Yap Sesh #7: The Burnout Bees

In this episode of Yap Sesh, Hosts Anna and Maurice reflect on boundaries, burnout, and the tools that help them stay grounded—both as clinicians and humans. Together they explore how communication, self-awareness, and a little humor keep their work (and wellness) on track. 

The also recap recent VoiceProEd course Voice Notes; available now asynchronously on the VocieProEd website. 

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Check out our available courses: www.voiceproed.com/courses
Theme music by haspockets983: https://www.pond5.com/artist/haspockets983

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Transcript

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Anna: Welcome to Yap Sesh with VoiceProEd. We're your hosts. I'm Anna Diemer.

Maurice: And I'm Maurice Goodwin.

Anna: And we're sorry if you have missed out on our recent live courses, but in case you did not know, you can hang out with us every Sunday in a new episode of this podcast and check out our asynchronous course offerings at voiceproed.com/courses so you can always be learning from us.

Maurice: We have been yapping away. Now you have many, many episodes. This is what, episode 12, I think? Or 13? And so, I mean, 13 yaps to catch up on, if this is your first. And if you're joining us again—thank you. This has been a lot of fun. And as Anna had mentioned, we are building our asynchronous library. And so not only are you able to catch Voice Notes, our April course offering, for replay and ASHA CEUs, but we're also teasing Exploring Resonance, our next asynchronous course offering. So keep your eyes on the lookout for an announcement for the release date of that course.

Anna: You can follow us on Instagram at VoiceProEd and Facebook where we post all of our course announcements. But if you want the first—you want to be the first in the know—sign up for our newsletter, which you can do from our website. So if it sounds a little bit like we are putting on some jazz hands to make these announcements, we are, because this has been a very busy season for both of us. Is that correct to say?

Maurice: The busiest of—see, I've had a lot of busy seasons. This is, uh… this is a busy one.

Anna: And so we are tired.

Maurice: We are fatigued.

Anna: We are fatigued. So we can, uh, you know, hype us up a little bit, but on the inside we are struggling a little. So I thought we could come together today and talk a little bit about burnout and what we're going through right now and how we keep going, because the show must go on.

Maurice: The show must go on. It's—you know, this topic is one that I care about because it directly impacts me and one that my thoughts have changed on a lot over the years. As someone who works in front of humans—that is how I make money—I have definitely learned a lot about what it means to burn out. The feelings of burnout, how I deal with burnout, how I avoid burnout, how I run away from it these days. And so, yeah, I think it's a helpful conversation to have. I mean, I don't know a single voice clinician who doesn't have at least a relationship to an idea of burning out or feeling tired with the work that we do.

Anna: And I think it is especially hard when we are interfacing with human beings and the type of work specifically that you and I do, where it is one human being is in front of you. And so we need to be present and we need to be on. And, you know, we appreciate the grace of our clients, recognizing that we are also human beings and our brains might need a moment to catch up or take a break. But also, I want to be present in those moments with my client. I want to be there, I want my brain to be on and be listening and be active. And also, that's extremely exhausting for a brain.

Maurice: Yeah, this isn't just going to be a vent sesh. We're going to talk a little bit about what boundaries we've developed around our work and labor—specifically what tools we've found helpful and the things that we've integrated into our practice to help us not feel the way that this work can sometimes feel. Yeah. Thinking about burnout—because I think feeling tired can be a sign of burnout, sure, but there's a lot of things that make me tired. What are some signs of burnout that you recognize in your practice? Or what are some patterns you see around burnout?

Anna: I think for me, that tired feeling starts to build up and actually gets a little bit restless, like when my brain starts to be overwhelmed. It's this kind of moving underneath my skin of like, I am going to burst out of myself if something doesn't change about this situation. And this is something that I have worked with my therapist on and have realized is related to also my neurodivergence. It's easy for these feelings to build up and me not notice them—especially in the past when I wasn't aware that the way my brain works could be affecting how I move through my work and take care of my body. And so I'm a lot more aware now when that feeling starts to happen. And so last night, after a completely full week in my studio—I am absolutely grateful to be hashtag booked and blessed—and also my full load is... that's why it's the max. It's because it's literally the max that I can handle. And so I couldn't sit still in the last client that I saw last night and immediately when that was over was like—

Maurice: Yeah, yeah.

Anna: I am feeling this discomfort. Now what can I do to address that? And I think by this morning I'm feeling a lot better. So I think noticing those signs and then being able to directly address that has been a super valuable development for me in my life recently.

Maurice: Yeah. So suddenly, you know, listening to you talk about recognizing the signs and having help and recognizing that—because I don't think we are always completely aware of what's happening with our bodies. We may have a feeling that gets expressed in emotions or in actions, but we don't always understand that this maybe started before the explosion. But then also what you're doing about it—how you've kind of adjusted and recognized having a studio max and figuring some of that out.

Anna: I hear you. Yeah. What does it feel like to you? This is the interesting abstract part of—like, my therapist and I call it "the bees." I start to feel like there are bees inside and they need to get out.

Maurice: Yeah. For me, unfortunately, my burnout energy zero is—I get sick. And that has been a pretty consistent theme from my teen years to adulthood. And I can look back on that. When I was a musician, right, when I was singing more and singing full time around big performances, I would just get sick. And now as a clinician, the same thing will happen to me. And Anna, you've seen that here with VoiceProEd—when it came to us launching the business and doing these big course offerings—two days before, I would be sick. Like ill-ill, sick. And I don't know that anyone could tell, but I would constantly get sick on course offerings. And what burnout has really taught me about myself is similar to you—recognizing those signs and recognizing the difference between situational burnout and systemic burnout. Situational burnout would be, "Oh my goodness, I have this one event and I'm working really hard for it," and because I've not slept in three or four nights, either because I'm anxious or I'm preparing, I end up feeling under the weather or sick. And then systemic burnout is: "This situation doesn't work for me, and it's leading me to feel bad about myself." And having to face those things and what you do about them has been really, really challenging for me as a person, but something I am proudly getting better at.

Anna: We love to see it. Let's—I mean for our own mental health and physical health’s sake—we love to see it.

Maurice: Love to see it.

Anna: Yeah, for the second-ever VoiceProEd course, both of us had been sick, and so we were both trying to present and like, clearing our throat away from the microphone so that we could continue to present and speak during this course.

Maurice: I think what was really tough—I was thinking about this as we were preparing for this episode—is I did not know how to be good at something without burning all the way out. I didn't have a reference for what it felt like to produce good work without being tired, because I always equated good work with using 100% of my energy to produce that work. I just didn't have a reference for what it felt like to produce something great and experience ease at the same time. And so my whole life I just raced and raced and raced, and unless I was racing, it didn't feel productive. And so I had to really shift my idea of what it meant to be alive and be a human and be in relationship with other people—and like, look in the mirror and be like, "Maybe you don't have to be tired all the time."

Anna: Since you're just listening, this is the moment where we are just smiling at each other. Like. Well, this is a way that a human can be. Yeah, I think that is so real, the sort of grind that is romanticized in that way.

Maurice: Hmm.

Anna: And that we have been taught this and have internalized that that is the way that we move through the world, the way that we contribute to society. And that's ultimately not even sustainable for society, because when we burnout, we are no longer able to participate in society. We are no longer able to be in relationship with the people that we care about and contribute to work that we care about. And so. It is definitely tough to break those ideas down of. Like what? If not what?

Maurice: You know, what if—what if not? Asking that question and really having to face the fact that a lot of my behavior was challenging. Because I think when you're a human that consistently experiences burnout, you're looking for all the reasons outside of yourself. And it makes you really angry. I know that I'm stuck in this job, or that I'm stuck in this relationship, or I'm stuck with these clients, or I'm stuck with XYZ—and these people and these things are causing me burnout. Again, I think there's a systemic part of this that is very true. You know, working in healthcare sucks sometimes and often leads to clinician burnout because of how it works. And my behavior was directly contributing to the cycle of me essentially participating in it and feeling tired all the time. And too—many, many things can be true at the same time. And recognizing that and changing it has been a challenge, a lesson, and a journey.

Anna: So what if we zoom back in to like the micro level of when you start to feel the bees—whatever that is for you—the bees?

Maurice: Maybe... the burnout bees. Ohh my goodness.

Anna: The burnout bees. Oh, no. We're gonna have to make such a cute little graphic for this episode. With the bees on it.

Speaker 3: Wow, title of ep—title of...

Anna: Ep, title of ep. The Burnout Bees. You heard it here. You already saw it—‘cause you're listening to this episode now.

Speaker 3: Right.

Anna: What was I even asking? How do you—when you start to feel the burnout bees—you personally, in that situational moment, what do you do to help stave that off? What do you do to take care of yourself?

Maurice: Yeah, I have really, as of recent—this is not a thing Maurice has been good at for long, folks—I’ve recently had to start seeing my clinician care as a full day. So if I am seeing 7 to 8 patients in a day, which is very regular for me, that is a full day. And I have to recognize the fact that I can't produce anything anymore. And that means that sometimes I don't get to work on VoiceProEd stuff in the way that I wanted to. And sometimes I don't get to have sessions after work with clients that I also want to see, because what's most important to me has to be me right now in this moment, to stay healthy. And really prioritize the things that make me feel good—spending time with my partner, spending time with my friends, having a drink, going to the gym—and really kind of closing off the Maurice Goodwin who is a speech pathologist. How about you?

Anna: Yeah, I think limiting my day and learning what that max is for me. Because I'm an independent studio owner, I choose my schedule—and that has really helped me, even before I knew more about how my brain worked, knew more about my neurodivergence.

Maurice: Mm-hmm.

Anna: I could feel that I was doing too much and so kind of whittled down my work so that I could be more present for the work that I was doing. And so I don't see more than five clients in a day. That’s five hours of work. And I still have people be like, “You teach for five hours? That’s so much.” And I'm like, “Yes, it is. It is a lot.” And so on days that I do that, I try not to schedule extra things. I make sure that—like last night after I got done—I literally went and touched grass. I took a walk, I took pictures of the beautiful flowers that are blooming, I looked at the mountains, got out from in front of a screen, and that really helped me ground.

Anna: And I also enjoy reading, playing video games. I write poetry—this is, you heard it here first, my secret admission. I have done this my whole life though. But coming back to that in a moment of like, oh, my brain has enough juice left, has enough creativity to not only consume media and other great works of art like books and video games, but also do a little bit of the creation of that. And that feels really good—to have been making more consistent time for me to do creation and not just consumption, and not just facilitating other people's creation, which is amazing work and I’m so glad that I do it. But nurturing my own inner artist in that way has been super valuable.

Maurice: And maybe there's a specific moment, or maybe you're right—it was the burnout bees. But what—what does setting boundaries look like for you now as a human, as an adult, as Anna the voice clinician? And maybe how has that changed over time?

Anna: Yeah. So this is funny because one of my clients heard me in a podcast before she joined my studio. And this was right before COVID, and I was talking about how I was balancing all the things that I was doing. I was teaching voice lessons, I was the chorus manager of the Houston Symphony Chorus, and once a week, I would drive down to Lake Jackson, where I was adjunct faculty. I had a church gig. And I don’t know how I did all of that stuff, because thinking back, I think it was just all bees all the time. But I thought that was normal. That’s what you had to do in order to make a living as a musician and as a voice clinician. And so at the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of that work stopped because it was not safe to use voices in public.

Maurice: MMM.

Anna: And so in some ways, I’m grateful that that made some choices for me. I really started to prioritize my own health of, “Well, I don’t want to work for another institution that might have to make choices about what I have to do for work. If I have to show up in person, I want to take care of myself.” So I'm going to leave this job. I'm going to get more clients online. And that was the impetus for me figuring out what I could really handle. And there was definitely some skill regression there, definitely a while where I was like, “Wow, how did I used to do all of this stuff?” Because now I feel like my capacity is so limited. But it actually isn’t limited—it’s only limited in relation to what I used to be doing. Now it is just more balanced. So I’m really trying to stick to that word now. Where I would have said yes to an extra church gig, I would have said yes to, “Yeah, I can squeeze you in.” Now I am saying, “I’m full.” You know, the Houston Symphony Chorus is having auditions right now, around the time of this episode coming out, and folks are asking for extra time. And I—again, I'm very grateful to be booked—but I'm having to say no, because I know that if I am teaching more than five hours a day, especially listening to those same pieces over and over again, I will not be OK. And I won’t be able to take care of myself, and I won’t feel happy with my work or otherwise. So just learning that.

Maurice: Yeah.

Anna: No. Even though—like, yay money, yay seeing clients, yay these are the kinds of folks that I love to work with—but also understanding my own capacity and sort of protecting my peace in that way. It’s not easy. It has gotten a lot easier to be like, “These are the slots that I have. Sorry if you can’t come during that time. Let me know how else I can support you.” That conversation gets a lot easier, I think, as you go.

Maurice: Yeah. I—you know, when it came to learning boundaries and kind of recognizing, oh yikes—was not only getting sick, but I actually legitimately have bombed a few lectures that I’ve given, and things that I was invited to, or things where people asked me to show up. And the thing that I showed up in—showed up with—was just, like, not good. And it’s not that I need people to tell me, “Oh it was fine to me, I didn’t notice.” I don’t care. Because I know that I didn’t bring good work because I was tired, because I didn’t have the time to prepare, because I was saying yes to so much. And that has really shifted recently in terms of the things that I can say yes to. And so I’ve actually more often started with a number—even to myself. There are things that I want to do with my life right now that I just can’t do, because if I did them, it would drive me into burnout. And so I’ve just had to say no even to myself. Which maybe is the person I had to say no to the most anyway.

Anna: Oh no—mic drop.

Maurice: Just being like, “No, you cannot do this for 12 hours a day and then wake up tomorrow and do it again, and wake up tomorrow and do it again.” I think similar to you, I'm recognizing that I am a much softer human being than I would have thought I was in my 20s. And this soft human being needs to be taken care of.

Anna: I love that. I literally got a sticker at the anarchist bookstore here that says “softer and more dangerous,” and it’s on my water bottle and I stare at it all day while I’m at work. And that—I feel that so deeply right now. Like, I am—I'm just a soft guy.

Maurice: Yeah.

Anna: I have to preserve that because that is precious and beautiful and I deserve to be taken care of and enjoy life.

Maurice: Yeah, for sure. You know, there's about a bajillion ways that I’ve noticed benefit to my clinical practice. But what have you noticed to your clinical practice as a result of setting boundaries, as a result of recognizing the bees? What has changed in your day-to-day or client-to-client interaction?

Anna: Yeah. I am rarely actually tired.

Maurice: Hmm.

Anna: Like I have to not get a full night's sleep for maybe even a couple of nights. You know, like in college, I would fall asleep in class all the time. And, you know, thinking about high school—like, how did I get up at 6:30 and then go to school and start singing by, like, 7:30 every morning? And, like, no wonder I was exhausted. So I think I have not missed the feeling of being tired. That is another beautiful thing about choosing my schedule. Like, I kind of work second shift. So this is where the productivity in the society comes in again, like, “Oh well, you don't wake up till like 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning? That’s so late! You could be getting up and doing so many things.” Like, no. I don't get off until 8:30 PM. Like, it's just shifted, right? And so holding space for: this is how my life is different, this is how my body feels different, this is how I can take care of myself. When I start to feel a chronic illness flare-up, I have enough time to be able to slow down. And I've also set up my billing for my studio in a way that—

Maurice: Hmm.

Anna: If I need to cancel, then I don't lose money. My clients don’t—they lose that FaceTime, but I'm like, “OK, you know, send me a recording of you. I'll send you some exercises.” Like, this is not going to be good if I'm there for either of us. So how can I support you in other ways? And so I'm able to show up even when I'm not physically showing up. And all of that feels really aligned with the ways that I'm able to be a human being in addition to being a voice clinician, and also still make sure that I am giving impeccable service and helping out the people that come to me for help.

Maurice: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I love that.

Anna: What about you? What changes have you noticed?

Maurice: I am still figuring out some of that in terms of, you know, what I need. And as I, like, explore and listen to myself... What changes have I noticed in my practice? I feel way closer to the ground than I did before. Especially when I was working with clients that had a lot of feelings, I would sometimes get wrapped up in those feelings. I certainly used to approach my work as if I—you know—had the quote-unquote “answers.” I just... I do a lot less and actually get the same, if not a better, outcome. I don't know how else to describe it. I just feel closer to the ground and feel like I'm able to do my job and do that well, which has been good. It's been great. I'm very grateful.

The other thing that I would add is that probably the biggest change is noticing now that I don't have, like, an anxiety disorder in the way that I did before. And I'm able to see that not only—you know, nature, nurture, like genetic brain stuff—and also my behavior was leading to this cyclical hyper-attachment to everything. And not having that has really shifted my entire life. There is not a thing about my life that is not different. Everything is different—is the positive way of saying that—than it was before. So yeah, it's changed everything. And I know I just answered and said I'm still figuring it out, but it's changed everything, and that’s why it’s hard for me to answer that question.

Anna: Right. Yeah, the lessened anxiety is so real. Like, how did we both operate for so long? Like, when we met each other, right? We were both in the throes. We were in our late 20s, still in the throes of this, like, hyperarousal all the time. Oh, our nervous systems, right? Like this is—this is the therapy episode. This is like: Anna and Maurice have both been to therapy a lot and now are sharing our experiences with you—which we should also destigmatize that, right? Like, we did not do this on our own. We did this because—

Maurice: Sure. Yeah, yeah.

Anna: We have other clinicians that are helping us on this journey. We have people that care about us that have been here for us. We have been here for each other. Like, I have seen the changes in you and the way that you live your life and the way that we get to connect more and deeper now that both of us—

Maurice: Mhm.

Anna: —are doing less in other areas. We're able to show up for each other more and do exciting things like start a podcast and run a business together. And that's something that I really value about this relationship. And I’m also grateful for the journey that we’ve gone on—separately and together.

Maurice: Yeah. I will say, you know, for anyone listening and they're like, “This just means I do less,” I've actually—I’m able to look at my life right now and say that I am producing some of my best work now. And I feel great about the work that I'm producing. And I do think there are seasons of our life that get really intense—and I’ll use this week as an example of that. Me understanding the bees—the burnout bees—allowed me to contact Anna at the start of the week and say, “This is going to be a very busy week for me. I already have that feeling. If you need something, I’m here. I’m getting zoned in, and I will talk to you on Friday.” And that was the most helpful thing, because before I would disappear, or I would be inconsistent, or, you know, people around me weren’t sure what my relationship was to them because I wasn’t communicating it because I was feeling so overwhelmed. And now I’m able to communicate so much more clearly and express, “Here are the things that I need this week. Here’s kind of the zone that I’m in,” because I understand more about myself. So it's like also helpful for just, like, actually getting shit done.

Anna: Yeah. And like for me to receive that and go, “Great. Wow, that sounds like it sucks. How can I support you? Here is what I have the capacity to do to support you in,” or to—

Maurice: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anna: To be like, “Nothing is urgent. I’ll see you on Friday,” right? Which I think was sort of a combo of both. And here we are—we record on Fridays, so—

Maurice: Yeah, now that cat is out of the bag.

Anna: So it’s Sunday for you, but... it’s Sunday for you, but it’s Friday for us. Yeah, and I think getting better communication has helped all of this. So, like, related to burnout and boundaries—I think I just didn’t understand.

Maurice: Hmm.

Anna: A. What I was feeling in my body and what I could do about it, and B. How to set boundaries—with myself and with other people. And so learning to communicate better has helped so much with that, because I now both understand my own capacity and am able to say, “Here’s what I can do. Here’s what I can’t do.” And for the most part, I have received really great response to that—even though it was hard and scary to do it at first. Like, “Oh no, what if I can’t do these things?” That’s OK. I’m a human being. I can only do so many things.

Maurice: Great. Everyone who’s listening, just... that—a nice collective deep sigh.

Maurice: Deep. Thank you for joining us for this week’s Yap session. Feels odd to wrap up after that, but we keep going—

Anna: I know. Do you want to do tool time?

Maurice & Anna: Tool Time!

Anna: Yeah. So because I have been helping folks get ready for a choir audition—they have a couple of parts to this. They have to sing an excerpt from one of the Messiah choruses, they have to sing an excerpt from the Vaccai’s Practical Method of Italian Singing... I still don’t think that’s my tool though. I think I have been thinking a lot about solfège, because they all have to do sight-reading. And of course everyone is the most nervous about that, because it’s something you can’t specifically prepare for. You don’t know what notes and rhythms will show up for you on that piece of paper that they hand you when you walk into the audition room. So I have been doing a lot of practice with my singers on that this week, and I feel like solfège syllables are just, like, bumping around in my head.

Like, last night as I was walking, I was like, “OK, I’m going to walk for so long that I’m now thinking about flowers and mountains instead of literally this echolalia of solfège syllables in my head.” I got about halfway there—I only walked for like a mile, maybe two miles would’ve done the trick. But you do not have to use solfège syllables to sing. I mean, you don’t even have to be able to read music to sing. And also, it’s been a helpful tool for me going through my musical education as I’m helping singers do this thing that is really hard. And I love an existing framework that I can dive into and use to help with something.

I mean, that is ultimately what solfège syllables, using numbers, scale degrees, etc., are—it’s just a tool to help you read music, if that’s the thing that you want to do. And so I have been—

Maurice: Mhm.

Anna: Grateful for it, because it has been helping me and helping my clients this week.

Maurice: Cool. My tool—my tool is teach-back. I know I’m going to end up referencing similar tools, same tools.

Maurice: Really allowing the client that I’m working with to take the time to process and tell me what they’re learning about their voice. Tell me what it feels like, what we’ve been talking about and discovering and exploring together. It not only helps them develop language and a pathway and connective tissue between all the things that we do—it helps me understand their understanding of what we’re doing. It helps me communicate clearer if it feels like maybe something was misunderstood or misinterpreted.

Actually, yeah—a client this week recited something back to me that I had said to them, and they had interpreted it in the negative form of what I had actually meant to be a positive. And had I not just asked them to tell me what it felt like we were doing, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be like, “Oh—whoa—that was a complete miscommunication on my part. Let’s reframe this a little bit, and let me use language that feels like the positive part of that to you.” Which I think happens a lot, especially when you’re working on voice problems, right? That people interpret as, “Oh yeah, this is this thing that’s wrong,” or “this thing I’m doing wrong,” which is not really how I approach my work. And so using a teach-back like that—it continues to be a really helpful tool for me understanding how someone else’s brain works.

Anna: We love to hear it.

Maurice: We love to—

Anna: Hear it? All right. See? There we can—we can wrap it up on a high note.

Maurice: A high note, literally. Let’s wrap it up on it.

Anna: Thank you for joining us for another fabulous episode of... what is the name of our podcast? Yap Sesh. As you can tell, we are still tired, but are so glad to be able to come together and yap for you. The yapping is universal. The yapping even happens when our brains are tired—because we are professional yappers.

Maurice: Professional. Yeah. First, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Anna: Thanks for coming along on this feelings journey with us. As always, if there is a topic you want to hear us yap about, let us know! Follow us on social, subscribe to our newsletter, and we will see you next week for another Yap Short.

Maurice: Bye.