Caitlin Donovan | When Doctors Say, "We Don't Know" Podcast | Episode 307

Welcome to the show. My name is Eva Venari, founder of the Elevate Institute, and I'll be your host for today's podcast. When Doctors Say We Don't Know is an inclusive conversation. So many are craving to share their stories and experiences, and today's guest is no exception. Today's honored guest is Kate Donovan. Kate is one of New York City's leading burnout experts and acupuncturists, host of Fried, the Burnout Podcast, and author of the book The Bounce Back Ability— talk about creating a new word— Factor: End Burnout, Gain Resilience, and Change the World. How apropos for now. Kate, welcome to the show.

Eva, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. This is such an important topic in my life and the life of so many of my patients. Oh my goodness.

It is a repeating theme, and it's even more acute now than ever now that we're all stuck at home. So, truth. I want to ask you, I mean, most, most of us who are in this work, we don't just get into burnout because it just happens to be something we thought of at 5 years old. Have you ever been faced with that answer? We don't know when searching for answers yourself.

Absolutely. And the first time that happened to me was actually, I was quite young. I was 16. going on 17, and I was having really severe pain for about a week, and I didn't know what was happening. And I, I thought I was constipated, and so I started taking laxatives, and just— it was just like a really awkward time. And I ended up in the ER, and they kept telling me that they thought that I was having an ectopic pregnancy, but I was a virgin at the time, so that was not possible. But I grew up in a town that was— I grew— the city that I grew up in is, um, there's a lot of drugs, gangs, violence, etc. So I— it was really uncommon for a 16-year-old to still be a virgin, kind of. It's really normal. I had— there's a— in my high school, there was a daycare, you know. So, so they didn't— they didn't believe me when I said that, that, that couldn't be the case. And so they kept looking and kept looking, and then finally they found A cyst the size of a cantaloupe that had traveled from my uterus to my fallopian tube. And so I went in and had emergency surgery on my 17th birthday. So when I say I was 16 going on 17, I mean literally the day.

Yeah.

So the next day was my birthday and I ended up in emergency surgery. And when they finished the surgery and, and the doctor came back in after and I was sort of waking up, I looked at him and I newly 17, and I said, am I going to be able to have children? And he shrugged his shoulders and said, I don't know. No further explanation.

What, what was your thought right then in that moment? Like, what, what did you think?

Right then in that moment, I felt like my world was crushed. And right now, as a 38-year-old woman who does not have children because she chose not to have children, it's a totally different view. But at that time, You know, you sort of prep your whole life. You're told to like play with dolls and play family. And everyone is told that that's, you know, you're gonna grow up and do that kind of. And so at the time I was just sort of crushed and I was really frustrated by the fact that he couldn't tell me anything. Like I had always really been big into science and I was like, how do you not, how do you not have any idea whether or not This is possible. Like, why can't you give me any better answer than that?

And, you know, that's— that is a frustrating place to be, just having been there myself. So then when, when you're sitting there thinking that, were those internal thoughts or did that actually come out of your mouth to the doctor? Why don't you know?

No, absolutely not, which is surprising because I'm pretty in-your-face Often. Yeah, yeah, I'm from Boston originally, but, um, I was— I'm a pretty in-your-face person as a general rule, and I was very— I just, I think I was so shocked that I just sat there and I was like, what? I don't think I, I knew to say anything. And also, I was 17 and he was a doctor, right?

Well, we're taught to respect our elders and yada yada, and there's nothing wrong with any of that.

No, no, no.

Except don't—

there was—

there's definitely that feeling of, why don't they know? So what was your next step from there? What did you decide to do?

I didn't decide to do anything from there. I went and lived my life. It didn't matter to me at that very moment whether or not I was going to be able to have children because I was 17. So I kind of went and lived my life. And the interesting things that happened next, you know, I started medical school and then I left a pre-med track to study Chinese medicine, became an acupuncturist, and started working in an infertility center in Poland. So now we are 8 years later and I'm treating people for infertility from an Eastern perspective. And I heard people talking every single day about the fact that doctors had no idea why they were unable to get pregnant.

And I wonder if— I mean, that just seems like a natural progression to me. Would you think that was an unconscious decision to go into that practice and then go into Eastern medicine rather than Western? I mean, I'm thinking about all of this going, that's very not just ironic, but even apropos for you to choose all of these things. And I'm wondering how much of it is based on your experience.

You know, a lot of it, I think that I didn't— I don't think that I did it on purpose. I always thought that I was going to be a doctor ever since I was 3. I told my grandmother when I was 3, I'm going to be a doctor someday. And I really planned on that. And I got almost a full scholarship to Boston University. So I was very lucky. And I It's one of the best schools in the world. And I started going through that process. And halfway through my second year, I thought, I'm never going to do this. I don't want any of this. I don't want this life. I don't want to go through medical school and work 100 hours a week and kill myself. So this is another sort of foreshadowing moment where I was choosing a life that wouldn't lead me to burn out when I was 19, because I could see it.

Yeah.

Right. So I left I left the sort of Western medical ideal because I didn't want to kill myself to be a doctor. And when I was studying at the time, my minor was Eastern religion. So my major was biology on a pre-med track and my minor was Eastern religion. And I went to one of my Eastern religion professors. I was doing a master's level course in meditation at the time. They let me do that as an elective. I'm not sure why, but they did. And I went to her and I said, Olivia, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with my life because I've always thought that I was going to be a doctor and I don't have any other ideas, like none. And she said, well, why don't you do Chinese medicine? I said, what the F is that?

Yeah.

I had no idea, right? I had no clue. So when I started reading about it, I turned into like a neophyte. I was like a newly converted, wanted everybody to know about it. It made the world make so much sense to me. So when, when I was introduced to the concept of Chinese medicine, I was just so grateful that I felt like I had something that could explain the world to me in a way that made sense.

Isn't that a beautiful moment?

Yeah. Yeah, it really was. And I still love the way that Chinese medicine views the world. I use it even when I'm not in my acupuncture office. I still use it in my coaching practice because it makes things make more sense.

So what in particular? I mean, as far as— there was a moment for me when I kept being very, very stubborn with the idea, if you get Give your body what it needs, it'll heal itself. I don't need medication. Did you have something like that going on in the back of your mind that was rotating like a recording?

I didn't.

I had this—

I— this idea that Western medicine knows all this stuff, but they're missing all this other stuff, and now I can be privy to the other stuff secrets. That's what it felt like to me. It felt like I now had the key to the secret universe that, that doctors didn't have. So I felt really privileged to be in a space where I learned something like this. And then from there came the, oh, there's really other ways for people to heal. And that's when I started reading into the, you know, Edgar Cayce, and I read, uh, Don Castaneda, and I learned about plant medicine. And I did, you know, all those things happened at that time. And that's when I started really— learning that vibrations heal things and that you're— there's so many more things about the body that we don't really understand. And that if you do qigong, you can see the energy leaving the end of your fingers. And that's crazy.

Yeah.

You know, like all this stuff started happening because of this initial sort of, oh my goodness, there's this whole other way to look at and explain things that no one's ever talked to me about before. And I feel like it's this massive secret that I now get to be a part of.

Well, I think from many aspects, the people in— or at least the history that I've read up on with Chinese medicines of all kinds, whether it's feng shui or if it's like Chinese face reading— these are practices that were handed down within families and used specifically for treating the royal family. So it was coveted and held secret. Keep it secret, keep it safe. Because it gave you a leg up on everybody else.

Well, as far as— I mean, I'm actually a face reader as well, and so I haven't learned that about face reading, that it was separated for the royalty. It was because it was very often used for matchmaking, even in the countryside.

Yeah, for health reasons, they didn't necessarily— they wanted to protect the woman's discretion, you know, her—

Yes, yes. So they would use face reading and pulse without actually looking at them sometimes. So there's a lot of older pictures of Doctors taking the pulse of a female, reaching in from behind a curtain so that he doesn't have to look at her body or her face even. Yeah, there's pictures like that.

Yeah, and in a way, I wish that we could roll some of that dignity back into our healthcare here in the West, because if we look at how women especially— or at least that's been my experience— I feel like nobody really respects privacy. They're just like, let me poke you here, take off your clothes, and then we're gonna leave you naked for everybody in the room to see you.

Well, this is actually really interesting because Europe is a little bit less prude than we are in the States.

Yeah.

And so as an acupuncturist in Europe, the first time that I had a patient, they just started taking off their clothes while I was in the room with them. And I was like, I'm gonna leave. I'm gonna— here's a curtain or something. And they were like, what is your problem? It's just a body. And then when I got back to the States, now that I'm back in the States and I'm working in New York, I feel like I'm supposed to leave the room, but I haven't left the room in 12 years because people in Europe don't care about taking off their clothes in front of doctors. So the question to me becomes, do doctors need to have more, more respect for our bodies, or do we need to be more comfortable with the fact that we're in them?

Yes, maybe both.

Maybe both. Yeah, maybe both.

Because just because we have nothing to hide doesn't mean we don't have a sense of privacy. And so that's different for everybody. And I love that conversation because you're right, it is absolutely everything to do with culture, what we're used to. I know that in a lot of European countries, when families go swimming in their swimming pool in the backyard, they don't use bathing suits, etc. And I wouldn't think I would feel very comfortable swimming naked around my own family. That just seems really strange to me. So it just depends, I guess, how you're raised.

Yeah, I don't know anyone that swims naked in their swimming pools in Europe, but, but, you know, it's really uncommon to have gender-separated saunas, for instance.

Yes, there you go.

Yeah, so they just, they don't, that's not really a thing. So it's interesting to me that I think that the issue with Doctors in the Room and our clothing is that they're doctors, Western doctors, forget that there's a human attached to the body.

Right. Yeah.

And I think this is the part that's really important.

Yeah, it is. And, and that's, that's the, um, the separation that somehow we have achieved in ourselves creates a lot of anxiety, um, into the body. But how can— and I'm wondering if there is a direct connection between that separation on both sides of this conversation between doctors and patients and how we feel about the body and the respect for it that actually leads into burnout.

I think that this is a huge thing because I think that the separation from mind to body is a massive, massive problem in burnout. Because everybody that I've spoken to, which is— this is— we're talking hundreds and hundreds of people over the past few years, they knew on some level, on a physical level, that they were done, you know, that their bodies were like giving up. And they used the power of their minds to push through that. And we can use the power of our minds to push through it, or we can use the power of our minds Well, we can't really push through it, but we can use the power of our minds to believe that we can push through it. But we can also use the power of our minds to heal ourselves. And we're not looking at it the right way. We're not saying, oh, I'm getting this signal from my body. So that means that I should put a little bit more effort into staying connected and listening to what I can, should, shouldn't, might be able to do. We're saying, oh, my body's saying I shouldn't do this, but I have to because otherwise I'm going to be embarrassed. People aren't going to love me. I'm not going to be productive enough or whatever the reason happens to be that we decide to push through something. We use the strength of our mind to take us down the wrong road.

And that becomes incongruent with our purpose or our goals.

Right.

So I hear this chatter an awful lot in groups, in networking groups. You know, we're all on Zoom getting Zoom butt talking to each other and having to use our words to communicate right now. And I hear this a lot. With the lack of privacy in the home, and now not just the person who is running a business is now running a business from home, but the partner is also having to be an employee or running their business also from home, previously out of the office. Now they've got kids working from home, doing their schoolwork from home, not being able to spend as much quality time even though they're physically in the same space together, and not being able to get privacy. So I get the question a lot. I'm so tired. I don't know what to do about it. What kind of advice do you have to— for twofold, for those who are already experiencing that, oh my God, I'm already, already so tired, I probably have burnout, and 2, for those who feel like they're on the precipice of falling into that cavern, like what can they do to help?

For me, when in this situation, the thing that I ask people to look for is maybe a little bit surprising, but I think is really important. The thing that I ask people to look for in this moment and pay attention to is resentment.

Uh-huh.

So my advice is to find resentment in your life. Look for it on purpose. Where are you being passive-aggressive? Where are you shouting thank you? Where are you saying to the room at large when nobody is really listening, sure, I'll empty the dishwasher again? You know, where— when— where are those moments in your life? And to take those moments and use them as keys to figure out where new boundaries have to be drawn. What we have to realize right now is that none of us have ever done this before.

Right.

None of us have ever done this before, so we don't have the right answers. There's no perfect way to set up your household to function in today's world because we're all different, we're all in different situations. Some of us have kids at home, some of us don't. Some of us are working away at a from the house part-time. Some of us have offices at our kitchen tables, and some of us are in our bedrooms, and some of us— there's so many different situations happening that the only commonality, I think, is that the boundaries need to change. But boundaries can't change until we can have a smart conversation about them, and we can't have a smart conversation about them until we figure out where they are missing. And we find out where boundaries are missing by looking for resentment.

That's a really good starting point. So an emotional intelligence is required here, is to not just, not just feel the anxiety, but look inside. What would be a really good question to ask yourself to recognize that resentment?

I think that the best question would be, where am I feeling put upon And unappreciated.

Ah, and then what, what you do with that from there becomes a conversation around your own personal needs. What do I need out of this to feel less put out?

Well, the conversation starts as— to me, the next questions are, what needs to happen with this in order for it to change, right? So like you're saying, what is it that I need? But oftentimes we jump from, okay, I have this resentment, so I have to tell somebody about it so they stop doing it so it gets fixed.

Right.

And that's actually not really commonly the solution. That's about 20% of the time. But the questions become, okay, the first question is, is this something, this thing that I'm having resentment over, is this something that absolutely needs to be done? Because right now we are repeating a lot of day-to-day activities that were necessary 6 months ago that are not necessary today. So for instance, if you're still writing your whole family's schedule on a big calendar, even though everyone is home all day, like, you don't need to do that anymore. If you are still cooking breakfast for the whole family, even though your youngest child is 8 or over, like, you don't need to do that anymore. Like, an 8-year-old can scramble eggs. Might take you a minute to teach them how to do it. But an 8-year-old can scramble eggs. So the question, the first question is, does this even need to be done at all? Because then we figure out that the boundary becomes you letting go of doing an activity that no longer needs to be done, right?

Mm-hmm.

This is really important. So that has nothing to do with having a conversation with anybody. It has only— the only thing it has to do with is you letting go of a responsibility that you took on at one point that may or may not need to continue. And if it doesn't need to continue, allowing yourself the grace to let go of it.

Oh, that's a gift. So I hear this all the time. Everybody's in the home, I'm working. The only thing that keeps them from knocking on my door is the sound of my voice because they know that I'm— they're not to interrupt while I'm in a meeting. So where would you think the enabling is occurring and And the empowerment can be moved in a situation like that.

So this— these are for later questions, right? So the first question is, okay, can somebody else do this? Or the first question is, does this need to be done? The next question is, can somebody else do this? So that becomes a question about handing over jobs, right? Which needs— we all need to remind some people quite a few times. That's normal. People's brains are not tuned into jobs that they don't have to do. Our brains are very efficient. If somebody else has done the laundry for 12 years, I'm not even going to see the laundry because my brain has officially emptied that part. You know, it's not important. The next question becomes, is if I have to do this, if this is a thing that must be done and I'm the person that has to do it, is there an upgrade to a tool that I can use? Like if you have to cook every day, are your knives sharp enough? Do you have the right cutting board? Are the pans nonstick and comfortable for you to use? Do you need to upgrade something to make it easier for yourself? Then we get to the last question. If there's no upgrade and I'm resentful and there's not really anybody else that can be doing it and somebody is invading my space, what boundary needs to be put in place to keep myself protected? And when we put a boundary in place from this perspective, our job is to use particular words that allow us a transfer of responsibility that does not feel like a boundary to another person but feels like an empowerment.

Yeah.

So instead of saying, I need you to take care of the vacuuming from now on because I can't do it, we say, all right, we're shifting the family responsibilities around a little bit. Of, you know, Samantha, I really truly believe in your ability to pay attention to the vacuum and take care of it when it needs to be taken care of. And if you find that people are interrupting you a lot, the conversation becomes, I know that sometimes you have questions for me. I trust that oftentimes you can find the answer on your own, and that if you can't, you'll wait until I leave my room to ask me. So you use the words trust, believe, resources, abilities. You tell people that you trust them, that you trust in their resources, that you believe in their abilities.

This releases a lot of the neediness that comes from—

Yes.

Right.

Yeah.

And also allows for the person— what I'm hearing— the person who is constantly being needed or believes that they're always needed and therefore feeling pulled in many directions, that, that relief that they so need that can help prevent the burnout.

Exactly.

So what if a person is already feeling the burnout? They're over the cliff, they're in the abyss, they're like, I don't— I can't function anymore. What, what are some, some words of advice for that?

I don't think it's different advice, to be honest.

Okay.

You start with resentment because it's a place that so many of us are afraid to go, and it's a place that if we really start paying attention to, we find out all the places that need to be adjusted in our lives. But I don't believe that when you are really truly burnt out, sometimes you do need to borrow someone else's eyes and ears for a little while. Because yours are a little broken. There's a, you know, Instagram memes love to tell us that we're not broken. When you're burnt out, you literally are a little broken, and it's, it's not your fault, but you are. And if you need someone to hold space for you, then get somebody to hold space for you.

So, and I'm thinking about quality of, of that kind of holding space. It's the who you turn to. What kind of person are we looking for here?

That's really dependent on personality, right? There's a lot— when I first started doing burnout coaching, burnout coaching did not exist, so I was kind of your only option. But I'm not your only option anymore, thank goodness, because I could never take on all the people that need a burnout coach.

Yes.

There's so many people that are in need right now, and I can't be responsible for, for helping all of them. That would not be a sustainable way for me to avoid burnout long term. So the question becomes, what kind of person do you resonate with? When you read their website, does it work for you. Like, I, I tend to be very upfront and very honest with you, and the feedback that I've gotten from patients over the years and clients over the years is you should not work with Caitlin if you're not ready to face the truth.

Yes.

Just don't. Just don't do it. Don't sign up with her. Go with somebody else that's going to allow you— that's going to be maybe a little bit more gentle. I'm not going to try to hurt you on purpose, absolutely, and I will be careful to make sure that you feel empowered enough to take the actions that I think that you need to take. However, I'm not gonna let you— I was just gonna swear. I'm not gonna let you lie to yourself.

Yeah, you're okay. You can do that.

Okay, I'm not gonna let you bullshit yourself.

There you go.

I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna stand for it and I'm not gonna listen to it because I believe that self-honesty is one of the most healing practices that we have. So if I hear you lying to yourself, I'm gonna call you out. And if you're not the kind of person that likes to be called out, if that doesn't work for you, then you should look for a burnout coach that works differently than I do.

Yeah, well, and that's, that's an important distinction is, is being able to have somebody meet you where you are and provide you the things that you need. Right. And that, that could be in many different forms. So great idea. So you're working with people remotely at this point?

Yes, my burnout coaching for me has always been remote. So that didn't change.

Perfect. Yeah. And then as far as acupuncture, what happened with, with With that line of work?

Yeah, I was closed for 4 months. And so I was closed from the middle of March until the middle of July-ish. And we reopened in July and now I'm up to about 40% capacity and I'll only be able to get to about 70% capacity because we have more time in between patients to allow the disinfectant to dry. We have a very specific protocol for keeping everyone safe, which I'm happy to follow. So we have to do an aerosol— like, it doesn't have to be aerosol, but we have to do an air spray that we let settle onto the tables. It's not like a spray something and then wipe it down. It's a spray and then wait for it to activate and dry and all of that. So there's this whole process that we have now. So I'm at about 40% capacity, which I'm pretty thrilled with right now, to be honest, because there's, you know, things— everything is changing and adjusting and shifting and it's It's okay, it's okay at the moment. But I do think that especially in New York City, people need to have a space where they can actually physically come and have somebody else take care of their bodies and put them in a healing state, because there's just so much overwhelming stress this year that I don't know anybody that couldn't use a little extra support, you know?

Exactly, and I couldn't say it better. We're trying so hard to get all of our connection in through some sort of remote way, whether that's— I know more people are going back to telephone. Just call me.

Yeah.

With the telephone, you know, we want to get away from the just texting. We're seeking that connection. And so healing, I agree with you, people want that, that touch, that interaction. So that's fantastic that you're there in New York doing that, and that you're able to offer the remote sessions for burnout remotely. So So if someone is listening to us in our discussion, they're like, hey, I really want to hear more about Cait. I want to get in touch with her. How can they do that? And do you have anything for them to interact with you?

I do. CaitDunnevan.com is the best way. Cait is C-A-I-T, just to make things a little more difficult for everybody. It's not a K. So it's CaitDunnevan.com and all of the information is there. And there is the— the resentment journal is actually a paid course. It's very inexpensive, but it's, but it's a paid course. And the free resources, one of my favorite ones is called Living According to Your Core Values. And it's just a way to give you a little bit of a snapshot into the values that are most important to you, which might be different than the ones that you think they are if you haven't sat down recently to do an exercise like that, so that you can, when new things come into your life, you can sort of look at them, look at your value list and say, does this fit? Does this not fit? Because very often we just say yes, we say yes, we say yes, and we forget that there's a system and a set of sort of rules that we would like to feel like we're living by that we're not checking in with. So that's one of my favorite free resources for people that's available on the, on my website.

I'm going to check that out myself because I preach that, but I want to, I want to know what you say too. So I'm gonna check what I do against what you do. I'm really curious.

It's probably the same.

Yeah, I love it. Okay, wonderful. And thank you so much for all that generosity. And I want to wrap up the show because we are just about out of time with the final question. And I want to know, what do you feel is the most important thing to remember when searching for answers?

To stay in your heart. You cannot, absolutely cannot take anything that anyone says, not even me, and accept it for truth without judging it against your own truth. Take the things that work for you, leave everything else. And when you're not sure, stop. Take 3 deep breaths through your heart. Act like you're breathing right through your heart. And then ask yourself, does this fit with me? Does this belong to me? When you're searching for answers, you've got to be able to decide what fits you, because there's no— there's not a lot of universal answers out there. There's a lot of universal concepts, but the words that are used that are going to resonate with you are very particular and belong to you.

Beautiful words. Words of advice, and I couldn't agree more. And thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom with us today.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah. And signing off now, thank you for listening in with our guest, Kate Donovan, on today's show. This has been yet another engaging conversation. Doctors say we don't know. And my goal for those of you listening is to hear that message of hope so you too can Turn that message, uh, of experience of pain rather into triumph. And if you're driving or simply can't click on the links to the show notes, uh, for today's podcast guest, you can always hop on to theelevateinstitute.com and follow the links for today's show. There's more to talk about. Tune in next week for a new episode of When Doctors Say We Don't Know, coming out every Sunday morning. This is Eva Vennari reminding you to question everything.