You're Not Lazy, It's Probably Burnout - and How to Heal

It is okay to have high standards. It's okay to have a big to do list. But when we're talking about burnout, you have to retrain your brain to learn that you can sit down and rest without feeling all the time like you have to earn it. Hey there and welcome to let's Talk about it with Laurie Streeter. A space to talk honestly and get real about mental health, therapy and all things wellness. I'm Lori, licensed therapist speaker and your host, here to bring you insights, tools and information you can actually use. Whether you're navigating anxiety, healing your relationship with food, or trying to figure out which techniques will work for your life. I'm so glad you're here. Let's dive in and let's talk about it. Hello. Hello and welcome back to another episode of let's Talk About It. Today I want to tell you and talk to you about how you are not lazy, you're probably stressed and maybe you're burnt out. I think burnout is a pretty important topic to address if you feel like you just can't get started on an ever growing to do list that you have running on the little post it note in front of you. This one's for you. I hear these things a lot from my clients, from women I know, and I think they're super relatable and this is just such a significant thing to talk about. I want to be maybe not the first one to tell you because hopefully you have support, but. But I am here to tell you you're not lazy, you're not a bad mom, you're not useless, you are probably stressed, you are probably tired, you are maybe burnt out. So something I hear a lot from women is that they do feel lazy. They feel like they're a bad mom, a bad wife, a bad partner, a bad sister, coworker, friend, whatever. They feel useless. And that's a really, really shitty feeling. So let's talk about what's happening here. Let me paint a little picture. Maybe this hits a little too close to home, but stick with me. It's Saturday, you have stuff to do, laundry, dishes, emails, whatever. And you're frozen on the couch. You're just sitting there, maybe scrolling through Instagram, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. You know, there's a list of things to do, maybe there's even things you want to do, but you're not moving, you're stuck, you're frozen. You feel like, again, useless. What is happening here? That is a common picture of burnout that I hear. That is a very common scenario that I hear from a lot of my clients where there's a list of things to do. Maybe again, there's things they want to do and they can't. They're not moving, they're stuck, they're frozen. They don't know what's going on. And so that's what they come into my office talking about. And that's where we start a lot of times. So if that sounds like you or something you've experienced, hang in there. We're going to talk about what to do about it. Let's separate out stress and burnout first. I want you to think about it like this. Stress feels like too much, too much with too little time. I have too much to do. Stress is a natural response. It's a natural response that happens when changes or challenges are happening. It feels like too much. Burnout feels like not enough, not enough mental capacity or emotional space. Prolonged stress can cause burnout, but it also can be caused by other stuff too, which makes life difficult. Think about stress in terms of too much. It's a natural response. Burnout is more of that mental capacity. Emotional exhaustion. It is like next level bullshit that we feel sometimes. Think of burnout as a deep sense of exhaustion, lack of motivation. I hear people say that they feel detached from life. Daily life, relationships, their work. So the repercussions of burnout are rough. They are really, really difficult. And it can cause a lack of emotion, like feeling like you don't care or you can't care. And especially for women moms, it can apply to anyone, but it can lead to resentment because you feel like you can't care or you feel like you don't care. You do care, but you feel like you don't have the mental capacity to care. And then you resent people around you. You're upset with yourself. Like it's just internally. Burnout does not feel good. Let's talk about something specific for a minute that I often see connected with that burnout. Feeling the mental load. If you are a woman, if you are a mom, you may have heard this term before, but we're going to break it down because the mental load is real. And sometimes that mental load we carry is pretty freaking heavy. This is like the emotional labor. It's keeping the internal to do lists, managing everybody else's needs, the pressure that you feel like you should be doing it all. The mental load is the invisible load. And it can cause a lot of struggle. But it's hard to explain to people because you can't see it. Like you can't kind of explain very well sometimes what's going on internally. Because feelings aren't always easy to explain to people, or they're not always easy to articulate. Or if you're feeling this deep sense of exhaustion and this lack of mental capacity or emotional space, a lot of times we don't have the verbiage to be able to explain that we don't even know what's going on with ourselves. So that aspect of the mental load that we carry that can lead to burnout and have an impact is significant. Burnout, it doesn't come from the constant feeling like you're doing too much. It can, but it also encompasses the thoughts like you're not doing enough, or like you just can't stop because you feel responsible, or again, that mental load and stuff like that. So there's a whole internal dialogue and this whole internal thing that's going on. When someone is burnt out, it doesn't just look like they can't get out of bed and they're exhausted internally. There's a lot happening. When we talk about burnout. All right. Before we talk about how to manage burnout and what we're going to do about it, if you feel like you're there or you're getting close, I want to run through some common signs that I've seen in my clients over the years and in my own life, because I think knowing the signs of burnout or knowing if you're there now is important, and then we can figure out what we're going to do about it. So here are some things I see that you can kind of decide, that sounds like me, that doesn't sound like me. Things that once felt totally doable now feel totally impossible. This is a tough one because you feel, again, I've heard I feel useless. I feel lazy. Why can't I do this? You used to be able to do xyz, and now it feels like this mountain that you can't climb. Constant tiredness, but not just feeling physically tired again, this physical and mental exhaustion, even if you are getting good sleep. So a lot of women who struggle with burnout, they're sleeping, and maybe they're sleeping a lot. And there's this lack of ability to wake up rested, this constant physical and mental tiredness. And another sign I see with burnout is this feeling of numbness and maybe frustration that you don't feel like you care enough. You care, you want to care, but there's no capacity and emotional space to be able to care or not enough. Space to care. So there's frustration and then there's a lot of numbness because we start to feel that detached feeling. A couple thoughts I hear when people talk about burnout are, I just don't feel like myself. I. I just can't get it together. I feel useless, I feel lazy. Things like that. So now let's talk about what we're going to do about all this. We have some signs, we have common thoughts. I've explained burnout, how we are going to differentiate it a little bit from stress. Now what do we do? If you're there, if you're approaching burnout, if you're afraid, you're approaching it because you kind of see it coming on the horizon, let's talk about what we're going to do about all of it. One of the big things I've seen work and be beneficial are little resets. But because if burnout is something you struggle with, if you're dealing with burnout, or again, you see it coming on the horizon, you might already be thinking, I don't even have the bandwidth for this. I don't have energy for anything else. No other little resets. Lori, don't give me other things to do. But that's what we want to do for burnout, because there isn't mental capacity, there's not emotional space, there's not this physical energy. There's not a motivation. So you're not going to have a lot of bandwidth to do a lot or to implement a lot. So little resets throughout the day are kind of what we're going to rely on here. And let me prove to you why this works. Neuroscientists, when they do brain scans, they see changes in brain scans of things in the brain that are lighting up that should be. Or not lighting up that shouldn't be, right? These changes that they're looking for 15 minutes a day for 15 weeks. So 15 minutes a day of a technique for 15 weeks is generally where they start seeing significant changes in brain scans. This doesn't mean you should be defeated, because it's going to take a while. This doesn't mean you're not going to feel relief sooner than 15 weeks. I'm just saying the stats that neuroscientists see, proving that 15 minutes a day is. I don't want to say it's all we need, but that's not a lot of time. And the 15 minutes a day doesn't all need to happen at once. So we're going to talk about, like, what those 15 minutes a day can include how you're going to do these little resets. Here's what I would suggest. Find a few small things to ask for help with. Training yourself to get help is a good thing. Thing. Ask someone, can you do this for me? Can you answer that email? Can you take the garbage out? At home, at work, your kids, your friends, Learning to ask for help is super important because a lot of people, women especially, who deal with burnout, they are hyper independent and they're used to doing things on their own. So retraining your brain to ask for help is going to be incredibly important here. Another thing is if you don't have time for something like a walk, if you don't have time for physical movement, which is important, just go stand outside for a couple minutes. The sunshine, especially in the morning, it can help with circadian rhythm, Fresh air, nature in the backyard with your, you know, bare feet, whatever, standing outside for just a few minutes every day, it can be one of these really good little reset things that we're talking about. Another thing is learning how to allow yourself to rest without convincing yourself you have to earn it. A lot of times I see with high achieving women, burnout, stress, all of that is that I just have to do this one more thing and then I can sit down, I have to get this to do list done and then I can rest. You have to retrain your brain to say, sometimes done is better than perfect. Sometimes the bare minimum is enough because I need to rest, I need to sit down, need to get some sleep. It is okay to have high standards, it's okay to have a big to do list. But when we're talking about burnout, you have to retrain your brain to learn that you can sit down and rest without feeling all the time like you have to earn it. And then other little tactics like taking deep breaths throughout the day. Use something like the red light, the, the stop lights, like literal red lights or doorways. Remind yourself to take a breath, engage senses, oh, that tree is really green. Or hey, that building is going up there or I smell a campfire. Engage your senses, take a breath. Little moments throughout the day when you walk through doorways, when you're sitting at a red light. These are very good ways to trigger an association of a little mindful moment. We're talking about little periodic things throughout the day that help create tiny little resets that are going to start to have a compounding effect to pull you out of this burnout feeling. You have to look at this like you're not trying to do an entire reset or overhaul. A lot of times when there's something major going on in our lives or we're really struggling with something, I got to change all of these things to make it better. No, that's like the opposite of what you want to do here with burnout. You probably don't even have the energy to think that far. So give yourself a break. Take a breath, a break of retraining your brain to ask for help. These are going to be what make the changes over time. Small does not mean insignificant. When I talk about taking a breath at a red light, asking for help with something, learning how to take a rest and sit down before you think you've earned it, it doesn't seem like they're going to have a significant impact. But they are over time. It's like compound interest. One of my favorite things to tell my clients and is not the last time you are going to hear me say it on the podcast. I already said it a minute ago. Small does not mean insignificant. We often think that if we're not doing a major overhaul or we're totally changing our schedule or our day that it's not going to have an impact. It is starting to incorporate or reincorporate. If this is something you've lost sight of. Small things to give yourself breaks, give yourself permission to ask for help. These are the things that can help you rebuild the mental and emotional capacity that has probably dwindled or currently, depending on where you're at, may be non existent. Always remember, you don't have to do this alone. Reach out for support. Reach out for professional help. Keep in mind you do not have to crawl out of this burnout cave by yourself. There is someone there who will support you and who can give you more tools than I just did, but hopefully that's a good start. If this is something you're struggling with, until next time, take care. Thanks for hanging out with me today on let's Talk about it with Laurie Streeter. If this episode resonated with you, it would mean so much if you'd leave a five star review, share it with a friend, or come say hi on Instagram. Lori Streeter, your support will help this podcast grow and I so appreciate you being here today. I want to help people just like you feel like they're not alone and and gain the tools they need to grow. Until next time, take care.