265. Burnout - Recognizing the Signs and Taking Action

In this episode, we dive into the signs of burnout and how to recognize when stress is turning into something more serious. Discover quick, practical tips to help you regain control, set boundaries, and prioritize self-care before burnout takes hold. Listen in for advice on taking small steps that can make a big difference.

Subscribe & Review
Subscribing and leaving a rating and review are important factors in helping the Reshape Your Health Podcast and the YouTube Channel reach more people. If you haven't already subscribed, please do that today.

We would also be grateful if you left a rating and review, too. In your listening app, scroll to the “Ratings and Reviews” section, then click “Write a Review” and let us know what you enjoy about our show. We appreciate you taking the time to show your support. Thank you! 

Resources From This Episode

>> Insulin Resistance Diet Blueprint - https://www.zivli.com/blueprint?el=podcast

>> Free Low Insulin Food Guide - https://www.zivli.com/ultimatefoodguide?el=podcast

>> Join the Zivli Program Waitlist - https://www.zivli.com/join?el=podcast

>> Test Your Insulin at Home - https://www.zivli.com/testing?el=podcast

Have a question? Email us at: support@zivli.com

Transcript

Morgan (00:18)
Hi, I'm Dr. Morgan Nolte, founder of Zivli. As a geriatric physical therapist, I saw the heartbreaking effects of insulin resistance. At Zivli, our mission is to help you prevent and reverse insulin resistance for long-term weight loss and disease prevention through a low insulin and inflammation lifestyle. Each week on this podcast, you'll learn simple, actionable tips to lose weight, keep it off, and get healthy. If you're ready to create a body and life you love,

you're in the right place. Let's get started.

Well, hey there and welcome back to the Reshape Your Health podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Morgan Nolte. And today we're gonna talk about something that I've been teasing over the last couple of episodes, and that is burnout. This is something that I experienced on a recurring basis, especially during harvest, but I've experienced it in other times of my life as well. And for the life of me, it always sneaks up on me. It always surprises me. And I'm really committed to

do better and to structure my environment and my routines and my support system better so that I don't experience burnout or at least I reduce my risk of burnout and the severity of the burnout for the sake of my marriage, for the sake of my relationships with my kids and just for the sake of my own like mental health. So I think that this is a topic that's very important. It was more.

like highly discussed, I would say during COVID. And I think that it's still going on. We're just not talking about it as much. So whether you're managing a high stress job or balancing family responsibilities, juggling multiple projects like burnout can really sneak up on you. And it's definitely more than just feeling tired or overworked. It's a state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion that can really impact your life. So.

If you relate to that, please listen in. Please think about how you can apply the concepts that I'm teaching in this podcast today. Because burnout, it doesn't just affect your productivity. It really affects your relationships and your physical health, your mental health, your emotional health, your spiritual health, and overall just the quality of your life. So today we're going to explore the signs of burnout and more importantly, what you can do to manage it and what I'm doing right now, recover from it.

So let's talk about what is burnout. Burnout again is a state of chronic stress that leads to emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion. It's often caused by prolonged periods of overwhelming demands, lack of control, and insufficient support. There's three key components of burnout. So the first is exhaustion. Like you just feel physically drained. You feel emotionally depleted, like you do not have the mental bandwidth to show up.

and do what needs to be done with your normal positive attitude. You might also feel just like mentally foggy, like you're not firing on all cylinders. The second component is cynicism and detachment. So I really resonate with this one, a sense of disengagement, reduced motivation, negative attitudes towards your work in life. For me, bitterness is an emotion that often comes up during a season of burnout, bitterness towards my spouse, bitterness towards

just kind of the situation of harvest in general. But again, this has happened to me. I'd say harvest is the recurring one, but it's happened to me at like with work, both when I was working in traditional PT and when I worked for myself. And the interesting thing is I changed my work setting. I went from a skilled nursing facility to home care. And then I went to working for myself and I experienced burnout in all three areas. So sometimes it's not

the environment itself, it's how we're navigating through our environment. And that's what I'm really coming to learn over the years is this is an internal process. Yes, there are external factors at play for sure, but I think the key to handling burnout and preventing it and reducing it is developing our internal processes and how we deal with things and how we communicate and how we set boundaries. So I think...

One important thing that I want you to take from this is don't always like play the victim card and blame external circumstances. I know that's the default posture. I know that's easy, but that's not always just gonna fix the problem. anyways, I really, really struggle with that bitterness, that resentment, negative emotions, that kind of stuff when I'm a season of burnout. And then reduced performance. So struggling to perform even like on routine tasks.

I know I always feel very unproductive. Like normally, if I'm not burnt out, I honestly feel like I can get so much work done in a short period of time. But during a season of burnout, I work slower. It takes me longer to do something. I get distracted more easily. I get forgetful. So all of those things I definitely experience.

And I am not alone. That's why I wanted to talk about this. So according to studies, burnout affects nearly 77 % of employees globally. That's like, if you look around your workplace, three out of four of you are probably burnt out. And it's especially prevalent in high stress professions like healthcare, education, and customer service. Again, I was in healthcare, kind of am still, and I've done a really, really good job at restructuring my work environment, my work schedule.

reducing my work hours, delegating, building a team. Like I did not experience work burnout during this harvest and it was amazing. I just experienced like mom burnout. And so there's different forms and kinds of burnouts and causes of burnout, but it is possible. Like I'm living proof it's possible to make changes and prevent it in the future. So we can do this. Now, according to the Cleveland Clinic,

This is important because I think a lot of people listening to this podcast are caring for aging parents or have cared for aging parents. More than 60 % of caregivers experience symptoms of burnout. And it's important to recognize this is not like a light switch. This is a gradual process that occurs when the stress of caregiving tasks, they really take priority or precedence over your personal needs and commitments. So over time, just like bit by bit, you're like chipping away

at your time and your energy. And that's, think, why it sneaks up on me every time. It's not like an on-off process. It's like a gradual light switch. And then all of a sudden, I'm just like, done. I just snap. So this is, you know, it's dangerous for my relationships for sure. But again, it can lead to physical health problems. So thankfully, this time I haven't had interrupted sleep. But in previous burnout episodes, I

definitely have had sleep issues. Typically, I develop some level of anxiety, sometimes depression, not always, but over time, if we don't handle this, it's gonna lead to more serious issues, maybe some heart issues or high blood pressure. We know that chronic stress raises your blood sugar levels and increases your risk for diabetes. But to me, the most important aspect of this is it can lead to just long-term

dissatisfaction and interpersonal conflicts. And I'm really committed to my marriage. I'm really committed to my family. And I understand that I have to that I get to that I want to improve myself to improve those relationships. So I, I understand I married a gem of a man like he's amazing. I understand my kids are so amazing. And that it's my personal attitude and my boundaries and my environment.

that I have control over that will help this situation. So let's move on to just recognizing some more signs of burnout. I've kind of mentioned a few of them, but we have the chronic fatigue. It's like you're constantly feeling tired, even after a full night of sleep. Maybe you're having sleep problems, like you have a hard time falling asleep, you're waking up during the middle of the night and your mind is racing. That was kind of my sleep problem was.

I'd wake up at like three or four a.m. just thinking about all of the work related tasks that I wanted to get done or both of our kids so far have been terrible sleepers. So we definitely developed sleep, sleep anxiety. Like are they just going to start crying again? Like right when we fall asleep. And then over time, if we don't address this, you're going to experience frequent illness. So burnout definitely weakens the immune system. You might experience chronic colds or headaches or intestinal issues or autoimmune

like autoimmune issues are very common as well. Some of the mental and emotional signs that I wanted to repeat were irritability. So this is a classic sign for me when I'm short tempered with my husband or with my kids. Cynicism, another classic sign for me. I develop a negative and a detached attitude. Sometimes I just like numb out and spend too much time watching TV just because it's like the only place where I feel like I can stop thinking about the stress.

Feelings of ineffectiveness. you you might feel like you're just going through the motions. You're not really getting the joy that you used to get out of life or daily experiences or your work. And then anxiety and depression. So that's not just like feeling sad for a little bit. You know, this is persistent feelings of worry or sadness or hopelessness or just like you don't know what to do. And that causes some people anxiety.

Some behavioral signs that I think are interesting are procrastination. If you find yourself procrastinating a lot, that could be a sign of burnout. And that's often just because you're putting tasks off because you feel overwhelmed. Isolation is a big one. So if you find yourself withdrawing from friends, family, colleagues, avoiding social situations. Now I do have to put a caveat in here. That is kind of my MO anyways. I am a little bit of a

and a big introvert, first of all, but I personally just like being at home and I like being around just a small group of people at a time. So I wasn't big to engage in social interactions anyways, but for me, that isolation is like, I just don't experience it because I'm pretty isolated anyways. But if you're more of an extrovert, you might experience that. Reduced motivation. So.

loss of interest in activities that once brought joy or fulfillment for you. I experienced that as well just because it's like you're already so tired. Like who wants to go out? Like for me, it's like riding a bike and I have to drive to a trail to do that. And it's like, it just seems like so much work. Like I'm already tired. So I don't want to spend any more time or energy like doing things that bring me joy. I also find gratitude harder to practice. And then again, I forget things that that's a big sign for me as well.

just forgetting like something in the kid's backpack or something that I was gonna say. So another behavioral sign. And you absolutely do not have to experience all of these symptoms to be burnt out. Even just a few could kind of be the flag that you need to recognize it, acknowledge it and get some help. So let's talk about what you can do about it. The first step.

I think the biggest step is just to acknowledge it and recognize it, accept that burnout is real. You are not making this up. It's a sign that you need to take care of yourself because denying the burnout, first of all, it invalidates your feelings. And other people might say, you're fine. Like just push through it, whatever. You know how you feel. know, listen to your instinct, listen to your intuition. If you feel burnt out, you probably are. And then secondly, give yourself some grace.

Like you do not have to be perfect. I think a lot of people wear these masks of perfectionism that cause exhaustion. Like nobody is perfect. I think everybody like looks on social media and assumes that everybody lives this like perfect life. One of the many problems with social media. So be kind to yourself. You are not perfect. You are not supposed to be perfect. You do not have to be perfect. And it's okay to not feel okay.

Okay, it's okay to not feel okay, but you will be okay, if that makes sense. Step number two is set boundaries. This was absolutely critical when I was experiencing work burnout. Again, changing job settings did not help with the burnout. I still got burnt out until I learned how to set boundaries. One of the main causes of burnout is overwork and a lack of boundaries.

So learning how to say no or set realistic time limits on your time and your energy. So what that looked like for me was I don't work in the evenings like 99 % of the time anymore. I used to work, gosh, when I started this business, who even knows, like 50, 60 hours a week. Oftentimes it was like multitasking with the kids in the background or staying up late at night or staying up all night. It was not.

It was not ideal and it definitely led to burnout. So over the years, I've been able to build a team and delegate tasks and build processes and systems so that I can delegate and things can run smoothly without me doing everything. And that has been the biggest game changer. So if you don't work for yourself, really having a conversation with your boss about your burnout and working together to maybe create a more realistic.

schedule or expectations for like when you're available to communicate for example so that you're not answering emails or work calls after hours. This is the second one that I'm working on right now is personal boundaries. Again, I was experiencing mom burnout during this harvest season and you know, it's not like they're wonderful kids, like they're just, they're great. But that day in, day out,

caregiving responsibility, getting them to the practices, getting them to the games, the meals, the laundry, the housekeeping, everything. What I realized was I am designed to need more rest than what I am giving myself. And that is okay. Like I do not have to be that engaged, active mom 100 % of the time. My house does not need to be perfectly clean all of the time.

We don't always have to have like delicious healthy meals all of the time. But more importantly, I think just a boundary on like what I'm responsible for during our busy seasons like harvest and what my husband is responsible for. So that kind of takes us to step three, which is delegating and asking for help because you really, can't do everything by yourself.

Whether it's at work, whether it's in your personal life, I know the feeling that you have to trust me. I have been there. Like I know what it feels like to feel like you have to do all the things, but you don't. My colleague with Zivli Beth, she gave me this really nice analogy once that's like, it's almost like you're juggling balls. Some of the balls you're juggling are glass. Some of the balls that you're juggling are plastic. Some of them are rubber, which means you can let some of the balls drop at least for a season.

but don't let the glass ones drop. And for me, the glass ones would be my relationship with my husband, my kids, my faith. Those are the biggest like balls that I have in the air that I don't want to let drop that are my priorities. So in order to honor those relationships and all seasons and not get burnt out, I have to ask for more help. So at home, like what this is going to look like is

We're gonna be meeting, my husband and I will meet kind of seasonally to say, all right, know, baby's coming in April. What is our plan? You know, okay, Justin, you're gonna be taking the two older kids to school every day for the remainder of the school year. You're gonna be packing their lunches, but I will be happy to you know, prep something for breakfast, prep something for lunch. It's gonna change season to season. Like who's mainly responsible for this? Who's responsible for that?

But having those clearly defined, realistic, shared, agreed upon expectations, I think will help me especially from having unrealistic expectations on him. And then also just giving myself grace for what I've agreed to, know? And I think part of that too is scheduling in self-care more, scheduling in rest time more, which kind of takes us to the next thing. So really, really prioritizing self-care because

Burnout recovery starts with taking care of yourself, understanding yourself, getting to know yourself. I feel like I do a really good job taking care of my physical health, even during a season of burnout. Like my sleep was okay, my exercise was okay, my nutrition was okay, but my emotional health definitely suffered. My spiritual health suffered. My mental health also suffered.

For me, prioritizing self-care looks different at different seasons along your health journey. But just physically, think it's so important to take care of your physical health because it really assists you in taking care of your mental and your emotional health too. So focusing on getting good sleep, eating nourishing food, exercising regularly, staying hydrated, kind of doing all of those basic things is important during a season of burnout and recovering from burnout.

recovering from burnout might require more rest as well. I'll kind of talk about how I'm doing that in a little bit.

So rest isn't, again, rest is something that I have not done enough of and I'm working on that. So emotionally, I think finding activities that you can find joy in and relax in, meditating, reading, spending time in nature, enjoying hobbies that you're passionate about, connecting with loved ones who don't judge you and who love you unconditionally.

and who aren't just gonna sit there and like try to fix your problems. I don't think that's the kind of self care we need. I think we need more of like that compassion, understanding type of energy. Another thing I'm doing for self care right now is getting more into human design. So I'm not gonna get into the details today. I say it's kind of like, you know, there's like the Myers-Briggs and the Clifton Strengths Finders Test to kind of find your strengths and your personality traits.

This is similar, but it's way more woo woo. But it's more so like, how are you energetically designed? And I don't care that it's woo woo, to be honest. I'm finding it really helpful to understand myself on a deeper level energetically. And a few things that I've recognized by digging into my human design is yes, I need more rest. I am designed in a way to

be able to work for bouts of time, but then I need more rest than most of the population. And I have been neglecting that. Another thing is not offering my help unless it's requested. I'm usually very good at that, at seeing the need, offering my help. But what I've realized is if the help isn't invited, that can lead to bitterness and that can lead to resentment and that can...

not be the best use of my energy. There's so much that I'm learning from it. It's been really refreshing and really validating to understand like, I think another huge thing that I've understood in this is, like my energy field, my aura is very permeable. And I have always felt that I have always felt like I can sense people's energies. I can also like connect very deep with people very quickly.

I can get to the heart of things like one of my friends in college, he's still our friend, Sean, he would joke with me. He's like, Morgan, anytime I feel like I come over and talk with you, it's like you're peeling open my soul and like inspecting it. And I'm very good at that. But what I've realized is that has to be invited. And there has to be some sort of exchange, otherwise it's just draining on me energetically. So what I'm doing is more energy protection and more energy cleansing and

Specifically, that's more meditations, more rest, and then more like hot baths and showers. I'm also gonna try to spend more time in nature. So those are the things that I'm doing to prioritize my self-care. So far as I've lay members, I'm big on action items. So this week, my action items are to meditate, like do a meditation on my phone before bed, and then have some sort of like mindfulness practice in the morning where it's either gratitude or another meditation.

taking a hot bath or shower right after dinner so that I'm just like cleansing that energy out. And then the last thing is really being aware that other people's energy is not my energy. Yes, I am prone to absorb that and amplify that and reflect it back to people. I'm almost like a chameleon, but like on steroids with my energy. So if I'm around super happy people, I can get super duper happy and be very extroverted.

If I'm around somebody who's sad, can go there with them. I can feel that with them. Sometimes at the detriment of my own energy. so getting to know myself better on an energetic level will absolutely help me protect my energy so that I can let the good energies in, but recognize the chaos from my kids, the frustration from my kids, something negative from somebody else.

I don't have to let that in and I don't have to embody that. And that's not my energy. That's somebody else's energy that I can choose to not let in. So for me, prioritizing self care right now is just getting to know myself better on a deeper energetic level and creating some strategies and systems around my energy protection and cleansing. I know that's a little bit woo woo, but hey, it's helpful for me. So the next thing that you can do,

is just reconnect like with your purpose in life and your meaning in life, whether that is professional or personal. So reconnecting an example here is I went to visit my grandma this weekend and she lives out at Lake McConaughey and it's a beautiful place. It's always kind of been like my happy place. Had some nice conversations with her. Got a break from caregiving responsibilities for the kids. Justin watched them, thankfully.

And it's almost like that emotional and mental and spiritual reset when you're away from your normal environment. I was able to get out into nature a little bit. So for me, like just getting away for a weekend is such a reset and a great way to recover from burnout. The next step is to seek professional help if needed. So if this burnout is feeling overwhelming,

getting therapy or a counselor can be helpful. I have tried that in the past and there are so many different kinds of therapy. I just don't think that I've ever really found a therapist that I connect with very well, but I'm certainly open to it. I just think that I'd be a little bit more specific in the type of therapy that I want and the type of therapist that I want, but I know so many people find therapy extremely helpful.

And then the last thing that we can do is to take breaks and take time off. So again, just like I went to the lake this weekend, sometimes the best way to reset is just to step away entirely. So a weekend getaway, a vacation, even if it's just a day off, like give yourself the time and space to rest. This is something that I'm gonna be doing more and more of. And it's also kind of part of our, we call it the planting plan. So this spring when the baby comes,

Right when planting starts, I'm gonna be asking my mom for more support, my mother-in-law for more support, and then we have a wonderful babysitter here too. Asking her just to help out like on a Saturday occasionally or a Saturday afternoon so that I can just have some personal time. It'll be so nice. And then during these breaks, try as best you can to avoid work-related tasks entirely to allow your mind and your body to truly relax.

And if work is not the cause of your burnout, like it wasn't for me, that means avoid caregiving responsibility tasks. If you're aging for, or if you're caring for aging parents, take a break from that for a weekend or even just a day and let yourself mentally reset. So I hope that those tips were helpful. I again have used all of those tips in the past. What I'm focusing on most right now is just my energy and getting to know myself better on an energetic level.

figuring out what my environment should be like, what my schedule should be like, how much more rest I really need to thrive, and then guarding my energy from the negative energy of other people. So I think just to kind of wrap this up when we're talking about preventing burnout in the future, the first thing is just to build resilience. And this happens over time. One of my best friends, Megan, told me, I don't...

know like the context behind this but i like the story. she said that they tried to build like this completely like i don't know this environment but it was like artificial and so they they planted trees in this like perfect environment with perfect conditions but no wind and over time like they just realized these trees are so weak they don't have any root systems because the wind is what

challenges the trees to make their roots grow deeper. And that's exactly what seasons of burnout can do for us too. It's like we're a tree, the burnout is the wind. It's challenging us to really deepen our roots, deepen our understanding of ourselves, our behavior, and what we need to thrive. So don't think about burnout always as a bad thing. Think of it as an opportunity to build resilience.

and build personal strategies, get to know yourself better. So coping strategies, mindfulness strategies, expanding your network, getting good at asking for help, getting good at saying no, all of those are opportunities that come out of a season of burnout. The next one is to create a sustainable work-life balance. So regularly reassessing our balance, our harmony, and I don't really like the word balance because I think

I always think of like a scale and like you're either perfectly in balance or you're not. And I just don't think that's a realistic expectation. Work-life harmony is actually one of our company core values. So anybody who works for us, I always say, I don't wanna overwork you. Please let me know if I'm ever asking too much of you. I want you to be able to have a like family life too. That's important to me. I want that to be important to you too. So I think having those like,

regular meetings with Justin to say, this season is coming up. What is our family plan to prevent burnout, to prevent overwhelm, for regular connection? Another super important thing is that we're gonna be going to church together as a family every week. So for whatever reason, when harvest hit, he wouldn't necessarily come to church and that was hard on me. And I was honest with him about that. But I think when you get so caught up in the routine of work,

Like it just, it is what it is. And that's kind of how I accepted it. But I realized that that regular connection with him is so important to me. And so that was something that I think will make a big difference, like moving forward and planting and future harvest with our work-life harmony to find rhythms that work for our family. I'm really excited for that. I'm excited for those meetings. Yeah.

It'll just be a really positive change for us. The next thing is just creating a supportive environment. So surround yourself with people who understand these signs of burnout and can help support you when you need help. I think during seasons of burnout, I guess I do tend to isolate because I'm not as engaged with, you know, my friends or my mom or my mother-in-law during these seasons. I'm just almost in survival mode. So I think I could do a better job about that. And then

talking openly about your mental health to people who care, to people that aren't gonna judge you, to people that aren't just like gonna be like, well, you should do this and this and this and this. And you're like, okay, like that sounds overwhelming. So just, you know, if you're gonna share this with somebody, be sure you're sharing it with people who will be compassionate and not judge you. And then practicing regular self check-ins. So this is something that I'm getting better at, but just making it a habit to check in with

like myself with yourself regularly, asking yourself how you're feeling, like what's going well, where you might need adjustments. And I know that in seasons of burnout, it can be so hard to pause. And that's why in the season of recovery, I'm focusing on building those habits of regular, like regularly pausing throughout the day, regularly like cleansing my energy throughout the day.

so that when we get into a more intense season, when baby comes in April, when planting comes in April, I have those established habits and I will be better set up to sustain those habits during a busier season. All right, we're gonna wrap it up. So burnout is real. It's important to recognize the signs early before it becomes overwhelming. I have not gotten there yet, but I do believe that this harvest is

kind of like the last one that I will tolerate this level of burnout. That's kind of what I told Justin, I just never wanna do that again. And I don't think that we need to, I think we can plan better, we can be more proactive, we can work together, we can communicate more, we can find strategies to prevent it because dang it, I think it's like it's almost something that's easier to prevent than.

then go through and recover from, but it takes that mindfulness to like really be intentional to prevent it. Remember, it's okay to not be okay sometimes, and it's okay to not have a solution or an answer to your problems yet. So learning how to just sit in that discomfort and not trying to fix it or fix yourself, I think is a good strategy, just almost like building your emotional resiliency. So being very mindful of your environment,

your energy, your self-care practices, creating boundaries around your work and your personal life, being sure that you have enough rest in your schedule, I think is so important. So I hope that you found this episode helpful. I hope that you resonated with some of it. If you're experiencing burnout, I hope you take even just like one strategy from today and try to implement it. I hope that you communicate with your loved ones about this.

because they care about you and they love you and they want to support you and they want your success and they want you to be happy. And so let them love you, let them be there for you. That's a blessing for them, that's a joy for them to be there for you. So do not be afraid to lean on your support system in a hard time. They love you. So I hope that you have a wonderful week and I will talk with you at the same time, same place next week. Bye for now.

Thanks for listening to the Reshape Your Health podcast today. To learn more about Zivli, our online course and coaching program to reverse insulin resistance for long-term weight loss and disease prevention, check out our website at www.zivli.com. That's z-i-v-l-i dot com. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please leave a rating and review on your listening platform and share it with a friend.

I'll talk with you at the same time, same place next week. Bye for now.