story together. And it's usually really emotional. They usually cry. Really it's, and it's like you're kind of accessing all that repressed emotion that they haven't been able to think about and access And you sort of able to help people see you from a different perspective. And I think that's where the community element is so important as well, that when you are in the community with other people going through it, usually mothers or fathers, but mothers particularly, are much more compassionate towards other mothers than they are towards themselves. So sometimes just being able to think about the story as another person can mean that you can tap into some of that. Wow. I have done amazing things here. The other things I hear about a lot are other people. So I hear a lot about the judgment of other people. The perceived kind of ostracization, it's not quite the right word, but it's it's not, I don't think it's necessarily conscious on the part of other parents, but it's just this feeling of we are in this different place, which nobody really recognises. We don't have the same things to talk about. And when we talk to other parents, the things that they talk about just don't connect. And so the social networks break down really quickly.

Tiffany Westphal (she/her) 37:57

We notice when people come into School Can't Australia, the first thing is that sense of finally connecting with people who get it, who understand. And just that sense of relief at finally finding people who understand and who it's safe to talk about these things with.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 38:14

Finally, Tanya reminds us through the metaphor of the caterpillar and the butterfly that the darkness of this time of burnout is not permanent. A transformation is happening even if we can't see it right now, and that this time requires some patience and a good helping of self-compassion

Tanya Valentin 38:31

I love to think of things in terms of a metaphor of what's happening in nature. We replicate cycles in nature being part of the natural world ourselves. The metaphor that made the most sense to me is that of the caterpillar to the butterfly. Before we have moments where they might stop going to school or go into burnout we struggle, we're a totally different being. And when we reach this point where the crisis happens, we to move into this space of darkness. It's almost as if we're going into that chrysalis. So when the caterpillar goes into the chrysalis, it doesn't just be a caterpillar that grow wings, it actually dissolves. Like it just turns to goo. And when you're in that chrysalis stage, a lot of times it's just getting through the day. You know, you're not thinking about this on a deeper sort of level, but through this process, you are changing. You're evolving all the time, just like the caterpillar who's turned to goo. And the other part of it too is that sometimes we have some ideas of how our future's going or where we're forming into the butterfly. But also what happens in their chrysalis is that the cells that will eventually form the butterfly, they will form, and then they dissolve again, and then they form and they dissolve again. And it's like that for us too. We are changing and we're shaping, and sometimes we just need to give ourselves compassion and just be patient with ourselves because are just doing the best that we can with the capacity, the understanding, and what is available to us at that time. And then there is a time where our children come out of burnout. The stage that we are in now is not going to be the stage that we're in forever, even though it sometimes feels like it's going on forever. But as our children grow and mature, they're going to change their life stage. It's going to, look different to what we imagine, but it's not going to stay the same. And for us as parents, we're emerging at that time too. Sometimes with the butterfly, the butterfly doesn't just come out of the chrysalis and then flies off. There is a struggle to come out of the chrysalis. You have to have time to dry your wings. For us as parents, when we are coming out of this time, sometimes we have to allow ourselves just a bit of time and space to rediscover who we are as a person. Now that we're not a full-time around the clock caregiver of our child, just home bound.

Leisa Reichelt 41:37

Hmm.

Leisa Reichelt (Host) 41:38

Well, I hope wherever you are in your journey, there was something in this episode for you. Perhaps you're seeing potential signs of burnout but are not quite sure. Perhaps you're in the depths of it and just holding on. Or perhaps you're seeing green shoots, trying not to show your excitement. All of the conversations you've heard today are from full episodes of our podcast that are available in the back catalog. I'll put links in the show notes for you to make it easy. And if someone you know could benefit from hearing this, please take a moment to share it with them. If this episode has sparked something for you, maybe you recognize your own story in what you've heard, perhaps you'd like to share your own School Can't Experience story with us, please email me at schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com. If you're a parent or carer in Australia and you're feeling distressed, please remember you can always call the Parent Helpline in your state or call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Please don't hesitate to reach out for support. Thank you again for listening. We'll talk again soon. Take care.