244: Why Burnout Is An Epidemic and 3 Steps to Feeling Better Now with Kathy Caprino

I'm an enormous fan of therapy. Everybody needs it at some point or another. So if you came from a family that said, oh, therapy is for weaklings or worse, there's a lot of words that are thrown around about people who seek therapy. They're mistaken. You need to be strong to admit you need help. That's strong. That's brave. Hello everyone, this is Kathy Caprino and welcome to my podcast, Finding Brave. I've created this show for everyone who longs to create something bold and brave in their life, to rise up, speak up, and stand up for who they are and to reach their highest and biggest visions. Each week I'll be speaking with inspiring guests from all walks of business, leadership, entertainment, the creative arts and the entrepreneurial world. And they'll be sharing their intimate stories of Finding Brave and offer their best strategies for building your most rewarding, joyful and meaningful life, business and career. Hello everybody. Kathy Caprino here and I am so happy to be with you on what I hope is Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving weekend here in the US And I want to wish you a beautiful holiday. No matter where you are, who you're with, what you're doing, I hope it's just what you want it to be, maybe relaxing, maybe full of a lot of fun and socializing. Whatever, whatever is your wish for this holiday, I hope you have it. And I'm coming today to talk about something that I think is so important, which is burnout. And it's so important because first of all, I seem to be talking about it or it's coming up in conversations every day with either my clients or my course members or my friends, my family, the people I sing with in my community group, the church I sing with, my tennis buddies. We're all talking about it. And it's so fascinating because everybody brings their own filter, their own perspective, what they think is going on. But I also see and, and I'm bringing this to you as a former marriage and family therapist, which was a life changing experience and really gave me a window into people's lives in a way I never had before. And also coaching for 16 years and writing a about it and talking to experts about mental health and wellness and well being and what gets in the way of that. So I want to talk about why I think there is such an epidemic of burnout today. But also three. We can call them hacks, we can call them doable strategies for addressing burnout today for you. And you know, another thing I really want to share about this. While a lot of people are talking about It. I think perhaps even more people are not. They're not sharing with their loved ones. They're not sharing with their friends what they're going through. And they may not even recognize what they're going through, but they know it's not good. So I would say it's for anyone, whether you're talking about it and recognizing it or not. This is for you to really help you finally recognize what you're feeling, why you're feeling it, and do something about it. Okay, so let me talk a little bit about how I view burnout. Everybody's got a different definition. I feel it is a consistent level of stress that is a bit beyond our. Beyond our normal functioning, but also beyond our coping mechanisms. And I think there's an epidemic. So let me stop. There can be depression. There can be exhaustion. There can be overwhelm. There can be irritability. There can be anger. Some people are just much more quick to anger when they're tired and burnt out and depressed. It can be all of that. So I'm less worried about, you know, a scientific definition and more about just look at how you're feeling. Do you feel yourself? Do you feel like, wow, I can't believe I just reacted like that. That's so not like me. Those are signs that you're going through, at least burnout. There could be other things as well. Why is there an epidemic? Someone asked me and, you know, I'm drawing on my Forbes post about this recently, which we'll link to below. And someone said, you know, well, why. Why specifically is there an epidemic? I feel that the reason for that is there are so many factors and situations all coming together, a confluence of influences that make it very, very difficult for us to cope because we really haven't had this kind of confluence of factors in most of our lifetimes. So what am I talking about? These events are intense career stress. Am I coming? Am I going? Am I getting laid off? And we know what we're talking about here. There's been massive layoffs. Am I going into work? Is it remote? Is it not? There's parenting challenges and anxieties. I do not ever mean to be doom and gloom, but I have to share this. I have a lot of friends who are educators. And one educator told me of of K to 5 kids that the lack of discipline, the last lack of respect, the lack of focus, the amount of distraction that these kids are facing, she is concerned or believes it'll take a generation to overcome what has happened here. And there's a lot of reasons for that. But I'm going to put out, put my neck on the block and say that teachers are typically very good disciplinarians and sometimes parents are not. And I am a parent of grown kids and I know when I wasn't and if I wasn't, it didn't go well. We need discipline. It needs to be a certain kind of discipline. Kind, loving, compassionate, never shaming. But the point is there's so many parenting challenges, right? But there's also things like war and coming off the pandemic and yet another successive string of viruses that we feel we've not heard of before, right? So there's war, there are financial situations, there's climate change. Much of what is feels like is completely out of our control. When you have all of this at once, it's overwhelming. Would you not agree? All right, so there's another piece to this that I want to add that I've seen since I became a therapist, but I'm seeing it even more right now. When I was studying as a therapist, we learned about over functioning, it was called, and we often talked about it in a couple. So when one over functions, and that is doing more than is healthy, appropriate and necessary, the other under functions, that's how it works. And it works that way. As you as a manager, you as a leader, you as a parent, you as a friend, if you are doing more than is healthy, appropriate and necessary, the other person's doing less. And it's damaging. It's damaging to both parties. Because when you're doing more, for instance, for your children than you should be, than is healthy for them, you're crippling them. You are robbing them of problem solving, of skill building, of, of feeling satisfaction for what they've accomplished, you're really robbing them of these very important things. But on top of over functioning, what I'm seeing in working with now over 20,000 professional women across six continents is perfectionistic over functioning. So we're not just doing more than is healthy, appropriate, necessary. We are trying to get an A in every iota of it. And it's just not possible and it's not wise and it's not healthy. Not everything that you're doing needs to be an A plus. In I think both of my books, the first book, Breakdown, Breakthrough and Most powerful, you, I, I give examples of how we over function kind of every day and try to just be perfect at it. So when you compound perfectionistic over functioning with all the stressors that we've not dealt with at the same time burnout happens. This is just what happens. And sometimes crisis ensues very often. So because I'm a coach, I want to definitely give you doable strategies, not strategies that are so pie in the sky. And, okay, that's going to take me four years, or if I do that, that's five hours a week. I don't have five hours a week. I don't want to give you those strategies. I want to give you quick hacks that can actually transform how you're feeling right away. Okay. The very first is gain greater awareness of what you are feeling and dealing with so you can have greater choice. And again, I learned this as a therapist. Greater awareness leads to greater choice. So the deal is you cannot change or address that which you're not aware of. So it's time to identify exactly what is generating your experience and your feelings today of burnout. Right? So ask yourself these questions. And what do I mean? I don't mean just, you know, throw them out there and think about them for a second. I mean, take this Thanksgiving weekend, if you can, go for a walk, sit on a park bench, be by yourself, turn off all your device devices and have a pad and pencil in front of you and ask these questions. Have the Forbes piece in front of you and answer them. Number one, what makes me the most stressed, worried and anxious or depressed right now? And try to be specific, right? Try to be as clear and concrete as you can. You know, an example of not being clear and concrete. I remember we were taught also in therapy, but I use this a lot when clients, new clients would come. I'd say, hi, Sally, how are you? What brings you to therapy today? And often they would say, I just want to be happier. And I'd say, nope, we're not going to work on that. And they said, what? What kind of therapist are you? And I would explain that happy is so vague. And. And the barometer shifts, right? The bar shifts when we make it so vague. So the question would be, if you woke up tomorrow, happier, what would it look like? What would you be doing differently? So it's action we're talking about. So same with this. What makes you most stressed, worried and anxious? Right. And if you woke up tomorrow and you weren't stressed and anxious, how would you know? That's what we're going for, really? Behavioral and solution focused. Number two, what is different now than a few years ago when I wasn't feeling so burnt out? What has changed for me personally? So, for instance, when we're talking about climate Change or war, that that can just. And especially if we watch a lot of news. I've interviewed a lot of people about this, but Michelle Ghilan is a dear friend and she used to be a broadcast journalist and moved into becoming a positive psychologist. And she said the research showed that just eight minutes of news, which is negative, we know it. You know, in, in the media, we've often heard the term what bleeds, reads, meaning that's what grabs people in the negative. Eight minutes of that will change your mood for your entire day. So I would suggest being incredibly careful what you ingest. So I watch 30 minutes of a particular news channel on television, just 30 minutes, and I have news highlights on my phone. And I am incredibly selective what I press my finger on to read. But the question is, what has changed for you? Now, going back to that point when we're hearing headline after headline about stuff that's out of our control, it can make us feel very helpless and very victimized and very scared. So I want to ask you, in your personal life and your career, what has changed for you specifically? And I think the more you can get clear with that, the more you're going to be able to do something about it versus the onslaught of negative headlines that just make us feel sick and sad. Right. Number three, what is the stress emerging from specifically and which of these are in my control and which are not? So for stressors within your control, such as how much you're working every day or the job that you have now, this is interesting. A lot of people think, I can't control my work, I can't control my job. Well, if you feel that, or I can't control my manager, the first thing I'd ask you to do is read my book. Get it anywhere you can find it. There's an audiobook, there's Kindle, there's hardcover, paperback. Read it. It's about the seven damaging power gaps that impact 98% of professional women and 90% of professional men. And when you have these gaps, and My survey showed 90. No, no, sorry. Too much Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving pie. 75% of professional women have three or more of these gaps at the same time. When you have three or more of these gaps, you cannot thrive. You might look successful on the outside, but you're not going to feel successful, rewarded, fulfilled, calm, self esteem, confidence, you're not going to feel that. So I would really like you to look at what is in my control and what is not. So let's say your boss is making you crazy. Well, for A lot of companies, they have EAP employee assistant programs. You can talk to someone there, you can talk to your doctor and get a therapist recommendation. Or if you are interested in therapy, I recommend marriage and family therapists because they are trained to look at the system. They don't look at just what you're dealing with. They're looking at everything that's impacting you in your system, within your family, within your church and temple, within your community, right within your children's school. So, oh, and there's a wonderful resource, aam.org you that's the American association of Marriage and Family Therapy. And there's a therapist locator right there. So if you want to meet with someone in person in your community, you can find, find someone there. But there are things you can do. For instance, let's talk about burnout. You know, I read a while ago that Americans take the least amount of vacation, you know, compared to many other countries, and it's certainly European countries. We don't take our vacation, we don't take time off, we don't take sick time. So let's start there. Can you take a day off? And then don't be a perfectionistic over functioner and spend the whole day working, you know, doing laundry and take it for yourself. Do something that feeds you. Feed your mind, feed, feed your soul, feed, feed your body. Okay, now number two category of steps here to take, take the reins on what you can control. So back to perfectionistic over functioning. Address where you may be over functioning in your family, in your job. Are you a volunteer? Do you work 60 hours a week and then you volunteer 10 hours and you're just so drained but you don't know how to say no, or you don't know how to back out of that project, or you don't know how to say no to the friend who, who is desperately calling on you all the time. Right? So I've written also about quiet quitting, which really blew up on the scene from a Tick Tock Real in the summer. But generally, as I understand it and as I've written about it and talk to people about it, quiet quitting is, is not what it sounds like. It's that it's not just I'm about to quit and I'm looking for a job and I'm not telling anyone. It's not that. It's that people are sick and tired of doing more than they were hired for, more than they were paid for, and not getting compensated and not getting appreciated. So they're deciding to back off and do exactly what they were hired for. No more. I have challenges with that because for many, many people and also for women and other underrepresented groups, if you do exactly what you were hired for and not an iota more, sometimes you're penalized compared to other groups. And secondly, my wish for you is that you love your work and it's rewarding and fulfilling. No, I don't want you to be burnt out doing great work. But I think backing off and doing what we consider only what we were hired for can also lead to you feeling disengaged. You know, I don't care about this. I don't want to give a second more than I have to. I don't think that's the way we want to live and work. And that's my view. But you can. I will definitely link to the articles I've written about why I don't love quiet quitting now. Sometimes we have to do it for sure because we're drowning. And obviously always put your mental and physical health and spiritual health health first. But I do think if you're pretty disgusted with your employer and how they're taking advantage of you, it might be certainly time to look for another job, one that you're going to love. All right. But back to controlling what you want to control. Ask yourself, are there people in my community or in my life that I can ask for help this week to ease my burden? You know, I have a dear friend, for instance, who's gotten very injured and had surgery. And, you know, I know it's hard for her to ask for help, but others have stepped in. We're not waiting for her to ask. You know, there's already a sign up genius where people are coming and bringing meals and, and, you know, there's just a million examples of people who are angels in the wings waiting to help out, but they're not going to help out if you don't say anything if they don't know you need it. Right. Number two, is it time for some therapeutic help to talk through in a really honest, candid, open, safe way what you're going through? Sometimes. Not sometimes. Often it's very difficult to tell our family. I'm depressed, I'm not myself. I feel listless, I feel hopeless. And so many people are men and women are soldiering through, you know, parents. I know so many parents of young kids or teen kids and my goodness, there's challenges. Anyone who's a parent or an aunt or an uncle or helping out kids in any Way know children can be a challenge and knowing how to give them what they need in the way they need it can be a deep challenge. It might be time to talk to a therapist and I just want to tell you, as a former therapist and one who's been in therapy and one who gets help a lot when I need it, I'm an enormous fan of therapy. Everybody needs it at some point or another. So if you came from a family that said, oh, therapy is for weaklings or worse, you know, there's a lot of words that are thrown around about people who seek therapy. They're mistaken. You need to be strong to admit you need help. That's strong, that's brave, that's not weak. So I hope you will reach out again. Check out aamft.org for a therapist near you. Or you can always reach out to me and I can see if I can connect you with anyone I know in my network. All right, now the over functioning piece. I would. I love this question that I'm about to ask you. Whenever someone tells me I'm, I'm just killing myself. I'm doing so much, I'm doing everything. I always ask, and I ask this, no matter what problem you're bringing, how old is this problem? How old is this behavior? And you know, a lot of coaches don't want to talk about the past there. I've had people tell me we're trained not to. Nonsense. That's just nonsense. My head explodes when I hear that. If you're not talking about what a person went through in the past, you're missing an enormous part of the picture. Ah. So any coach listening to that, who wants training, it doesn't have to be therapeutic training, but I train coaches on how do we dig deep. And, and how do you recognize when someone need therapeutic help over coaching and what to do when that emerges. But the point is, the question is how old is this problem? And I want to tell you I'm almost never wrong. Not that I need to be right all the time, but it's a very rare, I think one in a thousand that someone doesn't say, is this an old problem? And the reasons are fascinating. It may be that they were the older sibling and the parent wasn't stable. So they had, they were the parentified child. They had to take care of the siblings. Or maybe it was they weren't loved. If they weren't getting straight A's and then doing 50 other things, they truly weren't loved. They had a narcissistic parent if you, if you're a woman and you've had a narcissistic mother, there's an amazing book by Dr. Carol McBride on will I never be good enough? Healing. I think it's called Healing Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers. It is so powerful, so powerful. But if you had emotional manipulation, if you were shamed into, you know, I don't care what you do, but you have to be a doctor or a lawyer or we're going to reject you from the family. All of this is going to contribute to you being a perfectionistic over functioner because you couldn't be loved, you couldn't be accepted, or if you weren't, or there were risks if you weren't, that my family's going to fall apart, or I had to go get a job at 16 because there wasn't enough money. I want you to ask yourself, how old is this problem? And what else did I learn in my childhood that is with me today? That is hurting me. That was a coping mechanism I needed, but it's hurting me today. And another piece to this is, what new boundaries and priorities can you establish and communicate like, okay, kids, you're 16 and 14 and it's time that you help out here. So here's what I'm thinking. You could do your laundry every week and I really would love it if you would help out with Blip. You would clean your room, you would put your clothes in the laundry and then do the laundry. And you, maybe you could help me with a meal. Now, when you've done everything for your kid, they're going to push back. They're going to say, what? No, I don't have time for that. Of course they are. So part of, part of building a boundary is not only communicating it, but dealing with the consequences of the pushback. Because it's new for them. But I guarantee you they will be better off for it. And think about how your, your team, your staff, your assistant, you know, is anyone on your team asking you questions that they should know how to answer? Now, they've been in the job six months. Well, you have to train them. You have to say, ted, I know you got this. I know you can do this. And you know, you do ask an awful lot of questions. So I want to spend a week with you only looking over your doubts about, you know, what leads you to asking these 17 questions. And then I want to wean you off doing that. Be the manager they need, be the leader they need, and then assert the boundaries and deal with the repercussions okay. Thirdly, this is the third big step you can take today to deal with burnout and depression and overwhelm. Value yourself and your health and your well being more today. In fact, I'm giving you a number, 10% more. I want to tell you I learned about this 10% more thing with my amazing tennis pro Dane Osterley. And he said this, I don't know, six months ago I, or maybe even a year ago, I was just really drained. I coming to his clinic, I go to an amazing clinic with him once a week, tennis clinic. And you know, I had a lot of things on my mind. And the clinic is an hour and a half and by about an hour I could just feel the energy fall out onto the court. I was just not giving it, not there, not present. And he said to me, just give me 10% more. Kathy, that was so motivating. 10%. Why is it motivating? One, it's doable. It's not 80%, it's 10%. Number two. I felt like I knew what that could look like. Okay, come on Kathy, get in it. Come on. You can run to that. You can be more assertive, more aggressive on the court. It was doable for me and I started incorporating that, talking about a lot of things. I mean that 10% more is so helpful, but it's helpful in valuing your own well being and health. Just 10% more sleep, maybe 10% more. You love nature, you love to be in the sun. I happen to be. I happen to have seasonal affective disorder. So I have my sun lamp here and I take a walk whenever it's sunny, whenever I can soak up sun. And that changes me. I'm a changed person. I'm happier, I'm more vibrant, I'm more resilient. 10% more. So I turn on the. I dug out the sun lamp recently and, and I'm using it. What do you need? Is it a walk in nature? Is it a bath with aromatherapy? Is it time socializing with your friends? My goodness. You know, we all got so isolated during COVID I just sang with my a group of friends. Some carol's at dear friend's house this weekend and we're also uplifted from it. Just 10% more. What do you need? And if you tell me you don't have it, you don't have the time, I'm going to push back. I'm going to say if you don't have 10% more to give to yourself, you are stuck in a cycle of over functioning and, and being a martyr, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be harsh. That's martyrdom. And you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna end with this metaphor symbol. I'm about to take a plane to Milwaukee and I'm giving workshops to a women's resource summit all about the most powerful you. And you know, on the plane you always, always, always hear when the, when there's a cabin pressure change and the masks come down, the oxy oxygen, I need more coffee. Oxygen masks come down. Put it on yourself first. If you're traveling with children or with someone who needs your help, that's just, that's not a little platitude. That's life or death. If you are responsible for people or things in your life and you don't have enough oxygen, meaning life affirming, spiritual, emotional, physical, behavioral support and help and energy, you're not going to be able to do what you need to do. This is not a nice to have. This is a must have. So put the mask on. Whatever the oxygen mask looks like to you, put it on now. So in the end, this is what I want to leave you with. We're not doomed to a condition of burnout. We're not, it's not set in stone. Yes, a lot of us have it. More than we ever have, more than we ever thought we could have. But there are practical, manageable, specific steps you can take here. But that requires doing things differently. The finding brave path. If you keep doing what you're doing, what can possibly change? And you know, I read and it's a quote I adore from Einstein. We cannot solve a problem on the level of consciousness that created it. Wow. I mean, I think that describes why so many of us can't make changes. Because we're trying at the law, at the wrong level. We're trying to do some little tweak. I don't know if I just do this, it's going to be okay. I hope that you hear within these steps I'm sharing. It's probably more than just a tiny tweak. It's a consistent change. It's a consistent change in your mindset. It's a consistent change in how you feel about yourself and how you love yourself and how you accept yourself and validate yourself and honor yourself. And it's a change in feeling shame and humiliation. If you're feeling burnt out, so are millions of people. You're in very good company. But now is the time to do something. Something. I hope that's helpful. I hope that where you see this LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, wherever you Did I mention yes, Twitter. That's a whole other story. I still am on Twitter. I'm holding out to see some changes here and I'm writing about what I'm seeing, but I haven't given up yet. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I know many of you have left. That's a whole other story. But wherever you see this, I hope you'll post a comment. What you got out of it, what tip works, what you don't understand. I love your questions because it's in your questions that we make this even more vibrant and helpful for people. All right, my friends, Happy Thanksgiving to you. I really hope this was helpful and I will see you in a few weeks and have a wonderful brave holiday. Thank you. Bye. Hi folks, Kathy here. I wanted to share some exciting news. My book the Most Powerful youl, which is being translated into Arabic, Chinese and Polish, has now been published in paperback and it's being featured in a cool app called Uptime that offers five minute summaries, or hacks as they call them, with key insights and powerful action steps from the world's best books. I hope you'll check out the Most Powerful youl Paperback and you can find that on Amazon and wherever books are sold. And do check out the app Uptime on your phone or via the link bit lybit ly uptimemostpowerfulu links are also listed in the show notes below. Thanks again for tuning in today. Thanks so much for joining us today. And please don't forget to check out finding brave.org for more programs, resources and tips. And tune in next time for your weekly dose of Finding Brave.