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Episode: Ergopathology (BURNOUT) with Kandi Wiens

Author: Alie Ward
Duration: 01:07:24

Episode Shownotes

Exhaustion! Numbness! Anger! You’re stressed out. I get it. Let’s fix it. I cornered one of the world’s experts on Ergopathology, scholar and author Dr. Kandi Wiens, to ask about the causes of burnout, warning signs, what professions are more at risk, how to recover from burnout and prevent it

in the future, which was the focus of her book, “Burnout Immunity.” We also chat about neurodiversity, hockey mascots, childhood trauma, how do you tell your boss you're burned the F out, grit, and guilt. Also, you don't need to wait until you're on a tropical vacation to recharge. In fact, don't.Visit Kandi Wiens’ websiteBuy her book, Burnout Immunity, on Amazon or Bookshop.orgA donation went to Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ FoundationMore episode sources and linksSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesOther episodes you may enjoy: Eudemonology (HAPPINESS), Personality Psychology (PERSONALITIES), Attention-Deficit Neuropsychology (ADHD), Funology (YES, FUN), Genocidology (CRIMES OF ATROCITY), Suicidology (SUICIDE PREVENTION & AWARENESS), Traumatology (PTSD)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes!Follow @Ologies on Instagram and XFollow @AlieWard on Instagram and XEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jacob ChaffeeManaging Director: Susan HaleScheduling Producer: Noel DilworthTranscripts by Aveline Malek Website by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Summary

In this episode of "Ologies with Alie Ward," Dr. Kandi Wiens discusses her personal experience with burnout, particularly a hypertensive crisis that spurred her journey into understanding stress and burnout. Key topics include recognizing signs of burnout like headaches and relationship strains, the biochemical responses to stress, and the importance of emotional intelligence in resilience. Dr. Wiens also touches on how traits like grit can both help and hinder individuals in high-stress jobs. She emphasizes practical self-care strategies, the psychological impact of childhood experiences on burnout, and the necessity of supportive work environments to combat burnout effectively.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Ergopathology (BURNOUT) with Kandi Wiens) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_02
Oh, hey, it's your coworker who makes Bundt cakes, Allie Ward. And speaking of work, let's get right into it. How are we doing? How are our brains? How are you feeling? Are you feeling like a little bit like wilted lettuce?

00:00:10 Speaker_02
You feeling like a swollen infection gonna pop? We get it. I get it. So this episode has been a long time coming. And I cornered one of the world's leading experts on burnout.

00:00:20 Speaker_02
They got their MBA at the University of Oregon and a doctorate of education at the University of Pennsylvania, where they are currently a senior fellow. They're the director of the Penn Masters in Medical Education Program, too.

00:00:32 Speaker_02
They wrote the book on burnout. It's called Burnout Immunity. So, ergopathology, it's the science of ergon, which is work in Greek, and pathology, which is something bad. But what exactly is burnout?

00:00:43 Speaker_02
Okay, obviously we're going to cover it, but if you're experiencing exhaustion, cynicism, and professional inefficiency, you're going to want to keep listening.

00:00:54 Speaker_02
Before we get to it, though, thank you to all the patrons at patreon.com for submitting your questions for this episode.

00:00:59 Speaker_02
You can get sneak peeks at future episodes and you can submit questions for them by joining Patreon for as low as a dollar a month. And for zero dollars, thank you to everyone leaving reviews. which helped the show so much.

00:01:13 Speaker_02
Like, for example, this week, Euphonium Shorty left a review that said, That's happened to me at least a dozen times with this podcast. That's why I love it. Amazing, really, the frequency with which they come out.

00:01:28 Speaker_02
If I could change one thing, they write, it'd be Ally taking better care of herself. Euphonium Shorty, timely. I'm doing much better, and I'll tell you how I balance life with work that I legitimately love.

00:01:41 Speaker_02
Also, speaking of love, lots of love back to reviewer Amari. You know who you are. Okay, let's get into it. Please take a load off, lie down on a carpet. You can recline against a tree trunk.

00:01:51 Speaker_02
Take some time to listen and absorb the teachings about what is burnout, who burns out faster than others, who doesn't burn out.

00:01:59 Speaker_02
what professions are more at risk for fatigue and mental health repercussions, how do you tell your boss you're burned out, neurodiversity and burnout, grit, the myths of guilt, hockey mascots, childhood trauma and lingering anxiety, and how to tell your brain to tell your body that you got this.

00:02:16 Speaker_02
And when to acknowledge, no, I do not got this. Baby needs to rest. Also, how you don't need to wait until you're on a tropical vacation to recharge. In fact, don't. With scholar, author, and burnout expert, ergopathologist, Dr. Kandi Wiens.

00:02:52 Speaker_00
Burnout expert.

00:02:53 Speaker_02
How does it happen? How does one become a burnout expert? I'm just like diving right in. I'm like, tell me everything.

00:03:01 Speaker_00
Well, let me tell you, when I was probably nine, 10 years old, that's the last thing I ever thought I would be. In fact, I didn't even hear the word burnout until just probably I don't know, eight, well, 12 years ago.

00:03:10 Speaker_00
So becoming a burnout expert, for me anyway, started with me having a life-threatening wake-up call experience with burnout, the kind where I was having a hypertensive emergency and just decided to go on a quest to figure out what was going on with me, learn how to deal with my stress.

00:03:28 Speaker_00
And then as I started nerding out and geeking out on the whole thing, I Decided to go get my doctor and I just it was like one of those. I'm okay.

00:03:37 Speaker_00
I'm gonna go figure this out for real I'm gonna science the shit out of this thing and I'm gonna find out why Some people just seem to be somewhat immune to burnout.

00:03:45 Speaker_00
They are clearly experiencing a lot of stress But they work alongside people like me that are experiencing the same sort of stressors, but they're not burned out what's going on with them and

00:03:55 Speaker_02
Can you tell me a little bit about that hypertensive emergency, if it's not too traumatic, but what was the moment you realized that it was related to stress?

00:04:06 Speaker_00
Yeah. So at the time, this was back in 2011, I was a management consultant on the road a lot, had three young kids at home, living the whole type A personality sort of career.

00:04:17 Speaker_00
Loved what I did, threw myself into it, super engaged in work, loved my colleagues and my clients and all of that.

00:04:22 Speaker_00
And I felt at the time like I was experiencing a lot of stress, but to me it felt like the good kind of keeping myself motivated sort of stress alongside a lot of the other bad stress too.

00:04:32 Speaker_00
But my approach back then was just stuff that stress, like put it in a box, put that box in a closet, like lock that closet and don't touch that stress until you're ready for it.

00:04:42 Speaker_00
What happened was when I had this hypertensive emergency, which I had no idea I was even having one, I went into my doctor's office just for a routine annual physical.

00:04:52 Speaker_00
that kind where you go in and they check your blood pressure and they check all your vital signs. And you're in and out in about 20 minutes, they give you your A and say, see you back here next year. I thought it was one of those.

00:05:03 Speaker_00
But what happened was I was in the exam room, the nurse checked my vital signs. She checked my blood pressure four times before saying anything. And the only thing she said to me was, I'm going to go talk to the doctor.

00:05:14 Speaker_00
And instead of taking that seriously and thinking, holy cow, what is this about? What's going on with my blood pressure? Instead, I picked up my phone and started working again because that was the norm for me.

00:05:26 Speaker_00
And I know it's like I'm hearing stories from so many people that that's what they would have done too.

00:05:32 Speaker_00
Because the stress I was feeling at the time had just become to feel so normal to me that I wasn't recognizing the fact that when my doctor came in, she told me that my blood pressure was 200 over 110.

00:05:43 Speaker_02
Yeah, I didn't know what that meant at the time. Just a side note, I had to look this up. Normal blood pressure, 120 over 80. It's considered high around 130 over 80. Stage two is like 140.

00:05:56 Speaker_02
But if you get a blood pressure reading over 180, over 120, you need to call 911 or go to the ER immediately. Like you could die on the spot. And again, Dr. Weins was 200 over 110.

00:06:11 Speaker_02
So this is what's called a hypertensive crisis, and it's usually caused by people forgetting to take blood pressure meds, or kidney disease underlying, or heart disease, some pregnancy complications, taking meth, or really high anxiety.

00:06:27 Speaker_02
And according to the CDC, heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in the United States, killing over 300,000 women in 2021, or about one in every five female deaths. We do have a cardiology episode coming up, of course.

00:06:41 Speaker_02
But yeah, her blood pressure was well into the range of all hands on deck.

00:06:46 Speaker_00
Holy shit. And then, of course, she gave me a huge dose of Xanax, which I'd never had before, and brought my blood pressure down. And so like an hour later, she called my husband to have him come pick me up.

00:06:59 Speaker_00
And about an hour later, I was finally, you know, stable enough where they could send me home and not to the emergency room. I was basically like ordered to be on bed rest for several days.

00:07:08 Speaker_00
And my first thought when she told me that was, there's no way I can be on bed rest because I have this big leadership development program to run. And I almost panicked, like it almost sent me back into another stress spiral.

00:07:21 Speaker_00
But then the second thought was, well, thank God someone's finally telling me I can go home and rest, giving me permission to rest because I wasn't giving myself enough rest.

00:07:32 Speaker_00
And I hear this so often from people that I work with and people who hear me speak. But then my third thought was, you know, she's absolutely right. My doctor is telling me I'm not fine. I need to take this seriously. I need to stay home and not work.

00:07:46 Speaker_00
And so for a few days laying on the couch on Xanax and blood pressure medicine, I had a lot of time to think and started reading some books and started

00:07:55 Speaker_00
digging around on what are the best stress management techniques and doing just also a lot of self-reflection. And it started to dawn on me then that I needed help.

00:08:05 Speaker_00
I needed to make changes because my work environment was not gonna change anytime soon.

00:08:10 Speaker_00
So I needed to think about for myself, what were some immediate things I could do, but then also it really dawned on me too, like longer term, I really need to find a work environment and the right conditions where I can really thrive without burning out.

00:08:24 Speaker_00
So that's kind of how it started, my interest and my geeky curiosity on stress and burnout. And then it eventually turned into me wanting to get my doctorate so I could study it for real.

00:08:35 Speaker_02
When you realized that you had to make some changes, where do you start? Did the doctor say, like, okay, you need to do—or are they just like, your blood pressure's good, you got to figure out the rest?

00:08:48 Speaker_00
It was like, you know, gave me medicine and told me to go home and basically figure it out for myself. She didn't recommend anything at all. And this was, again, back in 2011 where Very few people, if any, were talking about burnout.

00:09:00 Speaker_00
I wasn't really hearing about it. And I worked in health care consulting. So it wasn't really until 2012, 2013 that I started reading studies about this stuff and reading some other stress management books and practitioner kinds of books.

00:09:13 Speaker_00
But then when I started digging into the research, I started seeing, OK, there is this thing called burnout. And then I was able to put my finger on what I was experiencing.

00:09:21 Speaker_02
What exactly, looking back now that you have your doctorate and now you've been working in this for so long, can you pick apart a little bit of what was happening during a burnout episode? I imagine that it can show up in your heart or your brain.

00:09:36 Speaker_02
I imagine that whatever crisis people might finally get to can show up in all kinds of ways, right?

00:09:43 Speaker_00
So there are really a number of ways that we can pay attention to the fact that stress is turning into something that's a little bit more dangerous, potentially getting to a point where we're going to break down or burn out.

00:09:54 Speaker_00
And I would say, first and foremost, pay attention to the physical signs.

00:09:58 Speaker_00
Most of us can notice things like headaches, not sleeping well, not being interested in exercise, not being interested in intimacy with our partner, you know, all kinds of physical manifestations that if we were to just really pay attention, they are there.

00:10:12 Speaker_00
Those signs are there.

00:10:13 Speaker_00
But then also like some of the psychological ways that burnout manifests, things like just, you know, lack of interest in things that we once loved to do, starting to feel more negative and cynical about work or about other people.

00:10:27 Speaker_00
And then we also might notice changes in our relationships. Some people tell me that they notice the first signs of burnout when they start to notice their relationships are kind of fraying.

00:10:37 Speaker_00
And starting to become more tense that they start lashing out maybe at people that they really love or they even enjoy working with. So there are a number of ways that you can pay attention to how stress is affecting you.

00:10:49 Speaker_00
And it's really noticing the fact that burnout is really this thing that can be quite insidious.

00:10:56 Speaker_00
meaning that it can really sneak up on you if you're just going through the motions of life and keeping with the grind that you've always been doing, which was my case.

00:11:06 Speaker_00
And a lot of people that I talked to who have been burned out, that's how they experience it because they're so focused on performing or achieving or helping other people or just juggling life and family and everything all at once that it's really easy to lose track of what's going on with yourself.

00:11:24 Speaker_02
And what's happening from a scientific perspective? I know the amygdala has so many things to say when it comes to stress.

00:11:35 Speaker_02
I know we've got cortisol, we've got adrenaline, we've got dopamine, we've got serotonin, we've got all kinds of things going on. What is happening under stress where it finally just, like the roof caves in?

00:11:49 Speaker_00
Well, so for some people, it caves in on a physical level. And burnout, for the most part, is a psychological experience with stress. Our body goes through all kinds of chemical reactions.

00:12:00 Speaker_00
When our amygdala goes off, it's that part of our brain that triggers the fight, flight, or freeze response. And very few of us, though, are actually threatened by bears coming out of nowhere or being chased by a tiger.

00:12:14 Speaker_00
Or, you know, in my case, I actually am going through something that it's not physically threatening, but it's psychologically threatening to me. So that to me is much more stressful than something like coming on the ologies podcast.

00:12:29 Speaker_00
But also excited, like there's stress involved in both of those scenarios, but one triggers a threat response to stress. The other one coming on your podcast triggers what's known as the challenge response to stress.

00:12:42 Speaker_00
So our body's going to react differently in each of those situations. And what's really important and what I write about in my book is learning how to pay attention to those signs so that you can regulate your nervous system.

00:12:55 Speaker_00
Whether you're truly being threatened or if the stressor is something that you are excited about and looking forward to, you can learn how to regulate your nervous system in a healthy, productive way so you can show up as your best.

00:13:07 Speaker_02
So Dr. Weins says that the challenge response to stress kicks in when we want to perform or achieve something. And why it doesn't freak you out is because you've told yourself that it's not life-threatening.

00:13:19 Speaker_02
And so your body uses those fight or flight hormones like if you were exercising or trying to beat your brother-in-law in a potato sack race. So the challenge response gives you energy and focus and motivation and just a little bit of swagger.

00:13:33 Speaker_02
So how do you respond that way instead of throwing up in a garbage can before your annual performance review?

00:13:40 Speaker_02
Dr. Wiens writes that you have to like gently brainwash yourself or you have to unbrainwash yourself by telling yourself inside, hey, you can do it. You can go crush this. So don't try to suppress the stress because that makes it worse.

00:13:56 Speaker_02
And she says to tell yourself, I'm stressed right now, but that's okay. I've experienced stress before. I always get through it." Or say, hey, why not go for broke?

00:14:05 Speaker_02
I'm stressed right now, but this ain't my first rodeo and I'm going to kick some ass, she writes in her book.

00:14:10 Speaker_02
She also says other quick mindset shifts include remembering all your strengths, remembering all the prep you did for the challenge, all the times you overcame similar challenges, imagining your loved ones rooting for you, or having a mantra like,

00:14:27 Speaker_02
I've got this, I can handle this." Or again, her personal favorite is, this ain't my first rodeo. And she confesses in her book that she'll actually wear a t-shirt that says, this ain't my first rodeo under her suits when she gives like a big keynote.

00:14:42 Speaker_02
I tell myself to show up like you belong and have fun, which I guess I didn't realize that I was shifting my terror into a challenge response to stress. And I have to do it every week before I record.

00:14:55 Speaker_00
Hi, doing it right now.

00:14:57 Speaker_00
Neuroscience researchers who look at this stuff and look at really all the chemical reactions to stress and not just burnout, but everyday stress for long periods of time, sometimes that may lead to burnout, other times it may not.

00:15:09 Speaker_00
It may lead to other psychological conditions.

00:15:12 Speaker_00
But yeah, when we get stressed and that turns on our nervous system and that nervous system switch is turned on for a long period of time or it gets stuck in the on position, we start to burn through our adrenaline first.

00:15:23 Speaker_00
And then our cortisol kicks in and that's meant to protect us. But over time, burning through all that cortisol really, really quickly can lead to other physical symptoms. It will immediately cause your blood vessels to constrict.

00:15:36 Speaker_00
So you're then experiencing lack of oxygen and healthy blood flow to your brain, which then puts you in what we call fast thinking mode. So it's like a chain reaction where we first have

00:15:49 Speaker_00
an unconscious physical reaction through the release of these kinds of hormones, whether it's adrenaline or cortisol, or in some cases with good stress, it's dopamine and oxytocin and other things that help us manage stress, but it's those physical things that happen without us even knowing it before we start to feel the psychological effects of stress and then eventually burnout.

00:16:12 Speaker_02
So the chemical background here is that adrenaline helps you survive in physical stress. It gives you this fuel boost in the form of glucose, which helps you get out of dodge or fight or hide in a bush or whatever it takes to evade an attack.

00:16:27 Speaker_02
Now the hormone cortisol, this is outlined in the Frontiers in Psychology paper, Burnout and Hypocortisolism. A matter of severity, cortisol responses to acute psychosocial stress. Cortisol gives us the energy mobilization to fight off that attack.

00:16:43 Speaker_02
As anyone who's ever had nervous diarrhea knows, it's not always helpful.

00:16:47 Speaker_02
And it continues, this paper, that long-term exposure to stressful circumstances without enough recovery is hypothesized to be the cause of fatigue and exhaustion symptoms in people experiencing burnout.

00:17:01 Speaker_02
So things might be happening physically to you under stress, but like your own BO, sometimes you can't even detect it. You're just accustomed to it.

00:17:11 Speaker_02
And you might not even notice your burnout and your anxiety symptoms until your body's very mad at you or your sanity starts to fray. And I'm speaking from experience. Do you think some people are more predisposed to burnouts?

00:17:23 Speaker_02
Like if you have an anxiety disorder pre-existing or you have depression or if you're a neurodivergent, do those people tend to push beyond their limits or have a lower threshold for this kind of stuff?

00:17:37 Speaker_00
Yeah, so there's interesting research that shows the relationship between You can look at it by temperament. So each of us is born with a certain type of temperament that doesn't necessarily change as we age and get older.

00:17:50 Speaker_00
And then we also all have personality traits that may change through life experiences. Anxiety is an interesting one. So people who have just like underlying anxiety disorders or tend to be one of the personality traits is neuroticism.

00:18:05 Speaker_00
So people who are high on the neuroticism scale. tend to be more prone to burnout in certain contexts because they are more easily triggered. But it's also not just with people who tend to run anxious.

00:18:18 Speaker_00
I would say what's important to look at for everybody is not necessarily whether you have an anxiety disorder or depression or anything like that, but really think about the interaction between what you want and need out of a work and life environment and what you're actually getting.

00:18:34 Speaker_00
What is the environment that you're actually in? Because it's really the interaction between you and that environment that makes you more vulnerable to burnout in certain contexts or in certain environments.

00:18:46 Speaker_02
Yeah. I'm laughing about the neuroticism because we did a personality psychology episode. I took a test and it was like, your neuroticism is so high, we can barely measure it. It was just like, ah, shit. How'd they know?

00:19:01 Speaker_02
So I know definitely some of us are predisposed And we'll link to that personality psychology episode. It is a banger. We'll put that in the show notes.

00:19:09 Speaker_02
But the cheat sheet is that there is a scholarly five-factor model of these five core personality traits, which are agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness.

00:19:22 Speaker_02
And there was a 2023 study titled, The Big Five Model Personality Traits and Job Burnout, a systematic literature review. And it showed that higher levels of neuroticism

00:19:33 Speaker_02
and lower levels of agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion, and openness are associated with higher levels of burnout. No surprise.

00:19:42 Speaker_02
So the neuroticism and hiding from the world and being stubborn that I think protects me from failure, nope, it does not. Why are we like this? Do you think that there's anything in our pasts that makes us more prone to pushing through?

00:20:00 Speaker_02
I understand things like, you know, childhood trauma or codependency issues, things like that might make us take on more than we necessarily should be handling.

00:20:15 Speaker_02
Does childhood experience or does codependency or does like, I can give more than the average person because I should, does that figure into being predisposed for burnout? It absolutely does.

00:20:29 Speaker_00
Yeah, absolutely. So if you think about what really contributes to my vulnerability to burnout and yours, Allie, your vulnerability might be different. It's two things. What are we born with?

00:20:40 Speaker_00
We're born with a certain kind of temperament and personality, but then also what's the environment? What are the conditions that we're exposed to in our early childhood all the way up until where we are today?

00:20:51 Speaker_00
And so, you know, aside from personality and temperament, which are hard for us to change in general, when we are able to reflect on the early experiences we had in childhood, and not just the experience itself, but who helped us or who did not help us through stressful experiences.

00:21:07 Speaker_02
And chronic trauma, like surviving long-term intimate partner abuse, or war, or sex trafficking, or childhood trauma, that can result in what's called CPTSD, or complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

00:21:21 Speaker_02
And as for CPTSD being distinct from PTSD, some experts fight about that, which is not chill.

00:21:29 Speaker_00
And it's interesting because there's really good research that shows a correlation between people who have had a number of what we call ACEs, Adverse Childhood Events or Experiences, and the studies are mixed.

00:21:41 Speaker_00
It's really showing that people who have a number of ACEs, like in my case, the whole first chapter of the book describes my experience from early childhood and how I went through a lot of adversity.

00:21:53 Speaker_02
And her book details more of that, but she writes, I grew up on an Indian reservation in eastern Montana. Picture big blue skies, golden wheat fields, and the rich beauty of Native American culture.

00:22:05 Speaker_02
Alongside abject poverty, little opportunity for education, and on my mom's side of the family, a long history of mental illness and alcoholism.

00:22:14 Speaker_02
She writes, my parents divorced after the tragic death of my two-year-old middle sister, leaving my mom to care for a newborn and me. Needless to say, she shares, we struggled a lot.

00:22:25 Speaker_02
My mom was traumatized and grieving in ways I couldn't begin to understand, and we lived in government-subsidized housing and relied on food stamps and Indian health care for basics. I was constantly bullied at school for being too skinny.

00:22:38 Speaker_02
Not my fault, I would think to myself. I've barely eaten in the last five days. So began my struggle with adversity-induced stress, she writes.

00:22:47 Speaker_02
So childhood adversity is even more crushing with systemic oppression and lack of financial resources and support.

00:22:56 Speaker_00
And at the same time, I had a really loving, supportive family environment, even though it was very unstable. And I felt at times very, very insecure.

00:23:04 Speaker_00
And that led me to all kinds of bad patterns and habits around overachieving and immersing myself to an unhealthy level. And that was offset by the fact that I had parents who loved me and I had other caregivers and people in my life who

00:23:19 Speaker_00
were supportive and tried their best to give me a secure environment as possible.

00:23:23 Speaker_00
So that all factors into both my patterns and how I've responded to stress up until today, as well as how I perceive stressors now and into the future and how that might make me more vulnerable to burnout.

00:23:36 Speaker_00
One that's really interesting that I'd want to hit on a little bit because I think a lot of people can relate to this one is

00:23:41 Speaker_00
We hear a lot about grit, and that grit is a good thing, the ability to persevere and work through things, you know, big, hard challenges.

00:23:49 Speaker_00
And we find that a lot of people who go through really advanced education, like physicians, go through, you know, med school and then residency fellowship, that they learn how to persevere, like they have grit like nobody's business sort of thing.

00:24:04 Speaker_00
So I started digging into that. And sure enough, there are studies that show that that grit protects people from burnout.

00:24:11 Speaker_02
So according to a 2018 paper, the relationship between grit, burnout, and well-being in emergency medicine residents, grit is this personality trait marked by perseverance and passion for long-term goals, especially over a sustained period of time.

00:24:27 Speaker_02
And this study found that residents with higher grit appear to be less likely to experience burnout. So how do you know if you're gritty?

00:24:35 Speaker_02
If you're the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team mascot, Gritty, a huge furry orange thing whose lore involves being disturbed from his secret hideout while the Wells Fargo Stadium was being built, you definitely have grit.

00:24:47 Speaker_02
Because Gritty gets his name from the grit of the Flyers team. Because when you're from Philly, you go through things like corrupt public officials and winter.

00:24:56 Speaker_02
Now, Gritty looks kind of like a Jim Henson character who owns more than one bong, and he was designed to represent someone that you'd high-five but not hug, and they really got that dialed in. So Gritty has grit.

00:25:10 Speaker_02
Maybe you're not gritty, but you have grit. There's a test for that. It's called the grit scale. And grit, I just learned this, it's not just about like someone who'd rub dirt in a wound. It actually stands for something. It stands for growth, resilience,

00:25:23 Speaker_02
instinct and tenacity. And this scholar, author, and psychologist, Dr. Angela Duckworth, pioneered a test for it, which includes statements like, setbacks don't discourage me, I finish whatever I begin.

00:25:35 Speaker_02
And this quiz tragically, honestly reads like a reverse assessment for ADHD, which we cover in depth on our three-part ADHD episode linked in the show notes with Dr. Russell Barkley. And we'll also cover neurodivergence later in this episode.

00:25:50 Speaker_02
So the grit scale, though, has its critics. Scores are kind of said to be in line with higher GPAs for students and spelling bee championships and military academy success. But as Dr. Weins explains, it's not an immunity amulet to future despair.

00:26:07 Speaker_00
But in my case, I thought, you know what, I'm a really gritty person. I'm kind of off the scales when it comes to grit. But why did I get burned out?

00:26:14 Speaker_00
Well, my theory and what I found through my research is that grit without self-awareness can get you in trouble. It may serve us really well to get through things like medical school or whatever these hard things are that you're working for.

00:26:30 Speaker_00
But then at some point, that pattern and those ways of working become so ingrained in us that we lose track of, lose sight of the fact that it's actually pretty unhealthy for us to keep going at that pace.

00:26:42 Speaker_02
When you do research on this, how do you approach that? Do you have to go and find subjects? Where do you even start? I imagine people who are going through a burnout are like, I don't have time to talk to you.

00:26:54 Speaker_00
Oh, totally. I was worried about that. Actually, when I started my first study, which was my dissertation, I thought, okay, Here's what I want to do. I want to find people who are in probably one of the most stressful jobs I've ever been exposed to.

00:27:05 Speaker_00
A lot of my clients were really busy physicians and clinicians. And then there are a number of physicians who have both clinical responsibility and then they also have leadership responsibility. So I thought, OK,

00:27:18 Speaker_00
Let me study chief medical officers because I know I've worked with a number of them and they just, the pressure and the demands on them is just like so extreme.

00:27:26 Speaker_00
So I thought, but wait, they're probably not going to talk to me or it will be extremely hard to get on their calendar. Well, I was actually surprised because many of them wanted to sign up.

00:27:35 Speaker_00
When they heard that I was studying stress and burnout, they were like, oh, let's talk about that.

00:27:41 Speaker_01
I have some thoughts.

00:27:42 Speaker_00
I want to tell you my experience. So I started studying that group of people and the findings were really the basis of what turned into more research. The next big study I did was with over 200 police chiefs and other senior law enforcement officers.

00:27:58 Speaker_00
So again, I went after what profession do I think has very regular, very high stress for very long periods of time. And sure enough, when I studied police chiefs along with the chief medical officers,

00:28:13 Speaker_00
What I would have them do is first tell me like on a scale of one to 10, how would you characterize your stress with 10 being worst possible, zero, no stress.

00:28:22 Speaker_00
And the ones who showed up as a seven or above, which think about that for a second, they were telling me that their stress for a long period of time is severe, very severe or worst possible. And then I have them, I actually measure them.

00:28:37 Speaker_00
I have a psychometric tool that a lot of researchers use.

00:28:40 Speaker_02
So this quiz is the burnout risk assessment and it's included in her book and it asks participants to rate their degree of agreement or disagreement with statements like, I feel comfortable asking others for help when I'm stressed out.

00:28:54 Speaker_02
I'm experiencing a lot of conflict with other people at work. I'm working longer and harder than I want to. My stress level does not feel sustainable. And I feel emotionally exhausted at the end of the workday.

00:29:08 Speaker_02
So this burnout risk assessment, it's kind of like a quiz in a magazine about like, should I have a threesome?

00:29:14 Speaker_02
But instead, it's used to determine feelings like, does my life stress make me wish I was a box turtle so I can hibernate five months out of the year? That's what it boils down to. too.

00:29:25 Speaker_00
So I found that there's this unique population of people who have this high level seven or above stress for a long period of time, but they're not burned out.

00:29:33 Speaker_00
So then I conduct very in-depth interviews with them, sometimes speak to them multiple times or follow them over a couple of months period to really dig in and understand what are they doing to protect themselves.

00:29:46 Speaker_00
So that's really the basis of the research. But aside from these really high stress jobs, I also interview people who are

00:29:52 Speaker_00
frontline workers and bartenders and baristas and babysitters, people who just experience everyday stress that, you know, a lot of people can relate to.

00:30:01 Speaker_02
And we're going to talk about money issues in a bit, especially in the medical field. I've heard from so many friends who are going through med school. It's just

00:30:09 Speaker_02
I mean, you're learning everything for the first time, you're studying, you're on the floor, you're expected to work 20 hour shifts.

00:30:20 Speaker_02
How does the medical field come into this when a lot of the culture and the work around it is already pretty fucked up?

00:30:31 Speaker_00
It is really. And this is one of the things that some of my colleagues and I have really been looking at is, I did a study with a number of physicians who wanted to look at, you know, why are our residents and fellows getting so burned out?

00:30:43 Speaker_00
Why is the rate so high? And why are they not coming forward to ask for help? First of all, in the medical professions, there's a lot of stigma around coming forward about mental health issues.

00:30:54 Speaker_00
And there's a lot of concern that if I raise my hand and ask for help, That's shameful. I should not be asking for help. I should be an expert.

00:31:03 Speaker_00
I've been getting straight A's throughout college and medical school, and now I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. And then there's a lot of pressure on me.

00:31:11 Speaker_00
And so if I'm the one out of these other 12 residents who raises my hand and asks for help, what is that going to say about me?

00:31:19 Speaker_00
And so there's that kind of culture and I'm seeing it change in some institutions, which is a good sign, but we need more research on this. We need more just awareness of what's going on.

00:31:30 Speaker_00
What are the cultural conditions that are really both causing the burnout, but also preventing people from coming forward and asking for help.

00:31:37 Speaker_02
There's a lot of folks too who just are feeling so burned out from four and a half years of pandemic, from lockdown, from increased screen time, from decreased social interactions.

00:31:54 Speaker_02
For more on some current stressors too, you can see our episode on genocidology with genocide expert Dr. Dirk Moses, or just look at the news in any capacity.

00:32:04 Speaker_02
So we've been trained to be on high alert, looking for information at all hours of the day and night. Is there something about the way that we are so tethered to devices that doesn't allow us to rest the part of our brains or our souls that need it?

00:32:23 Speaker_00
Totally. Yeah, totally. It's become so common. If you walk through any airport, I mean, just about anywhere you go, bus or train stations or whatever, you see people on their phones.

00:32:34 Speaker_00
How often do you actually go through a public place where more people are engaging and talking to each other? It's much more common that people are looking at their devices. So there's that.

00:32:43 Speaker_00
There's not enough time for people to really take their brains offline because when our brains are always online, even if we're consuming good, productive content, It's not allowing your brain or your psyche enough time to rest.

00:32:56 Speaker_00
And burnout, for the most part, is a psychological syndrome. And so when we're not giving our psyche a break, it's more likely that we're going to be susceptible to burnout.

00:33:06 Speaker_02
And you can see our recent episode about fun with Katherine Price, who also wrote the book, How to Break Up with Your Phone, The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life. What about working hours? Because our open signs are just kind of always on.

00:33:19 Speaker_02
We're like, I got my phone on me. We're always at a computer because it's in our pocket. Has it been helpful for some people to be like, I start work at 9 and I'm off at 5.30 and no one can tell me otherwise?

00:33:31 Speaker_02
Although, even if you did that, what if you've got kids and they're like, food and bathing. This is obviously from someone whose dog is asleep very gently in the corner because he could not handle it.

00:33:46 Speaker_02
But where do you start to put limits on it so that your psyche can sort of repair itself?

00:33:53 Speaker_00
That's the question of the day that each of us needs to really do some soul searching on. Here's how I look at it and how I think about it.

00:34:02 Speaker_00
This has been one of the most helpful things for me because during this research, which I consider to be action research, meaning that when I was researching people, I was applying this stuff on myself.

00:34:12 Speaker_00
So one of the things I learned and I still use to this day is to do just a daily, or for me, sometimes it's even a couple of times a day, just a quick check-in. Like, where am I on my stress curve?

00:34:25 Speaker_00
So if you think about, like, we all need a little bit of stress or even some, a good amount of stress to feel motivated and engaged and all of that. It gets us motivated and

00:34:35 Speaker_00
makes us want to perform and do good things for the world and other people and all that.

00:34:38 Speaker_00
But then at some point we get way too much stress, like way more things to do with all the kids and all the home things and all that, that we get out of what we call the sweet spot of stress.

00:34:48 Speaker_00
So the exercise where I really find a lot of value is just checking in to see, have I tipped over past my sweet spot of stress? Not just today, but like if I were to think about this past week and how it's gone for me,

00:35:02 Speaker_00
What am I doing and what is it really doing to me?

00:35:05 Speaker_00
So what am I doing to take care of myself and how is that really helping me create conditions to keep me in a zone in a sweet spot of stress where I'm really challenged and engaged, but I'm not, you know, flipping out and breaking down and burning out.

00:35:21 Speaker_00
Or what am I doing that's not good for me? Maybe, huh, okay, turns out that I'm saying yes to everything. I'm not setting boundaries or I set boundaries, but I don't uphold them.

00:35:32 Speaker_00
How can I focus on the things I can control to keep myself in that zone of sweet spot of stress?

00:35:38 Speaker_02
So what if you're in a sour spot, not sweet at all?

00:35:42 Speaker_02
So Dr. Wiens writes in her book that optimism can prolong longevity if you do want to live longer, but also optimism going into stress can help you make choices that kind of better equip you to handle the stress.

00:35:56 Speaker_02
And some of those choices are like engaging in more movement or less alcohol or tobacco consumption. And if Dr. Wiens knows she's going to have a tough week, like the day we recorded this, she had a few important meetings.

00:36:09 Speaker_02
And then right after we stopped recording this, she was headed straight to a big book signing event. Or if she feels overloaded, she dials down some things and adds others.

00:36:20 Speaker_00
Not drinking, eating really well, exercising, getting enough sleep.

00:36:23 Speaker_00
I know those things for sure will set me up for a day or two of just good clarity and a good ability to focus and a good ability to tolerate stress that I knew was going to come along.

00:36:35 Speaker_00
And sure enough, today is one of those days where I've got both the bad kind of stress, the threat response kind of stress, as well as some good challenge response kind of stress coming on.

00:36:45 Speaker_00
So I feel good about what I did the last several days just to help set myself up to be able to handle today really well. And then I also know that at the end of today, because it's going to be a long day, and there's a lot going on,

00:36:58 Speaker_00
I know that I have a really fun dinner to look forward to, right? It will be a long day, but I get to go do a book signing that I'm looking forward to, and I get to have dinner with three people that I absolutely love and adore.

00:37:09 Speaker_00
So those are just like, for example, for me, it's all about not just how do you manage stress in the moment or how do you take care of yourself afterwards, but it's also what do you do to set yourself up when you know you're going to go into a period of high stress?

00:37:22 Speaker_02
That makes total sense. Can I ask you some questions from listeners? Sure. Okay, we have a lot because I think a lot of people are feeling very burned out.

00:37:33 Speaker_02
But before we get to your questions about capitalism and neurodivergence and prevention of burnout, we're going to donate to a charity of Dr. Bean's choice and she selected the Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation.

00:37:44 Speaker_02
whose mission is to reduce burnout of healthcare professionals and to safeguard their wellbeing and their job satisfaction.

00:37:51 Speaker_02
And they also worked to pass in 2022, the Dr. Lorna Breen Healthcare Provider Protection Act, which supported healthcare workers' mental health and wellbeing.

00:38:00 Speaker_02
And we're actually gonna hear a little bit more about that backstory in a few minutes, but they're linked in the show notes at drlornabreen.org. And that donation was made possible by sponsors of the show, who you may hear about now.

00:38:11 Speaker_02
Okay, on to your questions. This one's right on the money.

00:38:15 Speaker_02
A lot of people, Jess, Sydney Koenig, Anna Lauren, Jacob Shepard, Olivia Rempel, Earl of Gramlkin, Jennifer Froh, Brianna L., Vanessa Adams, Danica Hello, all wanted to know, in Jesse's words, how do you deal with it when you got to have a job to, you know, live in this capitalist world?

00:38:31 Speaker_02
Anna asked about, is burnout primarily a phenomenon of living, working in such an intensely capitalist system? Does burnout exist outside of capitalism?

00:38:41 Speaker_00
Well, I need the names of everybody who submitted that question because I want to send them all a handwritten thank you note. asking that question because those are the kind of questions that we need to be asking.

00:38:52 Speaker_00
And I would say one is to focus on what I call meaningful connections.

00:38:57 Speaker_00
And so for people who actually in these kinds of experiences or like their jobs, they might even love their jobs, but there's just too much of it and there's not enough breaks and they feel the capitalism sort of pressure is to be very clear about the things and the people in your life that bring meaning to you.

00:39:14 Speaker_00
And that means getting super clear on what your values are. And values might be really small things like I value a good night's sleep. I need to get at least six, seven hours of sleep a night or more.

00:39:25 Speaker_00
Or a big value like I value quality time with my partner. or with my pets, even just sitting down with my dog for half an hour every day and just like connecting with my dog. Or your human children.

00:39:37 Speaker_02
Dr. Weins has three of them. Or maybe it's volunteering at a raccoon rehab center or whittling or birdwatching or coding or reading about sci-fi apocalypses. Whatever makes you go, ah, this is so good.

00:39:51 Speaker_00
I like this. And maybe the big thing for all of us to be thinking about is that For many of us the type of companies that we work and i'm not gonna change the fact that they are capitalist oriented.

00:40:03 Speaker_00
Organizations they just gonna happen overnight so how do we continue to operate survive under in these conditions also creating workplaces where there are.

00:40:14 Speaker_00
microcultures that support people to raise their hands when they need help, to not make them feel bad when they need to take a mental health day off.

00:40:24 Speaker_02
So if you run a company or if you manage people, you can be part of the solution rather than the problem.

00:40:31 Speaker_02
Now, if you're undergoing this also, if you're on the receiving side and you feel like you have no power, consider asking other employees if they're having similar experiences. and maybe approach management as a unified force.

00:40:45 Speaker_02
And you can remind your bosses that more burnout leads to higher turnover and staff and also reduced efficiency at your job. Now, what if you were raised Catholic like me? So many patrons asked about guilt.

00:40:59 Speaker_02
such as Jennifer Froh, who said, why do I feel so much guilt when not working? Full-time mom and author Sam Wise asked about this, Rebecca Fitchett, Sarah Manns, and Mims, who asked, how do you stop yourself from feeling guilty about needing a break?

00:41:14 Speaker_02
Asking for me. Mim's not alone. A bunch of people wanted to know, in Wynn Constanini's words, how can people deal with the shame and guilt that comes with literally not being able to be productive?

00:41:27 Speaker_02
Mouse Paxton wants to know, any tips on feeling guilty when you're too burnt out to do things with people?

00:41:32 Speaker_00
Yeah, that was my experience for a long period of time and I felt like I should not be raising my hand because everybody else around me is going through the grind and performing in there. They don't seem burned out.

00:41:42 Speaker_00
So I was carrying that shame and then the shame creates more stress. So it's a total vicious cycle, which you've got to get yourself off that hamster wheel as quick as you can. The sooner you can

00:41:53 Speaker_00
Find someone to connect with you know whether it's someone that's currently in our circle of relationships or professional that we can reach out to is sometimes really just starts with one conversation with the right person to get.

00:42:06 Speaker_00
a head start on the support and the help that you need.

00:42:09 Speaker_02
And in her book, Dr. Weems explains that excess pressure on yourself, like should statements, impose a set of expectations that aren't likely to be met because they aren't grounded in reality. Like it's not possible to make zero mistakes.

00:42:25 Speaker_02
And believing that you should be flawless just sets you up for a lot of self-blame and shame and guilt. And she calls this a form of thinking trap or a cognitive distortion that you pull on yourself.

00:42:37 Speaker_02
And it's about as effective, from my experience, as punching yourself in the kidneys. So what do you do if misplaced guilt is ruining your life?

00:42:47 Speaker_02
Dr. Weans tells the story of a physician's assistant she met who went through therapy and learned that her work guilt was itself a stress response, and it stemmed from a traumatic event from childhood.

00:42:58 Speaker_02
which helped her tap into self-compassion instead. So she was able to brush it off and not take the guilt seriously, just giving herself a damn break.

00:43:08 Speaker_02
Because again, giving yourself a break and some self-compassion and lowering the stakes could actually save your own life.

00:43:14 Speaker_02
And on that note, Daniel Opdahl, Neen, Kelly Dooling, Essie Rue, and Sugarpuff Daddykins asked in Sugarpuff Daddykins' words, can we please talk about mental illness and burnout? Yes, let's.

00:43:28 Speaker_02
A bunch of people did kind of ask about that mental health aspect, too, and about reaching out. And like Cleb and Farron wanted to know if there are links between burnout and suicide. We just did a suicidology episode.

00:43:40 Speaker_02
So could burnout ever lead to suicidal ideation for people?

00:43:46 Speaker_00
Sure, it does. Yeah, there is a correlation there. Studies are showing that. But we've also heard stories of individuals who are suicidal with previous history of expressing stress and burnout issues.

00:44:00 Speaker_00
And we do see higher rates within the medical profession, for example, that's where some of these studies have been done. And I hear actual stories like this is really sad, but I hear

00:44:11 Speaker_00
I would say at least one story a year from someone that's close to me, like someone that I work with that I know well, telling me that someone who's a resident or a fellow that they know of or mentored or something like that, you know, died by suicide.

00:44:26 Speaker_00
Fortunately, we've got some organizations out there that are working as hard as they possibly can. And they have some really dedicated, talented people like the Lorna Breen Foundation. It's one that I'm starting to get involved in.

00:44:37 Speaker_02
And Dr. Lorna Breen, who we talked about and whose foundation we donated to, was an emergency medicine physician who died by suicide in late April of 2020 after being on the front lines of COVID.

00:44:50 Speaker_02
And despite having no known mental health difficulties prior, experienced a burnout and a fear of poor performance that was so intense that it led to her taking her own life. And the foundation started in her honor states that in the U.S.

00:45:06 Speaker_02
400 physicians die each year by suicide and female physicians are more at risk, especially in emergency medicine.

00:45:13 Speaker_02
And for more on these statistics, you can see the 2010 study, Burnout, Hopelessness, and Suicide Risk in Medical Doctors, which concluded that even 15 years ago, people in charge of workers' health should pay particular attention to the burnout in doctors.

00:45:29 Speaker_02
and intervene with changes in the work environment. Another 2012 study titled High-Risk Occupations for Suicide found that there were increases in rates of suicide in the occupations of coal mining and construction laborers too.

00:45:43 Speaker_02
And I've gotten questions in the past about veterinary medicine and mental health and there was a 2015 paper suicide in veterinary medicine. Let's talk about it.

00:45:52 Speaker_02
And it cites that the rate of suicide in the veterinary profession has been pegged at more than twice that of the medical profession and four times the rate of the general population.

00:46:02 Speaker_02
And the American Veterinary Medical Association said that burnout among animal health care workers

00:46:07 Speaker_02
is even higher lately due to higher expectations for pet owners, overwhelming workloads, the impact of the global pandemic, educational debts, and, this was surprising, instances of cyberbullying are taking a toll, which then leads to compassion fatigue, which is this physical and emotional exhaustion that can result from caring too much about your job and high stakes matters.

00:46:31 Speaker_02
And from vets to vets, military personnel are also experiencing post-traumatic stressors and burnout. And we go more into depth on that in the Traumatology episode two, which we'll link in the show notes. So jobs are hard in a lot of sectors.

00:46:45 Speaker_02
The world is tough. And of course, people are trying to help the helpers, like the Dr. Laura Brink-Harris Foundation. Dr. Wien continues.

00:46:53 Speaker_00
And that foundation is doing some incredible research and some incredible just like philanthropy work to change the way hospitals evaluate their physicians and the types of conditions that physicians work under.

00:47:05 Speaker_02
And you mentioned working with police chiefs and, you know, medical residents and chief medical officers.

00:47:13 Speaker_02
What do we see about burnout on the other side of the finance scale, where, like Tyler Bates asked, how does one balance not working extra because of burnout, but when you low-key need the money?

00:47:25 Speaker_02
Tao, also known as Nasty Garden Rat, says, what's the effect of money or financial stability on burnout? My job had me so exhausted at $18 an hour, but much less so at $20, even though I'm doing the same work. Still burned out, though. Woof, they say.

00:47:41 Speaker_02
Dave Cannon wants to know, would winning the lotto help burnout or is it something deeper? When you've got to grind or you need that grit because you're working three jobs, how can you even begin to start to balance that?

00:47:53 Speaker_00
Yeah. Well, I would say, first of all, I think one of the things we haven't really talked about is that oftentimes people characterize what they're feeling and experiencing as burnout. When these examples you just shared, I wonder a little bit.

00:48:05 Speaker_00
It may not be burnout. It may actually be overwhelm, overwork. overfunctioning, meaning that you have just way too much work, not enough resources, not enough time, not enough support. A lot of those people are just overworked and overextended.

00:48:18 Speaker_00
The remedy for people who are overworked is oftentimes more recovery time in the form of not just... I don't mean just like vacations or spa days and all that. I mean micro-recoveries where you're truly taking a mental, physical, psychological break

00:48:32 Speaker_00
And you are forcing yourself like really intentionally creating space in your life where you are connecting to the things and the people in your life.

00:48:42 Speaker_00
You're giving yourself positive energy to offset the feelings of overwork, you know, so that you can create have that psychological capacity. So you can go to your boss and say, I've been working 70 hour weeks for the last however long.

00:48:57 Speaker_00
I can't do it anymore like this is what it's doing to me so the goal is to help people get the psychological strength to go to their leaders or whoever and say here's what I need in order to be my my most effective at work.

00:49:12 Speaker_02
So yeah, if you're thinking every day, one day I'll just go to an island for a week and I will fix all of this. It's actually easier than that. I mean, yes, it's wonderful to have something to look forward to.

00:49:23 Speaker_02
And this positive anticipation has been shown in studies to fight depression, but it doesn't have to be an expensive escape to a piece of land in an ocean. You can create a tiny little safe space every day, even for 10 minutes,

00:49:38 Speaker_02
Sitting and meditating, listening to chill music and closing your eyes, breathing deeply, reading a chapter in a book or doing a craft. And I know it might feel more stressful at the beginning to carve that time out.

00:49:53 Speaker_02
Trust me, you're like, I have no time. How can I possibly do this? Or maybe you have to wake up a little earlier than your kids or work, or you have to ask for support to carve out that time.

00:50:04 Speaker_02
It might not feel like it's helping immediately, but the routine of doing something even for 10 minutes a day that feels chill and feels like a treat that's not scrolling helps you know that you have that little respite daily, reliably, and that you have your own back.

00:50:19 Speaker_02
And I wanted to get back to this because you were mentioning the people who don't experience burnout, even though they're in the 7 to 10 scale. What did you find in your research that was common to that? I'm like, are they just sociopaths?

00:50:33 Speaker_02
Do they not feel emotions or do they have like really good recovery systems?

00:50:40 Speaker_00
Exactly. That's what I wondered too, like who are these people?

00:50:45 Speaker_00
I don't know, were they raised by unusually cool headed parents or they have like Jedi mind tricks that they play on themselves so that they can survive in some crazy stressful environment? I mean, that's exactly what I went after in my research.

00:50:57 Speaker_00
That was my primary research question. So a lot of it has to do with our emotional intelligence. That's the whole basis of my research in the book is that stress creates emotional responses.

00:51:07 Speaker_00
So it's learning as much as we possibly can about how we respond emotionally to different types of stressors. That includes things like understanding what triggers my stress and not just what triggers me and ticks me off, but what's underneath that?

00:51:22 Speaker_00
Where did that come from? What happened in my past that led me to have this trigger?

00:51:28 Speaker_02
So it's not just about avoiding stress entirely, but understanding and clocking your own reactions to it and your own unique sensitivities to it.

00:51:37 Speaker_00
So emotional self-awareness is a big attribute that these people with burnout immunity have. They're very in tune with their emotional response to stress, very clear on what their triggers are, what ticks them off.

00:51:49 Speaker_00
They're also clear on what makes them tick, what motivates them, what gives them good positive energy. And then they're able to regulate. This is the emotional regulation part of emotional intelligence.

00:52:00 Speaker_00
They're able to regulate their emotions, their thoughts, and their behaviors. Working in very stressful conditions, but just emotional self-awareness and emotional regulation are some of the big cornerstones of creating burnout immunity.

00:52:15 Speaker_00
But it's also things like staying really connected to your values to people that you love meaningful relationships. It also has a lot to do with your outlook on life. Some people thrive in certain conditions better because

00:52:29 Speaker_00
their outlook on that type of an environment is more positive. And so that passion, that calling that they felt is protective. Our general mindset and the way we think about the world, the way we think about work.

00:52:42 Speaker_02
So emotional awareness and regulation being the cornerstone of burnout immunity means a bit more challenge to folks who are neurodivergent. My hand is raised right now.

00:52:53 Speaker_02
Now, the National Institutes of Health ADHD Support Toolkit recommends people wanting to support someone with ADHD up their empathy and refrain from blaming and shaming someone who's struggling to handle a heavy load with executive function issues.

00:53:09 Speaker_02
So be patient, be empathetic, and it encourages for those with ADHD to take short breaks during tasks that require continued focus.

00:53:18 Speaker_02
And there was this brand new study in 2024 titled, Executive Function Deficits Mediate the Relationship Between Employees' ADHD and Job Burnout. And it found that, hell yeah, lower executive function contributes to faster burnout and fatigue.

00:53:33 Speaker_02
Not to mention masking, which is a term that means you spend a ton of your energy pretending to be neurotypical in a world built for this productive grind of working like 10 hours a day, usually sitting at a desk.

00:53:47 Speaker_02
And this masking is common in autistic adults and kids as well.

00:53:51 Speaker_02
Stanford Medical School has a neurodiversity project, and one presenter, Katie Oswald, laid out that autistic burnout arises from chronic life stress and this mismatch of expectations and abilities without adequate support.

00:54:05 Speaker_02
And symptoms include long-term, typically over three months, exhaustion and loss of function and a reduced response to stimuli.

00:54:14 Speaker_02
And some causes of this autistic burnout are life stressors and masking and cumulative overwhelm, lack of empathy and dismissal of struggles and lack of support from others.

00:54:25 Speaker_02
But it recommends some interventions like peer-led support groups and meditation and exercise, trauma-informed care, art therapy, animal-assisted therapy, and interventions that are peer-led help a lot.

00:54:40 Speaker_02
So without this kind of support and empathy shown from others and ourselves, it's much harder to maintain this optimism and self-confidence and self-care like rest. and time away from screens and healthy hobbies that we need to avoid burnout.

00:54:55 Speaker_02
But for all of us, Dr. Wiens has a chapter that details how to recover from burnout using what she's coined the 3R prescription, or 3RX. And that means recover, reconnect, and reimagine.

00:55:07 Speaker_02
And she acknowledges with the recovery that a certain painful irony exists that comes along with recommending tips and strategies for making a full burnout recovery.

00:55:16 Speaker_02
because the ultimate responsibility for burnout recovery and certainly prevention lies with the employer," she writes, not the employee.

00:55:23 Speaker_02
But we can try to do what's in our control and sometimes you can't get better in the environment that's making you sick. In which case, you gotta bounce. But you can try to change your mindset and set boundaries.

00:55:37 Speaker_02
And the reconnect R involves getting in touch with things outside of work like people and hobbies and downtime and group activities or even your values or your vision of your ideal self.

00:55:48 Speaker_02
And then the third R helps you reimagine your life going forward.

00:55:52 Speaker_02
So, she details all these strategies in her book, but they can help you regulate your approach to stress and the emotions that come up from it to lessen the impact on your life and your brain and your body.

00:56:04 Speaker_02
An emotional regulation, I understand, is not the same thing as stuffing your feelings down and not feeling them.

00:56:13 Speaker_00
That was me. And a lot of us think, oh, well, that will just make it all go away if I stuff it.

00:56:19 Speaker_00
I have one guy tell me, one of my research participants, he was a chief medical officer, told me that he was a professional stuffer, like stuff distress, like crazy, until he ended up with diverticulitis, which is like really bad things happening to your intestines.

00:56:33 Speaker_02
Not to mention, of course, cardiac and metabolic disease and autoimmune diseases. And there was one study, a 2018 paper, Association of Stress-Related Disorders with Subsequent Autoimmune Disease.

00:56:45 Speaker_02
And it found that, yes, stress-related disorders were significantly associated with increased risk of autoimmune disease.

00:56:53 Speaker_02
So being exposed to high stress and not having the outlets to cope or to explore it or to get support, or essentially developing what psychologists call emotional intelligence or regulation, can be deadly. Yeah, oy, no.

00:57:09 Speaker_02
better to deal with the emotions than whatever's going on in them guts, you know? But yeah, I was like, I have an idea. What if I just don't feel the bad feelings and I scroll instead? Poof, I made them disappear. It's like, no, you didn't.

00:57:21 Speaker_02
Until they come back again and they haunt you. Exactly. Well, this is, okay, this is my last listener question. Matthew Walker, I mean, so many people, The Lady is a Geek, Katie Biardi, wanted to know, in The Lady's words, does burnout leave a scar?

00:57:36 Speaker_02
If you've had one burnout, are you more likely to have another? or experience it more easily? Same thing, Katie had that question too. If you get it once, are you more predisposed to it?

00:57:46 Speaker_00
Oh, it depends what you do with that information. Totally depends on how you were able to recover from that burnout experience. And what did you learn from it? What do you not want to do again?

00:57:57 Speaker_00
Because all of us when we're burned out, all of a sudden, it becomes clear, like, oh, that's what was causing the burnout. Oh, that's, you know, what triggered me. Oh, that's what I wasn't doing. Or that's what I was doing that made me more vulnerable.

00:58:10 Speaker_00
So it depends what you choose to do with that information. In my case, I was like, hellbent on not ever getting burned out again. Like I said, when I was nine or 10, I never wanted to be a burnout expert. I never crossed my mind.

00:58:22 Speaker_00
But now I'm glad that I am because it forces me to really pay attention. I made a commitment to myself, I'm not going to let that happen again. I want to live a full, happy life while I'm here. I want to have stress in my life. I actually want to have

00:58:36 Speaker_00
good stress and stress that will challenge me and help me learn and grow. But also know like I have a limit. I need to be really, really aware of what that limit is. And it's my responsibility to get myself out of it.

00:58:48 Speaker_00
And that doesn't mean, and I get it, people might be wondering, well, I don't have the luxury of getting myself out of it. I didn't feel like I had the luxury either when I was burned out. So I took my time.

00:58:58 Speaker_00
It took me a couple of years for me to create an exit ramp. and a path, a new plan for myself to where I was going in a direction that I knew was going to be right for me and wasn't going to cause burnout for me.

00:59:12 Speaker_02
I think it's also interesting that everyone else can see you on an absolute crash course a mile away and you're like, nah, I got this. And a lot of times there's at least one or two people in your life that are like, you're going to burn out.

00:59:24 Speaker_02
And you're like, other people might burn out. Not me, watch this. And then you're just in a ditch crying. Denial. It's a thing. Yeah. I always ask people the worst thing about their job.

00:59:38 Speaker_02
And I am wondering, what is the hardest thing about your work in burnout and not getting burned out?

00:59:49 Speaker_00
It's a hard one, but maybe it's actually an easy one. The hardest part for me is Well, I feel really, I guess, blessed that I get to hear that people feel comfortable opening up to me about their burnout experiences, and I feel honored that they do.

01:00:03 Speaker_00
So that's a good thing. But at the same time, the hard part about it is I want to help everybody.

01:00:07 Speaker_02
Yeah.

01:00:08 Speaker_00
I would love to take everybody under my wing. And just say, you know, follow me, let's do these things and you're going to be just fine. And I promise you, we're going to get you out of this. And I just, I can't do that.

01:00:19 Speaker_00
I mean, I help as many people as I can.

01:00:21 Speaker_00
And then I also have my limits where it's just that that's what can cause me to burn out because I'm expressing so much empathy and compassion for other people that then it turns into me not having good boundaries for myself.

01:00:34 Speaker_00
What about the best thing about what you do? The best thing I think is really just bringing awareness to something that so many people are struggling with.

01:00:42 Speaker_00
And after a speaking event or a podcast, people will reach out and say, you know, your story really resonated with me. I felt like you were in my head. And I just feel super honored that people are opening up more about it.

01:00:56 Speaker_00
And my hope is that the more we talk about it, the more we bring awareness to it and try to really decrease the stigma associated with it, that we will start to see cultures change.

01:01:06 Speaker_00
But it's going to take people like me and you and others who have been burned out and recovered to get back in there and say, look, there are ways to create cultures where we can expect, you know, really high performance out of people, but also

01:01:21 Speaker_00
not to the point where we're going to lose them.

01:01:23 Speaker_02
Yeah, it is. I think speaking out about it is so helpful for me to hear other people talk about it and to know that it's not just like a moral failing of my own. No, it's not. I'm so glad I got a chance to talk to you.

01:01:36 Speaker_02
I imagine there's so many avenues you can go down. Do you see yourself doing this Just wanting to ask and answer questions for as long as you can.

01:01:47 Speaker_00
It's so fun. That is one of the best parts of my job, too. I've always been someone who's just naturally curious. I mean, I love researching itself.

01:01:54 Speaker_00
to go in there and dig into people's lives and really truly understand at an empirical level what is going on.

01:02:00 Speaker_00
Burnout is a phenomenon, so it's one of those things that we can get in there and study, but we need to talk to people and hear about their life experiences, and that's pretty fun.

01:02:09 Speaker_02
I mean, there's no shortage of need or examples. That's great. That's true. You are guaranteed a job in this culture and economy.

01:02:19 Speaker_00
I don't know if that's a good thing.

01:02:21 Speaker_02
Yeah, exactly. So ask experts amateur questions because honestly it might save your life.

01:02:28 Speaker_02
Now this was recorded a month or two ago when optimism and hope may have been easier to come by so it might seem like easier said than done which let's be honest that's like most things in life but unfortunately keeping tabs on your mental health is more important than ever

01:02:46 Speaker_02
because you're an ape wearing a shirt and you're really not built for this, I'm sorry to say.

01:02:52 Speaker_02
So part of combating global stress is learning when it's getting to be too much and taking care of yourself in constructive and not just numbing and dissociating ways. Trust me, scrolling's not helping you. So heed my warnings, please.

01:03:08 Speaker_02
And for more info, you can pick up Candy Wien's book, Burnout Immunity, which we'll link in the show notes. And we'll also link where you can follow and find out more about her work. So thank you so much for being on, Dr. Wien.

01:03:19 Speaker_02
So you can learn more about ologies and you can follow us at ologies on Blue Sky and Instagram. You can find me at Allie Ward on both platforms. We also have shorter, kid-friendly episodes available in their own podcast feed.

01:03:31 Speaker_02
It's called Smallogies, wherever you get podcasts. You can look for the new green logo, which was designed by Portland artist Bonnie Dutch. We also have Ologies merch available at ologiesmerch.com, or the link in the show notes.

01:03:43 Speaker_02
Erin Talbert admins the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Noelle Dilworth is our scheduling producer. Kelly O'Dwyer makes the website. Susan Hale, managing, directs the whole shebang.

01:03:53 Speaker_02
Jake Chafee co-edits the show and lead editor, and Canadian who is trying not to burn out with American and global genocide stressors is Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn.

01:04:05 Speaker_02
Nick Thorburn out made the theme music, and if you stick around until the end of the episode, I tell you a secret. In this week, it's I'm the ghost of burnout past and future, and I'm here to tell you

01:04:17 Speaker_02
no matter how strong you are or how good at suffering or how much you want to fix the world, you have to take care of yourself or you will possibly be sick and sadder and less able to do the things you want to to change the world.

01:04:34 Speaker_02
So I have been through that. I thought I was tougher than anyone else. And I thought I could just get through things. As you might know, last summer, I had an excruciating burnout that landed me in the hospital a few times.

01:04:46 Speaker_02
And then I had to take a bunch of time off and relearn how to talk to my own brain. So everyone warned me for years ahead of time I was gonna burn out. I love this job. I love a lot of jobs that I have and have had all at once.

01:05:01 Speaker_02
And I just didn't know how to live like a normal person. I was like, I'm a robot. I'm a machine. I keep work. No. So you're a person if you're listening to this, unless you're an AI, which is weird, but you're a person and you gotta take care of yourself.

01:05:16 Speaker_02
So, what I do, which has been helping me a ton, I mentioned this in another episode, but I have a list of things that I do to keep myself alive, and I print it out, I check it off every day, it's helped so much in the last few months.

01:05:28 Speaker_02
Again, I print out a new sheet every week, each day, I get a point for things like drinking at least 64 ounces of water, or meditating, or going on a walk, or reading a book, even one page.

01:05:42 Speaker_02
journaling, avoiding too much caffeine, avoiding alcohol, avoiding scrolling, doing a hobby. I love cross stitch because I can't use my phone and it's zero stakes and for some reason it like calms my nervous system.

01:05:55 Speaker_02
I literally get a point for showering and then I add up the points of the day to see how I'm doing. and it's kind of like a game to play.

01:06:02 Speaker_02
But doing something, if you need to gamify it, if you need to have a checklist of stuff you do, don't do it because you have to do it because you deserve to do it and it'll start becoming a routine that helps.

01:06:13 Speaker_02
So checking in with yourself and giving your little ape brain the comfort that you need takes less time than what you would spend staring into space and worrying.

01:06:23 Speaker_02
Whatever you want to do to contribute to a more just world, you'll be able to do it if you're nice to yourself first. So there's my secret, there's my advice to not grind yourself into a nub.

01:06:35 Speaker_02
The world needs you to take your survival and your health seriously, and I honestly, as your dad, Ward, As your internet dad, let me be a cautionary tale that it just doesn't work long-term. You will nosedive at one point, and you deserve it.

01:06:48 Speaker_02
Every single person deserves to take care of themselves. So, if you're still sitting under that tree or lying on the carpet, just think of things that make you happy and make you feel better, and please do them for yourself.

01:06:59 Speaker_02
Doesn't have to be a vacation. Okay, go drink some water. All right? Bye-bye.

01:07:22 Speaker_01
We all agreed that you deserve a break.