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EP077: Combatting burnout · Unpause Your Life

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You are listening to Unpause your Life with Doctor Cally As Says and Master Coach
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Jenny Fontana, founders of the Life Coach method. Each one of our uplifting
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and deep dive episodes is heared to help you tackle the things that hold you
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back from having the most magnificent life you deserved. Sit back, relax,
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and prepare to be coached. You are listening to Unpause your Life with Doctor
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Calli Ess and Master Coach Jenny Fontana, and today's today's episode is something we
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can all relate to. We are going to talk about burnout. Now,
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whether you're a mom who's burnout, an executive who's burnout, or both.
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Burnout is a real thing and a lot of people mistake burnout for depression.
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So we're going to talk about that. And as I always say, it's
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better to burnout than fade away, my reference to my gen X people from
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Death Leopard. Those of you that don't know that are either too young or
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too old listening to our podcast, so welcome. We're going to bring the
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energy today to talk about burnout mischief you lack when you're in burnout, then
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you have no energy. You have no energy. So let's talk about it.
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What does burnout mean to you? So burnout is like critical level of
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exhaustion. I traditionally I feel like the definition applied only to work, but
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now our definition of work has changed in twenty twenty two. So anything that
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causes you significant amount of stress to the point of exhaustion, where it physically
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and mentally taxes you, that to me could be burnout. My husband mentally
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and physically taxes me. But that's not burnout. Well, then you are
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having all the all the women listening just went that's me. That's me.
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I just I heard myself in there. Okay. So let's talk about the
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signs of burnout. So here are the clinical. So when we talk about
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clinical, what a therapist would diagnose you with. First one is feeling out
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of control. Everything is overwhelming. You no longer can control getting the kids
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up, making the lunches, going to work, coming home, making the
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dinner, walking the dog. All of that stuff is just too much.
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The second one is the one you mentioned exhaustion. And it's not just I'm
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tired because I put it in an eight hour day and I don't want to
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go to the gym and I want to sit on my bed and eat bon
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bonds and watch Netflix. Not that I do that, but may have done
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that past. It's a bigger exhaustion. It's like overwhelm of the thought of
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getting up and making the lunch. Okay. The next one is reduced interest
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in worker personal life. Don't feel like going to work, don't feel like
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helping people. Now, this is a big one for therapists because you all
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know I'm a clinician. We have a ten year early death rate among us
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because we are listening to people complain all day a lot about everything, and
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when we burn out, we not only don't want to listen to you complain,
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we want to complain that no one wants to listen to us. So
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it's very interesting for what you do in terms of burnout. The next one
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is physical disturbances, similar to stress, but more pronounced. So you're a
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nutritionist, stomach ache, right, graving cake, candy, pasta mask,
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you end up with the stomach ache, correct, ye, But it's more
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than that. It's the digestive changes that your body actually physically goes through because
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your cortisol levels stay up high. Uh. Your your stress response is sometimes
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it's not eating. Sometimes you're so burn you're so overwhelmed with what's happening that
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you don't eat, so and then your digestive system is in a state of
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chaos. It could be diarrhea, to be constipation, and anything from one
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end to the other. And those of you that just went, oh,
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that's how I could lose weight. I just need to be burnout so I
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don't eat. That is not a viable solution to weight loss, ladies and
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gentlemen. The next one is feeling helpless, trapped, detached, defeated,
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sarcastic. I give up, right. We've all known somebody who says,
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you know what, I'm just tired of everything. I quit right. Usually
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in this stage we end and up in front of a therapist going I'm depressed
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because they don't really know what burnout is, and that therapist goes, not
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a problem. Let me send you to a psychiatrist who will write a prescription
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for that. And now you're on subalta. You're on well for your trend.
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One of these days, big Bart is going to assume me you're on
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all the garbage for depression, but you're really not depressed to burn out.
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So that's what happens next. And then if you don't get medicated, you
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end up disregarding your responsibilities forgetting to make lunch, for getting to pick up
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Susie from school, and there she is standing in the rain at four point
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thirty in the afternoon because you forgot becoming isolated. Your friends want to go
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out for lunch, you don't want to go arguing, starting a fight in
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Walmart other than the normal crazy Walmart stuff. And of course my field subs
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dispuse. I end up with a lot of high functioning executives that come to
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me and say, I just can't handle all of this stuff going on,
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all this noise, noise at work, noise at home. There's noise everywhere,
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and I got a drink to bring it down a notch. Well.
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And here's what's interesting. The two primary people who experience burn out the most
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are your type A personalities, your executives, I mean, people who are
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on all the time, and your caregivers, people who are on for someone
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else all the time, working to take care of kids, they're taking care
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of elderly parents. I mean, I know you joked about gen X,
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but we are now in the perfect middle ground for being there to take care
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of both our aging parents and our children that were grown you know, that
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are growing up in our household, so we sometimes end up right in the
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middle of that. I put both my parents on notice, and this is
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probably horrible. Do not come to me to change your diaper. I will
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pay for someone to do it for you, but I am not the caregiver.
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I am the type of executive. So and you've both dead that our
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parents will come to me. Yes, that's a great idea. You can
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have them both. You could have both. They're crazy all they're chaos at
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one time, not for me, So yeah, you're right. Though gen
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X has kids, they're dealing with gen X has parents, aging parents that
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may need and need those resources coming soon. Most of my friends are getting
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divorced, so it's that on top of it, career changes, divorce,
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midlife crisises. I'm watching half my friends are like, I'm going to get
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a boob job and I'm going to learn pole dancing, and I just bought
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a Corvette, and I'm like, whoh, We're all having midlife crisis at
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the same time. And I'm over here going I'm deciding if i should get
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my first round the botox, and most of my friends are already frozen face.
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So gen X is yeah. And we handle stress a life better than
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I think Eddie generation because we raised ourselves. I mean, we were the
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letsky kids. We didn't have parents, so a lot of stress we handle
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and handle and handle, but we do break and when we break, everything
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goes to shit because we're the caregivers. We're the cleaners. Where the cookers,
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where the transportation? You know, we answer the husband when he opens
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the frigerator and goes, where's the kutchu and you're looking at it, going
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second shelf, right behind the milk, you know where it is. For
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some reason he can't put his hand in there and move stuff around. We're
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doing all this stuff. That burnout is eminent, you know. And oddly
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enough, one of the I'm going to use the term self care loosely here
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because of how it works. One of one of the things that especially women
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love to do at the end of the night might be had that glass of
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wine as they consider self it's their time to relax, to unwine. And
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as much as that can be a good form of relaxing with one glass or
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two, it actually is one of the few components that can really exacerbate burnout.
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So those who aren't exercising on a regular basis women and this does go
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for men too, but women are the ones who are predominantly expressing this burnout
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these symptoms. Men don't generally report this as much. But you know,
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not working out on a consistent basis, being obese, and actually being a
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heavy drinker. So drinking to excess actually can increase the likelihood of burnout.
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And you may think, oh, I'm just going out on a Friday night
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to you know, release all my stress with my friends and end up.
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You know, drinking way too much every week is going to spiral you into
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another problem that you're going to have to deal with down the road. So
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you said two very important pieces of information right now, actually said three.
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One was nutrition. If you are eating garbage, you're already taxing your indocrine
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system, your adrenal system, You're already gonna be tired. So pop tarts
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and hot pockets are not food. Feeding the kid chicken nuggets and macaroni and
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cheese. As much as it's easy, it's not food, Especially if you're
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eating it. Your body's already going to be taxed from that, which makes
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disease and inflammation and inflammation goes up. It causes disease. It also causes
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burnout. All of these things are related, so you have to eat healthy.
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Whether you want to or not, you have to. The second one
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you talked about alcohol. A lot of people use alcohol. They use opiates,
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they use xenax, they use anything they can get their hands on,
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quote unquote tune out the noise. So if I take a glass of wine,
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I can unwind. The problem is wine is basically poison. There's nothing
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in wine that's really good for you. So I think I'm relaxing, but
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I'm really not. Again, I'm taxing my physical system. So it's one
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hurdle my physical system has to dig out of. And then, like most
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of my clients, that one glass of wine turns into two, turns into
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three, turns into I'm gonna start drinking at two o'clock while I'm on a
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zoom call, and I'm gonna put it in a coffee mug, and next
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thing you know, they have an alcohol problem. So that's huge. Another
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piece of exercise. People laugh at me because I get up, I put
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my gym clothes on, and I don't come out of my gym clothes until
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I've gone to the gym. That means if it's eight thirty at night,
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I'm still in my gym clothes. If I haven't worked out, I'm gonna
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work out. And that's important because people say I don't have time to work
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out, and I do it in fifteen minute increments, so I'm a you.
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Also, you're not only working out for the physical benefits, you're also
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working out, which is what everybody needs to do for the emotional and mental
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health benefits of right size right. And that's a huge part of combating the
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burnout syndrome because it is physical and emotional, mental, you know, And
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just simply doing that fifteen minutes get so many pieces of your day on break?
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Do you know what I mean? For that fifteen minutes to allow you
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to get out of your head being CEO being all things for everybody, and
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you're going, I don't have to think of anything but what I need to
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do, and you're hitting every part of your body to be physically affected,
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but you're also changing your head space. Right. And one of the things
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I do, like in night, I know I don't sleep well unless I've
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done some form of workout, whether it's fifteen minutes yoga, fifteen minutes of
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zumba, which is five zumba songs on the YouTube. I've got a commercial
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gym in my house, so fifteen minutes on the gauntlet, fifteen minutes on
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the deck something, and then I really want to work out. I'll go
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to the gym and I'll be around people, but not around people because put
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my headset in, put by my baseball cap on. But I'm around people
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and I'm watching them work out, which makes me want to work out.
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So that's the key to everything. Even if it's fifteen minutes here, fifteen
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minutes there, sneaking it in, you know when you can. You have
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to sneak it in because it helps with all the physical symptoms but also with
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the mental systems. It's a de stressor and it's a great serotonin booster for
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the happy capital well exactly because if you are constantly stressed, your cortisol levels
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stay elevated, You're affecting your adrenals. You're going to fatigue them and literally
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burn them out. And like you said, it's going to change, especially
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for women, there's going to be rapid change in your hormone. It'll be
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imbalanced. Everything will be off, which is going to cause that many more
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symptoms physically, mentally, and emotionally. Yet coming from not finding that ballance,
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you know, keep yourself out of burnout, and that's self care,
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which comes along with taking a hot bath at night and not answering the phone
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past a certain hour or getting off your social media. And you know,
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I work with CEOs that say to me, I'm on zooms from eight o'clock
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in the morning to eight o'clock at night, to the point where they're eating
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on the zoom because they're not taking any kind of break, they're not going
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to the bathroom, they're not doing anything. And you have to decompress from
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social media. You have to decompress from your phone. You have to unplug
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from technology because that in itself causes all kinds of physical problems. So if
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you're always on your phone, you're always checking things, you're always checking your
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email, and you're always in a state of flux. If I might miss
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something, which is a whole other episode we're going to talk about, fomo
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are missing out. That causes burnout. So you have to be able to
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step back and relax from all this stuff. Because if you work for someone
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else, At the end of the day, you are replaceable period. As
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much as people like to say you know they need me, they can replace
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you. I've owned enough companies and work for enough companies that you are an
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expendable person. So if you've died tomorrow, they're going to hire by next
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week. Now, if you own your own company, of course you're gonna
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want to make more money. You're gonna want to put more hours in.
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It's also about systems, which we're going to get into another podcast, and
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how to make your money work for you, which is a whole other ball
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game that we're going to talk about. Especially in our Life Coach course.
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We have coming up to Life Coach method on how to work less, make
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more money, and make a bigger footprint help more people. There's a way
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to do that without burning out yourself. It's just knowing how to make it
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happen, because a lot of people don't know how to do it, and
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they don't have healthy boundaries. You know, they don't say I'm doing this,
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this is my time. They don't tell their husband, I don't want
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to go out Friday night because I'm tired. I don't want to go have
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dinner with that couple that I can't stand because you know, it's a fake
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conversation. They don't want to let their friends go from high school or college
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even though they're now thirty five with two kids and they're tired. So all
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of those things have to be in consideration when you talk about lifestyle. Yeah,
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because I think women in general think we need to be all things to
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all people at all times, or we're letting some ball drop somewhere somehow,
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and then we take on the guilt of that, which that's probably a whole
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other episode two, but that, Yeah, but I don't have that at
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all, which we both do. Most people do. Many, many women
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especially have this society pressure that they're supposed to be able to do all the
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things that we did as nineteen fifties women when we also didn't work forty five
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to fifty hour or more work week, you know, and be home and
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have everything ready in the evening, and you know, just they believe it
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to be for mentality, which great, but it doesn't work all the time.
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But really bringing it back is, you know, taking care of your
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physical body day to day will allow you to start to recharge your mind and
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working those two components together is going to really keep the burnout from hitting critical
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masks. You know, that's the most important thing, because you can't just
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get up and stop everything that you might be doing. I mean, as
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a surgeon, you can't just decide you're not you know, you can't do
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the surgery. As a CEO, you can't just decide I'm not running the
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company necessarily on any given day, you know. So you have to implement
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things that are going to have help you work on managing that balance. So
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things like we've talked about already, like diet and exercise, stay hydrated,
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that's huge. I mean, I know how many times if I don't have
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a glass or a bottle of water near me, I don't think of it.
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It's it's you know, it's not something I think of. You mentioned
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earlier about not sleeping well. Our minds are always running. Half the reason
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you probably don't sleep well is because you're thinking of all the things you're ready
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preparing to do the next day. So finding a way an outlet to keep
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that pen and paper on the night stand before you go to bed and jot
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down the things that are running through your head to allow you to have a
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mental break. I think Connecting with friends is another one that's huge. All
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too often, and I did say, like women are more apt to report
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burnout and we'll talk about it. But making sure that we don't stay isolated,
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you know, in what we feel, I think is a huge thing
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that we have to make sure that people know that it's you're not alone.
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You know that it's okay to mention it to friends. It's okay to go
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out and say, hey, I need I need to connect, I need
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to go let's you know, let's go do something. You know, let's
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go play mini golf. And the reverse of that is true because some of
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us get our energy alone and some of us get our energy in groups.
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You're a group person when you love to be around people, you're very social.
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You get your energy around people. People fucking exhaust me because as soon
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as I'm around them, they want me to solve every issue they have.
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And I'm listening to this one's problems and that was right, And I did
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this for a living, so I don't want to do your problems. So
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I would rather be alone than around people. So for me, it's the
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opposite. So if you're listening, don't think that you need to go out
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and have coffee. If it's something you don't want to do, I'm frankly
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happy not doing it. And people say, you know, do you have
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friends. Yeah, we talk on the phone. I have two girlfriends.
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We meet up for girls year once a year, weekend, whatever. We're
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perfectly fine with that. I have a friend I talk to once every two
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years. Anna. We're fine with that. We pick up right where we
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left off because we don't need to be out there around each other for the
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energy. It's just different types of people. So you have to know what
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recharges your battery and what makes you tick. So if you need that socialization,
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get out and do it. If you need that alone time, take
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it. You know, shut the bathroom door, grab a book, dim
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the lights, take a hot bath, and totally veg out or put on
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a podcast. If you're super feeling depressed, watch a comedy, watch a
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YouTube stand up video. I always watch Jeff Dunham. I love Jeff Dunham.
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So when I want to laugh and he brings out, you know,
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silence, ay kill you. I'm laughing my ass off at that. And
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I mean it's not even funny for a lot of people, but I think
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it's hilarious. So getting out of the mindset into a positive mindset is key
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to combating burnout. But it has to be basically whatever allows you to feel
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like you're getting a break whatever, exactly, exactly, and it has to
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start with the physical first. You cannot dig the mental out. If you're
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eating pizza and garbage and not working out and on your phone constantly, your
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mental is not going to get better until you change the physical. It's always
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chemical first. Then from there you can change the mental. Any other tips
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or tricks that you have for us, that's all I could think of.
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Yeah, No, I mean the other one that everybody loves to use,
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mindfulness. It's, you know, a good buzzword these days. But I
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think understanding and being away of what you're feeling in general, just being mindful
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of how much you're actually doing in a day and how you feel about it.
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You know where that is. Again, we're trying to alleviate hitting critical
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mass burnout so that you can say, Okay, you know what, it's
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not like, this isn't like a one day thing. Okay, I had
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a really hard day and I need to go, you know, sleep an
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extra five hours. Okay, you know what, great, that's the day
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and you move on. This is like you know a time frame and you
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realize that over this time frame, you're increasingly getting more stressed and more anxious,
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or you know, or you're gaining a lot of weight, or you're
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just feeling generally poor of health. Being mindful of what's leading up to that.
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That might even be your first step knowing I'm taking on too much and
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allowing yourself that time to go. I need a break, simple, simple,
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Let never perform that break. Case that goes back to no is a
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complete sentence. No. I have no problem telling people I'm not doing that
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and they get They're like, oh, well, you have such an attitude.
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You never want to do anything. I'm not doing it. I don't
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feel like doing it. And I'm at an age where I don't have to
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go out and do small talk if I don't want you anymore. You know,
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a lot of people feel obligated to do that and then to talk about
23:23
nothing for hours, and they just feel like, well, I just wasted
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three hours having dinner and talked about nothing and it wasn't accomplishing anything. And
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now I'm even more tired after working a full day taking care of a baby
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and I got to work tomorrow, so you can say no and that's okay.
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And as you go through different stages of your life, you're going to
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find out that some you know, when you're young, you want to go
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out, want a party, you want to do all that. Once you
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start having kids, it's harder to go out during the work week. You're
23:52
tired, you put in a full day, you have kids in the morning,
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you have kids at night. You know, it's hard to go out
23:59
for a two hour dinner. And then on the weekend sometimes you've got soccer
24:02
practice and baseball practice and cheerleading practice and drama and all this stuff, and
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your friend goes, well, you don't have time for me anymore. So
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yeah, that's the case. I mean, that's kind of how it is.
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And the kids get older and they go to college, and then all
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of a sudden, you're like, wow, I have all this free time
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and you want to go out with everybody. So it's not abnormal to want
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to take a break. You just have to know when you need that break
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and give yourself that space before you get into the burnout base, right exactly.
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Yep. So keeping in line with our short podcast, as you're driving
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to and from work, or going to the bathroom or taking a shower,
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whatever it is you're doing, taking that break so that you don't burn out.
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Yes, listening to us, We appreciate it. We love you.
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Give us a big like. Follow us on iTunes and iHeartRadio. Go over
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the Life Coach Method, check out what we're up to, give us a
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call if you want to get involved, and we will see you on the
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next podcast. Bye. Thank you for listening to Unpause your Life with Doctor
25:10
Cali Estez and Master Coach Jenny Fontana. Head over to www dot The Lifecoach
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Method dot com to learn more about coaching yourself and how to become a Master Coach.