Parental Burnout: What Exactly is it? And How is it Hurting our Homes and Families? (Part #1)

Foreign. Welcome to Finding Noble, a podcast where we climb into the world of young people's mental health and where we provide support for the adults who support them. I'm your host, Carly Red. I'm honored and grateful to be joined by my Wonderful co host, Dr. Kevin Skinner. Hi, Dr. Skinner, and thank you for being with us today.

Hey, Carly, how are you?

So great. I just want to say that I really do value our time so much together, and I love being able to learn from you, and I always just come away feeling better. So I'm very much looking forward to more time with you today. Talking about burnout, which is a hot topic. The reason why I think burnout is such a hot topic right now is because so many of us just seem to be stumped by it. We are trying to fight it, figure it out, get rid of it, but it doesn't seem to leave. And now we're watching how burnout plays out as a major inhibitor to ours and even our children's mental health, and also its drastic influence over our ability to find fulfillment and connection with ourselves and with one another. So how do we define burnout? Dr. Lottie Derby, she's scientist at the Mayo Clinic who studies burnout, defines it as a manifestation of chronic, unmitigated stress. So burnout is this condition where stress doesn't relent or let up, and this leaves its mark on our bodies, which anybody experiencing burnout can likely attest to the exhaustion and the weariness that they are currently experiencing in their body. We can all feel it physically. But I thought this was really interesting, that burnout also leaves its mark on the brain. One study says the chronic psychosocial stress that characterizes burnout impairs people's personal and social functioning and can also overwhelm their cognitive skills and neuroendocrine systems, eventually leading to distinctive changes in the anatomy and functioning of the brain. The same study says as this cycle spirals further out of control, over time, neural structures begin to show signs of wear and tear, which lead to cortical thinning with cognitive effects like memory, attentional and emotional difficulties, disruption of creativity, and problem solving abilities. Yikes. This kind of sounds serious. We get it. Burnout hurts. It does not help. Dr. Skinner, can you maybe give us your definition of burnout and what it looks like? Maybe some symptoms?

Yeah. So let's talk about it in three parts for a second. So, burnout, you mentioned what it's doing to us physiologically. When you're in stress, your body feels like it has to either be in fight or flight mode. And, and when we're in that kind of stress and we're producing adrenaline and cortisol, our bodies are not designed to consistently putting those chemicals out into our body. So the consequence is, is that our body feels stressed, our body feels tight, our body gets headaches, our body gets ailments, we have all kinds of health related issues. So when we are experiencing burnout, it's our body's way of saying, hey, you need to slow down, you need to. And when we don't slow down and we push through it, we're more prone to ailments because we're getting all the hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, in which our bodies are not designed to consistently be producing. So that's concept number one. The next part of it is the emotions that come with it. When I'm constantly in burnout, I feel more anxious, I feel more overwhelmed, which means that I'm more likely to be irritable and angry.

Yes.

And so now I'm not being who I want to be as a person, as a mother, as a father, or as a parent, as a spouse. And so now from that perspective, I'm burned out. I'm not performing in relationships the way I want to. So we've got physical and mental components and then we look internally what it does to us and all of a sudden we feel like there's something wrong with this. And so now I'm internalizing this. I, yes, I may feel anxious and yes, I may feel depressed, but now I'm turning it back on myself. I think there's something wrong with me. So those three core parts, the physical manifestation, the mental health, anxiety, depression, so forth, and then that internalized belief there's something wrong with me and I'm not feeling happy, I'm not feeling joy.

I think that's really interesting that almost our body stress response system itself has burned out, that it's not functioning properly. And all the effects from that in every part of us, especially cognitive and social, which is depressing, to be honest. I feel like, what do we do about that? You know, I think that it's what stumps us, that we are trying to figure it out. And it doesn't feel like a weekend away is going to solve it. I think we've all kind of tried that. We're like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm going to take the day off and see if this helps change it. But because it's a sustained unmitigated stress over a long period of time, it seems like There has to be some real shifting that happens for anything to start to change. Is that correct?

Yeah. So let's talk about that. The weekend retreat or weekend day off, whatever can be good if we learn how to utilize the time right. So first there's the bigger break and then there are day to day times where we take time to do self care. The habit of self care, the habit of doing something you enjoy, that slows you down, that helps your body relaxed. If we're going to deal with burnout, we have to learn to relax the body. Because our society has been go, go, go, go, go. Even when we're off, we're on. And so we might be checking our phones, we might be getting messages from work, we might be having children rushing here, rushing there, attending their sporting events or their plays or whatever. And all of a sudden it's go, go, go, go, go. And no, I'm not at, say, work, but I'm still engaged in something that's okay, I got to do this and I got to do this. And so the brain is not getting this downtime to say, I need to sleep, I need to relax, I need to feel calmer. Really. A weekend away can be great to rejuvenate, but I'm more interested in the daily habits of self care that are habitual, that are built into our life rather than. And again, nothing wrong with a weekend retreat. Go take that. But get into habits that are better for your wellbeing. I'll give you a short example of that, Carly. I'm assuming that you have your favorite music list.

I'm very passionate about what type of music I listen to. Yes.

What in your playlist soothes your soul, relaxes your mind and your body?

I actually do have a playlist that's called Bend and Breathe and I listen to it after every time I run outside in the mornings. And when I come back and I'm stretching right before I wake up my kids, I listen to this as I stretch. And because it's probably habitual, but it really does help just silence all the inner chatter and really help me meditate. Even though it's not a full meditation, I'm moving, you know, and stretching and all that, I'm not sitting perfectly still, but it really does put me in a kind of a reset. It resets me for the day.

That is a beautiful example. Right. You have music that has a very calming influence on your body. That's exactly what I'm talking about. But I'm going to suggest that many of our listeners may be doing the same thing, but they don't even recognize why they're doing it. Now if I find myself listening to something that ramps up my energy and gets me motivated, that's very different than something that soothes my, my inner core. So I'll just give you an example. I, I like listening to Yani and Enya. I've started listening to classical music and my drive home from work, my wife gets in the car and says, you've been listening to classical music again. And yeah, actually I have been. Right. But part of that's because I personally am recognizing I need downtime. I need to downregulate a term we might use away from this energy that has been going on all day long. And so we started with music, but I could do the same thing in a walk while I'm at work. Say you drop your children off to dance. Going for a short walk could actually get you in nature to help you calm down. So these are small things, but they're not small to your mental state and your physical well being. So even a simple habit as that can help your body say, oh, okay, now you're taking care of me. Thank you.

I thought this study was really interesting. They said that skipping breaks hurts the quality of our output in the long run. So this is especially in the workplace or wherever we're spending our time working could be in the home too. But it says one study found that taking 17 minutes of rest for every 52 minutes of work is ideal. That's a significant span of time for every 52 minutes.

Yeah, but what's interesting there is it's 17 minutes. The same is actually true of mothering or fathering when you're with your children, if you can get a short break just to, so to speak, take some self time to reflect, to do something that you enjoy. Because as we're talking with parents again, especially young parents, they don't really get a break. They're constantly on because they've got children, you know, tugging on their legs and they need to feed and they need to change a diaper and they need to get or other kids elsewhere.

Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. It just doesn't.

Yeah, exactly. And so having a scheduled time on a regular basis to get away from that again, we love our children, but we also have to make sure that we have the energy to take care of them. We often say it's hard to give anybody water when your bucket's empty.

Yes, yes. I think maybe baked into our current modern culture is you've Heard the word hedonic treadmill before that. We are just running and running and trying to get somewhere and never really ever getting there. And we're not taking breaks that fill us in the meantime. And that's a lot of what burnout is, is never finding those human moments to feel human again, to really reconnect to. Why am I doing what I'm doing? Why did I choose this path in my life? Kind of reshaping that throughout the day, even, especially in motherhood, to be able to say, okay, yes, I chose this. I chose to have these kids. I choose to love these kids. Let's take a break, zoom out, refocus, and then come back in a little bit throughout the day, not just once in a blue moon.

If I can add to this something that I think is really important here, there's a tremendous value in getting together. The kids are playing, developing social skills, and the parents in this situation are getting a time just to talk with another adult. Because if you're talking with just the children day in and day out, all day long, and you're not having the opportunity to talk with other adults again, it accelerates that burnout. So even scheduling play dates, going to the park, doing activities together and letting the children play can be a very valuable way to, so to speak, get that break. So we're not going to burn out. So taking time to socially interact with those, great opportunity to help reduce burnout.

I love that you said that. I'm actually so excited you said that. Because I want to talk about that later, more significantly, in greater amounts. Because I think that is probably one of our most important healing points with burnout is that we're not socializing enough as we need to. We are not scheduling it into part of our daily meets. We don't think it's something that we actually need. It doesn't feel necessary. But before we get to that, I want to talk. I feel like you've already answered these questions that I wanted to ask you. Why are we seeing increased amounts of burnout? Seems like more than ever. And what can we do about it? I feel like we've already started to delve into this, but why are we seeing increased amounts of burnout? Could you maybe answer that for me and what you've seen?

Well, yeah, let's. Let's talk a little bit about it from the state that we're always on. If I as a human had an off button, when do I push that off button? And how effective is it when I'm actually off? So let's say the off button is when I'm sleeping. Well, we know that we're sleeping less. We know that in general we're not sleeping as well as we used to sleep. There's a lot of theories on that. And part of it's because we're entertaining ourselves with television, with our devices. And so even right before we go to bed, looking at this blue light television, this blue light screen right in front of me, laying in bed. And so even there I've got a message I'm replying to and then I think I'm just going to fall straight to sleep. Part of our journey here is we're trying to figure out how do I let this body relax and, and if I'm constantly on and my devices are on my hand and the average person spending somewhere between six to eight hours a day on a device, what we're, we're realizing is we might be working and doing things, but then we're not leaving it behind. I think about my grandparents who, no, they didn't have, I mean, heck, they didn't even hardly have a landline to talk on the phone. So what did they do when the sun went down? They read books, they talked with each other. What do we do? We sit on our devices responding and checking out what's going on. And so our mind is constantly getting data. Oh, by the way, that message just came in. Did you see that message? You see this message? Did you get this message? And so we're, we're in an environment where we're data overload. That's a phrase we might use, we're data overload. And then the burnout doesn't have to be that it's from work. It could simply be data overload that's burning us down.

That's so interesting. And I feel like it's cyclical because to deal with our burnout we'll often pick up our phone saying, oh, I need a break. And we'll pick it up and start scrolling and some manner, it could be the news. I, I do that through the news thinking that's going to calm me down, which is hysterical, that I'm picking up my phone to calm down by looking at the news, which is of course not a great stress relief.

And do we really think that's going to help us relax? And if, if I was to check your relaxation level before you get on your device and then after, are we ever really more relaxed?

That would be a really good exercise to really start paying attention to. Okay, do I really feel better? After I took this time span, even if I gave myself a break, is this what's making me feel better? What are the things that I'm doing to making myself feel better? I feel like there's must be something happening in our brains, though. That pull pulls us towards a device. Why is that?

I think it's the dopamine. Because the dopamine is an anticipatory chemical, and the dopamine that we get from that kind of event, I mean, what's next? If you really think of you're picking up that phone, what's new? Am I missing out on something? The FOMO concept, but information, data, is there a cell? Oh, did I miss this message from a friend? Oh, I better respond. And so we're afraid that we're missing out on something. The anticipatory chemical dopamine is like, where's the next hit going to be from? And that's really what these devices are doing to us. It's getting us to anticipate. What is that next hit that I'm going to get from information? Is it a friend? Is it news? Oh, I didn't know that happened. Oh, wow, that's cool. Imagine for a second that you went for a walk without a device and you had about five to ten minutes without anything other than your own thoughts. What would that be like?

I think it's scary. I think that's scary to say, okay, I'm going to be in my own thoughts for a minute. I'm going to have to actually feel something for a minute. And I already feel overwhelmed. And there must be something inside us that's telling us, actually, I'm going to feel more. And right now I'm trying to feel less. That's why I'm going to go numb out on my phone. But instead, all the firing starts to calm down and regulate when we go to quiet places and quiet moments to connect with quiet moments.

So we're trying to train our brain differently than what we've been recently habituated to. And if we were really to break it down, that's what we're doing. I mean, if we're going to step away and I, again, I encourage everybody, leave your phone behind for a bit, go for that walk, get in the bathtub, and just be with yourself, whatever version you choose. But spend time without this and notice what it feels like just being with yourself. And I think the burnout is because we're not spending enough time understanding our own thoughts and our own emotions. And then we're go, go, go. Go. Go. The body's just not designed to be this way. And I. If you really want to know why we're burning out and we're more anxious and we're more stressed and we're more depressed. I think it's because our body's in a constant state of movement. And go. And it's not getting time to just be with that inner core, that inner part of us that's saying, how do I connect if I'm with my higher power? How do I. How do I connect this soul with the universe? How do I connect this to that part of me that maybe I'm not even listening to because I'm so distracted by noise.

I like what you're saying about how if we do it from sun up to well past sundown, right before we go to bed, we're really not getting those basic needs met. And we call them physical needs, but they're more than physical needs. Everything is interactive with one another, right? So we say better sleep, better food, exercise more, move your body more, those kinds of things. But really those physical acts are changing the shape of our cognitive makeup. Am I correct with that?

I think absolutely. In fact, I think the challenge we now have is we're so used to it that when we don't have it, we might actually go through withdrawals because we don't have that information. And the data coming at such a rapid speed. Again, this is going to be a process for many of us. If we're going to really reduce burnout, we're going to have to intentionally practice being away from these devices. And it's not just devices, it this constant information. Again, I just think we're a whole lot better off when we plan and schedule time to reduce that amount of data coming in.

I think because work and home life have all become too enmeshed, boundaries do seem to be more vague than ever. And I do think it's nice that we have more flex flexibility in the work space, even in the education space. But without. I like the word intentional here. The intentional boundaries, the premeditated boundaries that we create for ourselves, this flexibility and this enmeshment with work, school, home life, all of it may be hurting us more than helping us. If we're not putting up our own boundaries, our own parameters on how to really keep the things that we value most thriving in a space that are thriving, rather than getting muddled and mixed about with the things that maybe we don't value most. That may be important, but not what we value the most. And obviously, by That, I mean, probably our own self connection and then our familial or relational connections around us.

That's a really good point, Carly. I, I would just say that more often than not, when I sit down and, and working with my client, I'll often go to an exercise. It's a value based exercise to help them identify what their core values are. And if you are, it's just a really simple exercise. It's, it's really fun to do. I can give it to everybody real quick. So what I do is I ask them to write down five things that they value the most, the things that are the most important to them. So here's your core values. Then I have them take a minute or two and I say, okay, now what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to just write the things that are bothering you the most right now in your life, the things that are on your mind the most. So they write down a list of the things that are bothering them the most. And then I have them put a score. The things that are bothering you the most. Give it a score. How a negative? How negative? Up to a hundred. How negative is that on your life right now? And they'll come up with whatever the score is. And I'll say, now I want you to look, these are the things that are on your mind and here are your values. How aligned are they? And when we're not spending time on the things that we value, we're being taken away from who we want to be and how we want to feel and things that matter most to us because we've got these other things going on. The more we are in alignment with what we're thinking, what we're doing with our core values, the more in harmony and in sync we are personally.

When our time and our actions don't align with our values, that it's proven to make us unhappy. And that when we cognitively say, this is what I value the most, then we're choosing to spend our life on the things that mean the most to us. I think that is my biggest fear is that at some point I may look back at a certain span of time in my life and regret that I hadn't focused on the things that I actually cared about most. And so yes, I definitely want to go try that exercise. Another question I have for you. Is there a chance that we are trying to cram too much into one season of our lives? And how do we set this up? How do we cling to the absolutely essential and the things that we care about most and let go of the inessential. Even when voices and rhetoric outside is telling us that's going to hurt us, that maybe we're not spending enough time at work or not spending enough time in a certain space to advance ourselves to the next level. How do we let go of the inessential or spend less time on the inessential?

That's a really interesting question. I've thought about it because I have eight children and how do I spend time with them and how do I interact with them in ways that they feel connected and feel loved that this outside world is telling us how to live our lives. And I think what we have to do is we have to minimalize. We have to say what matters the most and why are we doing this? Especially in today's culture. I've had children play sports and when they're in high school, the demand is absolutely off the charts. I mean, some of these sports are year round and if you're not doing year round, you're not going to not only make the team, you're not going to get playing time. So why am I doing it? And that amount of external pressure is phenomenal in today's culture. And I love what one of my daughter's basketball coaches said. She said something very interesting. She said, you are first and foremost a child of your parents and prioritizing that relationship is going to be important on the basketball court.

Wow, what a cool coach.

Yeah, yeah. But there's another just taking a little bit further. It's a matter of we prioritize these things for a reason. And when we are going to function at our optimal level, we have to be able to say, I'm not going to be able to do that right now. This season is not the season that we're going to be practicing. I may develop my own skills and I may do that because that's okay. Because I choose to, I want to. But this concept of a year round sport or year round activities, I think it's teaching our children that they have to always be on and that doesn't work.

It's setting them up for a life of a lot of burnout.

Go, go, go, go, go. And we've tried to do this with our children. There's times where I've actually had to say to my children, I honestly would prefer that you just do nothing tonight, that you just sit back and find a book or you just sit down and read, just take the night off. Because they're so used to this Go. And again, I appreciate the fact that they're driven. I appreciate all that. But I also understand that there's a time to say, you know what, let's celebrate and let's just sit down and read a book tonight, or let's just sit down and play a game as a family. Let's go for a walk, let's go for a hike. Let's spend time doing the things that will we know will help us bond and connect.

I think what comes to mind is moments when I have done that myself as a parent, when I have modeled that kind of behavior, where I've stopped and taken a breath and rejuvenated in some way. And I really do think the language we use and the habits we ourselves have, how we value ourselves and what we value as parents and adults, that really ultimately shapes how our. The children in our lives view themselves and how they'll end up viewing themselves as adult. This has happened a few times, but sometimes when I'll just say, you know what, I'm having a day where I'm just gonna. An afternoon where I'm going to take a break and I'll take an hour and I'll pull out a book, and the kids will walk in the door and they'll see me reading a book. And normally their behavior when they come in the door, I mean, they're a little bit older now, but still it's very chaotic. Most parents can relate. And normally it's, I want to go to this. Oh, I want to go to this. Oh, I want to go. Here, take me to do this. And it feels like a whirlwind. And moments when they've walked in, seen me reading, all of a sudden they'll put their backpack away, they'll slowly get a drink of water, and then they'll go grab a book and they'll come sit by me on the couch. And it almost makes me sad that I haven't done that more as they've grown up, because I think, oh man, how great for them to one feel connected with their parent as they're sitting me stopping, paying attention to them, showing them that they're what I value most, but also how they themselves, after frenzied day at school, they can have a break from it by doing quiet time. They don't have to go, go, go to be of value.

And when we slow down like that is when we're more likely to have meaningful conversations, right? And so again, some of these most simple things that really seem that way, they really are simple. It's sitting reading a book, which means your child comes in and they sit next to you. What's the likelihood that at some point you're just going to have some conversation about school or something? The other thing that we often are neglecting is actually eating meals together. One of the things that I really appreciate about my wife throughout my life I've had a variety of evening engagements for a variety of reasons. And she said if you could be home at 6 o' clock and we could eat at 6 o' clock as a family, that's all I really want. On those nights that I know you're not going to be available intentionally, I, I would schedule my life everything around. But that time was our sacred time. That was our family time, which means that we can have conversations, how was school, we ask questions. And that's actually a time where we're family regulation, away from the chaos because we're spending time tuning into each other to have a meaningful conversation that is actually helping them develop social skills. It's helping them learn how to regulate emotions, talk about difficulties, talk about the good parts of their days, talk about. And it's a powerful time that we have lost as a society because we're go, go, go, go.

It just feels like the older they get, the faster everybody gets going. And those moments are very rare indeed. Even I imagine a lot of us, like I'm even here thinking, I don't know how that would ever happen. I don't know how that would ever work. There's so many commitments that we've committed to, but it can work a couple nights of the week and there can be a few days where it, it does actually work out plan. All the kids can be home at all the same time and the parents can be home at the same time. But just you saying it was yeah a great motivator for me to actually try to start doing that more often.

Well, and let's even look at it another way. I could do it with breakfast in the morning. On days that we know that's impossible, again, it could be one on one or it could be as a family, but just simply spending time with a child, one on one, eating breakfast or in the evening, that time is still going to be connecting and then intentionally doing it. The days that you can do it in our home, for example, one of the things that we do is Saturday night. It's my job to cook. It's my job to, to feed the family. And everybody knows that on Saturday night I'm responsible. And so whether I go get a pizza or whether I make something, that's my time. And we eat together as a family on Saturday nights almost always. And, and, and so again, burnout is going to be reduced when we connect with each other.

I a thousand percent agree with that. I think that is imperative to healing from burnout and preventing burnout.

Coming up in part two of our discussion on burnout, they were baffled because.

Their diets were horrible. They ate so much meat and fat and fried foods and the men smoked cigars and drank heavily and they could not figure out what was happening. It didn't make any sense at all. But then they started to pay attention to the community. You've been listening to Finding Noble. I'm Carly Red. Follow Finding Noble on all available podcast directories and find out more on our website, findingnobel.com that's finding noblen o b l e dot com and if you or anyone close to you are looking for further resources on young adult and adolescent mental health, Dr. Skinner and a host of other leading professionals working in the mental health world share courses and even answer your questions, all on parentguidance.org that is parentguidance.org brought to you by the Cook center for Human Connection.