The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - Are You Ignoring These Burnout Warning Signs? Psychologist Warnings.

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode 142: Are You Ignoring These Burnout Warning Signs? Psychologist Warnings.Feeling overwhelmed by the pressures of work and life? In the final episode of the Burnout Bites series, Dr. Claire Plumbly breaks down the key external and internal factors that contribute to burnout and offers practical strategies to manage them. Discover how to regain control and protect your well-being—tune in nowIt’s a fantastically interesting and helpful episode and we hope you find it so useful! The Highlights: 00:00 - Introduction00:29 - Host Welcome01:46 - Burnout Bites Series Finale02:53 - External vs Internal Pressures04:41 - Common External Pressures05:38 - Invisible Cultural Pressures07:12 - Internal Pressures and Self-Expectations08:53 - People Pleasing, Perfectionism, and Avoidance10:41 - Strategies for Managing Internal Pressures11:39 - Tools for Self-Healing and Support12:53 - Closing Remarks and Social Media Links:📚 Check out Dr Claire's Book on Burnout: How to manage your nervous system before it manages you: https://amzn.to/3W9nsgi 📲Connect with Dr Claire here: https://www.tiktok.com/@drclaireplumbly https://www.instagram.com/drclaireplumbly/ 🖥️ Check out my brand new short courses for aspiring psychologists and mental health professionals here: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/short-courses🫶 To support me by donating to help cover my costs for the free resources I provide click here: https://the-aspiring-psychologist.captivate.fm/support📚 To check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0 📖 To check out The Aspiring Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3CP2N97 💡 To check out or join the aspiring psychologist membership for just £30 per month head to: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/membership-interested✍️ Get your Supervision Shaping Tool now: https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/supervision📱Connect socially with Marianne and check out ways to work with her, including the Aspiring Psychologist Book, Clinical Psychologist book and The Aspiring Psychologist Membership on her Link tree: https://linktr.ee/drmariannetrent💬 To join my free Facebook group and discuss your thoughts on this episode and more: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aspiringpsychologistcommunityLike, Comment, Subscribe & get involved:If you enjoy the podcast, please do subscribe and rate and review episodes. If you'd like to learn how to record and submit your own audio testimonial to be included in future shows head to:

Hi there, it's Marianne here. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly let you know about something exciting that's happening right now. If you've ever wondered how to create income that works for you, rather than constantly trading your time for money, then you'll love the Race to Recurring Revenue Challenge with my business mentor, Lisa Johnson. This challenge is designed to help you build sustainable income streams. And whether you're an aspiring psychologist, a mental health professional, or in a completely different field,

the principles can work for you. There are also wonderful prizes to be won directly by Lisa herself. And if you join the challenge by my link, you can be in with a chance of winning a one-to-one hours coaching with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Do you want to know more? Of course you do. Head to my link tree, Dr. Marianne Trent, or check out my social media channels, or send me a quick DM and I'll get you all the details. Right, let's get on with today's episode. People talk about the sweet spot of work-life balance, but what if that is hard to

achieve? What if both of those pressures feel like they are meaning that you are heading towards burnout? Let's take a deep dive looking at all of the different types of factors that can contribute to you or someone you care about feeling burned out. I hope you find it so useful. Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. For the last five episodes, I have been bringing you a special, special, special series on burnout, or more specifically, what burnout is and how to avoid it, both for yourself, for those that you might be working with, and or those you care about. It has been my pleasure to work alongside Dr. Claire Plumley, who is also a qualified clinical psychologist and the author

of a brilliant new book on burnout. We have evidenced during this series that teamwork makes the dream work and it's always okay to have people support you. You don't need to worry about me. I'm not going anywhere. It's just that over the summer, it can be a little bit of a juggle with the children. I wanted to make sure I was still providing you super brilliant, useful content whenever you are ready to listen or watch it. Claire is really spoiling us with our final installment of the Burnout Byte. Absolutely don't need to have listened to the previous five episodes, but I would recommend that you do because they are exceptional. Let's dive in and hear our final burnout bite with Dr. Claire. Hello and welcome to the final of Burnout Bites.

This has been a series of six short episodes that I've brought to you all about this topic of burnout in the hope that we can understand it and take collective action to looking after ourselves and protecting those around us as well. I'm Dr. Claire Plumley. I am a clinical psychologist. I work with people who have experienced trauma and are feeling anxious or burnt out. And I have a clinical practice both online and in Taunton Somerset. And I have recently written a book. The book's called Burnout, How to Manage Your Nervous System Before It Manages You. The link is in the show notes and a lot of the nuggets I've brought to you over this short series has been from that. So today I wanted to bring you this idea of the difference between external and internal pressures because on the surface you'd think it would be

simple if we're feeling stressed that we would slow down and pace ourselves and pause and rest so that we don't then tip into this more closed out, overwhelmed, burnt out place. But there are two reasons that we don't. There are external pressures that come from the people and situations around us. And there are internal pressures that come from within us. So I'm going to break that down today so you have a little bit more of an understanding of it. External pressures include the types of demands in our lives that are really hard to escape from. So it's the boring adulting type of things that we have to just get on and do, unfortunately. So bills to pay, high caseload, dependents like children or elderly parents.

It might be quarterly targets or questions and wants from the people in our lives who we really care about. The thing with these external pressures is that sometimes they're super obvious, but sometimes there's a little chipping away effect that can go on. They can just start to mount up. And when I worked in my NHS job job this happened in a really gradual way and often on their own each little demand felt almost inconsequential and like i would be creating a bit of a fuss if i said anything about this so for example when i first started to work in the nhs as a full-time equivalent you were expected to see about 15 clients a week. When I left that position, which was almost seven years later, a full time equivalent was expected to see 25 clients in a week. Not only that, but

we were expected to do measures at each session and provide more reports. It was just a lot. And it hadn't become quite clear to me until I sat down and really thought about it how much more I was being asked to do. So here's a list of the common external pressures so you can just check in and see how many of these you've got going on. Holding in mind that this won't just be at work this will be in your personal life and friendship life and any maybe voluntary commitments that you have as well so take it as a broad brushstroke. Time pressures. So this might be deadlines, completing projects, or, you know, on a day-to-day basis where you've got to get somewhere at a certain time, get the kids to a club at a certain time. Any conflicts or disagreement where you're kind of feeling this constant pressure of being

up against someone else or friction. Any high emotional labour in your job. So tending to others and negative emotions and not having emotional support for your own this is a really strong external pressure that can be a bit more invisible workload just having too much to do and obviously that ties in with the time pressure often not enough time to do it this is an interesting one role ambiguity so when you're not quite sure what you should be doing or you don't want to step on the toes others, there can be a lot of energy that gets used up there with decision making and trying to work out the best course of action. When we don't have a control over our situation, or the resources available to us, or the demands being made, excessive criticism from others. This is

a really tricky one, again, that can feel like it's beyond our control. And it links into the next one, which is lack of positive feedback or appreciation. So if we're doing all of this work, but without this extra of people noticing and seeing what we're doing, when there's any insecurity in our life, so uncertainty can really drain us. So job insecurity, not knowing how long we're going to be in a post or having to continually reapply for work this is really hard for us complex tasks or a lot of complex tasks so we can't just kind of automate out certain things and kind of just know this is how I'm always doing things if we're having to always wrap our head around more complexity and new instructions this is really again an external pressure pressure coming in at us from the type of work that we're doing. Of course, last but not least is financial worries. So a lot of external pressures are visible and obvious, but not always.

There can be some cultural ideals or ways that we expect men, women, carers to behave in a certain way that can also add to the type of external pressure certain people are under. I go into this in chapter seven in my book, but I just want to introduce that idea right now that not all external pressures are easy to put your finger on. Some of them might just be almost an expectation that you kind of don't recognize that this could be something that you question or hold at arm's length to look at and decide actually is this something that I do need to always be responding to. So some of these are really practical external pressures that we might be able to do something about. Sometimes we do have more control than we realize and we stop and spend some time working on what those options are to reduce external pressures then that's a really valuable piece of work. But there are some external

pressures that are less visible to us. And they can often come from ideas that are woven into our culture. So for example, about our roles, what's expected from us, for example, that's different for men and women, it might also be different depending on your role in the family, your role at work. So for example, women as carers, men as breadwinners, that's a very common one that most people can see as really unhelpful. And I go into this in one of the chapters in my book, trying to help people understand the narratives that might underlie all of this. But just know for now that there are very obvious visible external pressures that we might be able to do something about. And there are others that are harder for us to fight on our own and actually this takes collective understanding and action

to challenge. The second type of pressure is internal and this comes from pressures inside us such as our emotions and our thoughts. This can motivate us on through stress even when we're feeling really quite tired and we don't have much more to give. It can be informed partly by our biological and psychological makeup, such as our personality traits, core beliefs, any sensitivity to stimuli and temperament. And it tends to show up as things like emotions, guilt, anxiety, shame, thoughts, such as, well, I'm responsible for keeping everything together, or I've not done enough yet to deserve a break. And also unpleasant sensations in the body, which are linked to stress, such as that rush of adrenaline. Everything then feels urgent. Muscles are tense. Your heart's racing. You feel fidgety.

The idea of trying to pause or slow down just seems to go against what your nervous system is telling you. In my book, I talk about three patterns of internal pressures that I see a lot in burnout in my work. So the first is people pleasing. So obviously being nice and kind to people isn't bad in and of itself. But people pleasing is when it tips into feeling like you're worthless unless others are happy. Your needs are bottom of the pile. And so all of the thoughts and emotions and internal sensations are linked to that. If you have any sense that others aren't feeling okay about things that you're doing, you will feel

an urge to fix that and people please. The second is perfectionism. Again, the wish to do things well isn't in and of itself a bad thing. It's when this tips into an exhausting pursuit of perfection at the expense of your well-being so not resting and not pausing and never delegating for fear of others getting things wrong and this is usually fueled from a negative place fearing the worst if you don't get things just so the others will reject you or you'll be criticized or put down and so again the internal pressures will tend to revolve around specific worry thoughts about exactly that what will happen if things aren't perfect and you get all of the internal sensations linked to moving on always keeping your foot on the gas. Third that I go into my book is this avoidance of emotions by

using busyness so if you fear your own body you fear your own emotions which can be you know really common negative emotions are really unpleasant as we know pretty much a lot of our work in psychology is about helping people develop a more compassionate relationship with their emotions but it's really understandable that we would try and avoid negativity and when we haven't had experience growing up of this building up our confidence in our ability to be attuned and respond to our body this can cause people to overuse work as a strategy and so you might have these internal thoughts of I can't cope with negative anxiety or other emotions what if this tips me into a really difficult place I can never come back from so I hope this is helpful

for separating it out beginning to think about what what are the areas where I have control yes there are some areas of external pressures that I might benefit from stopping and trying to problem solve maybe getting some support with and that might involve like practical and investment as well to try and get external pressures down and then there are internal pressures that is more role of self-improvement and self-healing and you know the role of a psychologist can help with this again absolutely these areas are things that we can do something about but you've got to be aware of what your internal patterns are and know how to slow it all down before responding before you do that so possibly reading my book if you've got time or listening to it on audible or

doing any of your own continued work that you might already have up your sleeve like your mindfulness practices or any other therapeutic approaches compassion focus therapy and acts these are all really really helpful for trying to move through these patterns in a way or change your relationship with them i really hope you found this series of six episodes on burnout helpful i'd love to connect with you in my social media if you would like to find me i'm on Instagram I'm on TikTok I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn you can also like I say check out my book and if you're on my mailing list I love to get replies so do check out my mailing list you can access that via the website all of the links to these are in the show notes

and I will now hand you back to Marianne who who is going to bring you her next episode. As usual, the slightly longer episodes that you are more accustomed to. Thank you very much for having me. And Marianne, thank you for allowing me this platform. Oh, thank you so much, Claire. And it's been lovely having you head up the podcast for this last six weeks, and you've done a beautiful job. So thank you for sharing so generously with my audience. And please, to you, my audience, if you have found it useful, please do join Claire's mailing list. And of course, grab your copy of Burnout, How to Manage Your Nervous System Before It Manages You. If you've already bought it,

please do rate and review on Amazon. I hope you found this to be a really, really wonderful use of the last six weeks of your time. I would love any feedback that you might have about it. Please do come and connect with me and discuss in my free Facebook group, The Aspiring Psychologist Community with Dr. Marianne Trent. Come and connect with me on my happy hangouts on socials. I'm always on LinkedIn, so that's a great place to follow me, but I'm everywhere. Dr. Marianne Trent. Come and follow me on Insta, TikTok, all of those great places. And let me know what content you would like. Don't forget that we have Marianne's motivation and mindset sessions, which happen weekly for free, exclusively in the free Facebook group.

And if you love what we do here on the podcast, I think you will adore what we do in the Aspiring Psychologist membership. If you would like to access that, you can do for just £30 a month with no minimum term. And do remember the free psychology success guide, which you can get by going to my website, www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk, and then head to the top for free resources. If you have already read the Clinical Psychologist Collective and the Aspiring Psychologist Collective, please do drop me some ratings and reviews on amazon and on goodreads i am so privileged that you are part of my world and i will look forward to bringing you the next episode which will be along from 10 a.m on saturday on youtube and from 6 a.m on monday wherever you get your podcasts thank you again be kind to yourself and to those around you and I'll look forward

to seeing you very soon. Take care. to be on your way to being qualified it's the aspiring psychologist podcast with Dr Marianne Turris My name's Yana and I'm a trainee psychological wellbeing practitioner. I read the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. I found it really interesting about all the different stories and how people got to become a clinical psychologist. It just amazed me how many different routes there are to get there and there's no perfect way to become one and this kind of filled me with confidence that no I'm not doing it wrong and put less pressure on myself.

So if you're feeling a bit uneasy about becoming a clinical psychologist I definitely recommend this just to put yourself at ease and everything will be okay. But trust me, you will not put the book down once you start.