Latest / Millennial Mental Health Channel / Burnout- It's Getting Hot in Herre
Transcript
- 0:00We'd make it work, but we sug it out a little bit, but
- 0:02still it was. It was rough, burnout, thug it out. This
- 0:09is Millennial Mental Health Channel. I'm doctor Justin Romano, a child adolescent psychiatry
- 0:14fellow, and I'm Adikoreo, a licensed clinical therapist. Our podcast is here
- 0:18because we wanted to start a much neater conversation about mental health. Our goal
- 0:21is to teach you as much as we can by sharing our own experiences and
- 0:25interviewing experts in the mental health field. We will discuss topics like mood disorders,
- 0:29psychotic disorders, substance use, personality disorders, and many more. Millennial
- 0:33Mental Health Channel buy Millennials for everyone. We hope you enjoyed today's episode.
- 0:39Eeea, this is Cowboy Tom and then see as a production of Spreaker from
- 0:45our Heart Media. All right, Eddie, are you burned out? No?
- 0:55Not currently? That's what we're talking about today, burnout. Tell us
- 0:59why we're talking about burnout? Oh? Why not talk about burnout? I
- 1:03don't know. Every time we come up with an idea for the episode,
- 1:06For our episodes, it's kind of like we'll usually have like a bank of
- 1:10ideas, right, justin like they will have ideas that we've float around for
- 1:12a while. We'll have ones that just kind of pop up, especially if
- 1:15you look at like our popular culture ones. But I think burnout is just
- 1:19one. As I was trying to get ready for what we wanted to talk
- 1:22about, I'm seeing it all over I'm teaching my grad school class right now.
- 1:26I know my students are pushing through to end this in the semester.
- 1:30We have a few weeks left, but I know they're working through it.
- 1:34And they've told me, like people have straight up told me like they need
- 1:37a break. They've used the word burnout. They've told me in journal reflections
- 1:41that they're having a hard time. They're just telling me. So I'm hearing
- 1:44it. I see it. I know they're doing their best. I feel
- 1:47for them. When I was in the program years ago, now, I
- 1:51just remember, but that first year, going from end of August all the
- 1:55way till middle end of July of the next year is a lot long ass
- 2:00time. Like, yeah, we had Thanksgiving and Christmas and Spring break.
- 2:02There's a long ass time to be in school. And I know Dan and
- 2:06Kevy when they were in autometry school, they had that long year after their
- 2:09first year where they didn't have a summer break anymore. And I'm sure for
- 2:13med school same thing. You had a long, long school year. So
- 2:16it's tough. I get it. I feel it. Burnout is rough.
- 2:20I see it a lot on Reddit too. It it comes up every once
- 2:22in a while on the therapist. I've read it about burnout. So I
- 2:25just want to talk about it. I want to normalize it a little more
- 2:28and just let people know we see you, were there for you, we
- 2:31feel you. It's tough. We got to be aware of our feelings and
- 2:36our emotions if we want to fix them or make them better or make them
- 2:39more tolerable. So if you're feeling a little bit of burnout and you clicked
- 2:43on this thinking like, yeah, I'm feel a little bit of burnout,
- 2:45I could use some information on this. We hope that you feel heard and
- 2:50understand that a lot of people feel this and it's normal, and hopefully get
- 2:53some tips on how to combat burnout a little bit too, and to know
- 2:58we can bounce back. We can always bounce back, but how we bounce
- 3:00back it'll depend. But when I think of burnout, I think back to
- 3:05you know, now I've worked in three different settings. My very first setting,
- 3:07community mental health, which is like burnout central. I remember where we
- 3:12had the busy times and we had the slow times. Like busy times was
- 3:15started the school year, big stressor for kids. I worked primarily with teenagers.
- 3:20Picked back up a little bit kind of in the spring, and then
- 3:23summertime was super slow, So those are kind of times where you'd kind of
- 3:25recharge a little bit. I think when I worked at the hospital, there
- 3:30really wasn't a slow time because it was COVID. I think we've talked about
- 3:34this, eating disorder. Rates just shot through the roof. We had a
- 3:37waitlist all the time, like we were always had patients, a patient,
- 3:39discharge, new patient next day, So you know, there wasn't really a
- 3:43slow time. But now I think about in a school setting, like I
- 3:46have like very definitive like start and stop times, which I think has been
- 3:51really helpful for me to not really feel burnout. And I try to not
- 3:54say this I'm on summer break now. I try not to say to my
- 3:59coworkers anymore because they kind of slapped me on the wrist when I used to.
- 4:00But I don't really think I need a full summer break, like I
- 4:03get a couple of weeks into it, I'm okay to go back to work,
- 4:08but I'll take the summer. I know, like there's not a whole
- 4:11lot of perks in education, you know, so to have a full summer
- 4:14break, to have the other breaks, it's helpful, and I know it
- 4:17just makes me think and I reflect, like I feel very fortunate to feel
- 4:21like I don't need the whole summer break, that I'm in a position now,
- 4:25a job now where I can feel like I'm recharging and there's tough times,
- 4:29but I can recharge throughout the year where I don't feel like I need
- 4:31like an extended break. Unfortunately, I didn't have that in my first two
- 4:35jobs, but I do now. But yeah, I think that's another reason
- 4:38why we have today's episode. So I want to let Justin do our first
- 4:43story time. I'll share my story after I've rambled enough, but I'll pass
- 4:46the mic to you. Justin hit us with a story. And I just
- 4:49wanted to say too that Nan I would kill for a summer break. That
- 4:53sounds great, no complaints. My neighbor's a school counselor and he's off for
- 5:00the summer, and he's just out on the boat every day, just spending
- 5:03time with his family doing fun stuff NonStop. And I'm just like, I
- 5:08wanted to do that too. A shout out school counselors. Yeah, shout
- 5:13out school counselors. So for my story time talking about burnout, a lot
- 5:18of doctors feel burnout. It's just a crazy field. And like Eddie said,
- 5:23med school's wild where you're just drinking from the fire hose, just trying
- 5:28to take in as much information as possible and spouted out on tests. Every
- 5:32test could be the end of your career if you can't pass it, which
- 5:35is really stressful. Then you get into residency and it's like you're constantly being
- 5:40graded, you're constantly being judged, you're constantly being evaluated on whether you're good
- 5:45enough to do this. It's just a lot of stress. It's a lot
- 5:47of pressure, and a lot of people, especially at the end of residency,
- 5:50are feeling a lot of burnout. Some of my friends are finally I
- 5:55graduated last year, but a lot of my friends are graduating this year and
- 5:58they're telling me I'm done. I want to change a pace, a change
- 6:01a scenery. I get like I feel burned out. I would need something
- 6:04different. And mental health is just a hard feel to work in too,
- 6:09and I love it and I wouldn't be doing anything else, which is why
- 6:11I want to stick with it. And I know I should go to therapy
- 6:14and that would probably help prevent me from getting burnt out, but I have
- 6:18not done it yet, and I'm still trying to figure out why I haven't.
- 6:21I keep saying at the time thing, but who knows, Probably just
- 6:25a great excuse. But when work gets overwhelming, I find myself getting a
- 6:30little angry sometimes, like I yell in the car on my drive home.
- 6:33Sometimes I just kind of get really numb and just drive home in silence,
- 6:39just feeling nothing. I had a situation a couple of weeks ago where I
- 6:45had a really rough week where I had some urgent patients that needed to be
- 6:48seen, so I sacrificed my well being and pushed them into my schedule and
- 6:55stayed late and worked with them. And then I also had like a bad
- 6:58migraine that week, and I had a patient fire me because of a documentation
- 7:02error that I had made. I put something in the chart wrong, they
- 7:05didn't like it, and they fired me. And so just like just a
- 7:10bad week. After that week, I felt pretty burnt out. Plus it
- 7:15was right at the end of the school year when all my patients were already
- 7:16stressed, so it was just a high stress time. So I set some
- 7:20healthy boundaries with work. I told them, like, hey, I can't
- 7:23keep doing those extra intakes seeing those new patients that need to come in urgently.
- 7:29I can't be sacrificing myself to just pump as many people through the clinic
- 7:32as possible. I did a lot of crying, like I had one of
- 7:35my car rides. I just cried and cried hard. I sobbed. I
- 7:41needed to get it all out, all that pressure, all that anger,
- 7:44all that frustration, all that sadness, all that stress. I needed to
- 7:46let it out through my tear ducts. And I rearranged my time off schedule
- 7:53a little bit to just spend more time with the family, spend more time
- 7:55outside. It's like, my main point here with this story is that I
- 7:59tried to actively recover after I had like a really really hard week where I
- 8:03felt like garbage. I felt kind of burned out. I try to do
- 8:07something about it, and it helped. So I'm not perfect by any means,
- 8:11but if I do have any advice for you, it's be mindful of
- 8:15those things, know your warning signs, know when you're feeling that burnout,
- 8:20and try and make a change, Try and do something to make yourself feel
- 8:24better in a healthy and positive way. Man, thanks for sharing. It
- 8:26is so hard. I think like when you work in a profession where your
- 8:31job is to help other people, it feels like we don't always help ourselves
- 8:35and we kind of give us to the end. It's hard, but we
- 8:39got to get you the therapy. What the fuck, dude, I know
- 8:46it's time. Time's up on Justin. If you need help, let me
- 8:52know. I can just give me your insurance. I'll look for a provide
- 8:56that's true. You're good at this well, I know psychologytoday dot com is
- 9:00a really good place to find. That's what I usually recommended people. Well,
- 9:07thank you again, dude. I appreciate it. I'm glad you feel
- 9:09better. I'm glad you could let it out. The catharticness of crying is
- 9:15real. I don't know enough people think about that. It's tough for men.
- 9:18A lot of men have been trained from a very young age, hey
- 9:22don't cry. That message has been repeated to young men for centuries, and
- 9:28boy does it keep us stuck and emotionally stuck. So I always just try
- 9:33and say, like, I'm a huge I'm a huge crier. I need
- 9:37to let it out otherwise I just feel terrible. There's no crying in baseball.
- 9:43I hate that exact story. So yeah, I think so it's getting
- 9:50ready for today. Really just reflecting on my first two jobs and knowing that
- 9:54I was starting to experience burnout when I didn't really have a word for it
- 9:58or well, how really describe it? Really for me, the signs were
- 10:03if there was any time I'd wake up and snooze, like a bunch of
- 10:07times in a row, or like get to work at the last minute because
- 10:09I just couldn't get out of bed. There are times where I would just
- 10:11call in sick and say I was taking a mental health day. Like when
- 10:15that was started to become more frequent, I knew I needed a break.
- 10:18There's even a couple of times in my first job in community mental health,
- 10:22I started to have dreams about work, and like that's like right, people
- 10:26joke about that of like, oh, when you're having dreams about work,
- 10:28that's not a great sign. It is not a good sign for me.
- 10:31It was not a good sign, and I knew shit was wrong. I
- 10:33knew another sign would be that I would get to work. And as much
- 10:37as I loved my coworkers and my clients and patients, I'll say this and
- 10:41all the jobs I've worked so far, all three settings, Community Mental Health,
- 10:48Hospital, School, I love so much, the clients that I've had,
- 10:52the students that have had, the patients, just get into work with
- 10:54them, share space with them. I've loved my coworkers, the people I
- 10:58get to work with on a daily basis. But when I was burnt out,
- 11:01like I would like immediately be in a bad mood, and it really
- 11:03would like I would walk into the building and just be like I'm fucked this,
- 11:09like not be thrilled. There's always something that would upset me. Not
- 11:13a whole lot could be done. And actually the first time I went to
- 11:16see a therapist was related to just the work stress and just not being really
- 11:22able to manage it and not being able to work through it. I know
- 11:26that a lot of people will say like, oh, working out is great
- 11:28for me, like it helps me be stressed. I'm just not one of
- 11:31those people. I work out a decent amount. I could probably work out
- 11:33more right, a little better or whatever. I work out a decent amount,
- 11:37but like that even didn't do it for me. Like I'm not one
- 11:41of those people like, oh, I gotta go lift some heavyweights and I'll
- 11:43feel better. I'm more of just like, damn, I'm kind of tired
- 11:46now, but I don't feel But now I'm just tired and don't feel better.
- 11:50So like the exercise I part really didn't do it for me. Therapy
- 11:54helped. My therapist helped a lot, but ultimately, right, there were
- 11:58just things that were out of my control and I just couldn't really stay in
- 12:00those settings for much longer. So things changed. I We'll talk about what
- 12:05we can do for burnout in a little bit, but that's my story.
- 12:07It's one that I've thought about a decent amount and really makes me feel really
- 12:11fortunate to be where I'm out now with my job of like feeling that I'm
- 12:15not burnt out, and I really do appreciate that. Cool. It sounds
- 12:20like this job is so much a better balance for you. Yes, I
- 12:24think the consistent schedule of like I start working this time, I get off
- 12:28at this time, not having to do the long hours, like the hospital
- 12:33and not having to I don't know, there's just so much more the support.
- 12:37Same thing feeling like and we'll talk about it a little bit, but
- 12:39like feeling like I have autonomy and I can kind of choose what to do
- 12:43and so much better. I've talked about this a lot. I always seem
- 12:48to bring up Reddit. I always seem to bring up the therapist Subreddit seriously,
- 12:52like once a week. Once every other week, burnout gets brought up.
- 12:56And if you're a therapist at all, clinician and you want to say
- 12:58an anonymous community that you can get some ideas from, get some support from
- 13:03the therapist, one is pretty good on Reddit. There's you can find resources.
- 13:07I just did my students did a presentation on ACT acceptance and Commitment therapy
- 13:11this week. I was able to just provide a few slides on resources and
- 13:16I found a good amount of resources from Reddit. So there's a plug for
- 13:18that. But the definition of burnout, what is burnout? Because it is
- 13:22a real thing. So according to the American Psychological Association, the APA,
- 13:26burnout is physical, emotional, or mental exhaustion accompanied by decreased motivation, lowered
- 13:33performance, and negative attitudes towards oneself and others. It results from performing at
- 13:39a high level until stress intention especially from extreme and prolonged physical or mental exertion
- 13:45or an over burdening workload take their toll. Basically, you're working a lot.
- 13:52Work is hard. It's taking a toll. In listening to that definition,
- 13:56like, what's the difference between burnout and depression? Is it just the
- 14:01situation? Maybe? Yeah, yeah, super similar. Yeah, a lot
- 14:05of overlap between them. Yeah. So the word was first used in this
- 14:09sense in nineteen seventy five by US psychologist Herbert J. Fudenberger, who lived
- 14:16from nineteen twenty six to nineteen ninety nine. Great Year the Other Matrix came
- 14:20out Fantasy film in referring to workers in clinics with heavy case loads. Burnout
- 14:26is most often observed in professionals who work in service oriented vocations, for example,
- 14:31social workers, teachers, correctional officers, and experienced chronic high levels of
- 14:37stress. Psychiatrists, yes, school counselors, school counselors. You know.
- 14:43Nineteen ninety nine is also the year that Y two K was a thing.
- 14:48I don't remember it much, but I've listened to podcasts I talk about it
- 14:50and it seemed like a scary time. Yeah, everyone was worried. Yeah,
- 14:56uh, well, with burnout, it could be part particularly acute in
- 15:01therapists or counselors who do trauma work. That's that's a tough thing to do
- 15:05day in and day out, and these are ones who feel overwhelmed by their
- 15:07cumulative secondary trauma of witnessing the effects of witnessing what's going on with their clients
- 15:13and patients. B NOT is also experienced by athletes when continually explode exposed to
- 15:18stress associated with performance without commiserate rewards or rest. That makes sense. I
- 15:26can't imagine being an athlete constantly having thousands and thousands of people judging you,
- 15:33talking talking shit about you. Like it's a lot of pressure. And we
- 15:35did a whole episode on like what it's like to be an athlete in the
- 15:39mental health struggles that they have, and they are at a higher rate for
- 15:43depression and anxiety than the general population. Well, you know, when you
- 15:46add something like social media and like people feeling like they I don't know,
- 15:50I feel like people feel really entitled that they need to know stuff about like
- 15:54professional athletes and like celebrities, like personal lives all the time or like they
- 15:58deserve answers and ship and like, I can't imagine that toll of like I
- 16:04don't know you see on TikTok all the time, like if celebrity couples or
- 16:11TikTok celebrity couples. I'm thinking one specifically. It was, uh, this
- 16:17girl who I think was like TikTok famous on her own and then her husband
- 16:21or her fiance was in the NFL. I don't remember either their names totally
- 16:23fine, but they broke up recently and like people were like, what happened?
- 16:27What you need to give us the details? Like, no, the
- 16:30fuck they don't. They're gonna tell you shit. Yeah was it Barrios,
- 16:34No, it was Tiana or Tea something. Is the girl Taylor Swift and
- 16:41Travis Kelser No, that would be way different if they broke but yeah,
- 16:48it's just like in this age of social media and like people, yeah,
- 16:52just feeling entitled, like I need to know this information. And then you
- 16:56add that with like damn, I'm not doing well or my team is sucking
- 17:00now and I'm part of the problem. Like that is so much pressure and
- 17:03a lot of people too. Unless you're like the top of the top in
- 17:07your sport, whether it's you know, football, baseball, basketball, gymnastics,
- 17:11tennis, soccer, whatever, it is, like, unless you're at
- 17:15the top of the top, the other people kind of in a sense are
- 17:18like fighting for their livelihood and their jobs. So that's like they got that
- 17:23too. That's rough some of the research on this stuff. There's a paper
- 17:27from Steel at All twenty fifteen, and Steel is way too easy of a
- 17:32name, Eddie. Come on, pick a paper with harder name pronounced,
- 17:36please, I want to challenge so Steel twenty fifteen published a study in the
- 17:41Journal of Mental Health that identified workload and lack of autonomy, like Eddie mentioned
- 17:45earlier, as factors that contributed to decreased job satisfaction and increased job turnover for
- 17:51therapists. The study also mentioned the importance of managers and supervisors to be aware
- 17:56of this so that they can try to limit the potential of therapist coping all
- 18:00of this by depersonalizing their clients. Yeah, and I've seen this too with
- 18:03psychiatrists. If they they're burned out, they stop trying to make a connection
- 18:08with their patients. And that's that's just such a terrible spot to be because
- 18:12that's kind of the best part about being a psychiatrist too, is the connections
- 18:17with the patients. So it just makes things astronomically worse. Yeah, you
- 18:21know, I knew a psychiatrist at one point who we were going into a
- 18:25team meeting for one of our patients and they had to like stop me on
- 18:29the way in and be like, hey, can you can you tell me
- 18:30a little more about can you remind me about this patient? And just knowing
- 18:34like all the stuff they were doing, and this was one where they like
- 18:38every there's like one day a week or one day every other week they were
- 18:41gone because they were traveling to another state because they worked in that state,
- 18:45and they were just they're the chief of this and the Yeah, that fart
- 18:51is tough. And I think too, I think about that with with community
- 18:53mental health of like therapists who have caseloads of like forty fifty, sixty seventy
- 18:59clients, How are you supposed to remember every single person to the amount that
- 19:03they deserve as a client and as their therapist? Like that's yeah. The
- 19:08other story we wanted to mention was from Rosenberg and Pace Sorry still kind of
- 19:12easy last names. It's from two thousand and six. They identified hours work
- 19:17per week and job setting as factors that contributed to possible burnout. So,
- 19:22just if are you working and I didn't read all the specifics, but is
- 19:26it They didn't really give like this number of hours per week. It should
- 19:30be like where you cap it at, but it's like, are you working
- 19:32too much? Is this job setting something that's given you a lot of stress?
- 19:36Those can all be things that helped lead to burnout unfortunately. They also
- 19:40cited that new clinicians should consider adopting self care strategies and peer support to help
- 19:45decrease their chance to burning out, which I think were things that were really
- 19:48helpful for me. You know in my other jobs, of like I had
- 19:51that I had that peer support, maybe not as much as the self care
- 19:55strategies, but the peer support was really one of the things that was most
- 19:57helpful to me. Yeah, I got a lot of the self care,
- 20:02but not a lot of the peer support. Because I'm the only child adolescent
- 20:04psychiatrist in the city, so i don't have anyone to run things by.
- 20:08Luckily, I've got my support group and support system from residency, and I'll
- 20:12run things past some of my former attendings and things, but yeah, a
- 20:17little less. I felt a little out on an island, being the only
- 20:19child psychiatrist in town. I think that's where a lot of like private practice
- 20:23therapists struggle too, is that they start to feel alone. And like,
- 20:27I think private practice offers people a lot of great benefits, like setting your
- 20:32schedule. I was thinking about this. I was on a walk the other
- 20:34day and I was like, you know, if I was in private practice,
- 20:37like I like check my watch. I was like, it's like eight
- 20:38thirty right now, I could like finish my walk, get back to my
- 20:41house, first client at nine, nine thirty, be done by like three
- 20:47o'clock, four o'clock if I wanted to. That seems pretty nice, but
- 20:49then you lose. There's also the part of like that peer support that you
- 20:53might have of working in a clinic where someone's right next to you and you
- 20:56can just talk to them, So that does get hard. I didn't I
- 21:00did not realize you were one of one. Yeah, I think there are
- 21:04four in the whole state and only one in the city of Cheyenne. Were
- 21:07a desperate need of child adolescent psychiatrist. So if any young people are out
- 21:12there thinking about a career choice. There's jobs for you. Consider the thirteen
- 21:21year long road of becoming a child psychiatrist. You're really saw that it's worth
- 21:30it if it's what you like to do, which I do. But from
- 21:33the mail clinic, here are some questions to ask yourself if you think you
- 21:37might be experiencing burnout? Do you question the value of your work? Do
- 21:44you drag yourself to work and have trouble getting started? Do you feel removed
- 21:48from your work and the people you work with? Have you lost patients with
- 21:52coworkers, customers, or clients. Oh that was a good one. After
- 21:59that patient fired me. A couple of weeks ago, one of my nurses
- 22:03like forgot to get vital signs on one of my patients and I literally literally
- 22:08like snapped my fingers at her. I was like, Hi, come on,
- 22:14like we gotta we can't keep messing up like this. I snapped at
- 22:17her a little bit, but I made sure to apologize afterwards, explain the
- 22:22situation and said I'm sorry, like it was just a really bad moment for
- 22:26me and I should not have done that, And she was really gracious about
- 22:30it. So yeah, up next, Do you lack the energy to do
- 22:36your job. Well, is it hard to focus on your job? Do
- 22:41you feel a little satisfaction from what you get done? Do you feel let
- 22:45down by your job? Do you doubt your skills and abilities? Well,
- 22:51this is a good one that I think I've mentioned this during COVID. I
- 22:55think I was a lot of us were filing burnt out. But I remember
- 23:00used to be like I'd go home and like drink a beer and then like
- 23:03sometimes it was like two, right, and it was just like it was
- 23:04basically like self medicating. So this next one is are you using food,
- 23:10drugs, or alcohol to feel better or to know how you feel? That
- 23:15A lot of these are hitting home from those those times in my life.
- 23:18But yeah, absolutely, I've certainly fallen into that trap at certain times in
- 23:22my life too. Yeah, and then have your sleep habits changed. I
- 23:26noticed that when I'm really stressed, I'm feeling kind of burned out. I
- 23:30have chronic nightmares about having to go back to junior high and I'm also having
- 23:37to be a doctor at the same time. And they're like, if you
- 23:41don't go back to algebra one and finish it, then you can't be a
- 23:45doctor anymore. Just so stupid, but it's just all the time I have
- 23:51those treats. I don't know if I've mentioned this out loud, but this
- 23:56school year in particular, Again, I love my job, but man,
- 24:00it was it was tough, like the end of the year, like the
- 24:03last like January, like basically January to June was busy the old time,
- 24:07and like February, I was waking up in the middle of the night like
- 24:12I was like, oh no, I was not sleeping the whole night.
- 24:15I'd wake up, go back to sleep, like I didn't mention anybody.
- 24:19Yeah, it was tough, man, And I wasn't burnt out. It
- 24:22was just a lot of stress, dude. There was multiple times I'd wake
- 24:26up, but like one two in the morning and just be like, work
- 24:30is rough right now. But then I go back to sleep. Eventually then
- 24:34we'ld make it work. But sug it out a little bit. But still
- 24:37it was it was rough, burn out, sug it out. Don't do
- 24:44that. And then the last one from the Mayo Clinic. This is more
- 24:49on the physical symptoms side, But do you have headaches, stomach or bowel
- 24:53problems, or other physical complaints with no known cause. That sounds a lot
- 24:59like anxiety, especially in kids. They tend to wear their anxiety in their
- 25:03body. My headache, stomach problems, diarrhea, all that kind of stuff.
- 25:07What do we do, How do we fix this? What are we
- 25:11supposed to do? So if you find yourself answering yes to many of those
- 25:14questions, then you too might be experiencing burnout. Some of the suggestions that
- 25:18we have for you are number one, seek support. Talk to other people
- 25:22who understand you, who are validating and want to listen, because that is
- 25:27such an important piece of the human experience. I think being able to know
- 25:32that other people get where you're coming from and understand helps a lot. It
- 25:37might not fix the problem right then and there, but I think that helps
- 25:40a lot. One thing that I don't always do the best of, but
- 25:42I preach to all of my children or my students and my clients self care,
- 25:48trying to figure out what it is that can help you out. And
- 25:51I tell I think I think one of the best things as a team if
- 25:55you can figure out what you can do now as self care that makes you
- 25:57feel better, that gets you in a better headspace and just better physically mentally,
- 26:03whatever it is. Lock that in now. So then when you get
- 26:06older, whether you go to a college or you go to a trade school,
- 26:10or you join the workforce, military or whatever it is, you have
- 26:12that skill set the honestly will put you ahead of other people your age and
- 26:17people older than you. You know how to take care of yourself and you
- 26:19can figure that out, and that just that helps a ton. I always
- 26:23like to ask the question of what healthy mechanisms do you have to get out
- 26:27your stress? And I meet a decent amount of young people who say I
- 26:32have none. I don't really have any healthy mechanisms. And I always try
- 26:37and jump to do you draw, do you write? Do you like music?
- 26:40Like, try to figure something out, but sometimes you have to search.
- 26:44Sometimes you have to figure something out that speaks to you. And I
- 26:47always hate it when people say, like, oh, I'm not good at
- 26:48it, so I don't write, or I like to do it, but
- 26:52I'm not good at it, so I don't use it to get my feelings
- 26:55and emotions out. Like there's so many more reasons to do it than just
- 26:59being good. Do it at it, like if it helps you, just
- 27:00do it. Like along the same lines of self care, exercise is a
- 27:04huge one Prioritizing sleep is a big one too, which is really tough because
- 27:10sometimes if you feel burned out, you feel like you never have any time
- 27:12for yourself, so you sometimes want to stay up late do something fun,
- 27:17but then it messes with your sleep and you feel even more burned out the
- 27:18next day. Practicing mindfulness, so this is one mindfulness meditation not exactly the
- 27:25same thing, but sometimes they go hand in hand. That one can be
- 27:27hard, and that one can be If you figure out that it's not helpful
- 27:33for you, that is totally fine. But I think that the least you
- 27:37can do is give it a shot. Whether it's listening to a guided mindfulness
- 27:41exercise, whether it's listening to a guided meditation. I think it's fine to
- 27:44try those things and realize, like, Okay, maybe this is not the
- 27:47best for me, but I think those are good ones to give a shot
- 27:49too. But yeah, and then the last one, and this is one
- 27:55that really resonates with me because I think, ultimately this is how I got
- 27:56out of my last two ones. But just consider leaving the situation you're in.
- 28:00And I want to say this very clearly that I understand that there's a
- 28:04certain level of privilege there is to be able to leave your job and to
- 28:07be able to leave the situation you're in. I understand that not everybody has
- 28:11that, but hopefully this is for those people that do have that opportunity or
- 28:15like on the fence about it, consider it, think about the options,
- 28:18think about what can be helpful. You know, I think back to my
- 28:22students this week, you know, we have the students. We had group
- 28:26presentations on ACT on Acceptance and Commitment therapy, and the parts of the presentation
- 28:30that group was given just kind of like a just kind of an open dialogue,
- 28:33open like mock. These are things that could be covered in an accession
- 28:37with group therapy, and it really ends up turning into like an open and
- 28:42honest discussion of what are things that are bothering some of the students and things
- 28:47that are impacting them, And some of them ended up saying, like,
- 28:49I know I can't necessarily do something. And this is part of that psychological
- 28:52flexibility of ACT of one of the principles, but I know I can't necessarily
- 28:57do something about the situation right now, like I'm kind of locked into where
- 29:00I'm at now, but being able to say it out loud being able to
- 29:06acknowledge it and identify it and know that this is not permanent. That kind
- 29:10of helps a lot. So it was cool to just kind of be a
- 29:12part of that and like have the other side of it if like maybe I
- 29:15can't, I can't really consider leave in my situation right now, but just
- 29:19being able to talk about it, acknowledge it, and know that this is
- 29:22not permanent, that just helps a lot. And to build on that point,
- 29:26I've been listening to a lot of psychiatry and psychotherapy podcasts with doctor David
- 29:30Peter, and he always says that bringing up the things that are bothering you,
- 29:36expressing yourself, talking about it with people who are there showing you love
- 29:40and support kind of rewires your brain so that the things that are stressing you
- 29:45out, the things that are bothering you, they're not as difficult, they
- 29:49are easier to manage, they're easier to understand and to accept if you're able
- 29:55to talk about it with people who are understanding and validate of those experiences.
- 30:00So that's a huge part of acceptance and commitment therapy is being able to get
- 30:04some of that stuff out. And two, I think being able to get
- 30:08empathy from people in a world that doesn't feel so full of empathy right now,
- 30:14just being here like I feel you. That is really hard. Thank
- 30:19you, right, Like that's all I needed. I get somewhat of a
- 30:23selection bias because I see kids are struggling with their mental health. But I
- 30:27noticed that communication style and a lot of the families that I work with,
- 30:33kids will express how they feel and parents will say, like, you don't
- 30:36really feel like that, that's not what's happening. They'll invalidate the feelings and
- 30:40say like, well, you can't mean that. They'll instead of just sitting
- 30:44and listening and validating and sitting in the emotions and feeling, they're questioning and
- 30:52creating conflict and that I think that's a huge reason why the kids are developing
- 30:56depression and anxiety in the first place, is because they don't have in that
- 31:00parent relationship, which is supposed to be the strongest and most loving and understanding
- 31:04relationship. They don't have that acceptance and understanding that they're longing for. Yeah,
- 31:10our support people are our support people, but sometimes our support people don't
- 31:15know the best way to support us. Sometimes they just know the best way
- 31:18to support themselves and think that that can translate into like, oh, I
- 31:22can just do the same thing for my kid, and that it just doesn't
- 31:25work that way. A lot of the time, I basically hear the same
- 31:27things too, like sometimes the kids that come in are just like I try
- 31:33and say this, or I try and say that. I'm like, Nope,
- 31:33they're just not getting it. Like people at home or not getting It's
- 31:37not all parents, they're friends, they're people their age they're also not getting
- 31:41it. It's hard and then to then to take that next step of Okay,
- 31:48this is what I need. I need to now communicate this assertively to
- 31:51the people in my life that support me. That's where I think a lot
- 31:55of people get stuck of, like they don't communicate it, and then they
- 31:57go on months, years, long time of just not saying it, and
- 32:00then that then they developed this like resentment towards people off like well, no
- 32:05one gives a shit anyway, and it's yeah, yeah, it's a tough,
- 32:08tough cycle. Bady, what's your take on point for today on burnout?
- 32:15I think the biggest thing is that burnout is real. It's something that
- 32:20impacts a lot of people, and just because you're feeling burned out, doesn't
- 32:22mean you did something wrong, doesn't mean that you deserve it. Like,
- 32:25please reach out for help, ask for help. Know that there's people that
- 32:30understand and that other people are going through it, and not just in like
- 32:32a way of like everyone deals with it. It's fine. It's more of
- 32:36like we're here for you, like welcome, like we we understand. I
- 32:39like it. What about you? We live in a society that values money
- 32:45and possessions more than anything else. And if you want to live a happy,
- 32:52mentally healthy life, we got to push back on it a little bit.
- 32:54If you let your work, your work will run you into the ground
- 32:59to make as much money as possible. You got to set healthy boundaries for
- 33:02yourself. You got to prioritize yourself, your family, the things that you
- 33:07find the most important in life. And that'll help you stay grounded and that'll
- 33:10help you fight burn out. Hell yeah, I like it. Play us
- 33:14out man. Oh, thank you my friends for listening. Apple Podcasts,
- 33:17Spotify, whatever other podcast app you have, We are there. On Apple
- 33:22podcast feel free to leave us a five star review and a comment. We'd
- 33:24love to read it. And on Spotify you can do the exact same thing.
- 33:29On social media. Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok at Millennial MHC
- 33:35on our website millennialimac dot com. Thank you all for listening. Go take
- 33:39the chance to take care of yourself today if you haven't done it yet,
- 33:43and remember take care of all mentals.