Burnout...How We can Survive

Feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, or like you’re running on empty? You’re not alone. In this episode of Beautiful Chaos, Tammy Ramsey sits down with burnout expert, therapist, author, and podcaster Cait Donovan, PhD, to explore what burnout really is, why so many of us miss the warning signs, and practical ways to begin recovering—even when life won’t slow down. Whether you’re caring for a family, building a business, or simply trying to keep up with life’s demands, this conversation offers hope, encouragement, and realistic steps to help you take back your energy.

#burnout

#warningsigns

#family

#worklife

#stress

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What if you're not lazy? What if you're not unmotivated? What if you're simply burned out? So many of us, including me, keep pushing, thinking we just need to work harder or drink one more cup of coffee or just get through one more day. But burnout doesn't just steal your energy, it steals your joy, your focus, your health, and sometimes even your sense of who you are. Well, today we are lucky enough to be talking with burnout expert Kate Dunabin, who has lived this herself and now helps others find practical ways to survive burnout, even when life won't slow down. If you're running on empty, this conversation is for you.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

It's a beautiful payoff post-it's a beautiful pay-up. Sometimes sometimes I'm a two ready to shape this beautiful case.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Today I'm so excited for our guest, Kate Dunavan. Kate has spent years telling people the truth about burnout. It's not a personal failure, it's a mismatch problem. She's the host of Fried, a top 1% podcast with over a million downloads, author of the Bounce Back Ability Factor, and is currently writing Mismatch. With 3,700 five-star keynote reviews and a 99% approval rating, she's the person organizations call when they're finally ready to fix the real problem. I would like to welcome everyone to Beautiful Chaos and welcome the fabulous Kate Dunavan. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_03 2:01

I am thrilled to be here. So happy to be invited. And last week I was having just, you know how you have a week, you have a bunch of bad days, and there wasn't anything particular going on. It was just a bunch of bad days. And this week is kind of magical. So you know it's all balancing out.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Yay! I love it. I love when magic happens in our lives for sure. So I I want to talk to you. I actually um after reading, I want to talk about how I found you. So I'm on the ICF, it sends me things for music in the park or our nonprofit that I run. And I'm looking at your bio and I'm like, oh my goodness, I would love to have her on our show because I have suffered with burnout multiple times. I'm um, oh girl, if I could tell you, I just came off of um selling tickets for a circus and promoting a circus and created America's uh Power County America's 250 group, and we're doing celebrations every month. Plus music in the park every week, plus 4th of July, big huge celebration coming up. So I'm in the throes of it, and I I have to really balance my rest time and actually schedule my rest time. So, I mean, people if people have listened to my show know that I've I I burned out and I share openly with how I deal with things. So let's talk about you because gosh, I've been listening to your podcast now. I read your book this morning, Bounce Back Ability. Yes, it was fantastic. I actually actually I have like the last two chapters to read. So I haven't got on the total fixture problem yet. So let's talk about your journey. What what happened with you that brought you to research and learn and educate yourself and all things related to burnout, and do another degree and and and because that part wasn't in the book.

SPEAKER_03 3:59

I did that after the book. Um, so I was really surprised by burnout. I first did not know what it was, I didn't know it existed, I didn't know it was a thing. So it really caught me off guard because I learned it was the thing and I learned it was the thing I was experiencing all on the same day. Oh my word. Was incredibly jarring and brought up so much shame. Like shame. Yes. Yes, and I hear this. Yeah, I hear this a lot from other people too. So when I got when I realized I was burnt out, I was reading a Harvard Business Review article on burnout, and I was just going, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, that's me. And at the time I was a practicing acupuncturist. Acupuncturists are stress management experts because that is literally Chinese medicine, is how different stressors affect the body through different systems and how the you know all the pathways connect. That's there's gonna be somebody in here that knows Chinese medicine that's gonna be like, Kate, that was not a great explanation. But the basics, right? It it is always about an outside stressor or an internal stressor, could be weather, it could be emotions. It doesn't matter, but the stressor affects the system and then creates disease. I was thinking to myself, sitting there reading through that article, thinking, how could this have happened to me? I am a stress expert. I do I have a master's degree in this. I have treated at that point probably 20,000 acupuncture treatments I'd done. I had a successful practice, I had a happy marriage, I was living in Prague of all places in the world. Like, how lucky is that? I was looking at a castle every day. What I was just flabbergasted.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

So I I think so that's where the shame comes in because you feel like because you're the expert that you should just have your crap together, right? And and when you don't, you do you feel like a failure in some aspect and that you're doing something wrong. I did that with health coaching because I gained like 25 pounds while I was health coaching, and I was like, Well, who am I? I'm obviously flailing at this, and then you start judging yourself. So, how did you walk yourself out of that and realize, oh, I'm in the throes of this burnout, and and it's not necessarily my fault.

SPEAKER_03 6:38

So I think that was the thing, right? So I I started, I am um very cerebral by nature, and I like to read, and I'm a nerd. So the the next easy step for me was read everything you can find. Gather information. You clearly don't know how to fix this because you didn't even know it was happening, and all of the techniques you already know, like if they were working for you, you wouldn't be here. So you've got to gather more information because you don't know enough to figure this out. Um my husband was doing a postgraduate degree at the time at the University of Cambridge in the UK, distance, but um, and so he had access to university libraries, and that means you can download any piece of research you want, which is the loveliest thing. So it was 2016, this is now 10 years ago, about this time of year, actually. I downloaded everything I could find on Burnout, and I started reading through all of the research material. And what I kept tripping over was almost all of the burnout material at that time has since changed, folks. It's been a decade, there's new info. But at that time, so much of the info was based in either organizations or hospitals, and the conclusion was often this is, you know, 75 or 80% the organization's fault. Now I'm thinking, I am a solo practitioner, I work for myself, I don't have an organization or a hospital to blame, so the shame wasn't moving yet. I was still stuck in it, and as I was reading through the material, I'm thinking, there's no biomedical science in this. There's no diagnosis, there's no this is just a concept that we are studying through a social sciences lens, which is important and thank goodness for all of that research. But like, what's happening in my body? At that time, there was literally no information about what was happening in your body, no direct studies between burnout and biomedical research. None. So I started looking instead of burnout in the body, so looking for burnout science in the body, I thought I started looking at chronic stress. I said, all right, well, what does chronic stress do in the body and how can I figure that out? And I stumbled over a magazine article that made me roll my eyes immediately. I was like, oh my god, clickbait, gosh, this is gonna be so annoying, but I'm gonna read it. Because it said chronic stress shrinks your brain. And I was like, Journalists don't know how to read medical research. Ugh, you know, being super judgmental and and really gracious, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:22

So I I said, I'm gonna dive into this article, I'm gonna find the research that they use to write this article, and then I'm gonna come to my own conclusion. So I went in, I read the article, I found the research, I started diving in, and I thought, oh my god, chronic stress shrinks your brain. If chronic stress shrinks your brain, and my brain has changed shape because of my life experiences without my knowledge, because it's not like you're keeping track of it, then this is maybe not my fault. So the thing that quieted down the shame for me was the knowledge of what was happening from a biomedical perspective in my body. And so that became like this is now the first thing that I teach at almost all keynotes and it in books and things like that. Like, this is what I teach first, because I want people to have a space where they can release the shame, blame, guilt, and judgment that they're carrying for ending up in this space.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Yeah, that makes sense. So now there's there's a reason for it. There's actually science-based saying this is happening in your brain, and it's not something that you can uh control easily or change, right? Easily.

SPEAKER_03 10:43

But you have to know what you're doing and why you're doing it. There has to be a certain intentionality to it. It's it's the the things that you can do to change your brain. You look up neuroplasticity on the internet, it's like go walk in the forest, take some deep breaths, get some good sleep, and eat some good nutrition. It's the basics.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Right.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

Right. It's nothing really wild.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

But just knowing that it was possible and knowing that it wasn't my fault that it happened the other way, it's not like I was walking around going, Oh, I hope my brain shrinks today. You know, like that was that was not the situation. So that really just helped me release some of the angst I had around the whole situation, which allowed me to then start the healing process. I I wasn't really on the healing process before I kind of captured that. And the interesting news is just last year, August 2025, I just found out about this research this week. This is like brand new to me. Oh, this is exciting. Yeah, it's uh it's so fun. So, according to uh new research, they looked over a bunch of people that had clinical burnout. So they scored a certain degree or higher on the MOSLOC burnout inventory, which is the standard for saying somebody has clinical burnout. It's still not a medical diagnosis, it's an occupational hazard. But they took people that scored high on that um burnout inventory, they did brain scans, compared them to people that scored low on the inventory and did brain scans, and now they have a distinct pattern of changes in the brain that is associated with burnout specifically and differentiates it from things like PTSD and depression.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Oh wow. Because there's a lot of um similarities between symptoms of depression and burnout. So that's very interesting that the the brain is telling them something different. Yeah. Super cool. Yeah, that's very exciting. So, what about? So, here this just came to mind. Um, so like my mom has uh dementia. So I wonder she had a very stressful job. So isn't dementia kind of like the shrinking of the brain and the dying off of the brain, or maybe you don't know, but I feel like that's kind of so- It can depend.

SPEAKER_03 13:00

So there are different types of dementia. I'm not a neurologist, nor am I um a dementia specialist, but there are different types of dementia. So my grandmother had Lewy body dementia, and that is a particular shape of plaque that forms in the brain. Alzheimer's is amyloid plaques, I believe, or TAU plaques, tau plaques that form in the brain. Um yes, there is some die-off, but there's there it happens in different ways and for different reasons in different people. So the the brain changes that are associated with burnout are in very specific regions. The brain changes with dementia can happen in different places, and that's why the symptoms from one person to the next can be so, so drastically different. In the beginning with my grandmother, she was so angry and or petrified all the time. And her inability to regulate her emotions was related to where that change happened in her brain. Some people lose the ability to speak if it's in, you know, the the speech area of the brain, and et cetera, et cetera. So that so um the things that that create dementia, yes, there is an overall volume change in the brain, but the things that create dementia and the plaques that are seen during different disease processes can be in different areas and then and therefore cause different symptoms. And the burnt-out brain has a very particular pattern that is not plaque related, it's just volume loss related.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Okay. All right. So that's that's different then. It's way different.

SPEAKER_03 14:30

It's different, yeah. And somebody out there, of course, is a dementia specialist, and they're like, Kate, that's not exactly it. I said I'm not a dementia specialist. That's just the the very basics.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Neither one of us are are medically inclined in that area. We're just knowledgeable based on experience. You obviously have way more experience than than I do with it. But so um let's talk about um now you've researched burnout. I I think that what really interests me is that you come at it, like you said, that before there was like only doctors, medical, all these big corporations, is what they're looking at is this, you know, exhausted burnout thing. But it can happen for people that work from home, people that are entrepreneurs, mothers, like like I feel like like back in my mother years, I was holding down a part-time job and you know had three kids, and that was like extremely stressful. One part of your book when you talked about um boy, I just wish I'd because I thought this. Oh, I just wish I'd hit that telephone pole. Now my kids were not in the car with me. If I just hit that telephone pole just right, I could just land in the hospital. I'd live through it, but I could be in the hospital where somebody would take care of me for a change.

SPEAKER_02 15:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

So looking back, I'm like, that was burnout.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Like, but you didn't know it didn't have a name, I feel like. And not in that, not in our level.

SPEAKER_03 15:58

No, right? No, there were some in the research, right? They started researching burnout um around the same time that I was born in the early 80s. So it's burnout is about the same age as I am, as a concept, as a concept, but um, but studied in the way that it's studied now. No. The past 10 years, COVID actually is the thing that catapulted burnout into the spotlight.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Yeah, and I can believe that. I actually enjoyed COVID. I mean some people did, yeah. It's it was a break for a lot of people. It really was, and it made me realize I don't need the 10,000 things on my plate. Like I'm I'm at peace with just being because I I struggle with that. Um, I have to do something to have value, you know, and so it I worked through that and came to this place of I have value because I I just am, right? And but it gave me this other side of what life could be if you didn't have the 50 million things going on. Now, this is a weird year for me. I I'm more overloaded than normal, but I have learned how to take care of myself, and I think that's really important. So when I first read your bio and I listened to one of the podcasts, I was like, I feel like we're like two peas in a pod. Like we're we have the same thinking, but I'm looking at it like, okay, I went through this, so now these are the things I'm doing. Although you are gonna laugh because I don't know how many times I've heard you say, doing a gratitude journal is just stupid. And I do a gratitude journal, but I do um I do it on the days I want to do it. I don't tie myself to you have to do this gratitude journal every day, or you're not gonna be grateful. Yes, you're gonna be negative if you don't do. I give myself the grace and like, you know what? When I want to do that, I do that. And I even set the tone for the day. How I'm gonna, you know, come at something with light and joy. Um, so anyways.

SPEAKER_03 18:12

I think we could talk about that for a minute because that's an interesting thing.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03 18:16

So the I love a gratitude journal when you are in a place to be able to feel the flush of endorphins and hormones, you know, like to feel the actual shift, biological, biochemical shift in your body that happens when you feel true gratitude. Gratitude, actually, awe and wonder are even stronger. So moments of awe, like what you catch a you catch a sunset and it just really gets you. Yeah, those are j that's just as powerful, if not more powerful, than gratitude, is is uh some of the newer research over the past few years. If you have the capacity to truly feel the gratitude that you're writing about, it is an incredible tool. And I love it. When you are burnt out, you do not have that capacity. Right. Writing a gratitude journal makes you feel worse because you're writing things down that you know you should feel grateful for, but you don't, so then you feel guilty and shame instead. And that is not helping you get where you need to go.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Right, 100%. And I think that was the part that I that I heard too was you talk about that you have to be in the right head space for it. And that's what I really liked about. So I was saying we're we're two peas in a pub. I'm coming at it as like, hey, this is what I do to try to keep myself from getting falling into that trap of the burnout, like self-care. And you're going, hey, you're in it. This is what you need to do. Like, I think I was listening to one of them where you said, just drink water, just make sure you drink water for the day, just make sure you eat food for the day, feed yourself when you're hungry, when you can't. And I love that because that's like people don't understand if you haven't been in it, you just can't even function. Like it's er like yeah, their thought process is gone. Like, you're like, really? You want me to make a decision on what?

SPEAKER_03 20:25

Like well, that part of your brain that's responsible for decision making shrinks during burnout. Ah there you go. The part of your brain that regulates emotions shrinks during burnout. The part of your brain that assesses whether the amount of effort you're going to put into a situation will be worth the reward you're gonna get from the situation is offline during burnout. So everything feels like the amount that you're gonna get back is not worth the effort that you're gonna put in. That system is offline. Your amygdala, who I call Amy Jidala, because that's funnier. Amy, instead of shrinking, Amy gets bigger, and when Amy gets bigger, she over-interprets every threat in your life as like a threat to everything about you. So if you are walking through the forest and you see a stick, but you mistake it for a snake, you're gonna end up in a full stress response. Whereas normally you'd look down, you'd see something that looked like a snake, the front of your brain would come online right away and say, Oh no, no, no, that's just a root, don't worry about it. But you can't do that when you're burnt out. So now you're in a full adrenal, like your your adrenaline is high, your cortisol is through the roof, you're afraid of this snake, and there wasn't even a snake.

unknown 21:46

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_03 21:47

So all of that is happening all the time when you're burnt out. And the other interesting thing that's that's that's um consistent in burnt out brains is that the way that the brain connects with itself is more important than any single. Region. So there's like all these highways that go through and connect. Like the front part of the brain and the amygdala, they have to talk to one another and they connect through something called the interior cingulate cortex. So all these different networks of like highways that are in your brain during burnout, they form like sudden sinkholes and stop connecting with one another. It just drops out and it happens like in real time immediately. Like they can watch it happen on a functional MRI.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Wow, that's amazing. Now, how so is that part of your so that's your brain, but there's your sympathetic system and your parasympathetic. So your brain, your amygdala, is putting that um what did I just say? Sympathetic nervous system. Your whole body is affected by that. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So that's just the brain stuff.

SPEAKER_03 22:52

Yeah, there's there's muscle atrophy, the gut in your um the bacteria in your gut change, like all sorts of things change. You can get autoimmune diseases and autoimmune disorders, weight gain, weight loss, IBS, constipation, diarrhea, thyroid problems, you name it. I mean, we could go on and on and on and on. Yeah, because it's chronic stress that led to this complete burnout.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Yeah. And it breaks down every part of your body.

unknown 23:22

Yeah, gosh.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

And we so now I know you said so it's happening in our brains, and that's you know, you felt good about naming the okay, I know where this is coming from. I have I have no control over that. And I I love listening to you say also that you know you can't think positive things and make it go away. And I and then you were talking about how you you lie to yourself. Like I'm not a liar, but I lied to myself for two and a half years. I was taking care of parents, flying back and forth from Idaho to Delaware, taking care of my, you know, moving him to a assisted living and a nursing home and a funeral, and then moving my mom out here, and all these things were happening. And the whole time I'm doing podcasts or Facebook lives, Facebook lives as a health coach, going, okay, I'm just gonna turn this around and realize there's a learning lesson in here, da-da-da-da. And happy, I'm gonna be happy. Meanwhile, what was really happening that I wasn't even aware because I believed my lie was my body was falling apart because my brain probably that was happening, my brain was shrinking, and I started having the inability to finally like even make decisions like what's for dinner. I have no freaking idea. Can you just figure it out? Like, why can't you think with your brain for a minute?

SPEAKER_03 24:47

Mine is literally not working.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

Yeah, yeah. So is yours are so where are you at right now? I I would like to know. Well, first of all, so we've named off a lot of the things that you can recognize as as burnout, but can you go over some of those things? Like, how can someone tell if they're just a little stressed, which is like, I'm stressed, I'm excited about a project, you know, and I have a deadline. There's that kind of stress um versus chronic stress where you feel like your body's on high alert all the time.

SPEAKER_03 25:27

Yeah, so here's the thing, and this is why I I work from the place of burnout recovery and not burnout prevention, because I think that burnout prevention is for people who have already burnt out and are trying to avoid a burnout relapse. Most of us that end up burnt out do not have the capacity to notice those signs and symptoms along the way, and that's why we end up there. And that has to do with brain science too, which we can get into if you want. But there so if we're not gonna notice the signs and symptoms along the way, then someone who's listening to this who maybe needs burnout prevention, maybe needs in, you know, some something to shift right now, they're going to brush this off like it's about somebody else. They're gonna be, and most likely they are an overgiver, overcarer, people pleaser, hyper-independent perfectionist. So they're gonna be listening to this thinking, who it could help that's not them.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Oh, that's funny. Yeah. Right. So I could see that.

SPEAKER_03 26:25

So a lot of times the the things that we need to do or notice to prevent it, I don't even want to tell people because if you have the the propensity toward burnout, you're not gonna listen to me right now. Right. You're not gonna listen, but but here they are. We'll we'll say it anyway. First, you have to know the definition of burnout as it exists right now in the end of June 2026. I don't know when this will come out, but as we are speaking, the definition of burnout be according to the World Health definition, the um organization is number one, you must have physical and emotional exhaustion. Number two, you are cynical and depersonalized. And number three, you feel um either a lack of impact of your work, right? The reward for the effort is not there, that makes sense, or you are dropping in productivity, which of course you are because you're exhausted and cynical. Like so you're not, of course, that all of those things go together. It all goes together, like that makes sense. So, first of all, that's what that's what is considered burnout. But along the way, the things that we don't notice that are happening, a lot of people say, because you ignored your symptoms. I don't think you're ignoring your symptoms, I think you're just not noticing them.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

Or you're lying to yourself about your symptoms and you're giving it as you get older. Hey, I'm 60 and I'm always like, oh, well, you know, maybe it's just because I'm getting older. Yeah. So that's a lie you're telling yourself when you could be recognizing it as a symptom.

SPEAKER_03 27:55

Yeah, but I think it's okay that people don't. You know, I I just I don't like to use the word ignore because I'm like, listen, you missed it. So, okay, what do we do now? It doesn't matter. It it that already happened, so what do we do from here, right? Right. But if you're gonna catch it, you're gonna catch it in neck and jaw tension, headaches and migraines, changes in digestion, you're gonna notice it in frequent colds and flus. You're gonna notice it in a shortened emotional bandwidth, you're gonna explode more often, you're gonna feel like you have less control over what you're saying and how you're saying it and who you're saying it to. And you're gonna know that it's wrong as it's coming out of your mouth, but you're not gonna be able to stop yourself, kind of thing. Like that's gonna happen. You're gonna get more and more tired to the point where if you were someone who exercised normally, you will try to do the same exercise that you used to do. And instead of having it give you that endorphin boost that it would normally give you, it makes you want to take a nap. Your sleep will likely be disrupted in one way or another. So either you will not be able to fall asleep or you will not be able to stay asleep. Now, there's a bunch of people out there that just said, uh, sounds like perimenopause. True. So if you're in that space, then get yourself some hormones if they're safe for you, and then see what other symptoms still remain, right? Because yes, there can be crossover of these things, and burnout is most likely to happen at that age anyway. So that could be happening at the same time. So those are all the things that will pile up, different uh like chronic pain, injuries, things like that will start to pile up. A lot of people get jaw clenching, teeth grinding. You know, you'll go to your dentist and it'll be like, uh, you need a night guard, and you're like, I'm 37, I've never had a night guard, and they're like, Well, you you're gonna get one now.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

I had to have braces because my I had TMJ so blah bad, my jaw was so misaligned from from stress, which I didn't know I was experiencing.

SPEAKER_03 31:20

Exactly. That's the thing because you like it starts getting tighter, it starts getting tighter, it starts getting tighter, and you just get used to it.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Yeah. So it's it becomes part of you. It's just like that's just a that's just a thing. And so you don't put focus on it. Yeah, that's that's pretty amazing.

SPEAKER_03 31:40

Normal and human.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

Yeah, and I love that you you come across things as don't judge what's happening, also, don't don't label it good or bad. Whatever's happening is just happening, and you just have to figure out your your way forward. Um, and I do think the morality to burn out, yes, and and I I love that you you said in uh one of the episodes I watched as well that um you know, go to your doctor, have all your labs done, test to make sure it's not your vitamin D, test to make sure your your like test your hormones, like all the things to see where you are, because um, you know, it might really be something that's off in your system, which probably was caused by stress or just getting it.

SPEAKER_03 32:25

Would have been right, but like I've had people no, you don't know. And I'm I'm lucky to have a healthcare practitioner background. So when I was uh initially coaching people, like I got on the phone with someone one day and she's going through her symptoms and I started asking her about her cycle. And she's like, why is this burnout coach asking me about my cycle? But in Chinese medicine, I know that if there's some sort of anemia, she probably has either really heavy cycles, which is causing the anemia, or her cycles have changed to be super light because she doesn't have enough in her body to provide to have a full cycle. And she was like, Oh, actually, you know, they've gone down from like five days to two. I said, Okay. And this was an initial call, like back in the day when I did free calls and I was just getting started. I said, Listen, I don't want to offer you a coaching package right now. I don't want you to pay for coaching right now. I want you to go to your doctor and find out whether or not you're anemic. Because if you're anemic, there's no amount of like mind shift change that we're gonna do that's gonna make you feel less tired. And that would be such a waste of time and money and effort on both of our sides. So please just go do that first. She wrote me an email two weeks later. She said, Kate, I am severely anemic to the point where they want me, they wanted to have me sit down and get like get blood physically. I'm severely anemic, and my vitamin D is like completely in the tank, and my vitamin B12 is completely in the tank.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

Wow. No wonder she was a mess.

SPEAKER_03 34:01

She's exhaust like literally physically exhausted.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:05

She's physically just she's physically does not have the elements that she needs to have energy. And then she uh wrote in that email, she said, Thank you so much for not putting me on your calendar.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Yeah. Well, you sound like somebody that was really cared about patient care, not just about um well making money or getting the next person in. Like you were probably one of those people that listened and tried to figure out the inner workings to help you to navigate and heal them. So yeah, you'd be my kind of doctor to go to.

SPEAKER_03 34:45

Um I was really lucky to be really busy and to also not feel um pressured to keep people on because I needed the money.

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:57

Like I it was I could make that decision because of my relative success.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

Yeah, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 35:04

So my my generosity, there's I have a a a continuum that I talk about in burnout. It's the resentment generosity continuum. And when you're in your full generosity because you're giving from overflow, it doesn't even feel like generosity because it's not costing you anything. Right. I was in that place with my practice that that didn't it didn't cost me anything to to do that for that person. It or for however many people I did that for over the years, it didn't cost me anything.

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Right. But at one point it must have. At one point it did, because then you became burned out because then it was you give too much. And that yeah, if we only have so much so much to give, and if we're not refilling our cup, then we can't flow it into others for sure.

SPEAKER_03 35:51

So and this is why this work is so important in the nonprofit space, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Right, 100%, yeah. So um you talk about that you are your work is in the recovery, not in the prevention. So, see, that's where two pieces in a pod. Like we're like, I'm beside you, I'm right there. I'm I'm just on the I'm gonna try to prevent it because been there, done that, and I don't want to go through it. But for people that are in it, what are some things that they can do that doesn't feel like they're adding something that they're having to, I don't know, you just feel like you can't put one more thing on your plate.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:30

So what are some things they could do to help themselves to get out of the burnout or to at least maintain?

SPEAKER_03 36:37

So to me, the thing is we have to do some life pruning. We have to figure out what things we can cut away so that you can buy yourself back some energy to deal with the burnout, because dealing with the burnout does cost energy. So we need to figure out what can be cut off, what parts of the plant we can we can chop so that the water's going all to something important. And the way that we do that in my practice is we do a resentment journal instead of a gratitude journal.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

Ooh, okay.

SPEAKER_03 37:03

Because resentment will tell you every time where you are overgiving, where you are self-neglecting, where you are crossing your own boundaries, or easily allowing other people to cross your boundaries.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Or not setting boundaries.

SPEAKER_03 37:17

Is that yeah, which is the same thing, right? Like if you're not setting a boundary, then you're allowing someone to to cross yours. Like that's the same thing. So resentment will tell you every single time where you're overgiving, what things need to change, where you're misaligned, where your boundaries are off, and where you're self-neglecting. And if we can fill those holes, it's like right now we're gonna be moving in about six months, and we have some like nail pops in our ceiling because our house is only six years old, so it's still like you know, there's still some settling happening, and we have some weird like they changed the railings and they never patched this one little spot and we've been ignoring it for a while. And we know we now have to go and take a little, you know, blue painter's tape, and we have to mark all those little spots all over our house so that when we are ready to sell it, it we we finish those things and it's clean and done and and will sell easily. When you're doing a reserve with a resentment journal, that's the same thing that you're doing. You are going around putting little pieces of tape on the nail pops, on the holes, on the things that need filling, on the things that need fresh paint, on the things that need letting go of, on the things that need, right? Like you're just putting tape everywhere and then you can start to face them. You tackle the easiest projects first. So if you're doing the resentment journal and you realize that you are real mad at your egg pan. Because every morning you make eggs, and you've had eggs every morning for breakfast for 30 years, and every morning you make those eggs, and every morning they stick to the dang pan.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

I hate that.

SPEAKER_03 38:54

And it's making you mental. You go out and buy a new pan or you order one so you don't have to leave the house at all. Sometimes the beginning of burnout recovery is filling in the nail pops. It's doing the smallest, easiest fixes first, because those things that are creating that irritation every day, every morning, every time you do something, they are costing you way more than you realize, especially when you're burnt out. We've got to get those out of the way first. As you continue with the resentment journal, you're gonna get to places where you're gonna need to have some conversations and set some boundaries, where you're gonna need to stop saying yes before the phone the conversation even finishes. You know, like people haven't even finished the question, and you're like, sure. I had someone recently reach out to me and ask for some help with a keynote. I love helping other speakers with their keynotes. I'm very good at it. I'm better at it for other people than I am for myself, as most of the time these things go. And she I said, Yeah, I'm happy to do that next week. She said, How about Wednesday? And I was like, okay, I could make Wednesday work. My old burnout self would have been like, yeah, Wednesday's totally fine. But I looked at it and I was like, actually, I'm doing you a favor, and it would be better for me on Thursday.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

Good for you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:18

I didn't say I'm doing you a favor. That happened in my head, but I was like, if I agree to do this on Wednesday at eight o'clock in the morning, which is my only open slot on Wednesday, I'm gonna be annoyed when I get on the phone with you, which is not the energy that you deserve from me. So I've gotten to the point with the resentment journal that I can predict when I will feel resentful. And I go, I do everything that I can to move away from things that would make me feel that way, because those are all of the things that pull me out of alignment. And I said, Oh no, Wednesday's not gonna work for me. I got a busy day, but I can focus on it on Thursday. Here are the three spots that I have opened. She goes, Oh, that works perfect for me.

SPEAKER_00 41:03

And the the and and you were previously you would have been the people pleaser for sure, and been like, I'll just do whatever she wants and I'll make it work. Yeah. Yes. That that's I can see where that causes burnout because I that's I've done that multiple times. We've all done it. We've all done it, we're all victims of it. Well, because you just you know, always want to be liked or want to be loved, and you're afraid to set a boundary and to and that's not even a boundary. It's not even a boundary, it's an open schedule.

SPEAKER_03 41:36

Literally, she said, How's Wednesday? But as a people pleaser, your brain says, Oh my god, she must need to do it Wednesday. Yeah, yeah. You may that's it's a it's not even a boundary, it's just a story that you made up in your head from an innocuous comment.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

Yes, you think you know, but you don't know. You gotta flip that script, you gotta flip the script and go, no, no, no. Yeah, like you did. Oh, look, Thursday works better for me. Throw that out there.

SPEAKER_03 42:05

Yeah, yeah. She was like, oh, perfect. I said, oh great. And then when I show up on Thursday, guess what? On the resentment generosity continuum, I'm in my full generosity.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

Yes, I love that.

SPEAKER_03 42:17

If I had to show up on Wednesday, I would not be.

SPEAKER_00 42:20

Mm-mm.

SPEAKER_03 42:21

And I don't care how good you think you are or how much toxic positively, like you were mentioning earlier, just like, no, no, no, no, like I don't care how much you pretend, you cannot hide the kind of energy that you have when you are feeling resentful. People might not know it logically, rationally.

unknown 42:41

Right.

SPEAKER_03 42:41

But they can feel it.

unknown 42:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:44

They can feel it on some level, and they're like, mm, she doesn't like me. And you're like, I do like you. And they're like, mmm, something's not quite. There's some dissonance here. Something's off here. But it's because you're showing up when you don't actually want to. Not because you don't want to at all.

SPEAKER_00 43:03

But just that particular day, I'm I'm not, I'm not there. I'm not ready for that. I do that. So I have 11 grandkids. Oh I love them all. And my whole life was like I I want family first, right? And I I try to spread out how much I see them, but I actually went through a a similar thing of yep, nope. I can't do grandma's day this week because I just don't have the energy for it. Like with this upcoming Fourth of July event, like I know there's no grandma's day, there's no grandkids stand over. There's me just resting, focusing on the last minute things, resting so that I can show up on the 4th of July with all the energy that I need.

SPEAKER_03 43:49

Yes, on the generosity end of the resentment generosity continuum.

SPEAKER_00 43:54

Yeah. And and I I did read so music in the park. Uh we've been doing it for 12 years, and it's a lot of work.

unknown 44:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:03

And like when I'm working all year on it, basically. January it's gets really heavy busy with all the things, and if I may, I'm feeling like I don't want to do this anymore.

unknown 44:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

Like I'm overwhelmed. I'm not enjoying it. And I had to just force myself to in my case, I force myself to take breaks and rest because I'm a type A personality, and I will work until I drop at night. And part of my healing over this last 14 months has been nutritionally strength training, working with a functional doctor, and he was the one that told me 80-20. You give 80%, you keep 20%, when you go to bed, you should have 20% left. And I'm like, what would that be like?

SPEAKER_03 44:50

Chinese medicine says you should have 50.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

50? Well, that's even better.

SPEAKER_03 44:54

Right, because you need the battery to charge uh the rest of you.

SPEAKER_00 45:00

Yes. And if we drain the battery completely, there's no way in just an eight hour night of sleep, if you get eight hours that you're going to get that recharge.

SPEAKER_03 45:09

No way.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:10

So then you recharge to 70 and you use 100% anyway, and then you're at negative thirty. And then you recharge to 60, and then you're at negative 40. And then you recharge to 50, and it goes on and on and on and on and on.

SPEAKER_00 45:22

Until then you have that burnout moment where you can't get up off the couch and I and you just want to sleep for three days.

SPEAKER_03 45:28

And it doesn't then you do sleep for three days and it doesn't even help. So you asked earlier about the line. You started to ask, and then we went off on another tangent, but you started to ask about the difference. No, no, no, not I think, but I think it's it was a good question that was about to come. So I I want to address it. Where's the line between stress, chronic stress, burnout?

SPEAKER_00 45:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 45:48

The line in the sand between I'm just stressed and I'm burnt out is the one that we can draw the easiest. When you are stressed and you had a tough week, and it's Friday, and you take the weekend and you chill, and you are maybe not thrilled to go to work on Monday, but like you're rested enough and you can do it. That's stress.

SPEAKER_00 46:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 46:14

When you are in burnout and you are exhausted on Friday, and you take the weekend to chill, and it's Sunday night, Monday morning, and you're like, I feel exactly the same as I felt Friday night. So you take another day and you're like, that didn't change anything. So then you take a month of FMLA and it doesn't change anything. You're still that tired. That's burnout. That's the level of fatigue we're talking about. If you can restore yourself in three days or less, it's not burnout.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

Yeah. I love that. That's kind of an easy way to look at it. Well, we've got about five more minutes. So um I'm just gonna ask you this question to close it out. If you could leave our listeners with one piece of advice, especially for someone who is listening that might be overwhelmed today, what would you want them to remember out of this episode, out of your maybe a snippet out of your book?

SPEAKER_03 47:19

Number one, burnout is not your fault. This is the most important piece. It is very hard to start a healing journey if you believe that you caused your own problems. I love number one. Burnout is not your fault. Number two, get familiar with your resentment. It will guide you toward the life that is burnout free. It will take time. Burnout recovery is a 12 to 18 month process on a good day. It takes some people three to five years. So you're looking at an e a year at a minimum, minimum for recovery.

SPEAKER_00 48:06

Which tells me give yourself grace during that time because it's not an overnight thing.

SPEAKER_03 48:13

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 48:13

Yeah. I love that. Well, thank you for joining us today. And and you have a new book out. Um you're still writing it, yes.

SPEAKER_02 48:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:23

Um, and it's called Mismatch, correct? Do you want to give me just a short little tidbit of information on that?

SPEAKER_03 48:30

Mismatch is why good people burn out in good organizations. So when most things are right, why is burnout still happening? And the overarching idea is that it happens because there is misalignment in multiple places, and that misalignment compounds and creates chronic stress. So the misalignment can be wants in wants, values, needs, desires, preferences, and it can be at work, at home, in family, in culture, all sorts of different places. And so we go in the book through every single place where it can be, how you recognize it, how you realign it, what companies are responsible for, and what individuals are responsible for at every single level.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

Oh, I love that. Well, I can't wait to read that one. And I'm gonna finish, I only have a couple chapters left of bounce back ability. I'm gonna finish that, but yeah, as soon as your next book comes out, Mick mismatched, right? Mismatch. Mismatch. Yeah, say that three times. I'm super excited to read that too. So thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_03 49:31

And thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 49:33

It's been a blast.