Just Rest: Burnout Tips for Everyday Radicals
Just Rest: Burnout Tips for Everyday Radicals, hosted by Nicole Havelka, helps everyday radicals and world-changers who are tired, but not giving up to find connection, support, and soul-deep inspiration to keep resisting grind culture while staying true to their values.
Nicole Havelka is a burnout survivor, ordained pastor, yoga teacher, and founder of Defy the Trend. She spent years trying to change the world by working harder, staying later, doing more, but realized that real change doesn't come from depletion—it comes from deep, aligned, joyful living. Now, she coaches others to make rest a non-negotiable part of their resistance. Every week, you'll hear honest, unfiltered conversations about what it takes to build differently and rest radically. Episodes talk about resistance, spiritual practice, failure, boundary-setting, burnout, recovery, and the sacred power of saying, “no more".
Just Rest: Burnout Tips for Everyday Radicals
“You're Not Lazy, You're Depleted: Invisible Labor & the Burnout Epidemic”
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This is my summer playlist of podcast where I guested this past year. In this appearance on “Burnout, Invisible Labor & the Feminist Fight to Rest” on Feminist Founders, I talk with host Becky Mollenkamp about how women’s invisible labor – caregiving, administration, and housework – contributes to their higher rates of burnout. I’ve alluded to this dynamic all of the first season, but I go into much more depth with Becky Mollenkamp on Feminist Founders about how this impacts women, their relationships, their bodies and we talk about simple, game-changing strategies.
Take a listen to my conversation with Becky on Feminist Founders:
💬 Discussed in This Episode
- What burnout really is (and why it’s more than just being tired)
- How gendered expectations and invisible labor feed chronic overwhelm
- The critical role of embodiment and nervous system work in healing
- Why capitalist and white supremacist systems depend on our burnout
- The illusion of spaciousness and what it means to actually rest
- How meditation doesn’t have to look like sitting still and saying "om"
- The power of giving yourself permission to not volunteer at the damn PTO
- How to plan your schedule to not be a human version of a doctor's waiting room
- Why moms get guilted and dads don’t—and what that says about our systems
📚 Resources Mentioned
"Burnout" by Emily & Amelia Nagoski
"Sacred Rest" by Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith
"Essentialism" by Greg McKeown
"Rest is Resistance" by Tricia Hersey
🎧 This show is part of the Feminist Podcast Collective, a community of progressive creators reclaiming media through storytelling and solidarity.
📙 Get "Liberate Your Business" by Becky Mollenkamp at https://liberateyourbusiness.com/
00:00 Introduction to Summer Playlist Series on Just Rest
01:22 Introduction to Feminist Founder's series on Women's Invisible Labor
02:33 New Awareness of Burnout
03:11 Definition of Burnout
06:11 Invisible Labor and Its Impact on Women
08:25 Cultural Pressures on Women that Contribute to Burnout
14:13 Strategies for Managing Burnout
22:00 Creating Space for Rest and Joy
26:17 The Importance of Mindfulness and Somatic Practices
32:55 Collective Trauma and the Impact of Modern Life
34:58 Strategies for Avoiding Burnout
38:21 Understanding Rest and Its Many Forms
43:30 Creativity, Consumption, and the Need for Spaciousness
Connect with Becky Mollenkamp & Feminist Founders
Website: https://feministfounders.co/
Threads: https://threads.com/@beckymollenkamp
Substack: https://feministfounders.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/feminist-business/
Connect with Nicole Havelka
Send me a message via Speakpipe.
A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.
Introduction to Summer Playlist Series on Just Rest
SPEAKER_01Hi Rest Rebels, this is Nicole, your host of Just Rest, Burnout Tips for Everyday Radicals, and this is my summer playlist of episodes I guested on this past year. And I start with this one on how women's invisible labor, caregiving, administration, housework, contributes to their higher rates of burnout. Now I've alluded to this sort of dynamic with women, I think all of the first season, but I go into much more depth talking about it here with Becky Mollenkamp on the Feminist Founders podcast, about how uh this dynamic impacts women, their relationships, their bodies. And we talk about simple game-changing strategies to reverse this trend. So take a listen to my conversation with Becky on Feminist Founders. Welcome to Just Rest, burnout tips for everyday radicals who are tired but not giving up. I'm your host, Nicole Vavelka, bringing you tips and inspiration to help you feel seen and supported on your radical rest journey. Let's go.
SPEAKER_00Hi Nicole, how are you? I'm
Introduction to Feminist Founder's series on Women's Invisible Labor
SPEAKER_00great. How are you, Becky? Good. I'm excited to chat with you because Faith and I had decided that this summer we want to talk loosely about women's labor, sort of all the pieces and components of that. I just had a conversation that's gonna actually air after hours with Paige Worthy about her sabbatical. And she took two months away from work. And that as a self-employed person, I think can be scary for a lot of people, but she had reached a place of burnout. And that was what really motivated her decision. And so before we get to that and we hear from her next time, I wanted to talk to you about burnout because you do burnout coaching, and it's a word that I feel like 20 years ago, I don't feel like we heard as much about that. Like I just don't feel like burnout was in the ether. And now I feel like we hear about it so much. And so I wonder just kind of what you've noticed about the trends around burnout, and this is the big part what's causing so much burnout now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So it's interesting. When I started my business, I didn't talk about burnout at all. And that was like five years ago. Like it didn't occur to me to use that word, not that I didn't know what it meant. And even in telling my own story of how I came to start my business, I didn't use the word burnout,
New Awareness of Burnout
SPEAKER_01although I probably could, like that I had burned out on not so much the work that I was doing, but on the the situations I I found myself in. For me, and this I'm sure this is true for a lot of for you and a lot of your listeners, like there came a point when, you know, I was hired a lot for to bring change to organizations, and then people like that idea until it happens. And then there's a lot of pushback. And so I think what I burn out on not so much was the work, was the was the pushback and the the being the lightning rod for that. So I think there's a lot of which wouldn't fall into the definition of classic burnout either.
Definition of Burnout
SPEAKER_01What is the class? What is that depth? So well, the I should say burnout, the three elements of burnout, which I often teach people, are sort of emotional exhaustion. So I might have had that symptom, you know, like you just don't have feelings left to give. You just don't have any more. And then kind of the I think it's a flip side of the same coin, you you start lacking empathy. I think they fit officially call it depersonalization, but like you no longer can feel empathy for other people, which of course is a gross and dangerous place to be in. None of us wants to be there. And then then the feeling of of hopelessness could be a word you use, but like this sense that nothing you do matters. Like nothing you do has any sort of impact. You're not going to be, you know, and so you can only imagine if you're feeling that way about the work that you do or about whatever you do, like you're not, you're gonna stop doing things, right? Because you're you're gonna stop investing, you're gonna stop engaging because you're like, well, why bother? I'm not expending the energy anymore.
SPEAKER_00I think a lot of people, whether it fits the clinical definition of burnout or not, I think what a lot of us think of as burnout is where you've just run out of anything to give, right? There's just no capacity left, whether it's because you've lost interest and hope, or because you've just like completely run yourself to the ground. But it's that feeling of like, I can barely get myself out of bed and function. And like I just don't have any more to give to anything, really, right? It's not just work, although I think we often associate it with work.
SPEAKER_01Right. And that's where the I mean, that the classic definition applies to work. There has been more application of it. Like I've done some just a smidge of reading about like burnout and parenting. Mm-hmm. Burnout, which I know you're a parent. I'm not a parent, but I know you are. So, like, can you imagine those symptoms with parenting? Like that you don't care about the feelings of your child or children anymore. That would that's not a great place to be.
SPEAKER_00For people listening who may be there, it's also there's no shame in it, right? No, no, no, not at all. I mean, I think we think about postpartum and there it is such a challenging thing where you're experiencing feelings or lack of feelings in a way that you don't you don't recognize yourself. And I think that may be a piece of that too, right? It's like you're just sort of this place of like, I don't even recognize who this person is anymore. Because this isn't how I want to or generally have shown up in the world, right? And that's that's so hard to be there.
SPEAKER_01Well, and one thing I like to tell people a lot whenever I do, like if I do trainings or teaching, or and even sometimes one-on-one with coaching clients, you know, I'll say, here's the thing like the way our culture treats burnout is that it's somehow your fault. Right. Like you just need to manage your time better. You just need to, I don't know, learn how to say no. You just learn how or get another job. Like, often people's solution is like, oh, I'll just find another job, this isn't the right fit. And I'm like, I think the whole culture just doesn't fit. Like nothing about our culture, or rather, let me say it a different way. Everything about our culture promotes burnout.
SPEAKER_00Period.
SPEAKER_01Everything about
Invisible Labor and Its Impact on Women
SPEAKER_01it.
SPEAKER_00Do you know anything? I mean, it's okay if you don't know the answer to this. We can even just sort of conjecture, but I'm curious if there's any differences in the way men and women experience burnout or the degrees to which or the numbers of people who do, just because we're focusing on women's labor, and I think there's that often, not always, but often there's this added component for women where we're carrying a lot of other labor that's the emotional and mental labor of caring, whether it's for children, for parents, for you know, husbands, partners, whatever community. And so that adds on to so, like when we talk about burnout being work-related, we often think about that means that nine to five job, which means maybe a stay-at-home mom would think I could never be in burnout. When in fact, I think that is part and parcel with so many of our problems. It's very sexist in its nature, in saying that burnout only relates to those traditional, you're going to work and you have that J O B, when so many women are carrying so much labor that doesn't have anything to do with a J-O-B or is on top of the J-O-B. Right, right.
SPEAKER_01I think uh a good book that I always draw from about this gender dynamic is the book Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski, which, yeah, oh good, you're nodding, so you've read it. I know, I have it right next to me too on my stack. I grab it all the time.
SPEAKER_00I recommend it all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_01It is a must-read. And I think they do such a good job of making a big system simple. Like, and not that they're oversimplifying, I think just in language that is understandable about why women experience burnout. I'm not sure if there's evidence. I'd have to do a deeper dive of research if women actually experience a higher rate of burnout or not. But there are certainly cultural factors that would make burnout happen more for them. And like she said, there's the pressure. They talk about the pressure, and I use this in trainings all the time, to show up pretty, happy, calm, always attentive to the needs of others, caring. Whether you're showing up as a parent or at a PTO meeting or at work at your job, if you have a job outside the home, like you have that pressure to show up in that way, regardless of what the circumstances are, which is which I think there's a flip side for men, which I know less about because most of
Cultural Pressures on Women that Contribute to Burnout
SPEAKER_01my coaching clients are women.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I figured that would be the case. I just did a quick search in, you know, as much as we can rely on Google's AI results, but the top thing just talks about the women's burnout rates are generally higher for women than men. Many studies that have shown that. In fact, some show it's as high as twice as much. And that it's because of some of the things you're talking about, these, you know, the gender biases in work um and in the workplace, and then what I was talking about with these caregiving responsibilities that are often obviously not divided equally in work. And so I, you know, I think those things add up to it. Makes sense that women would experience burnout more. And I also suspect, well, this I don't know, but I'm gonna just throw it out there that they may be less likely to recognize it and do something about it. Although I also think men are pretty good at suppressing feelings. So that may or may not be true. But I do think that tell me what you've experienced, but I'm gonna guess a lot of people don't acknowledge what they have going on as burnout or is even approaching burnout because really the goal is to deal with it before you get to it. Right, right. But people don't even recognize they're on that path necessarily, or if they do, they don't recognize they're that they there's anything they can do about it. Right.
SPEAKER_01I think they feel powerless over it for sure. I mean, it is and I unfortunately I think in that way I don't necessarily help initially because I can help, but like initially I'm like saying, no, this is a bigger system, this is not your fault, which on one level is relieving, right? You're like, right, it isn't all my fault. On the other hand, you're like, well, then what can I do to change that that nonsense? What is that? What is all of that? So I think there is there is that dynamic. But like actually, when you were talking though about those burnout rates for women, which doesn't surprise me, I just wasn't sure about the numbers, so I didn't want to quote them. But like, I was just talking not too long ago with a a friend of mine who's an academic and who is, and this is a very small percentage of women who who's tenured. So she has, you know, worked her way from and is tenured at the university where she teaches. But part of the reason she pointed out, and I hadn't thought about this because I I I don't always think about academia, right? That part of the reason why women, aside from just being fewer in number in academia, don't receive tenure is because they're often saddled with extra administrative responsibilities. Like my friend had the for a long time had, and this is while she was trying to get tenure. And for those of you who maybe some of you know and some don't know, one of the big things for getting tenure is like having this body of research and and published articles that you need to show to justify you being tenured at your university. So you're having to do that really intensely in those first however many years before they can reach tenure. And then they might also be saddled with that. Like she was the director of an entire center, which was in addition to a teaching load. Now, her load for teaching was a little reduced because of that, but she'd even said they reduced the next person who took over, they actually reduced the teaching load more for in order to handle that administrative task. But that happens in even less formal ways, right? Like, like this is a classic example, of course, but like, oh, we're having a meeting. Aren't you gonna schedule, schedule the meeting and book the room and bring the snacks, you know? And it goes, it defaults to a woman. Or sometimes, as women, we're so conditioned, and again, not our fault. This is just what we're taught to do. Like, we do it without thinking much about it. I sure have, like, gajillions of times.
SPEAKER_00Well, and I think parents can relate, moms can relate to this that we become the default parent in schools. So, and I have talked to moms who have tried to change that, and it become it is like you have to push and push and push for them to finally so oh, you mean we actually are supposed to call the father first? Like they can't wrap their brains around that because the mom is always like the default parent, is how they what is assumed. And so trying to change this behavior, and that goes across everything. I mean, like you mentioned, it's happening there, it's happen, but it's happening inside of our own homes with very often with women who are becoming the default carrier of so much of the mental load of running the household. Whether it's, hey, I'm the one who stores up in my brain when the next appointment is for the doctor for the kid, when you know what they in their field trip is, all that stuff. I'm the one who's carrying that information, or even people without kids. They're the ones carrying, hey, here's when your mom's birthday is, and I'll make sure we get the present. Oh, we're running low on toilet paper. I'll make sure that gets gets handled, right? Like all of these things often default to women in the workplace, in the home, in the schools. That's again where you're saying it's systemic because every system, the healthcare system, the education system, like all these systems are often saying that the woman is sort of the default carer. And then when there's a money issue, suddenly it's the man who's like the default person, right? And having to retrain these systems is so hard. And of course, the same thing then, it's so hard to do it in our own heads. Yeah, like just learning to be able to like we can push back against that, right? You're allowed to say, no, actually, he's the default parent, not me. And even when, because this is what my friend experienced, they wouldn't listen, they still would call her. And she could have just said, fine, what is it? Right? Because that's what we often do. It feels easier. She had to keep pushing. Nope, it's not me. He's the default parent, right? Like, keep nope, I'm not handling this. Call him, he's available now. And that's challenging, I think, for us to do. But that is part of, I'm guessing, this process of avoiding getting to the place of burnout. It is that like taking on all this extra little load that feels small, like remembering your mom's birthday. Like, of course I'm gonna remember that. And sure, why wouldn't I get a gift if I'm thinking about it anyway? Right. And and yeah, we all use the toilet paper. I guess I could make be the one who makes sure it's a gets ordered. But each of these little things stacks up on top of each other, right? So many things. About women's labor, invisible labor, and how that you see that contributing
Strategies for Managing Burnout
SPEAKER_00to burnout.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, this one of the things that I lead in my group coaching experience are the quarterly planning sessions. And I've many times had clients, well, the thing, the one of the primary activities I have them start with is uh a brain dump of like everything that they do. I think you've done things like that too, here, just write it all down. And I kind of give them categories. I actually start like when I started, I didn't add this, but like I started adding household responsibilities to make sure you're naming that. I mean, because you're not you're acknowledging that that is stuff that takes time, you know, and volunteer activities. I have them name, like all that sort of thing. But I have had, and this is particularly acute, it seems, for parents, for for moms, because that's mostly who I'm dealing with. Like I've had people repeatedly end up in tears from that activity because they're so overwhelmed. And what they say is, I can't give any of this up. And I would almost always say can't.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I would also imagine that a lot of them don't like seeing it in black and white might be eye-opening, not in a in an exciting good way, like, hey, look, I can get rid of some of this. It's just that overwhelm of like, I think we do so much that we don't even notice, that no one else notices, no one honors, we don't honor, and we don't realize the weight of all that work because I hear this from clients too all the time, where it's like, like they start to feel this guilt of why am I so tired or why am I like, I feel lazy, all this conditioning that we have. Because, but like all I'm doing is, and they start to list all these things they're doing. Right. And it's there, and and it only includes the biggies, like, well, I'm only caring for my aging parents and caring for my two toddlers and running a business. That's not that much when I compare it to others. And when you start to interrogate a little, like, okay, well, are who's who's the one who's like, you know, buying the groceries, who's the one who's doing the meal planning, who's the one, like all of these other things they don't even consider. And then when you ask them about it, often they feel that, like, yeah, but that doesn't count. Right? It's not work. That's not like her. Right. And so I would imagine seeing that is it's probably hard for them first to even account for the things they're doing. And then to see it, I would imagine it's overwhelming in some ways. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I think that's exactly what's going on. And because there's uh this is also in the book Burnout, but it's also obvious if you paid any attention with mothers in particular, there's so much pressure on mothers to be in that role that you were describing, right? And I think some you can tell me if I'm wrong, because again, I'm fully saying this as a non-parent, but there's this like this sense of guilt or even shame for sure. Not living up to that, right?
SPEAKER_00Like not doing that's not a phrase that's used, but mom guilt, everyone is you don't have to be a mom to know the phrase mom guilt, guilt, right? Yeah, that's just thrown around as if it's a thing, right? And we just ex that we accept and no one says, what about dad guilt?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right, right. Yeah, I mean that conditioned you. It's so conditioned. I actually this was a conversation, this is a more casual conversation that happened kind of toward the end, or at one point in a co-working session I was doing. Two parents, two mothers just happened to be on there, and one of them was had said no, like because of the work we had done, was saying no to helping out in the school that her son was at because of a big work thing that was going on. Like, otherwise, before those times, she would have said yes to all those things, probably, was saying no to it, and but then said, Oh, as soon as this other big work project is done, I'll I'll go back and I'll do that. And one of I was so happy when the other mom on the call just said, you know what, my kids ate and I've never volunteered in the classroom. And I'm like, and that was so much more powerful than anything I could have said, right?
SPEAKER_00That permission slip, right? Right. Don't have to perform in this way. You don't, right?
SPEAKER_01If that's if you simply do not have time for it because of the job that you have, or for whatever, or caring for aging parents, or because you don't want to, quite frankly, because you would rather take a nap, I think that is a perfectly good reason, right? It's an important reason, right? Totally.
SPEAKER_00Just I want to, before I forget, quickly throw out a book called Fair Play by Eve Rodsky, which a lot of people know, but specifically if you are in a heteronormative relationship and have children, it is really an I mean, even if you don't have children, I think it can be useful, but it's most powerful for parents because it is about exploring the gender dynamics inside of a relationship and how they're showing up for caregiving, for labor, the labor inside of the household and the and with the parenting and how much is happening. And and the real goal is to hopefully open the eyes of the male inside the relationship to understand the um inequities, because often men and women will look and say, well, it's almost this tit for tat kind of thing that will happen inside the relationship. And it's like, well, you're caring for the kids, but I'm working and like you're you're, you know, putting them to bed, but I'm doing taking out the trash. But what that often doesn't consider is all of this, again, that invisible labor that usually falls onto women that is stuff that we don't itemize very often or that doesn't get noticed by the other partner because it's all happening in our mind, right? It's the thinking about all the 20 other things that are coming up that need to get done, that were, you know, oh well, his friend has a peanut allergy. I gotta be sure I'm careful. Like all of this kind of stuff, right? That women are juggling, that men don't see, so they don't often consider that as equal contribution. So fair play is really about that. So I think that's a really valuable resource. And I've I've known couples that have gone through it, and it's been very eye-opening in helping them again rearrange or reallocate what's happening again so it feels equitable and not just equal, because that there is a difference in that, right?
SPEAKER_01Right. Well, because I would argue there's a different kind of energy that goes into putting kids to bed than taking out the trash, right? I would do. And time, like taking out generally, unless something really goes awry, taking out the trash can take you just a couple of minutes. The child going to bed can take minutes, hours if you're having a bad day.
SPEAKER_00Right. And the trash isn't arguing with you, the trash isn't crying, the trash isn't making you feel guilty, the trash isn't like working your last nerve, right? Right. There is this, there is this emotional and energetic difference that, and you know, and hopefully men and women can also like I think part of the problem is women haven't felt empowered to articulate these things. And so if their partner pushes back of like, well, that's because you let the, you know, you let them get away with it or you blah, blah, blah. It's like, that is not what the conversation should be, right? Let's deal with the realities on the ground of what's happening, right? This is not a it's not about blaming and shaming, but like, yeah, maybe we could have made different choices. We collectively, because I'm not the only parent here, could have made different choices. Here's where we are, and what is the reality on the ground right now, and how do we make sure this feels equitable? So again, I really recommend that book. I think so often most of us are in survival mode all the time. Like I work with clients. I just had this this week with someone who is just in tears talking about all these things on her plate, you know, a partner who has health issues, a mom who is having dementia issues, a child who's overly an adult child who's like overly dependent, all these competing forces, not to mention house repair issues going on, and then feeling this all this feeling so awful because made a few mistakes at work. Well, how would you expect that you wouldn't be, right? Like, yeah, right. The problem is it's this place of like the cycle she gets in. And I think we can so many of us can relate to this, which is I just get to, I'm like, oh, can I just get to survival? And then one new thing happens, as it does, because life's gonna life, baby. Some new wrench gets thrown at you, and suddenly you're back to drowning, right? And then all we manage to do is claw ourselves back up to like, I'm doggy paddling, I can just breathe. And we start to take that as our baseline. Like, that's just normal. And then we're just trying to avoid drowning all the time. That to me is where you're in that perpetual place of facing burnout. So, what should it look like?
Creating Space for Rest and Joy
SPEAKER_01Well that I'm so glad you asked that question, Becky, because it's something that I've been thinking about a lot lately is and I don't have all the answers to that, because I live in the same world that y'all do. So Right. We're all I only know what I know, right? Although you and you know this, but listeners won't necessarily know this, that I recently took a part-time job in like sort of a well in in a church, which is a nonprofit. And anyway, any place can overwork you, but particularly places that are all about caring and giving, which is female coded, by the way, but like you know, and and I present as a female, so that you should just do it all the time without regard to yourself. Selflessness is prized, right? So I recently did that, and I've been like mostly working for myself on my own, completely self-directed for like five years prior to that. And I could not I could barely like wrap my head around the the shift, the difference, honestly, in in how I reacted to that kind of an environment. Like it was very somatic. My body was very, very, very stressed by that, which would not have happened five years ago. That would have been my baseline five years ago. And I'm like, so I'm trying to re like just put back together, like, well, what are the changes that I make? Well, some of it is just working at home by yourself. If I'm like hitting a wall, I can go lay down for 20 minutes. You know, I think we're both fans of the 20-minute power nap.
SPEAKER_00And I know that doesn't work for everybody, but like we're having Nicole, but I can't nap. It makes me feel horrible.
SPEAKER_01That is too bad. 20-minute zone out. Zone out, right? It doesn't have to be sleep. It can be or or go have lunch. I've been known to like have lunch and watch like a 20-minute sitcom on occasion where I'm like, I just need because I need to get out of whatever I was working on for an hour that's free on my calendar to go to the thrift store.
SPEAKER_00Like just retail therapy, a little get in a big thing is just getting into a different space. But what you're talking about here is how do you design a life that allows spaciousness? And that's what I was talking to this client about. It's like when we're in that survival mode, it usually feels like there's just no spaciousness. Every bit of our mind space andor calendar. And by the way, it doesn't have to look like your calendar is fully booked for you to still have this feeling, right? Because again, a lot of this is the mental and emotional labor. But there just feels like there's no space left just to be, to rest, to have joy, to have pleasure. Those things feel like, wouldn't that be nice? Oh, that must be nice. That kind of thing that we do, right? Oh, must be nice that you have space for that, right? Like this, like it's some luxury, some, but these are essentials. Rest, joy, pleasure, those are essentials. They're not nice to have that only the elite should have access to. Sadly, that's often what it looks like in our world, but it shouldn't be, right?
SPEAKER_01Agreed. Agreed. And even, and I think that's true. I think the because the more money you have, right, the more ability you have to pay others to do work for you. Like it certainly can help by spaciousness. On the other hand, you can still be filling your world with tons of activities, even if, say, let's say you're, and this is sort of almost an image of a classic news, like upper white, middle class, upper, upper middle class housewife who would have the ability to have like a housekeeper and maybe a nanny for the kids. But then what is the expectation of her time? Was to volunteer doing a million things in the community. So it's not like she wasn't doing anything. She just could afford, find out her husband's money, could afford to buy help. So she didn't have to take care of the kids all the time or do those kinds of things that might get on our calendar or some of our clients' calendars. That may not happen, but it's not like their time wasn't being used. Now that's not to say they didn't have more spaciousness. I'm sure they had more spaciousness than that nanny or housekeeper that was also taking care of their own children, right? Most likely. But still, like the the that's you can afford to buy some extra spaciousness. But even so, I think the time and the pressure for women to show up in a particular way can cause burnout. And yeah, and that life may not be satisfying to them, even though it looks like success,
The Importance of Mindfulness and Somatic Practices
SPEAKER_01right?
SPEAKER_00Well, and sneak peek to the conversation with Paige that it will be coming up, because again, she reached this kind of place of burnout of just overwhelm of nothing left to give, took two months off with the idea of like, okay, that I'm gonna have that time to fully decompress, to just create that spaciousness. And while that was true to a degree, what she experienced, and I think this is important because I think it's what so many of us, especially women, experience when we do have a vacation or take, we get an hour of time or whatever, the mental load didn't disappear, right? She just found new things to worry about, new things to fixate on, new things to turn around about. It didn't suddenly and magically create quiet and peace, right? Yeah, there was spaciousness, spaciousness on the calendar, but that doesn't necessarily equate to spaciousness in the mind and in the emotions, right? Those are two very different things. And the problem is it is such a learned behavior that we have to be going, going, going, thinking, thinking, thinking. What's next? How what what am I gonna do? How do you the doing, this human doing versus a human being, that we take away the stuff, but it doesn't change that until we do the work to change that, which by the way, we can do while also still working. Like you don't have to, I think I love the idea of a sabbatical, but you don't have to take two months. That's a real privilege. And you could do that and still be the same, right? And not actually get the benefit from it, because what really needed to happen is we have to learn how to disconnect from the conditioning that creates the burnout. And that's where you're kind of talking about the systems and the culture that we live in.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And that's and and what you're talking about, like that that being wired for the busyness is in our nervous system. Like that isn't, I mean, and I and I again, people who are psychologists, people who know even more about trauma than I do, and I do have like trauma uh sensitive training, but I'm not like a neuroscientist or something, just know what I know from reading things that um like that kind of thing gets wired and takes time. And that's part of why I include mindfulness practices. Like I'm also a yoga and meditation teacher and practitioner. And so the the somatic piece, and this might be looping back to what we were trying to talk about earlier, actually. Like the somatic piece is so important because even if even if you clear the calendar, your body and mind is gonna want to do the other thing, right? Because that's what it's used to. Why would it do anything else? And it takes, it takes time and effort and like a lot of really intentional healing in your body to get rid of it. Like your mind is not, I mean, this is just true in general. Like, your mind isn't gonna shut your mind off. And I know people who come to me like, I when I meditate, I can't, I can't, I I my mind is racing, I'm making to-do lists or whatever the thing is that's you know, they're perseverating on. And I'm like, here's the thing: feel your body. It's counterintuitive initially until you've retrained yourself to do that. Find your breath, find your feet is a really good one. Like, feel your feet, feel your body. Like in the case of like Paige or other people starting a sabbatical, like build in a lot of time for movement.
SPEAKER_00Well, that that somatic experience, I think, is so important. And when you're talking, and that was why I also was like, I know that you do this, which that that the meditation work, the yoga work goes so hand in hand with the burnout piece, where I think often in my experience, I shouldn't say a lot of women, but I do think it's more than just me. But we are we become so disconnected from our bodies because we live in a system that actually encourages us to distrust our body and that our bodies become the source of so much trauma, both physical and emotional and other trauma. And I think much even more so for women, because we are made to believe that this vessel is the thing that matters the most about us, right? Because we are so much judged on our appearances, not to mention all the other ways that our bodies are sources of trauma. So many of us dissociate, we become very disconnected from our body because it's so painful to be in the body. So learning how to be in the body is very hard for a lot of people. I think many people probably think I have this burnout problem. Give me the three-step solution. Like, let me use my brain to get myself out of this. And I would imagine for folks who have gotten to that point, they probably are so disconnected from their bodies that this embodied approach is probably very scary and difficult and yet is so important.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, one of the things I try to train clients to do, they don't know this is what I'm doing necessarily, but like so the secret. It's fine. I would tell them if they wanted to know. Yeah, but like pretty transparent. So at the beginning of my session, like one-on-one sessions, and even to some degree, like in yoga classes, for example, I would do this, depending on the class I might ask. Like, so what, like, so how are you showing up? What do you need today? And most of the time, we can't answer that question. And I have trouble answering it, and I've practiced yoga and meditation for more than 20 years. So, like, it's still a difficult question for me to answer. So, this is not coming from a place of like, I'm just some great guru, like on a mountaintop or something. So, but what gives me such joy is that over time, people can start telling me what they want in that moment. They're like, no, can we talk a little bit first and maybe save extra time because I could use a longer practice, a buffer between me and my next thing that I have to do? Or they say, Yeah, I'm really feeling scattered. Can we do some grounding practice? Can we so like I can not even tell you how happy it makes me when people finally are able, at least in that one little space. And if you can do it in that one little space, you you will be able to do it eventually in other places too, to be able to say, to say no or to say yeah, like to say no to what you don't need and and to say yes more to what you do need, which that might mean rest, that might mean getting away, that might mean saying no to one more activity or not going to volunteer at the PTO's next thing or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00Right. And I think too, for people who are like so new to embodied experiences, starting out at meditation in the way that we typically think of meditation, right? That can be completely overwhelming. It's just like there's no I cannot silence my brain. And they get it can be given, there's a lot of resistance there. And I know you know this, but I'm just speaking as somebody who's been in that place. And what I have found is for me, it's like, you know, we don't think of certain things as meditation, but they can be like a walking meditation, right? Just being in nature without any sounds or maybe some white noise or you know, gentle music or something, and just paying attention to what's around you. That's that could that's meditative. It's a walking meditation. Meditation doesn't have to look like sitting cross-legged and like, oh, and it can, and that's wonderful. It can be that. Yeah. But it can be a lot of things. And I think it's like in those early stages, starting to learn what are the things that help you just begin to breathe and find a little spaciousness, even if it's just like an inch more than you've had, right? That is the journey towards that same experience.
Collective Trauma and the Impact of Modern Life
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And I just full disclosure, I practiced mostly a physical practice of yoga for a decade before I would very willingly sit in meditative or restorative poses. It took me a very long time to be able to do that. And now I have less interest in the physical side of the practice. I still do some, but it's more to get me settled for other stuff. But again, that's after decades of retraining my nervous system. And and I think another thing to mention about our current situation that I think we're we're constantly bypassing is the trauma we've experienced collectively because of COVID, because of um uh because of our reckoning with racial with racial justice and the huge pushback that's getting right now. And he who shall not be named. He who shall not be named, yes, throwing at us, like yeah, like throwing like not even curveballs, but like aggressive, like aggressive policies toward us that is making our lives incredibly insecure, like incredibly scary all the time.
SPEAKER_00And I think somebody is just feel it so acutely. I think that's again that burnout book. Just go back to sort of the buyback.
SPEAKER_01Because Yeah, do something like you have to get rid of the stress that we're taking on all the time. Right. And what we'll definitely talk about is the that difference in the stress cycle.
SPEAKER_00In olden times, right? Right, we didn't have 24-hour news cycles, we didn't have social media, we didn't have now AI that's even wrapped, like everything just keeps ramping up the pace of our existence to the point where there's never an end to the stress cycle. Used to be you were chased by a bear, you did your fight, fight, fight, freeze fawn, the threat was removed, you got up, you shook it off, and that's a big part of it, which you'll read in the book. Yeah, and then you moved on because there was threat, you faced the threat, the threat was removed, and then you had a response to the experience of the threat. That is like the stress cycle. And now we live in this world where it's like it's one threat and another threat. There's never an end to the threats. Right. You know, every time you check social media, I just looked, shouldn't have, and I try not
Strategies for Avoiding Burnout
SPEAKER_00too much, but when I do, it's just one incredible stressor after another. One person crying, the bomb in another place. It's just so it's like I'm introducing all of the stress, elevating my cortisol over and over again without any relief. There's no like that stress is now over. Okay, now let me take a deep breath and be like, okay, the stress is removed, the fear is gone. No, it continues. And living in that, we are living with this elevated hormonal response constantly. So, of course, when you add that on top of just being a person who has to pay bills and raise children or you know, have just exist inside of community or whatever, like fuck yeah, we're all dying here. Like it's hard, right? Right. So just trying to say, how do I get to survival mode isn't enough because we, when you're thinking, like, if I can just get to survival in my life, then it's okay. But like you just mentioned, and we can't avoid there's this collective stuff on top of that. So even if you did get to a place where you're like, okay, I'm kind of juggling all the balls, I'm barely doing it, but I got it. There's this other like dark cloud that's still there that we have to account for. And so really, we have to be more than just surviving. We need to be in thriving. We need spaciousness. So we talked about some sort of like meditated, some sort of embodied somatic experience that we need to have in our day-to-day routine in our life, finding ways to reduce the load that we're carrying, because we can't necessarily reduce the world's load, although reducing social media consumption, reducing news consumption. I think all of those are part of that, like reducing the potential for burnout. Are there other things that you think we need to be thinking about if we're trying to avoid getting to that burnout state that we haven't talked about? I'm not sure. I feel like we've covered some of the big ones.
SPEAKER_01We have covered some of the big ones. One little piece of advice that I know has for some clients at least worked, and this is an idea from a book called Essentialism by Greg McEwen, which I like a lot. Not scheduling more than 65% of your day. I have a lot of trouble with this, by the way, for myself. And I don't even have children. But I know that especially for moms who are, or any parent, it would actually regardless of gender, the person who is the the phone call person, like to leave that. I know it was revolutionary for one of my clients to say, oh, I just don't schedule more meetings that are or more work that I for my job, like more work than I can handle in that, in that time. So for her, that 65% was a pretty good, like a good number for her. But don't schedule, like, make sure you have room for the unexpected. That's particularly of children, but that's true no matter who we are. I mean, like, I again, I'm home by myself, but if I'm scheduled to like, which I often do, like minute to minute to minute, if a tech issue happens with my computer, I don't have time. Like, that means I've now, like, whatever I was gonna work on that afternoon, I can't get to until another day, right?
SPEAKER_00Like before we become the doctor's office where we've all experienced it, where they're scheduled so within an inch of their life that if one patient goes a little long the entire day, like dominoes called now, you're the last patient of the day waiting 45 minutes or an hour for your appointment, right? And you're they're they're frustrated. It doesn't serve any of us to do this. And yet we all get so guilty of it. I mean, also just as an Enneagram type six for any others out there, I need security and and safety as like sort of my primary thing. And often having a schedule feels like that to me because I feel like I'm controlling this is where control
Understanding Rest and Its Many Forms
SPEAKER_00is an issue, the unknowns by saying, I know exactly what's coming. And that could look like, though, a way to approach this as somebody who's in that mindset is I can still plan, here's my hour. That is, we'll see what happens. But I know it's that hour where that happens, right? So, like trying to find some ways to still speak to however you show up in the world. And for some people, I know they're the very opposite, where it's like a schedule feels like death. And so that might be easier for some of them. But for me, it's that's a different type.
SPEAKER_01It's a different problem. Right. There's like some like there's some middle ground, I think, to be found between those things. I also love a I'm an Enneagram eight, but I love me a sky, and and I love me a schedule. So like I'm a big fan of planning. Obviously, we both lead planning things, you know, like both part of our job, part of our work that we've made for ourselves is helping people plan. Um and I would uh another resource that people might what might be useful to people is the book Sacred Rest by Sandra uh Dalton Smith. Uh and the first half of the book in particular is really helpful. So she's a medical doctor and sort of was like, because of the pace she had to keep with patients, was like recognizing burnout in herself and then develop and saw it in her patients. Like she would have people coming in with these real physical symptoms. And then when she would do the battery of tests, like nothing, quote unquote, was wrong with them. And then, but she started saying, but fortunately, she believed people and said, okay, there is something really wrong here, but like the tools I usually have don't work, you know, like the medical stuff doesn't work for at least in some in some of these cases. And so she just started recommending rest. And so she outlined seven types of rest in there. And so it's a really I I've often helped people go through those seven types and recognize things. Often it's stuff they already do, but they don't acknowledge it as a type of rest because we've we've so uh made, you know, capitalism has made rest and wellness like a thing. If you're not paying big money and spending large amounts of money at the spa or at a yoga studio or whatever, like it's it doesn't count as rest, but we'll still think of rest only as sleep, which also is not right.
SPEAKER_00I like to think of the rest when someone, one of my clients said this to me years ago, and it really changed my thought was rest being short for restorative, meaning yes, sleep is restorative, but there are so many things that are restorative, and and what's restorative to each individual is different. So when I started thinking, like, oh, what's restorative to me, I put that in my rest column, even if it doesn't look like what we often like I don't nap, but I do a lot of things that feel restored.
SPEAKER_01I mean, there are tons of things you can be doing. So that uh people will often have their eyes opened to that. It's a really good so her framework in the first half of the book is really helpful, and I suggest that to a lot of people and I teach that all the time because what even like kind of like we were talking about with Paige and her sabbatical, but this will happen even if you start making more space in your normal everyday calendar. Like, well, what do I do with that time besides stare at a wall, you know, or or find some activity in the house to do? That's what I would say.
SPEAKER_00What's the what's the theory where time is a vacuum or whatever and something else will feel fill it? I can't wait. But there's some theory where it's like, yeah, you can create space, but something's gonna fill it. And if we aren't being really mindful about what's filling it, it will be the things that our conditioning tell us should fill it, which is well, how do I use this time to make more money? How do I use this time to do the things that I would otherwise pay people money to do, right? Like it's that, or how do I consume more in this time? The things of capitalism have conditioned this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And so that, and it can be as simple as, you know, walking outside if that's accessible to you. It can be simple, you know, it can be really like turning on a piece, one piece of music for three minutes and doing like I do that sometimes where I'm like to de-stress, like, oh, I'm gonna have a little dance party here and I'm gonna turn on one, and if it's a radio, like a song made for radio, it's between three and four minutes long. It's not this isn't a a big chunk of time that we're we're spending on that. So those are just those little things. Find little things that you can do all day long rather than feeling like, oh, it must be. I mean, I do that with people in their practice. If people want to have a meditation practice, I'm like, you can do lots of little stuff. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Meditation can be one minute. It doesn't, I think that's the other thing is people think for anything to count or to be worthwhile, it feels you know the same way we talk about movement, or people think of it as exercise in that they're thinking about it for like calorie loss or whatever. But right, we think about like, oh, it doesn't count. It's not worth it if I'm not doing 20 minutes or 30 minutes or an hour or whatever the thing is that people have in their head. And there have been plenty of things that have shown that like 21-minute sessions over time can be as effective as one 20-minute session. So just doing something, carving out time. The other thing, just for people who still have that feeling of like, because this is that guilt piece that I think so many women carry, where rest, whether it's sleep, a nap, or other restorative activities, are frivolous, selfish, lazy, whatever the condition, greedy, the conditioning you've been given. I really recommend, and I know you will too, um, Rest is Resistance by Trisha
Creativity, Consumption, and the Need for Spaciousness
SPEAKER_00Hersey of the Nat Ministry. That book, and I love listening to it, is like a sermon that while it's, I don't feel it's as instructive, but I think that's the beauty of it, because not everything has to be instructive. It is the sermon that makes you reminds you that this matters and why it matters, and why, especially for women, and most especially for black women or women of color, why these things, this restorative taking time for self care of self, creating spaciousness, why that is part of our resistance. And why that is part of the revolution that so many of us right now are thinking about. So definitely recommend for sure.
SPEAKER_01If you want to and I know I don't know the title of it off the top of my head, but she has a new book out. I I haven't read it yet. I have not either. Someone was just mentioning it to me this weekend and I sort of had it in the back of my head, like I knew, and then I I haven't taken a look. So I'm looking forward to that as well to give and she's just a great follow on Instagram if you're an Instagram person. Yeah, the nap for industry on Instagram is a great place to to find her as well if you don't, you know, the book isn't your jam for whatever.
SPEAKER_00Yes, this were a couple of white women talking about this.
SPEAKER_01I think it's important to introduce a black woman who's talking about right. And these have all been uh white people that I've recommended prior to that. But that that uh that book, Rest is Resistance, is absolutely foundational to what I do. And it was so it articulated a whole lot of things that were in a jumble in my head before reading it. So I'm grateful for for her work in helping to further pull apart like what is it about our white supremacist patriarchal culture that goes in the and toxic capitalist system that that creates this problem that we have. If we just I mean, but think about a world, this is what I've been trying to think about. Think about a world where more and more people had that kind of spaciousness. Like, what could we create? And I know that Trisha Hersey in her book, one of the things that stuck with me, and I keep repeating to myself and to others, is that we cannot be creative. We can't imagine a different world other than what we're in if we're if we're just so busy and exhausted that we we have no energy for it. Creativity needs space.
SPEAKER_00Well, we can't be creating while we're consuming, right? It's like you're either in consumption or creation, and most of us are spending some because capitalism wants us to be in consumption mode. It needs us to be. Creation is this other is this beautiful, like to me, that's that space. There's ways that consumption is also generative and and great, but create the creation place is such a generative space to be in. But we it's you can't, it's really hard to be in both simultaneously, and most of us. So I think taking a little time to audit, like you're talking about auditing your time, and how much of that is consumption versus creation, it'd be interesting to examine for sure. I am really grateful for you for this time. This went long. I wasn't expecting this much. That's okay.
SPEAKER_01It was just a good conversation, Becky. I'm happy to put another hour, so don't worry so easily because I feel like both of us need to probably bug out, but this is there you go. That's also that reminder. We need to this has been we need to take a minute.
SPEAKER_00This is creation mode, though. It has felt generative, which is beautiful, but also let's not schedule ourselves within a minute of our lives. I need a bio break before my next call. So correct. That is super. That's also okay. Thank you, Nicole, for doing this. I really appreciate it. You're so welcome. This was a joy. And the links to find Nicole and her work and everything else will be in the show notes for this. So awesome.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Nicole. Bye, have a great day. Hi, Nicole again here at the end. This episode really shin a spotlight on why women are more prone to burnout. Am I right? I mean, had you even given much thought to how much extra housework, child rearing, caregiving, or even uh adulting that you are saddled with. Um, did you hear something in that that resonated with you or maybe even caused you to make a change or have a conversation with your partner? Email me with those thoughts at defythetrend at gmail.com, or you can always leave me a voice memo. The link to that is in the show notes, as well as on my podcast website. So I really hope you enjoyed this encore presentation of the Feminist Founders podcast. I really am thankful to Becky and co-host Faith Clark for letting me drop this episode here at Just Rest. I encourage you to subscribe, rate, and review their podcast, and find their newsletter on Substack. It's feministfounders.substack.com. And FeministFounders is also a proud member of the Feminist Podcast Collection. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Remember, rest is not a retreat from the work we do in the world. It is the work. So if you're ready to rest and resist, here's what to do next. If you know someone who's running on empty, please share it with them. Hit subscribe wherever you're listening so you don't miss a single episode. Rate and review us so that other radicals can find us. Consider joining us on Substack at defy the trend.substack.com where you'll find bonused content, tips for everyday living, community connection, and resources to keep you grounded. Radicals, remember, you are worthy of rest.