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The Battle Against Burnout
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'Burnout' is a popular term in our culture today… but do we truly understand it? The truth is that many of us have experienced or are experiencing stress at high levels, all while trying to still keep life firmly on the rails. And when left unchecked, this can quickly lead to burnout. But what is burnout, really? And are there some ways that we can curb it in our own lives? This week, we'll dig into the history of burnout, how to recognize the stages of it and discuss various tips and advice on how to keep it at bay .
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Transcript
Introduction and Episode Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
I want to, but I don't want to, yes. Isn't that biblical? Like, I want the good that... No, hang on, I'm going to butcher it. I'm not going to say it. Isn't it that I want the good... St. Paul says it. Okay. I want the good... Nope. The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Yeah, something like that, yeah. No, I'm going to come in again. I'm not going to put any of that in. What was I going to say?
00:00:39
Speaker
Welcome back to the Modern Lady Podcast. You're listening to episode 153. Hi, I'm Michelle. And I'm Lindsay, and today we are talking about burnout. Perhaps you've heard it too. The deep sigh that comes so often these days in response to the question, how are you?
00:00:59
Speaker
The truth is that many of us have experienced or are experiencing stress at high levels, all while trying to keep life firmly still on the rails. And when left unchecked, this can quickly lead to burnout. But what is burnout really? And are there some ways that we can curb it in our own lives? Let's discuss.
00:01:20
Speaker
But first, the best way that you can support The Modern Lady is by subscribing to our podcast on whatever app you use to listen to podcasts and by sharing us with your friends. We also welcome you to join us over at Patreon, where for just $5 a month, you will get exclusive and extra content. We want to remind our listeners that we have now activated a free trial option on Patreon. So while you can just follow the page for free, if you actually sign up for a free trial,
00:01:48
Speaker
you will have access to all of our extra content for seven days. And then you can decide if you'd like to join us as a paid member. Find us at patreon.com forward slash The Modern Lady podcast. And if you can't join us on Patreon at this time, a free way to support our show is by leaving it a five star rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. It's a chance to tell us what you love about the show and it helps others discover it too.
Podcast Support and Community Shoutouts
00:02:16
Speaker
This week's shout out actually goes to my brother-in-law, Randy, I have to, who tunes into the podcast and he always has an encouraging word for us about it when we visit. This is a special shout out for me in particular because I actually met my brother-in-law in our broadcasting program when we were in college. And so his good opinion of the modern lady with his background really means a lot. So thank you for tuning in, Randy, and for your encouragement and your support.
00:02:46
Speaker
Thank you, Randy.
Cooking with Kids: Challenges and Skills
00:02:48
Speaker
And if you would like to leave us a comment or message us about today's episode, the best way to get in touch with us is on Instagram at the Modern Lady podcast. But be sure to stay tuned to the end of the episode for other ways to connect because we would love to hear from you. But before we get into today's chat, Lindsay has our Modern Lady Tip of the Week.
00:03:14
Speaker
One thing that seems to unite moms across the board is the desire we feel to cook and bake with our kids. And then our abject horror we simultaneously feel when we actually think about how hard and messy it is to cook and bake alongside our kids. There is a lot to say on this topic and I'd love to go into my experiences in this realm and what I have done that has worked and also confess the myriad of ways that I have failed in this respect.
00:03:41
Speaker
But to keep this tip of the week short, sweet and helpful, I'll turn now to an article from the Hart and Stroke Foundation of Canada called 10 kitchen skills every 10 year old should know and see what they have to say.
00:03:55
Speaker
The article opens with information about how making food at home is the healthiest option and how when families all take part in this, our children become empowered to make better food choices for themselves as they grow older. And I love this. But where to start? First and foremost, teach your kids to wash their hands before they handle food. The second thing this article recommends, and this one is something I've never really thought about doing on its own, as an exercise,
00:04:21
Speaker
outside of actual cooking is to teach the kids all about measurements. Get out those measuring cups and spoons, get out the scale, etc. And let them play with those things and add some water or some uncooked rice as they learn about fractions. The next thing is teaching the kids to follow a basic recipe. Again, this isn't something I've ever intentionally done. I usually just try to include them in whatever I'm making. And that is a different experience than choosing a simple recipe to work on together. That is a project unto itself.
00:04:51
Speaker
Now this one is daunting for kids and many adults alike, teaching kids how to handle raw meat. I know my teens are super squeamish about raw meat and I think that I will regret not teaching them about how to handle it when they were little and way more likely to touch gross things. Next is that by the age of 10, many kids can handle peeling vegetables. They might not be ready to use a knife to cut things yet, but they can peel items for you. They can also learn how to use a grater.
00:05:19
Speaker
Here's another thing that I haven't taught as a lesson on its own outside of actually cooking something. And there's something to be said about teaching this as a lesson versus when you're stressed and in the middle of cooking. So the article suggests teaching basic cooking terms like saute, oil, roast, broil, et cetera, and the names of all of the pots and pans and utensils. I kind of want to teach this with my kids now. So I might gather all four of my kids together. Even the teens would be like, and this is a spatula.
00:05:48
Speaker
because they probably don't know. This next suggestion from the Heart and Stroke Foundation is that kids as young as 10 can cook something on the stove with a parent supervising. They can stir fry some vegetables or flip a pancake. However, it does say that if you're cooking on a gas stove, you may feel that it's better to wait a little longer.
00:06:06
Speaker
I happen to have an induction cooktop and I love that the elements are barely hot, even when you just turn it off. Here's a safety tip. Remember to tie back long hair and do not wear loose clothing when leaning over a stove. Our kids will likely be on a step stool, so hair and clothing might hit the stove top in a way that our clothing doesn't. And the article suggests teaching kids to make sandwiches at the age of 10. And it says that this skill makes kids feel so proud of themselves.
00:06:32
Speaker
I'd like to add that by this age, my kids make their own toast to having taught them over and over again toaster safety, like the top gets very hot and not to stick a knife or fork into the toaster. And once your kids can make their own toast or a sandwich, mom experiences her first taste of freedom.
00:06:50
Speaker
And finally, the last skill your 10 year old can learn and should learn is cleaning up after cooking. Many teens love baking, but it's the cleanup part that they try to avoid. Heck, this is the cause of many adults not wanting to do cooking or baking too. But 10 year olds still love sinks full of warm and soapy water. So let's let them scrub those pots and pans while it's still a game and not quite a chore yet.
00:07:16
Speaker
Oh, I love all this. I related so much to your beginning point about the initial thought of, this would be lovely to bake with my kids today. And then the almost immediate reaction. I don't want to. I want to, but I don't want to. Yes.
00:07:33
Speaker
I kind of liked the separation of teaching like measuring things and teaching the tools and the pots and pans the names of cooking utensils and pots and pans and the separation of following a recipe.
00:07:50
Speaker
because sometimes we forget that those are all like very unique and distinct skills all on their own, right? And I remember one of the very first things that I let my oldest do, so Claire is now, she'll be 13 by the end of this year and she's been baking
00:08:09
Speaker
largely on her own for the last few years at least. But one of the first things that we did was we followed a recipe from that book, Bringing Up Bay Bay. And it talks about how in France, children are encouraged to bake on their own from a very young age, but they make this thing called a yogurt cake. And the recipe is in the book. And basically what it is is that all the measurements are written in terms of how much you fill up the yogurt cup.
00:08:38
Speaker
That you can buy in the store, right? So I just went out one time and I bought a yogurt cup and we would wash it out, dry it, and she could measure in the other things. And so in that sense, I guess, that would be she was just following a recipe. Yeah, she didn't really, yeah, she didn't have to do fractions with like half a cup, quarter of a cup, that type of thing.
00:09:01
Speaker
And then can I ask, did you have her like take it out of the oven too? Like what, where's your stress level? And like, how did you handle the oven? I always did the oven up until, yeah, up until she was maybe around 10 or 11. So as the, as the article says, but we do have a gas top stove. So I am actually pretty wary, wary of my kids using it too.
00:09:27
Speaker
Yeah, I really do love this whole idea. And then finally, I just have to mention that point about cleaning up afterwards. That is actually a much more in depth lesson than you think. Because even if they do help you with it, a lot of especially baking involves I find oil.
00:09:45
Speaker
Oil or butter, and that's really hard to wash off of things. Or peanut butter. Right. And a measuring cup, yes. Molasses, if you do that sort of thing. Yes, honey. Yes. So even if they are helping you, even proper washing techniques, that can maybe take a long time to grasp for kids, especially if they're just at around that 10-year-old mark.
Understanding Burnout: Historical and Modern Perspectives
00:10:12
Speaker
Burnout is a popular term in our culture today, but do we truly understand it? It seems like so much of society is feeling burned out, whether it's at work or at home, and it just begs the question, is there something we can do about it? And if so, what? Right, Lindsay?
00:10:31
Speaker
That's right. It is everywhere. And I think it's one of those things that we, yeah, we all think we know what it is, but as soon as you and I started deep diving this, we're like, whoa, there's like actually a history here. There's like a whole big lesson. And in some ways I find it oddly comforting. And this is what we were saying before we recorded. When we kind of look into these things a bit more beyond like an Instagram reel or a little TikTok or whatever, a tweet,
00:10:54
Speaker
When we actually start to dig a little bit deeper, I just, I don't know, I find it oddly comforting to know the history and the proper definition of these things. Because it's quickly become one of those words like, and we've talked about this before, like love, right? Where we use it to encompass a lot of different, and we'll talk about this later, stages of burnout.
00:11:20
Speaker
But when you're able, I feel like when you're able to understand things at a little bit of a deeper level, it kind of gives you a little bit more to work with if you're feeling that way, right? So it's not quite so vague. And just even being able to understand things to the point where you could actually take actionable steps to help yourself, even just the prospect of that,
00:11:46
Speaker
is comforting so I totally understand and like you I am so grateful to have had the reason to sit down at a computer and actually dig a little deeper into burnout because I mean it's May and I've
00:12:02
Speaker
I think many of us are at the same place at the end of a busy school year, right before summer. So many things are wrapping up and this just tiredness, all encompassing tiredness, we're all feeling it. So this feels timely and it feels right. That's right.
00:12:22
Speaker
So if we were going to try to define it, there's multiple ways to look at it, but one of the things I want to say right off the bat is occupational burnout has been given an official category through the World Health Organization. And so we're going to talk about how it occurs in all different areas of our lives, but occupational burnout is really the thing, right, Michelle, that comes up over and over and over.
00:12:43
Speaker
ever again when we were doing our research. But we're going to look at occupational, emotional, vocational, so like within our relationships within our marriage and with our children. But the World Health Organization, again, in terms of occupational burnout, characterizes it using these three dimensions.
00:13:01
Speaker
exhaustion or feelings of depleted energy, feelings of negativism, cynicism, or mental distance from one's job, and decreased professional competence. We're going to see variations on those things throughout this episode, but that is kind of like, if you just have to go for like one quick definition, that's where I would turn.
00:13:21
Speaker
But it turns out that even though this really came into the psychological, clinical world of the 1970s, Michelle, you discovered that people have been burned out before the modern age. Surprise, surprise. Since very close to what may have been the beginning of time. Interesting.
00:13:42
Speaker
Well, we were joking because I was going through my notes and I was just saying, I'm like, I found examples of really early and the earliest example I could find was actually from the Bible. And I found this very interestingly in two different places. One was a Christian website that I can't remember because I saw it really fast and didn't come back to it.
00:14:04
Speaker
But another was from this paper called Burnout, a short sociocultural history by a psychologist named Wilmar Schofili, I think, Schofili. And he works at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. So this is his paper on the history of burnout. And he also mentions that one of the very first mentions of the concept of burning out was Moses.
00:14:32
Speaker
and how while in the wilderness with the Israelites, after having given so much of himself in this mission from God to free the Israelites from Egypt, really starts to become a little bit disillusioned and frustrated and resentful sometimes of the people who are still not satisfied and they just keep demanding more and more.
00:14:56
Speaker
And so it's like when they're like, we at least we ate better meals when we were slaves. Yes. And you can just see like the Bible doesn't say what his facial expression was like. We might be able to visualize it, right? It's like, oh.
00:15:11
Speaker
Yeah, so that's Moses. Again, both sources, this Christian website and this paper also talk about Elijah in the book of Kings, first Kings, where it's right after Elijah has done this contest with the priests of Baal, remember, and they're going to see which sacrifice is accepted first by their respective gods and
00:15:37
Speaker
The priests of Baal can't get their sacrifice to light on fire, but Elijah douses his with water and it burns up in a big holocaust. And then afterwards, so after all this has happened, he's been trying to prophesy to the people. They're still not getting the message and on top of that, now Queen Jezebel wants to have him killed.
00:16:00
Speaker
So he runs away and it's when he runs away to the wilderness and he sits under the juniper tree and he's exhausted and he actually prays for death because it's just not, there's no progress here. And that's when God refreshes him, right? So that's the biblical story of what happens. He ends up sleeping and this is the whole scene before he, just to put it into context, he walks out of the cave and experiences God in the silence.
00:16:29
Speaker
like he wasn't in the storm, he wasn't in the mighty wind, he was in the silence. So that as well, this psychiatrist was saying like Elijah was also feeling that disillusionment, that resentment of I've given everything and it's exhaustion. So after the biblical time period, we can also find
00:16:57
Speaker
the concept of burnout in ancient Greece. And I found this from an article on theweek.com. The article is called The Myth of Modern Burnout by a lady named Maggie Punishka, I think. And she says that some of the first theories of exhaustion before the term burnout was invented
00:17:16
Speaker
could have possibly originated from the year 5 BCE with this Greek physician named Galen of Pergamum. He was building upon Hippocrates' theory of balancing the four humors, though of four bodily fluids, right? And so the theory was there needed to be a balance in the body between these four things, blood, yellow and black bile, and phlegm.
00:17:42
Speaker
And so Galen, this physician, suggested that an overabundance of the black bile, which is the humor associated with melancholy, would present as an imbalance in the person's body with symptoms like lack of energy, sluggishness, lethargy. And he theorized that this could have been caused by a few different things like eating the wrong foods, for example. But the one that I found interesting was he also mentions excessive worry.
00:18:12
Speaker
And so this article was saying this was kind of the first mentions of how exhaustion can be from factors both in the body and in the mind, like this holistic perspective, which does correspond with how
00:18:30
Speaker
we hear it today. And so I mean, and all through history, there was one mention that I saw, there was a poem by Shakespeare in 1599, where it says in the poem, she burned with love as straw with fire flameth.
00:18:47
Speaker
she burned out love as soon as straw out burneth and Like the psychiatrist was saying it's possibly the first use of the term burned out in a psychological sense in the sense that it's an exhaustion of energy and in this case in relation to love Right. So it's just really interesting. That's like this. That's the history of burnout I was finding from like say creation up to
00:19:17
Speaker
the 16th century. And then I just feel like as we moved through the modern period, the Industrial Revolution and the very occupational senses of burnout started coming into play with electricity making people work longer. They couldn't just stop when the sun went down, as in the past.
00:19:40
Speaker
All of these different things, what you're saying is so true. People have experienced this concept of burnout, it seems like, long, long before we came up with this actual one encompassing term of burnout.
00:19:55
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that we can all agree that it has gotten worse and worse for your average person since the Industrial Revolution. I mean, the history of this is so vast and interesting, but really picks up during the Industrial Revolution. We were originally going to do an episode on self-care and we'd actually written like, I'd written full notes for two episodes, right?
00:20:16
Speaker
on self-care and it wasn't clicking for us because and we've already done one on self-care but this was pre-pandemic and the world has changed a lot since then so we were like okay let's look at like what people are saying about self-care now and it's so interesting because self-care and burnout go hand in hand like it's a cycle of like not doing self-care ending up in burnout do burnout or you get burned out do some self-care and it's like they really do go hand in hand um but one there was a lot of overlap in the research and one of the things was like
00:20:44
Speaker
the coming up with the proper work week during, you know, labor unions being formed in the Industrial Revolution and people going on strike and trying to get like a Saturday afternoon off, right, because they were working like 12 hours a day, except for Sundays. And, and it kind of starts then and it's like there's murky beginnings because the first person who really came up with like this idea of the 888 schedule, which is like eight hours of work, eight hours of sleep and eight hours of rest or leisure, which
00:21:13
Speaker
roughly how our days are presented now, it doesn't mean we all get to do that. But that is the basic breakdown. And that has been ever since this Welsh, I forget, he was a factory owner kind of came up with that idea. And it's like, we want to believe that that was like, an altruistic motive, like, let's make sure everybody's getting enough rest.
00:21:32
Speaker
When in reality, they also understand from a capitalistic point of view, like, you know, if people are resting and having leisure, they'll perform better at work. But it's all tied into this history of industry and capitalism and people working so hard and burning themselves out. So there's this long history of it. But burnout as we know it today certainly has become very ramped up. You know, World War I, World War II, like talk about burnout.
00:21:58
Speaker
especially since then. So we're going to jump to the 1970s, but right before that, you and I were talking about how as stay-at-home moms, we each have four kids, you're homeschooling. I used to homeschool. We were talking about just like stay-at-home mom burnout and all of the pressure we feel to do all of the things and how like, what was it like for our ancestors? And one of the things that I know is true, but it's hard to find research on,
00:22:22
Speaker
but I know it's true especially because I read a lot of really old newspapers is that our grandmothers and our great-grandmothers and our great-great-grandmothers were put onto trains and they went and visited their moms for like sometimes two or three weeks they'd have a little meltdown
00:22:37
Speaker
And I think their husbands would pack them up and they would go spend time with family and they would be mothered by their mother or taken care of by their older aunt. This happened all the time. All you have to do is pick up any community newspaper and you will see that so-and-so sister Bertha is staying with her for the next three weeks visiting from this town she's from because they had these like social pages, basically like Facebook.
00:23:02
Speaker
Um, and so right, this is always happens. Yeah, it is fun. And I'm like, wait a second. I don't know myself or a single friend who's been like put on a train and go to stay with somebody for a couple of weeks. So we actually aren't even living that. So it's this really interesting look at history. And so we're going to focus of course, on like the mom life, the burnout of maybe like the caregiver role. Um, but of course throughout this episode, it's going to be intertwined with occupational burnout because they do go hand in hand.
00:23:31
Speaker
And so now we're going to journey to the 1970s and find out when it became like a psychological clinical definition. OK, so Dr. Herbert Freudenberger is a name that you will come across again and again when you research burnout. We will look into his stages of burnout later, but his research stemmed from his own personal burnout breakdown. And it was in the early 1970s and Dr. Freudenberger would work all day seeing patients in his private psychology clinic in New York.
00:24:01
Speaker
working 10 hours every day. And then right after that job, he would head to a second shift and he would head down to the East Village, to the St. Mark's Free Clinic, where he would serve young people who couldn't afford medical care. And he would help them with everything from drug addiction, even breakdown of dental issues. He even helped found the clinic after spending time in one in like the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco in the late 1960s.
00:24:26
Speaker
And he felt passionate about this work at these free clinics. And he worked very closely with people who were struggling with very, very heavy things. And so he would be like really emotionally tied up in that. And then when the clinic would close, he would then lead a team of meetings until the early hours of the morning.
00:24:44
Speaker
So this is his work day. He'd grab a few hours of sleep and then of course have to do it all over again. And then one morning he wasn't able to get out of bed and it was the start of his family vacation and his daughter could not get him out of bed. That was it. Like he had just finally completely burnt out.
00:25:02
Speaker
Now this term being burnt out was being used in the world of psychology already, but it was especially being used among like free clinic workers. And so yeah, maybe Shakespeare first used it. But then another way that became popularized, this is a little bit different than Shakespeare, is that heroin addicts, when they would overuse a vein, they would burn out that vein. And so they would call it being burned out.
00:25:28
Speaker
And so they use that all the time, that kind of language. And so the free clinic workers picked up on what that looked like to be burnt out. And then Fredenberger started comparing burnout and people to burned out buildings, which you also saw a lot of in New York City in the 1970s. So I like that imagery of it as well.
00:25:47
Speaker
But then he was like, okay, what happened to me? So he turned his professional eye to himself. And this is where he started the deep dive into the world of like occupational burnout and started doing massive research projects. And his stuff is still used today. And I'm getting a lot of this info on his life from an article from the Washington post. And in it, they provide Freud and Berger's early list of burnout symptoms. And it's quite a wide list. And so it says exhaustion, being unable to shake a lingering cold.
00:26:15
Speaker
suffering from frequent headaches and gastrointestinal disturbances, sleeplessness and shortness of breath, as well as quickness to anger, paranoia, overconfidence, cynicism and isolation. So the article goes, in short, burnout was everywhere because anything could be burnout.
00:26:31
Speaker
And then on the other side of the country, Christina Masloch was just completing her PhD from Stanford University and she was studying the psychological effects of caregiving and burnout through caregiving and how detached concern was a term she came up with.
00:26:49
Speaker
is a crucial mode for caregivers so that they can protect themselves as they're pouring out themselves for other people. And so at this time in the really early 1970s, these two people on the opposite coasts of America pioneered the early research into burnout as we know it today.
00:27:05
Speaker
wow that is this whole journey through time i'm like okay we're working with a much bigger scope than when i walked into the research for burnout but it's so interesting that it's been something that everyone has
00:27:25
Speaker
like known about. You know what I mean? And it's the name of it is as recent as the 1970s. The clinical understanding of it is as early or as recent as the 1970s. But not only through all of history has the concept been like ever present, but even the spurring on of deeper research was brought on by burning out.
00:27:51
Speaker
That's right. So here's the thing. This is the lesson. We think we know about it. We think we know what it is. But our next question then is, am I just tired or am I burned out? What is the difference between that? Am I stressed or am I burned out? Am I depressed or am I burned out? That's what we're going to look at now, is to really look at the differences between these things and really get a better understanding of what the clinical definition is of burnout.
00:28:18
Speaker
I will say too that burnt out and burned out and burn out, they're all acceptable. Because I was like, is it burnt out? It was one of those things where until you're speaking into a podcast to an audience where you think you know what you're saying. And then I was like, Jason, is it burnt out or burned out? So of course I googled that and guys both are acceptable. So we might be saying it all over the place, right? Okay.
00:28:39
Speaker
So what does it mean to be tired? Like really tired, like that you're newly pregnant, exhausted through to your bones, tired. So this is fatigue. And the website scimed.cz describes it like this. Fatigue is when the body and the mind feel exhausted, even if you are not doing anything physically or intellectually demanding at that time. The only wish you have is to lay down and rest.
00:29:09
Speaker
It is a feeling where the body's energy seems to be completely drained away and you cannot imagine being able to do any further activity, either physical or mental. That is, so some of us might be like, well, I'm totally burned out, but that's just fatigue. Like that's, you know, being really, really tired. And then here's the difference between fatigue and actual burnout.
00:29:32
Speaker
Fatigue goes away after a few restful days, you know, taking a break from a few things or a couple nights of good, deep sleep. Another difference is that fatigue is often from physical exertion, whereas burnout is from mental strain and stress. Another thing is that fatigue doesn't often affect someone's personality. Like sure you'll be a little cranky, right? Cause you're tired, but it's not your actual mood. Like you can see a definite mood shift as we'll get into later as people are becoming burned out.
00:30:02
Speaker
Okay, that is so interesting because I was actually thinking of the word rundown. Yeah, the term rundown, right? Because that's what I was thinking too. I'm like, could we also be mistaking like being run down with being burned out? And similar to fatigue, I found that one of the differences between those two is being run down is also more of a physical
00:30:27
Speaker
Um, manifestation of stress. So rundown is like more like you can't shake a sickness. Um, you're, you're weak. Like you feel kind of weak and depleted either nutrients wise or energy wise and things like that. And burned out is something a little bit different, but, um, yeah, just to go along with it, like the physical manifestation of it, fatigue and being run down. Um, that is really interesting. All these little nuances.
00:30:57
Speaker
It totally is and another one is stressed. So then I was looking at stress versus being burned out So according to calm calm calm calm calm calm It's that app right the calm app that you will have so this says
00:31:17
Speaker
Stress is when your body reacts to pressure and demands with a burst of energy, faster heartbeat, and more alertness. But burnout can happen when stress has gone on for far too long, draining your energy and motivation. It's more than just feeling exhausted, it's feeling empty, as if you have nothing left to give.
00:31:36
Speaker
So I thought that's funny too, because I would always think stress and burnout are the same thing. And they're not. Stress is like these momentary surges within our bodies that can last for a few hours, even a few days. But it's this temporary state where you actually feel excitable or super anxious, fight or flight, that kind of thing. So that is not burnout either.
00:31:57
Speaker
So yeah, I thought I saw like chronic stress may lead to burnout. That's right. These things all lead to burnout. Yeah. Right. So it's almost like not all stress is necessarily burnout. Right. But all burnout is stress.
00:32:14
Speaker
Yes, all burnout would have a stress factor in it for sure. And chronic is a really important word as we continue to dive deep into this. And then the last one I came across is burnout versus depression. So now this is coming from everyone's favourite medical source, webmd.com.
00:32:32
Speaker
They're often right. So my own doctor uses it. We've caught him like literally using one D around the corner. I'm sure it's fine. It says burnout and depression can look similar, but burnout is usually related to one aspect of your life, like your job or your role as a caregiver.
00:32:55
Speaker
And just like stress, burnout left untreated can become depression. So depression, right, is like this overall sense of emptiness and all the, I mean, that's a whole other episode, but burnout is usually tied to one thing, which I thought was really interesting.
00:33:12
Speaker
Yeah, and I never realized, like I wouldn't have thought that there was this progression between all of these things right like you I was kind of lumping, many of them together. Yeah, to one complete term but
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah to hear about the contingency of each one as it leads to the next as it goes unchecked really puts things into a different perspective on how you you can approach it then. And this is something I take really seriously with I believe like the I'm gonna just make up a word here but it's like the over psychologicalizing of
00:33:47
Speaker
People from social media like thinking we can diagnose ourselves from a 20-second reel We toss around these clinical things that are very serious by the time you hit and we'll get to this Legit burnout you require medical assistance like so just justice I think it's really important in this day and age when people do just toss these things about without doing any research and
00:34:08
Speaker
to understand the differences between these things. I actually think it's medically and medically responsible like of us to really not just toss around these terms without knowing what we're talking about. Like I for sure have said like I'm burned out. Yeah, me too. And now I will probably think twice. Well let's keep going because it's so much more fatigue.
00:34:34
Speaker
And it's because it's actually the more we become aware of what the differences are, then we know how to better treat ourselves, right? If it is actually just fatigue, then there are things to do to help that. So this is, and I'm going to get into this more later when we're talking about what we can do, but having that self-awareness is so key here. Having this kind of just basic understanding, and it's not just to take care of ourselves, but it's to notice these things within our husbands, within our parents.
00:34:59
Speaker
the people around us so that when we understand what they're going through and we can pick out like it's just becoming more informed and then we can just be of service to others and yeah to ourselves the more we know okay and so now like once we have the differentiation of what burnout is not what burnout could possibly not be
Types of Burnout and Their Impact
00:35:19
Speaker
Once you're into burnout there are even different types of burnout you could experience right so we should we'll just define what those types are even before we get into it because those can look really different too depending on what you're experiencing.
00:35:35
Speaker
Yeah, and some of them are obvious, but one of them was not obvious to me before having researched this. And now I'm like, that makes total sense. So yeah, when you Google this, you're going to keep coming across these four different types of burnout. And so we'll just give you a brief overview of these. And this is kind of everywhere, so I don't really have a specific source to give. But the first one is overload burnout. And this happens when you work harder and harder at a frantic pace. People experiencing this are willing
00:36:03
Speaker
Risk their health and relationships we'll go into that more as we talk about the stages of burnout But that overload burnout is happens at the beginning stages when someone usually gets a new job or that you know They're trying to give it their their all but what's key here is that they're they know that they're doing taking on too much but they're willing to trade in their health for that at that point and
00:36:24
Speaker
And this is the one, this next one is the one that shocked me, that can cause burnout. And that's being under challenged. And this type of burnout occurs when you aren't given chances and opportunities to grow and learn new skills. And then you start to feel under appreciated and bored. And then what happens to the under challenged people is they start to distance themselves and they become cynical. And then they start avoiding responsibilities, those very simple things that they were already finding boring, they won't even do anymore.
00:36:53
Speaker
So you can actually get burned out by not doing enough. And then the next one is a neglect burnout and this happens when you feel helpless and you just can't keep up with your responsibilities. And then the final one is called habitual burnout. It is the most serious type and it's when your physical and mental fatigue is chronic and you are acting like a different person. Serious depression and suicidal thoughts can occur at this point and then professional help is definitely needed.
00:37:22
Speaker
Yeah, those three, the first three you were mentioning, the overload, the under challenged, and the neglect burnouts. I found it interesting because these three types, when we take being burned out out of that occupational sense we were talking about in the beginning, and then apply it to other areas of a person's life, like say homemaking or parenthood, motherhood,
00:37:49
Speaker
I actually think all three of these things can apply at the same time when it's applied outside the workforce, right? So like we often at home, we'll often overwork ourselves, even in the care of our homes and families. But at the same time, the work can be monotonous day to day. And it's not really a state in life where you like can get promoted.
00:38:14
Speaker
per se. And then sometimes there are new challenges that make you feel a little unequipped at first, you know, how learning how to clean well and properly, or learning how to cook, raising kids figuring out how to budget like all of these are skills and rather involved. So if you're
00:38:33
Speaker
kind of a little bit lost looking for a mentor in those areas. I feel like you can be feel a bit of that neglect burnout. All this to say, I found I just found it an interesting point that I can see these kinds of burnout individually happening in an occupational sense. But I was also struck about how all three could be contributing factors to burnout at the same time when it comes to our personal lives at home as well.
00:39:03
Speaker
Yes, you are totally on to something there because as much as all of my research pointed me in the direction of occupational burnout and I had to actually hunt for like burnout for stay at home moms and caregivers, it was a little harder to find that. And I'm not surprised because again, where you're going to research costs money. And so where you're going to find the money to research is companies and corporations who want to get the most to extract
00:39:28
Speaker
the best quality work out of their employees. And so they're going to put money into making sure that they can do that. There's no department for motherhood, right? That's looking at ways to keep moms healthy. Guys, we have to do that for ourselves. And so there just isn't as much research done about this. Now, the little bit of research that has been done, and I think one of the first studies done was just in 2019. I don't have that in front of me, but again, it's just an area that's very poorly researched.
00:39:55
Speaker
But there is a term that's called depleted mother syndrome. And so you can find that it's basically stay at home mom burnout. Now, according to an article on Forbes.com, one in five US adults stay home full time with their kids. And according to a study published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, these stay at home parents now they're most often moms. So I will just keep saying moms from this point on.
00:40:21
Speaker
experience worse physical and mental health than their peers who work outside of the home. This is not us weighing in on this age-old argument. It's just we're just talking about data here because this is what it was turning out during my research and I was shocked to find this because I've never seen this data.
00:40:42
Speaker
It says many stay-at-home moms experience burnout and anxiety, but depression is most common. In fact, one Gallup poll of 60,000 women found that stay-at-home moms experienced mental health issues at a higher rate than working moms. So what did the numbers say? Well, the poll revealed that 27% of stay-at-home moms experience depression compared to 17% of working moms.
00:41:06
Speaker
Both groups of moms feel stressed. That's pretty neck and neck with stay-at-home moms coming in at 50% and working moms being 48%. But 26% of stay-at-home moms say that they are sad versus 16% of working moms. But why is this, right? And I know at first we probably all have all these ideas.
00:41:25
Speaker
And there's a lot to be said on this. So one of the biggest things that researchers found is that we can't underestimate the social and emotional and psychological impact of working outside the home and how that social time can have a positive impact on someone's mental health. That is one of the number one things that contributes to the mental health of a woman. This doesn't mean she's not tired. This doesn't mean she's not stressed, right? Those numbers were all coming up.
00:41:52
Speaker
but her social mental health felt better when she was working outside of the home. In fact, they found even working remotely and just logging in to do Zoom meetings with your coworkers was helpful in combating those feelings of loneliness. And the main challenges for moms at home, and this is what you were alluding to earlier, Michelle,
00:42:11
Speaker
Some of the other challenges is isolation and loneliness, a loss of identity, and there's a jarring mental shift with this total life change. And this happens for moms who were dreaming of being stay-at-home moms and wanted to be stay-at-home moms. It's such a total life switch-up that is really abrupt for a lot of women.
00:42:33
Speaker
And then there's also this misconception that being home is easy, right? And it is definitely not easy. In fact, a lot of the articles I was reading about this situation for women was one of the coping things is to just admit that it's hard. Is to just actually say that to yourself, what I'm doing every day is really, really hard.
00:42:53
Speaker
And so when a stay-at-home mom is feeling burned out, what you might see from her is she might have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, she becomes impatient with her husband and kids, and she can become easily triggered. And so it's like getting angry or crying for what seems like no apparent reason. I'm sure she can, because I've been there, I am she, I'm sure she can stand there and give you all the reasons why she's crying or angry.
00:43:15
Speaker
But everyone else looking at it might be like, okay, but the reaction, your reaction doesn't seem to match up with the stimuli, right? Like it seems like you're easily triggered right now by things that might not have bothered you even a month ago. So then you add in all the hormones, right? Especially postpartum hormones and this pressure to feel like you're earning your place in the home. And again, this isn't you and I saying this, this is from the data and the research.
00:43:40
Speaker
that women who stay home feel like they need to earn that place in this culture and be like, no, I'm working really, really hard at home. I'm doing as much work as my friends who are working. And then, of course, they tie in Instagram worthy homemaker stuff and showing all this perfect stuff. And these women are clearly the data is showing being weighed down by anxiety and disappointment. They used the word disappointment. So the Forbes article also described many moms feeling, quote, lonely and a house full of people.
00:44:10
Speaker
And then they slip into the cycle of feeling alone and then depression prevents them from going out and being social and seeing friends, which then takes them right back into the feelings of isolation. But that really struck me that so many moms said that they felt lonely and houseful of people.
00:44:29
Speaker
That is a really startling thought, but I could see that because I know we've talked in the past too about how staying at home today is different than even a generation or two ago. Absolutely, yes. And the social factor would have been a different scenario completely as recently as maybe our moms or our grandmothers.
00:44:53
Speaker
generations. There would have been more people around during the day, perhaps. You wouldn't have had the social media peek into the perfected homemaking worlds on Instagram. You would just be able to chitchat with neighbors as they walked by. It was a little bit more of that kind of a lifestyle that may lend to that connection with people. But
00:45:16
Speaker
I totally see that being a really big influence and factor. And then also just acknowledging that it's difficult. I have thought about that in so many other areas of life too, that truly comparison is the thief of joy.
00:45:33
Speaker
And everybody's life has its own set of unique challenges. So you really can't compare like you have it easier than I do. So you don't have, you know, a reason to complain or anything like that. Or I don't have a reason to complain because they must have it so much more difficult than me. That's right. You got to just choose your hard. Everyone's choosing their hard.
00:45:56
Speaker
And so, yeah, I can totally see how there's multiple factors that make the stay at home situation when it comes to burnout just that much more so in today in like 2024.
00:46:10
Speaker
Now here is a list of some signs that someone is suffering from caregiver burnout. So again, a lot of the studies done into this area aren't necessarily done on stay at home moms. It's just anybody in a caregiver position, right? So there's a lot of our listeners who are taking care of elderly parents and that sort of thing as well. And this is a real thing. This is a legit problem.
00:46:31
Speaker
And so this is where money does go into research into caregiver burnout, like we were saying earlier with the work of Dr. Christina Masloch. So this is interesting. So this list is from parents.com. And these are the things you should look for if somebody is going is suffering through caregiver burnout.
00:46:46
Speaker
And again, you're going to listen to some of these things and be like, well, yeah, that's obvious. But you have to listen really carefully to how it's chronic or it's more serious than just feeling tired. So one of them is withdrawing from other people, becoming quite antisocial, losing interest in the things that you once loved.
00:47:05
Speaker
Sleep problems, changes in appetite, feeling exhausted, having trouble controlling your worries. I think that's really interesting. Having trouble controlling them, right? All moms have worries. We all have those terrifying moments going in to check on our kids and their curbs. We have those intrusive thoughts. I think that's very common. But usually we can talk ourselves out of it and calm ourselves down relatively quickly. But this is when you're having trouble controlling that. Feeling less hope.
00:47:31
Speaker
I thought that that was interesting too because it's hard to feel hopeful all the time But if it's becoming really hard to look forward to anything with hope that that's a sign Feeling extra emotional. So like again, it's not just our normal Ups and downs like women but sad a deep sadness irritability and deeply anxious Feeling like you need a break versus just wanting a break That's a very different thing if you ask yourself
00:48:00
Speaker
Noticing that you have a short temper. Feeling as though any new task might push, like put you over the edge. Right? Just one more thing. If you have to do right now, you're going to scream, you're going to snap. Um, needing to not be touched, right? We all know about being touched out and needing to be left alone. Waking up and not wanting to do the day. Like just that we keep talking about like these circumstances of people not being able to get out of bed.
00:48:26
Speaker
and then feeling resentful towards the baby or your kids or your spouse, and then feeling guilty about all of these things. We're really struggling with that in your head. So a lot of those are great things to be aware of and warning signs, especially as we're loving on our sisters and my daughters one day when they become moms and my daughters-in-law, like really keeping a list like this in your head and keeping a close eye not only on ourselves, right, but on the women in our lives.
00:48:54
Speaker
It's a good point because a few of those things, at least on those lists, are very internal things.
00:49:00
Speaker
Yeah. Right. So trying to keep up and keep an eye out for those things and others to have that kind of relationship where they might feel comfortable coming to you. Yes. Actually, you know, Michelle, I don't know about your early postpartum days, but I had a few people in my life, including my family doctor who checks WebMD. So I got to give him props for this, but I go in for all those immediate postpartum appointments. Right. And he would look at me and go, how are you doing as he's sitting down in the stool? But then he'd actually pause and turn right to me and look me in my eyes and go,
00:49:30
Speaker
how are you doing? Like he realized he had said it really flippantly, but then he'd lock eyes with me and read my, and then I'd almost cry every time. Cause as soon as somebody locks eyes with you as a new mom, it says how are, like in their tone changes, how are you doing? And so I had, you know, my mom said it like that. Jason would say it like that. And a few other women in my life. So it was just, just that difference of when, you know, somebody's actually ready to hear what you have to say to them makes all the difference.
00:49:57
Speaker
Okay, so we're going to swing back towards Dr. Freudenberger's work and his studies on occupational burnout because I think this is really interesting too. And so, and a lot of our friends here on the podcast are working, you know, women.
00:50:13
Speaker
And so this is really interesting. So he came up with the 12 stages of burnout, but he also came up with the five stages of burnout and they're different lists, but you could group the 12 as you break them all down into the five. So instead of, we just don't want to be too boring, just rhyming off lists, but I will say the 12 stages, but we're going to talk a little bit more about the five stages. Okay.
00:50:36
Speaker
So the 12 stages of burnout, this was again developed by psychologist Herbert Freudenberger.
Preventing Burnout: Strategies and Practices
00:50:41
Speaker
And his first one is excessive ambition. And so we were kind of talking about this earlier. This is where you start out with like a noble desire to work really, really hard, but left unchecked, it can transform into a compulsion to work hard. And it goes from being just noble work to wanting to be better than your coworkers. That's where it starts to change.
00:51:03
Speaker
And then you start working harder is the next step. As you feel compelled to do better and better at work, you start taking on more and more responsibilities, right? And you take more and more tasks on and inevitably this will affect your time away from work. So this is an example of like when you start checking all your work emails from home at 11 o'clock at night when you don't really need to.
00:51:23
Speaker
And you have trouble disconnecting from work. So that's only the second stage of burnout. The third one is neglecting your own needs. This is when you start putting the needs of others ahead of your own, but this is still in a workplace sense. No, that's really your family. You're just trying to get all of those things done. And then the next thing is displacing problems.
00:51:43
Speaker
You can feel the conflict arising in your life, and that what's going on in your personal life, and that almost seems harder to deal with than your work stuff, so you start displacing those problems. You keep focusing on the work stuff, but you're also, you can't shake that feeling that things are unraveling at home. So this makes the person start to get more jittery and panicky, and they start overreacting about small things in the home. So you can see this burnout starting to pick up steam right now.
00:52:12
Speaker
The next thing is a revision of values. So you start to realize that you've strayed off course and that you've moved away from the things that matter in your life, like your family and friends, and that your self care has taken a backseat. And then in the article, it actually says your entire self worth is now derived from your productivity and accomplishments. So again, it's all about work and everything else is taking this backseat.
00:52:35
Speaker
And then the next stage is denial of new problems. So now that you're placing more value on work over your time away from work, you're starting to think that everyone else around you is lazy or incompetent, right? You're the only one working. So now this is all in your head. No one else is working as hard as you are.
00:52:51
Speaker
And then you start to blame a lot of things. You blame your stress on all of these other things, but the person is losing the ability to understand how much they've changed. And this is why they're feeling stress. It's now that it's all outward. And then the next one is withdrawal. So now you're fully pulling back from all relationships. And almost all of the conversations you do have with people involve work. You might fall into bad habits of guilty pleasures now as a way to escape.
00:53:20
Speaker
And then the next stage is impact on others. The people around you now know something is up. Like you're not shaking this off, whatever's going on. You just aren't yourself. You're irritable. You're quick to anger. And you're starting to forget to do things like pick up the kids from school, things you would have never forgotten before.
00:53:38
Speaker
And then the next one is depersonalization. This is where you feel like a shell of your former self, detached from your own body like an outsider looking in and you're just going through the motions. And then it's inner emptiness. You question how valuable you are, your worth.
00:53:54
Speaker
You've lost your drive and now you daydream about quitting your job. You might be self-medicating at this point with things like alcohol. And then it's depression and it says life is now a blurry gray bleak haze. You're totally exhausted and you feel lost. And then finally it's full burnout syndrome. You've reached the breaking point. Medical attention is necessary as is time away from your job.
00:54:18
Speaker
Okay, so then you look at his other list, the five stages of burnout. And it's basically all of those things we just listed, but he's kind of narrowed it down into the honeymoon stage, right? Like we were saying that working harder and all of that stuff, the onset of stress, right? When you start working a little bit less and you're becoming irritable, chronic stress, then it's neglecting the personal needs and becoming resentful.
00:54:39
Speaker
The burnout, this is that apathy and exhaustion and the physical symptoms. And then the final one is the habitual burnout. This is where you need the support. So that's just a more condensed list, but I did like the 12-step list. I do really think it takes you on this journey. Well, yeah, it's almost like as you're reading through that list, you see this film of a person moving through each of those things, right?
00:55:04
Speaker
So we talk about how there's a difference between the occupational burnout as opposed to a caregiver burnout or if you're staying at home. But I see how those 12 stages can be felt from all areas of life. Like I see how they totally relate to the stay at home mom too, right?
00:55:27
Speaker
So I was reading the list. I read the first stage on the 12 stages list and I was like, uh-oh, already relatable, like the extreme enthusiasm. Yes. Just like as someone who jumps into every idea, like both feet and arms wide open.
00:55:47
Speaker
And that is actually the first stage of burnout. And on the five stages, the five stages list, it was the honeymoon phase, which is such a great term for it. All about that enthusiasm. But I can see how that excessive ambition can quickly spiral.
00:56:05
Speaker
I was thinking as I was reading it that really the crux of burnout as it pertains to these lists, it really does begin at that first stage though. The thought came to me, how much of it has to do with pride, burning out and pride?
00:56:24
Speaker
Yes, yes. And like the article says, that enthusiasm about your work, this is from the article, enthusiasm about your work is seemingly harmless. And I would say that in general, it's probably a good thing if you have like enthusiasm about your work.
00:56:42
Speaker
But right in the same breath, in the same paragraph, it talks about how, and you said, how the enthusiasm can morph into that compulsion to prove your worth to yourself and to others. And so I just did a quick Google search because I had this pride thing in my head and I was like, what again is the definition of pride? And Catholic Answers Encyclopedia, which is online,
00:57:07
Speaker
defined pride as the excessive love of one's own excellence. Yes. It's so easy for us to fall into this trap from healthy enthusiasm for your work to pride. The margin seems really small.
00:57:24
Speaker
So maybe, maybe it's hard for us to walk that tightrope or even impossible without, you know, God's help and grace. But in any case, that was a really interesting thought that I had when reading this article is that right there, bam, point number one, stage number one, do you want to curb burnout right at square one?
00:57:46
Speaker
You got to check your intentions on things, check your motivation, be mindful of your perspective. Because from there, stage two is taking pleasure in that praise that comes from excessive enthusiasm and the potential for a growing addiction to that recognition that makes it hard to turn work off. And then that just kicks the spiral into high gear.
00:58:11
Speaker
You know what I think is so interesting too? Well, first of all, as you're saying a lot, I'm like, check yourself before you wreck yourself. Like the motto of this episode. The lesser known theological motto. Was that in the Catholic answers definition somewhere? Footnote, footnote, footnote five. Check yourself. People in cyclical 1812. Yeah.
00:58:32
Speaker
So, but no, and you know, I think is really interesting and a really a way to combine like these two word worlds like the, which they are combined, but we're just, you know, pretend they're separate, like the occupational world and the caregiver world is so many of our peers started out so many of the moms who are staying at home right now, especially in Canada, where you get an extended maternity leave, higher than some other places in the world. A lot of these women are coming from the corporate world.
00:58:58
Speaker
So they're kind of taking this mindset, this corporate working mindset into their motherhood. There are good things about this. There are some things that I've seen like really crush women in the early years of motherhood with this, but I find that there's, I could see them taking this and going, okay, I'm going to jump into this like I'm starting a new project at work, right? Like this baby is a project.
00:59:20
Speaker
And I'm going to just work harder and harder because at your work, like you were saying earlier, Michelle, you get promotions, you get raises. You get like little bonuses. You might get like a little gift certificate out to a restaurant if you closed a really good deal and all these things. There's like different like external rewards and stimuli that we just don't have as stay at home moms. So I could just really see like this mindset, this corporate mindset coupled with the caregiver burnout being like this recipe for disaster.
00:59:49
Speaker
And no wonder so many young women, so many moms get so burned out. Yeah, it's that disillusionment, right, that I saw come up a few times in the discussion of burnout online is that another thing that contributes to burnout is like an over
01:00:09
Speaker
How would you say it? Like putting in too much energy and not receiving back what you thought you were going to get out of it. Oh, yes. But that makes process. Yeah. And that process repeating over and over and over again, though. Right. And yeah, I can definitely see how that that can manifest at home, too, is just you don't you don't get promotions at home. You can make it. We could make it for ourselves. Yeah.
01:00:35
Speaker
I feel better when someone else does. I'm like, could you please print me out a certificate that I got all the laundry done this week? And I would love to hang it. And I would love to frame that and hang it as a little joke in my laundry room. Yes. I think we just found our own personal exercise for the next little while. Homemaker promotions.
01:00:56
Speaker
Yes, but I was thinking like you and I are such suckers for going in like guns blazing right into anything. And so it's like, okay, it's almost a little painful to hear that maybe pulling back at the beginning might be beneficial in the long run.
01:01:11
Speaker
I was just at my kids' track and field events today, right, before we were recording. And I was watching all the kids running the races. And you could hear so many little conversations with these kids in grade four and grade five, all the way up through grade eight. And some of them were saying, well, my dad gave me this advice for running a race that I should start out, don't start out too fast, right? So you don't run out by the end, and then you shoot forward at the end. And I thought, this is so funny. And of course, it's the same advice, right? You don't want to be the guns blazing out of the gate and burn right out.
01:01:40
Speaker
As much as that hurts my very ambitious heart, who gets so pumped up about anything I'm trying, perhaps this is some advice I need I need to really consider. Right? That's such a good point. And about like knowing how
01:01:56
Speaker
how to moderate that at the very beginning stages. There was another thing I found interesting as you got further on both of the lists. And right around in the middle of burnout stages is when the person is like maybe aware that something's off, right? You were mentioning that. But then the person thinks that the antidote is more work.
01:02:21
Speaker
Yeah. They don't want to deal with the emotional side of the set. It's actually easier at that point when they have to deal with both things. They'd rather keep working. Yeah. And in some ways, like in some ways that like just get her done mentality to quote Mr. Jones for a second. Was that on our Patreon though? I think so. Yeah, it was on our Patreon episode. That is like my, we are going to put it on my dad's tombstone, which won't really make sense, but get her done. That is a quote from Derek. Yeah.
01:02:48
Speaker
And sometimes in life you do have to get her done, you have to power through, right? But I think the interesting thought here is like not so much that we may have to accept, sometimes that we have to power through work, but that we may think that this is the solution. I just thought that was such, yeah, that you would
01:03:11
Speaker
so badly not want to have to deal with the interpersonal stuff, the interior stuff, that you think the solution, that taking on more work is going to help you. Maybe again, still rooted in pride because instead of admitting that it's too much or asking for help or delegating or taking some of the pressure off, we think maybe subconsciously the praise that's going to come from having managed to pull it off again.
01:03:38
Speaker
is going to be worth it, and that that means that I'm worth it too, right? And we're just looking for the validation and the affirmation, which is natural, but seeking it in our work for work's sake isn't going to fill that space in the hearts that we're hoping it's going to fill, if that makes sense.
01:03:57
Speaker
Okay, so we've already been kind of just sharing as we're talking this through ways to prevent or like identify and then change these stages, right to kind of recognize when you're in them. And I think that that's the most important thing here is that self awareness. And one of the things I read and ways to prevent or deal with this is to really
01:04:17
Speaker
evaluate where you're at and in perhaps even using a scale like one to ten and asking yourself in these areas of your life like where am I sitting on that scale that might work really well for some people and going like okay and tracking it where there are a lot of people who like tracking that type of data and be like okay I can see that I'm holding steady here but then they also use that that idea of stop and the idea of stop it's called the stop method so the first thing you do is stop and
01:04:43
Speaker
And then the T is take a deep breath and ground yourself as you dial into your five senses. I've been thinking about that a lot lately and hearing things about like really listening to your body in those moments you're feeling anxious. Like what part of you is it your heart? Is it your stomach? Like what part of you is it your mind that's racing? So really dial into those five senses. And then the O is observe what you are thinking and feeling and then decide on the next right thing. And then the P is proceed with intention.
01:05:10
Speaker
Now I'll say, I like this method. I like how it's all broken down. I will never, that's too many words for a method. And I noticed they put, they kind of slipped two things into one letter there. Yes, they did. Twice. And so yeah, that is the stop method that you may have to look up yourself because you're not going to remember that.
01:05:30
Speaker
That's the first one, right? It's like self-awareness. And I think that, and again, every time I think about these things, I want to extend that to my husband and that grace and be like, okay, where do I think he's at? And these things too. And having that grace for myself, but also for the people closest to me in their life.
01:05:48
Speaker
Yeah, so kind of carrying along with this self-awareness aspect, one of the things that we can do too is to recognize and then respond to the signs of stress, right? And I will have to say that this episode has been very instructive for me on how to recognize when stress and burnout might be tipping into the warning zone.
01:06:11
Speaker
But yeah, like we've been saying, I think it's so good for us to have that kind of self-awareness because if we get really good at assessing where we are with the daily stress levels we face, then we'll probably get really good at cutting it off at the head, right? And then stop it before it becomes really challenging or
01:06:33
Speaker
even debilitating. And one example I could think of was when I was just skimming the list of signs and symptoms for stress, there was a list on a website called mind.org.uk. One of the things they list is loss of sense of humor as a sign of stress. Interesting, yeah.
01:06:54
Speaker
I was like, you know, we've talked about humor and laughter in one of our past episodes and how, yeah, it's really necessary to have laughter in our lives, something as simple as that. But sometimes you could stop and think to yourself, you know, when was the last time that I laughed?
01:07:13
Speaker
And even more so a deep belly, like almost laugh till you cry kind of laugh. When was the last time? And so if you're in the throes of stress or burning out, like the last time
01:07:29
Speaker
that that happened may not quickly come to mind. So things like that, learn how to recognize the signs because how great would it be if we noticed that sooner than later and then you could address it at so much of an earlier stage and it's something great to think about.
01:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, we have talked about laughter. We've even talked about doing another episode on it because it's so important to us. And I really have always said this. I think the reason why I have been able to really roll with the punches of motherhood like I don't usually feel stressed from my motherhood is because I laugh all the time.
01:08:05
Speaker
And I make it all, I try, I think I'm hilarious. So I make it all funny. And so I say to friends all the time, like, if I have to yell at my kids, and when I mean yell, it's because they're not listening, right? And you finally stop, you're like, that's it, like, get upstairs to bed, like that moment. I will admit, I always do that with a funny accent, and I'm not good at accents. So it just sounds like I'm garbling something out, like it doesn't,
01:08:27
Speaker
But I do it not in my real voice. And then that gets me laughing and them laughing. And so I can like shut down so many serious moments with humor. And it's just really been if I had to pick one thing aside from prayer that has gotten me through 18 years of motherhood. And I have now two preteens and two teens is really laughter. So I think that that's so true. And I love that recognizing the signs.
01:08:52
Speaker
Another thing that shows up over and over and over again as a way to combat this from the very beginning is exercise and diet. And there is a ton of research about how what we put into our bodies and how we treat our bodies can help prevent burnout. There's a big study done in Finland, and this is on PubMed, where you can get all the medical studies published. And they monitored the diets of 630 female employees who kind of worked in government jobs.
01:09:21
Speaker
And they found that the ones who ate a healthy diet full of good dairy, fruits, vegetables, and meats scored lower on the burnout indicator. There is a whole other test we haven't even gotten into here about the burnout indicator. And that's just one study. There's plenty that I said about moving our bodies, which we've talked about in previous episodes and what we put into it. But that seems to be a really key factor.
01:09:46
Speaker
Yeah. And that just really is all encompassing in like that self-care topic that we were going to do. Right? Yes. Yes. Actually, what we talked about at the beginning of the episode, like that proper exercise, proper diet and nutrition makes such a difference. And one of the things that we had talked about that we wanted to discuss in those self-care episodes that we both wrote out was like just this meaning of proper self-care.
01:10:16
Speaker
And I kept coming back to this idea of like, just take care of yourself. Like that's what it means in its most simple, basic form.
01:10:25
Speaker
And we send off to our friends all the time. We're like, bye, take care. Like we, we genuinely wish that our loved ones will take care of themselves so that they're good. Right. Um, and so yeah, like interiorly, exteriorly, uh, the diet, the exercise, the being social, it just reminded me of that viral audio on Instagram reels. I'm sure you've come across it where it's like,
01:10:51
Speaker
I'm feeling so down lately. And then the other person goes like, have you drink water today? No. Have you been outside? No. Have you exercised? No. Have you been active? No. So yeah, I can't figure it out. And I think the reason why it's such a popular reel is because it's relatable.
01:11:09
Speaker
So just making sure, like, are you taking care of yourself? And then, yeah, just presenting, putting a good foot forward at the most basic level of taking care of ourselves makes so much of a difference.
01:11:26
Speaker
I was thinking it's funny you mentioned reels and self-care because there's one that stood out to me and I think one of the things that really screws us up with self-care is we're getting all this messaging about what it is and what it is not and here's the thing it's self-care like only you know what you can do for yourself that will make you feel cared for
01:11:43
Speaker
So one of the ones that drove me insane in the last year was the whole one of going grocery shopping isn't self care, cleaning your house alone isn't self care. Yeah, it is. It is for me and plenty of other women commented going actually it is like don't tell me that that isn't self care. When I'm relaxed doing those things where I find great pleasure in those things.
01:12:01
Speaker
so that's like one side of the spectrum telling us what it isn't or what it but then the other side is you know the whole bubble baths aren't a self-care yeah they are like that can also be self-care it's it's truly again self-awareness and asking yourself what can i do today to take care of myself be
01:12:16
Speaker
guys we've said it a thousand times what you're doing your kids are watching and if you want your daughters and your sons to take care of themselves when they're older you have to model it you have to model it there you know you're not serving anybody and your future generations by becoming burned out
01:12:34
Speaker
And it's something that, like you said, because it's so personal, we really can't take our cues, especially at this stage when you might be feeling so stressed out to the point of journeying towards burnout. Trying to look for inspiration on what's going to help relieve your stress in terms of self-care from other sources might be adding more stress because it's just
01:13:00
Speaker
Adding more questions, more maybe doubt, more things on your to-do list because maybe it's not natural to your personality or going to fit into your stage of life. So I love that distinction. It's self-care. So what is it that you yourself really find relaxing and take pleasure in that's going to help you put you into that state of mind? I think it, what is it?
01:13:28
Speaker
It's the parasympathetic nervous system, right? You're saying that like I'm relaxing. Whichever one means that you're relaxed. That's what it's going to help you with.
01:13:43
Speaker
Another suggestion that kept popping up on ways to prevent burnout is about setting boundaries. And again, I don't think we've ever done a full podcast episode on this, but it's something that has worked its way into so many episodes. But here's a list with some ways to establish healthy boundaries.
01:14:00
Speaker
And so the first thing is to explore and define your values and be clear about what they are. Again, that's self-awareness and that's what you want for you and your family in your home. And the next thing is finding comfort and saying no. Comfort. I thought that was a really interesting word to use in that. But then it gets even more interesting. Find comfort and hearing no from others without taking it personally.
01:14:26
Speaker
And then practice vulnerability with trusted individuals. This could have come up in like so many times in this right finding somebody to just talk to. That's such an important thing. Communicate your needs, limits, and expectations in assertive statements. Clear, concise, to the point. What do you need? What are you willing to do and not to?
01:14:46
Speaker
The next one is follow through with your actions if a boundary has been crossed. So if you have set it up and somebody's crossed it, you know, you've got to follow up with that. You said you would. And that's respecting yourself. And then finally, respect other people's boundaries. Right. We're all good about setting our own, but are we paying attention to the boundaries set up set up around us? And so those things, I thought that that was awesome. And again, if you Google setting boundaries to avoid burnout, there's a ton of information on this.
01:15:16
Speaker
That's really good because I think that, you know, a lot of burnout, as we've talked about it today, really stems from not knowing when to stop in several different areas of your life, right? So yeah, I can see how boundaries create a big impact in the battle against burnout. Ooh, that's a good title for this episode.
01:15:40
Speaker
Wow. Okay. And then for us, especially as practicing Catholics, right, we would be remiss to not address the underlying source of consolation, comfort and motivation, proper motivation that comes in our lives, which stems from God.
01:16:02
Speaker
And so much of our faith life contributes to this prevention of burnout if we're tapping into it regularly. Things like regular prayer, making use of spiritual direction if you have access to a director at this time, frequenting the sacraments, regular time spent reading scripture. So, you know, this is truly, I think, the pivotal one out of all of these suggestions on how to prevent burnout because
01:16:32
Speaker
of what we've been talking about in all of those stages of burnout, where so much of burnout stems from our desire for affirmation, for validation, seeking our worth in our work. That's where we saw on both of those lists, where that enthusiasm started going off the rails.
01:16:52
Speaker
And we know that our worth comes from who we are in Christ and who God created us to be, who our identity is in Him. And to find that and to understand that is a life's work, but it's a work that never burns us out. And it only fills us with confidence and self-worth and peace, the things that we're seeking in the first place.
01:17:14
Speaker
You know, we can't really truly know ourselves until we seek to know God. And even when that first step of physical self-care or exercise or reaching out to a friend, if you're feeling the beginning stages of burnout, seems overwhelming, perhaps just a tiny little cry of help that we lift from our tired hearts will unleash a torrent of grace that will lift up and refresh our burned out hearts.
01:17:54
Speaker
Okay, it's time for our What We're Loving This Week segment of the show. So Lindsay, what have you been loving this week? Okay, I'm going to be brief, but it has to be two because I had the What I Was Loving for the two self-care episodes that we never produced. But when I was thinking about today with my notes, I'm like, I don't remember enough about it to like go into full detail. But I do still want to recommend, and I told you about this book, but I do want to recommend The Plague by Albert Camus.
01:18:21
Speaker
It is an outstanding book. And so if anybody's looking for a new classic, it's an easy read. It's very powerful. It's very interesting to look back on having lived through a pandemic, a worldwide pandemic with lockdowns. And this is all about that, but written, you know.
01:18:38
Speaker
not quite a hundred years ago. So anyways, that's the one thing is the plague if you want to read a new book. But what I'm really loving this week specifically, um, is Claire Safitz. Now she, I'm sure you've come across all of her videos on YouTube. I came across them forever without actually clicking on one.
01:18:55
Speaker
She used to work for Bon Appetit magazine and she got famous on YouTube for doing the gourmet recreations of our favorite snack foods. Everything from like Sour Patch Kids to Takis, like my kids love to Reese's Peanut Butter Cups too. And so have you ever seen her? She's got the dark hair with the white hair in the front and she's, but she's young. And so, oh my gosh, Michelle, that's a whole rabbit hole and your kids are going to love it too. So she's such a science cooking nerd, which I love. And so.
01:19:23
Speaker
She does her absolute best to recreate these stacked foods so they like do a deep dive into like how they're made and she will not give up. It takes days to master these foods. So that's really, really fun to watch. Now she left Bon Appetit magazine and she started writing her own cookbooks and now mostly films cooking videos from her cabin out in New York, New York state and cooks in her own kitchen and really explains
01:19:49
Speaker
Just like London Friends, my other favorite cooking show on YouTube, really explains what she's doing and the science behind it and why it would work. She's Harvard educated. Then she went to McGill for food history. She's just so pleasant to listen to. Her cookbooks are on my wish list. Claire Safitz. She's all over YouTube. Once you go down that rabbit hole, you'll be watching her nonstop.
01:20:14
Speaker
Oh my gosh. I looked her up while you were just plugging her there and this looks amazing. Oh my goodness. I can't wait for this rabbit. Yay. And though those credentials, that's incredible. Very impressive. You check back in with me in a week when Siva have been watching all her stuff. So what have you been loving this week, Michelle?
01:20:35
Speaker
Okay, so kind of like you, I was loving this a few weeks ago when we wrote our other script too, but I'm still not finished and I'm just a little further ahead, so I feel like it's still relevant. And I actually talked about this a little bit more in depth in our latest Patreon episodes, but for the last...
01:21:01
Speaker
I've been on a little bit of a break from social media. I don't think I talked about it here yet on the podcast. There were a few different things, you know, just that seemed off to me about how I've been using and consuming my online time and how it was affecting things like my attention span and focus.
01:21:23
Speaker
And so it just, it all led me to think, okay, I get it. I need some space. And it has been great. I'm still on this now.
Influential Authors and Media Recommendations
01:21:31
Speaker
But one of the things, and I talked about this on Patreon again, but one of the things that I do when I'm trying to adopt a new habit, or get out of a bad one,
01:21:41
Speaker
is I like I kind of stack the books I'm reading or the podcasts I'm listening to to support and affirm this new habit for me in my mind. I just like flood my ears and brain with anecdotal or scientific information to back me up and motivate me to continue. So this break with social media not so different and so enter author Jonathan Haidt
01:22:06
Speaker
Right. And you actually introduced me to him, Lindsay, when you recommended the episode of the Honestly podcast with Barry Weiss, where she interviews Jonathan. And from there, we finally get to what I'm loving besides that excellent interview, which is hate's latest book, The Anxious Generation.
01:22:26
Speaker
Like I said, I'm not totally finished with this book yet. I'm close though. And what I'm loving about it really is that it paints a really broad picture of how we got to where we are now with the world centered around the online sphere.
01:22:41
Speaker
So while Haight does talk about how the early 2010s were really this boom of social media's influence and the start of many hours and our kids' dependency on it, which brings its own problems, he talks about the societal changes that really paved the way for this to have a chance to take place and to actually take a foothold in our culture.
01:23:04
Speaker
and how it began long before the 2010s. And I just think it's a fascinating commentary on the history of the social media culture, which is a genre that is still relatively new. And it's neat in a way to be involved in the history of something that got it started in my lifetime.
01:23:25
Speaker
And so all this to say, I'm not sure where the springs break from social media is going to leave me, or if or when I'll be back in earnest on Instagram and Facebook, but I do find that listening to Hade's book, The Anxious Generation, has helped me see social media through a much broader and less personal lens.
01:23:49
Speaker
It's helped me to be more emotionally detached from it and has given some really great perspective that will definitely help me discern my usage of it in the future because it's not going anywhere and so I really want to take intentional steps to use it well and so I recommend checking this book out if you are perhaps in a similar place or even if you're just really interested in the topic.
Closing Remarks and Contact Information
01:24:16
Speaker
OK, that's going to do it for us this week. If you want to get in touch and chat with us about our topic today, you can find us on our website, www.themodernlady1950.wordpress.com or leave us a comment on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube at the Modern Lady podcast. I'm Michelle Sacks, and you can find me on Instagram at MMSacks. And I'm Lindsay Murray, and you can find me on Instagram at Lindsay Homemaker.
01:24:43
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening, have a great week, and we will see you next time.