How to Overcome Burn-out and Set Boundaries with Caitlin Donavan
In This Episode You Will Learn About:
The most crucial step to overcoming burn-out
Internal self-talk causing burn-out
Empowering others by setting boundaries
Build deeper relationships
“Your behavior sets your boundaries more than your words do.” - Caitlin Donavan
Show Notes:
Women are often overwhelmed with the challenge of setting boundaries. Emotions of fear of rejection, guilt, shame, or upsetting someone lead to pleasing others and not yourself. Without good boundaries, women can easily find themselves in a position of burnout. By establishing healthy boundaries, you can protect your time and energy, ensuring that you have the resources to live a joyful and fulfilling life. Think of how you would feel if you felt like yourself again - that part of you that you love most. In this episode, you’ll hear the most critical first step of overcoming burnout that no one seems to be talking about.
During this episode, you'll learn the most crucial first step to overcoming burnout and no one seems to be talking about it.
Confidence Building Notebook (Amazon): Learn tips to overcoming burn-out. https://www.amazon.com/vdp/076f7dc404264499a6f6ab87de3bc231?product=B09LGRX8ML&ref=cm_sw_em_r_ib_dt_XwENqy4LNKijX
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About The Guest:
Caitlin Donovan has a Master’s degree in Chinese Medicine and spent well over a decade of her life in foreign countries. As a keynote speaker and coach, she works with organizations and individuals on overcoming Burnout. Caitlin is the author of The Bounce Back Ability Factor, End Burnout, gain resilience and change the world. She is also the host of “Fried the Burnout Podcast with Caitlin Donovan.”
Fried the Burnout Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fried-the-burnout-podcast/id1469939920
Is Being Too Busy Really a Good Problem to Have?
A lot of times people will say things like, well, that's a good problem to have, you're so busy, you've got a three-month waiting list for clients and patients that want to see you. And clearly, you're really good at what you do. But to what extent? You're supporting everybody else but not yourself. And so tell us a little bit about this article, and how did this epiphany moment happen? And what steps did you take to get past that burnout to overcome that burnout and now be an expert on burnout?
X amount of years later, I don't remember what the article was titled, I just remember sitting at my desk, and stumbling upon it. And you know, everybody, I'm sure has had these moments in their lives. So I'm going to describe something and I'm going to hope that you're with me on this. You find something, and it resonates so strongly that you get goosebumps. And you know, do you feel it in the core of your soul, not even your heart, in the core of your very being. You're like, oh, that's true for me. And I was reading through it. And my whole body just kept sort of overflowing with this magnetism to the word and so the concept and I was thinking, oh my God, I don't understand how this could have happened to me. When you're an acupuncturist, the only thing you learn is how stress affects the body. You learn it through a different set of words, then you would learn in like now I'm doing another degree in biobehavioral health. So I'm learning all the western science words. It's a different set of words, but it's the same things. So I was already a stress management expert. How the hell did I end up here? And so I knew at that point, I'm a big DIYer, I do everything on my own. This was part of, you know, kind of financial issues that I grew up with men that figure it all out without paying anybody to help you is a terrible idea. But that was the first time in my life where I stopped and I thought I need outside people. So a lot of people that I know that work in burnout coaching now have this idea of like, it took me so much to get through it all by myself, and I didn't have any help. So now I want to help other people. Not me. I got help, and I know how valuable it is. And that's why I do what I do. I had a coach, I had a therapist, and once I got through some things and I had enough energy to focus on more than I had a functional medicine practitioner. We did a whole 30 we did some supplements, but I had to do it step by step, so I had at least three other practitioners that I worked with to get me through burnout. But the biggest piece for me, at the end of the day, was removing myself from being overly involved in making everyone else comfortable all the goddamn time.
And as women, one of the biggest challenges that I hear from women all the time is this overwhelming feeling, because it's a challenge of setting boundaries. And without good boundaries, women easily find themselves in that overwhelm, and that burnout. And it's constantly that pleasing everybody else, there's this fear, especially in your career, because a lot of my listeners are in corporate America. And one of the fears they have is if I am given an opportunity to be involved in a special project or something at work, there's this fear of if I say no, then those special projects are never going to come back to me. Or if I don't say yes to this, if I say if I don't say less, more hours, they're gonna think that I'm not prioritizing work, and prioritizing my family more than that. So it's this fear and this fear of judgment and guilt and shame and upsetting other people are so focused on everybody else versus ourselves.
How You Can Create Healthy Boundaries
So what are some steps that our listeners can take to really create those boundaries, and move past those thoughts of shame and guilt and fear?
So here's the thing about the emotional part. You need to take the time to feel the emotions. And you have to do that. I am not going to sit here and tell people that they can create boundaries and not feel crappy. You're probably going to feel crappy because:
It’s difficult.
It’s different.
You’re shifting people's expectations
It's just not going to be fun!
At first, it buys you space and time and joy and fun after. However, I think it does us a real disservice to say, just say no, and don't feel guilty and no is a complete sentence and then walk away. It's a much messier process than that. And when I was going through this on my own, one of the things that I noticed most frequently was that I want to help people that are not asking for my help. So for instance, I tell the story a lot because this is a good example, I took the train of the tram in Prague every day to get to work because it doesn't make sense to do anything else. It's just very convenient. It goes everywhere, it's fast, there's no parking, the streets are this wide, you know. So you take the tram everywhere, and I would get on the tram. And it would be full in the morning because people are going to work it's normal. And somebody's sitting in the seat for the differently abled slash elderly slash pregnant slash ill slash whatever the hell you know. But it's, there's a sign that says like, don't sit here unless you need it. And somebody would inevitably be sitting there. And then we'd be pulling up to the next stop. And there'd be an old lady 98 years old, with a cane and a handbag, you know, climbing up onto the trim at the next stop. And I would be staring at the person sitting in the seat that I think should belong to this old lady. And I'm judging them. Meanwhile, I don't know if they have an invisible illness like who the hell am I? And I'm, I need to get involved. I'm the person that would be like, Excuse me, could you get up so she could sit down please. All the while thinking that I am so kind and so considerate and so helpful.
So I'm putting myself up on this, like, you're going to be useful and you're going to help somebody and therefore people will be grateful to you, and therefore you will be worth something. This is where I found my value in the world. And very frequently, the old woman would say, I'm just going one stop, don't worry about it. It's like I had to stop putting myself in that position. And being in this place where I was constantly searching my environment for other people's assumed discomfort that I thought that I could solve. Right? Because when you're doing that you're really messing a few things up. One of them is you're being really judgmental. Those which is just making a lot of assumptions not being curious, being really judgmental. Number two, number two, you're being the moral police. Alright, because my morality and my rules are the correct rules like that's total nonsense. And number three, you're disempowering the people that you are purporting to help So this old woman who's 98 years old, who's climbing onto the trim, she's probably been riding that train by herself for 92 years. What in my body mind being thinks that she needs my help asking somebody to stand up if she I mean, she's literally been doing this her whole entire life, she's probably lived in that same apartment and taking the same trim every day, for 96 years. What the hell am I doing? So It's situations like this. That's where I started, I didn't start at home. I didn't start with my family. I didn't start with my patients. I started out in the world. Where am I entering some situations that are not asking for my assistance. And I started sort of looking and saying, and just pulling myself back. I didn't have to say anything, I didn't have to stay a boundary. I didn't have to change expectations with anyone. This was all internal work. And I think this is the most important part of boundary setting that everyone is missing. Everyone's teaching us what sentences to use to say no, when really before we can get there. We need to learn how to not over involve ourselves. exceptions to the rules, if there's an emergency. You know, obviously, don't walk away and say, Oh, that's not my problem. But I guarantee you, there's 12 times a day that your energy does not need to be in somebody else's situation.
Is Your Help Being Really Helpful?
I like how you say that that is introspective. And you said something that really resonated, which is almost taking the power away from the other person. One of the biggest mistakes I've learned when I was a manager, one of the mistakes that I did was I kind of projected this, well, I know you're in I know, my reps were my team, they'd be out in the field. And I didn't want to ask them to do anything more. And so what would happen is, I would sometimes take on that responsibility. Oh, don't worry, I'll do it for you. Oh, I did this for you, Oh, I did this for you. And the reality is, is I was taking away the opportunity for them to be in a position where they were learning a new skill, where they were stepping up as a leader where they were able to, I would be able to delegate something, and then they were able to take the lead on that. And now we're developing the skills that they wanted to be in maybe being promoted into a new role or exposure to somebody in the company. And I'll always remember that looking back that that was one of the biggest mistakes I made as a manager was trying to take on everything. And what it was doing, it was counterintuitive. It was stripping some of the people on my team the opportunity to learn and develop and, and fail because it's okay to fail, as long as I'm there to be there and kind of be like, okay, you know, it's okay, this is a learning lesson, we'll do this together. But to really acknowledge that learning that your help is not helpful can be really jarring.
That can sometimes bruise the ego a little. Some pride, a little bit. Like I'm well beyond this. So I can talk about this now with quite a bit of distance because this was, you know, we're talking 2016. So this is six, seven years ago, at this point. But God that's what I thought made me a good person. So shifting out of it required me to:
Pay attention
Sit with the uncomfortable emotions
Re-embody my own energy so that I could be aware of what my needs were in various situations
I didn't know how to meet my own needs, because I was constantly scanning the environment to see what somebody else needed. I'm the girl that's going to fill your water at somebody else's house. I'm like, Oh, the host didn't notice this girl needs water. You know, that's not my job. If that person can ask for water, like what am I doing? So by doing that, in addition to your health not being helpful to other people, you also have no ability to stay present in your own world. And therefore you cannot meet your own foundational basic needs. How many times do you avoid going to the bathroom? Because you're finishing an email for somebody else, because you don't want to interrupt a meeting because you don't want to. I say it on the podcast all the time on my podcast all the time. Like, one of the things you need to do to recover from burnout is pee when you need to pee. And that sounds ridiculous.
Before we get into all the tools on boundaries:
Learn to let people serve themselves.
Create an environment, especially in your workplace that is psychologically safe for your teams. So that when they do need your help, they'll ask for it.
Don't rob people of the opportunity to grow just because you need to be a martyr.
Identifying Internal and External Boundaries
Where do you want to learn and grow? And where do you want to increase your resilience by increasing your resources by asking for help? Both of those are okay. They're both part of life. But I feel like we're trying to live on sort of one side or the other and we just stay there. And there's a much more fluid opportunity here for us to sort of move through in this instance, I want it this way in that instance, I want it another way. And that's fine. That's hard for us to. That's another boundary, really. That's another internal boundary instead of the external one where I get really stuck on this internal boundary thing, because I don't know that anyone else is talking about it. And I think we're missing a really massive opportunity.
Because once you have these internal boundaries set, once you're not over-giving and over-serving and over-involved, the external boundaries become much easier to set.
Because you trust yourself more to meet your own needs, you start trusting other people more.
So you get to this place where you're like, oh, I can tell them what I really want a need. And it will be fine. Because they're adults in there, okay? Because I can trust what I want and need and tell myself that and I'm an adult, and I'm okay. So you will learn it internally. And then the external becomes so much easier. If I read on Instagram one more time No, is a complete sentence, I will throw something out a wall. No is a complete sentence. And like most of the time, it's not. Sometimes it is. But most of the time, if you do that, you're acting like an electric fence. You're zapping people. And there's just known no need, like, we offer each other grace. When we are invited to share stories. Sometimes you just have to say no and move on. Somebody is a narcissist, somebody's toxic, there's a bad situation, fine. But sometimes, if you grant people the opportunity to know what's happening in your world a little bit, it's so much easier for that person to give you grace. And you might think, well, they should give me grace anyway, because that's the right thing to do. But to be honest, you don't do it for other people, most likely, because that's not really how humans are construed. So if somebody cuts you off on a highway, your initial reaction is Oh, my God, that jerk. But if you find out the next day that that guy that cut you off on the highway, was rushing to the hospital, because his son was just hit by a car. You're like, Oh, my God, I hope he made it. So if we want to say no, graciously, and protect our generosity, which I think that's what boundaries are for protecting your ability to be generous in the areas that you really enjoy being generous, instead of spilling generosity into all the areas where it's just not really wanted or necessary or useful. If you really want to protect your generosity well, and you want to say no to certain things, and you grant people the opportunity to hear a piece of your story. Most likely, you're gonna get that grace from people. We've got to give them that chance. So if you're just like, No, and then you walk away, you're not giving people that opportunity. Some people don't deserve it. That's fine.
The Challenges of Finding Balance and Overcoming Burnout
I want to dig into this a little bit, because one of the challenges and finding the balance because of this is when you provide perspective as to what's going on in your life, oftentimes people will be more empathetic, gracious, supportive, all of those things. And then there's the other challenge where some people where they start to go and why I've got this going on, I've got this and then it becomes like Doomsday, and then they start to put guilt on themselves. So talk about balancing those two,
Who's putting guilt on themselves in this situation?
Sometimes it's that their own self, they start to go in this like self-sabotaging. Well, I gotta pick my kids up, and then I've got to go to work. And then they just start listing off all of these things that that they need to do. And then what can sometimes happen is the other person is going, Yeah, I got the same stuff going on in my life, too. And then it creates that like, whoa, do you have more going on than I do? Or the person that's saying all these reasons why they can't it's almost as if they're doing this, like self-shaming, self-guilt, self-judgment.
We don't do all the reasons. Yeah, giving people a glimpse is what we're talking about here. We're not talking about like sharing an entire life story. And the glimpse should refer to not necessarily the action that you need to perform, but the value that's behind it. So instead of saying I have to pick up my kids from school, you say, a long time ago, I prioritized being there for my kids when they get home from school. That's my priority, right? And that's the difference. So what we're talking about is offering people a view of your boundaries, your values, and your priorities. When people know what your values and your priorities are, they very infrequently question them when you complain that you have lots of things to do, you are not getting anybody's graciousness, because the whole world is busy, just like you said. So this is not about a litany of complaints. It's about sharing a value sharing a priority. That's enough. Sometimes it is sharing a little bit more of the story. My mother got sick last week, we weren't expecting it, it's thrown my entire schedule into chaos. Sometimes that's okay. But those are factual events. Usually, I do not ask people to include the emotional state of the story that they're sharing. Those are two very different things. People can be deserving of the facts of your story, without being deserving of your emotions. So it's about sitting down and sort of sorting through, well, what's factual here? What can I state in an even way? That is true, that is resonant. And that relates to my values. Without going into a sob story.
It also gives people the opportunity to get to know you more and 100% of what you prioritize in your lives, what's important to you, when you really tie it to that those values?
You said that one of your priorities during the day is to not have anything on your schedule when your children come home from school, right? If everybody in your life knows this, they automatically block out that time slot in your day. They don't call you at that time. They don't. Not because you're totally unavailable and not be. But because you said this is what is important to me. It's really easy for people to get on board with stuff like that. That's an easy thing to see. Like, okay, you're not available then because you're doing this thing. Okay. That's the whole story. And there's nothing like, oh, because I don't see my kids enough. Because they're at school all day because I'm working and then I have to work after they get home. And no. All you said was, that I really enjoy being present and being there when they get home. Yeah, that's it. That's setting the boundary without saying without saying all the other things that are going on.
I like the phrase of what you said is a long time ago, I made a commitment a long time ago, I made a commitment to go on a walk with my kids, and have that period of time where I just get to enjoy the outdoors. Yeah. That's it. And you could put up with anything in life, whatever that is. And it's also knowing that if people do call during that time, and there are some people in my life that have this kind of expectation on as to how frequently or quickly I should answer the phone because that's what they do. But I don't have my phone tethered to me and I choose to not have it tethered so that when I'm with someone I get to be present.
Three Steps to Creating and Maintaining Our Parameters
1.Look around for things in your life that other people could be doing for themselves. Or simply: get out of people's way.
If you have a 10-year-old and you're still picking out their clothes, stop it. Right? If you have a seven-year-old and you're still making them breakfast, honestly. Stop it unless you really love doing that. Unless that's like your thing. Cool. But if you hate it, stop it.
2.Make your environment feel as safe and as cozy as possible.
It's really, really hard to recover from burnout when you don't feel safe safety is of the utmost importance. The reason why we work on the internal boundaries first is the same thing you need to start feeling safe within your own skin within your own body. Because that's where the nervous system comes into play and allows you to heal.
3.Find ways to see your value as inherent to the fact that you exist instead of being attached to something you do, perform or provide.
Try to find a way, and this might require counseling or self-compassion books by Dr. Kristin Neff. There's a lot of ways, but understanding that your value is inherent and intrinsic and that your value is not associated with the things you give, the things you provide, the things you perform. The ways you help are critical to your ability to have long-term wellbeing, not just avoid burnout, but even just to be well.
