The Food Medic - S6 E3: Amelia Nagoski on Burnout

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

Amelia Nagoski, D.M.A. (Doctorate of Musical Arts), is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Music at Western New England University. Amelia is co-author, with her twin sister Emily, of Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. I first came across Emily and Amelia on Brene Brown's podcast and instantl;y bought their book - which I urge you to do so too! Emily couldn't join us for this recording but Amelia did an incredible job of telling us what we need to know when it comes to burnout. This episode covers:- Inspiration behind the book 'Burnout'- What exactly is burnout and how it differs from work-related stress?- “Human-giver syndrome”- Why those in helping professions are more likely to experience burnout.- The causes of burnout and how to prevent it happening- How to recover from burnout.- What fundamental things organisations can do to support their staff and prevent burnout.- How to set and deal with the guilt of implementing boundaries in your work and personal life.- Practical exercises people can do to integrate more down time and rest into their schedules. If you loved this episode make sure to give it a review, rating (hopefully 5 stars) and share it with your friends and family. instagram/twitter/facebook: @thefoodmedicwww.thefoodmedic.co.ukThis podcast episode is sponsored by WHOOP. Right now, you can get your first month free when you checkout through join.whoop.com/thefoodmedic Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm your host as always, Dr. Hazel Wallace. I'm a medical doctor, nutritionist, author and founder of the Food Medic. So I just want to start today's episode with a check-in. How are you? Hopefully you're feeling well and centered, but let's just take a moment to take a big inhale through the nose and a slow exhale through the mouth. I just want you to come center yourself and just be present for the next roughly 40 minutes listening to the show. So today's episode is on the topic of burnout and I know you're interested in this because you've been asking me to cover this on the podcast all year and let's be honest it's not been an easy few months has it? Earlier this year I experienced burnout myself where I mentally,

physically, emotionally just came to a standstill. I completely checked out. In all honesty, I just, I didn't even recognise myself. I was so ready to quit everything I'd worked so hard for and I didn't care. I had no choice but to take some time off work, take some time offline and just stop and re-evaluate my workload to find a sustainable way of moving forward that was healthy for me. I did reach out for help and I did get the support I needed and I have to say now I'm in a much better space but I am deeply aware of how easy it can creep up on you and that's why I'm so passionate about raising awareness and speaking up about this topic. Those working in healthcare and teaching professions are

at particular risk of burnout and I know a lot of you listening work in those fields so I'm thinking of you and I hope this helps. Of course burnout can affect anyone in any profession, even stay-at-home parents. So as we'll hear in this episode, it can affect anyone. Just a flag, I did record this a couple of months ago when the hospitals were still under a lot of pressure with COVID-19. I know some of them still are, but I was working a lot at the time and so I referenced that quite a bit. So today I'm joined by Amelia Nagoski, DMA, who is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of music at Western New England University. Amelia is the co-author with her twin sister Emily of Burnout, The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. I first came across Emily and Amelia on Brené Brown's podcast actually and I was,

I just love the podcast, I just love the episode so I instantly bought the book which I urge you to do so too and I asked if they could come and speak to me on this podcast unfortunately Emily couldn't join us for this recording but Amelia did an incredible job of telling us what we need to know when it comes to burnout. Today's podcast is brought to you by our sponsor whoop whoop is one of the most popular fitness wearables right now it's a 24 7 digital fitness and health coach that provides actionable insights to help you recover faster train smarter and sleep better whoop is unlike most other wearables in the sense that it doesn't just tell you what you've done but it tells you what you really need to know. So I've been using my Whoop for a few months now and I am so impressed with the amount and level of insight it can provide you. So each morning when you wake up you get a

recovery score from Whoop based on your sleep and other recovery metrics such as heart rate variability and resting heart rate. That score helps to guide your day whether you should push yourself and go all out, pull it back a little or actually just take a rest day. The greatest feature for me is the built-in sleep coach which lets you know how much sleep you should be getting based on your expected activity for the following day. It also tracks all four stages of sleep so you can get a breakdown of how much REM and slow wave sleep you got. It's allowed me to figure out ways which work for me to optimize my sleep. Whoop can help anyone perform better.

Whether you're preparing for a 5K, training for an event, or just looking to build healthier habits, Whoop can help you make smarter lifestyle decisions with data that is personalized to you. Right now, you can get your first month free when you check out through join.whoop.com slash thefoodmedic. First of all, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. And I would just love to start by asking you a little bit more about yourself and your background and what inspired you and your background and what inspired you and your sister to write the book Burnout. Well Emily had already written a book called Come As You Are, The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life

and she went around the world really talking to people, mostly women about it and they would come up to her after events and say Emily this book was so great. Thank you so much for all that sex science. Sure. But you know, the one thing that really stood out to me was that like a half a chapter about stress and feelings. And this shocked her. And she told me about it. And I was like, why are you shocked? Because I know that the information about stress and feelings was information that I had learned actually during my conservatory training. I'm a musician. And in conservatory training, you kind of learn how to process and feel feelings for the purposes of expression on stage. So I know that it's a learnable skill. And I also know that just because you learn it in one context does not mean you

learn to use it in the rest of your whole life. And when I did learn to apply it to my actual lived experience, it saved my life twice. So I reminded Emily of that and she said, oh, we should write a book about that. And that's burnout. Let's talk about what exactly burnout is. I think a lot of us use it in our vocabulary anyway. We say, you know, I'm so burned out and just use it in our vocabulary anyway we say you know I'm so burnt out and just use it quite loosely but how do we define burnout is it an official medical diagnosis and how does it differ really from work-related day-to-day stress burnout does have a clinical definition it is not a medical diagnosis it's not a illness. It is a condition brought on by, usually in the,

like the WHO defines it as a condition associated with overwork specifically. We describe it as being brought on by unceasing demands and unmeetable goals. It is not limited to a work context, of course. You can face unceasing demands and unmeetable goals in all the aspects of your life. We define it as the feeling of being overwhelmed and exhausted by everything you have to do and yet somehow still worried that you're not doing enough. In the original definition, they gave it three main attributes of depersonalization, decreased sense of accomplishment, and emotional exhaustion. But in the past 40 years, we wrote our book towards an audience of women. And it's pretty clear in the research that emotional exhaustion is the primary feature of burnout for women.

Yeah. And you mentioned kind of in the book, the different people who are more susceptible to it in different professions. And also the concept of human giver syndrome, which I've never heard of before. Yeah, that's because we invented it. Oh, did you? I love that. It's language that we adapted from a book called Down Girl, The Logic of Misogyny by a moral philosopher named Kate Mann. Her book is about the origins of misogyny and how it's justified in the world. To illustrate it, she sets up a framework of a world with two kinds of people in it. There's human beings who have a moral obligation to live, be, and express their humanity to acquire whatever resources are necessary in order to accomplish that. And also human givers who have

a moral obligation to give their humanity to the beings, to give their time, their lives, their bodies to the human being so that they can be and live and express their humanity. And you can tell, you know, it's a book about the logic of misogyny. So clearly, which one of these is she saying that the women are? Yes, it's the givers. This is a cartoon illustration, like a black and white version of really what's a much more nuanced and complicated idea. But, you know, in this version, it's pretty easy to recognize how this system operates. And most women that we talk to are nodding and crying at this point going, yes, yes, this obligation to give at all times. Now, being a giver is not inherently bad for you.

It's not inherently toxic. In fact, if everyone in the world were a being and felt morally obliged to acquire any resources necessary to live and be their humanity, then the world would be so competitive and so cruel. It would be, well, it'd be a lot like the world we have now, actually. But if we were all human givers, where we all felt a moral obligation to care for the people around us, then we would all be protected by all the givers around us and no one would fall through the cracks and no one would burn out. In the system of beings and givers, that's what makes human giver, being a human giver, a syndrome. And the symptoms

of human giver syndrome are if you feel a moral obligation that you're required for the sake of all the people around you to be at all times pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive to the needs of others. And if you feel at all times that if at any time you fail in your obligation to be pretty, happy, calm, generous, and attentive needs of others, then you deserve to be punished. And if there's no one around to punish you, we will go ahead and punish ourselves. That's when being a human giver becomes a syndrome, a thing that's going to keep you trapped in a cycle of obligation to others who are going to convince you that it's actually your place in the world to be squeezed dry like a tube of toothpaste,

empty with nothing left. And that is in fact what you're supposed to do. That is good and right and normal. But yo, that's not good or right or normal. And so is the solution in putting boundaries? The solution is to remove the responsibility from every individual to maintain their own boundaries and to change the world so that each person is surrounded by givers who will reinforce that person's boundaries for them. To create a society where no individual has to say, no, this is my boundary. And it is inappropriate for you to push that boundary that I have said no, and this is my limit. And then the person responds with, but I need you to blah, blah, blah. Instead, we need to have

the world be a place where a person responds to that with, I understand. I'm glad you're taking care of yourself. I will find another means to achieve what I need. Absolutely. And I love that you say that because I think when it comes to burnout, it's often put back on the responsibility on that person for feeling that way and for sorting out how they're feeling themselves and when it's a system problem. Exactly. Yeah. Which is, it's very interesting. Like we briefly were just discussing before recording that I've been working as a COVID doctor for the last year and no amount of self-care is going to solve how burned out I feel. Yeah, that's a perfect example. Like there, that's what we say in the book, the cure for burnout is not self-care,

can never be. That the cure for burnout instead is all of us caring for each other. Because when there is a system-wide emergency, like a world pandemic, there are just going to be more stressors and there's nothing that can be done until the emergency is over. And then we can't just expect doctors to go home and be like, okay, get better. You've experienced 18 months of intense trauma. Good luck with that. So for doctors and all of the essential workers, there needs to be systemic supports that are put into place to allow them to get back in. Just like when so many people were put out of work initially because the nations shut down, the solution for that was not just

good luck feeding your families. It was putting systems in place to make sure that they could pay their rent, that they could buy food, that they could live while we all took care of preventing people from dying of a virus. No one had control over that. No, of course. And so I guess, I mean, maybe it's a very big question, but what causes burnout and can we prevent it from happening or what can we do? And not just talking about an individual level, but thinking about people who do run organizations perhaps and how they can support people that work for them as well. Yeah, what causes burnout is unceasing demands and unmeetable goals. That's it in any realm of life. And it would be great if we could get leaders of organizations, CEOs of companies, to change

their company culture, where they actually create an atmosphere and a community that allows people to care for themselves and to care for each other, to take naps when they need them, to have flexible work schedules so that they can raise families in addition to being productive contributors to society or to their work life. But the truth is that those companies exist in a wider culture. Emily and I have done talks at some of the biggest companies in the whole wide world, companies who are known for their forward thinking. They have playgrounds and nap pods, and they at least have not just paid lip service to what wellness is like, but they have created infrastructure in their companies, in their actual office buildings to allow people to have access to those things

that are shown in a lot of research to make people more productive, to make them more well. However, those large campuses of many, many buildings and thousands of people who work there exist inside a culture so that even if there are nap pods on campus, even though there is a playground on campus, if you go use those facilities, there's a sense of judgment or fear that if you go use those, it's because you're a wimp and you can't handle the pressure. So it would be nice if we could make individual decisions one-on-one or even just individual decisions within a company. But the truth is that this is a really large-scale cultural problem that stretches all around the West and all of the cultures that the West has influenced.

Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, that means that it makes it feel like, oh my God, then we'll never change that. But the good news is that how we create change is one person at a time making a decision that's going to make whole community around them. And that is the way that change is made, one person at a time, affecting their community and that community, affecting another community, and continuing on until everyone in the world is safe and the world is equitable and just, eventually. Eventually. But it's by having these conversations that we hopefully start that change as well. And when it kind of going back to prevention, one of the things that you talk about in the book is the stress cycle and closing the stress cycle and ways we can do that. And that really stuck with me. You know, when I do finish a long day in clinic, I will try to get

outside and go for a walk and listen to a podcast or just listen to music to close my stress cycle. So can you talk a little bit about this? Sure. The idea is that stress is a physiological cycle. It happens in your body. It's made of neurotransmitters and electrical signals that we have evolved to develop to protect ourselves from things that are a threat. This was not developed for 21st century life. It was developed for the environment of evolutionary adaptiveness. So if you imagine yourself as one of our evolutionary ancestors on the savannas of Africa or somewhere, and you see the world's most dangerous animal coming at you it's

a hippopotamus no but really though it's a hippopotamus and the world's most dangerous animal is coming at you and what happens you might notice your heart is racing and your breath is deeper and your hands are shaky and sweaty how did that all happen it happened because your body released neurotransmitters hormones electrical signals electrical signals, and told every system in your body to make a change for your heart to race, for your breath to get deeper, for your digestive system to please get out of the way. Immune system, we don't need you right now. Reproduction, no, we don't need to worry about babies. If we get smushed by this hippo, there's not going to be any babies. So quit it for a second. We need to run. And so you run,

and you leap, and you jump you jump and you escape and you're hidden between two big rocks where the hippo can't get at you. And he's all grumpy. And then he turns and he huffs and walks away. And you are safe. You have used up the entire stress response. You've burned through all those chemicals and the electrical signals are done. And you feel elated and powerful and the sun shines brighter and you love your friends and family and you are glad to be alive. And when you have that feeling, it's because you've reached all the way through the actual physiological cycle that is the nature of stress that happens mostly below the level of conscious awareness. So that when that same cycle is initiated in us

today by heavy traffic or paying our taxes or like we're in line at the grocery store and the person has 13 items in the 12 item lane and like we feel our heart racing and our breath getting deeper and our hands shaking, we have that same response. But because it is good for society for us to be polite and quiet and wait patiently, we do that. And then by the time that moment has passed, we don't feel the stress in our body anymore. So we think it's just gone, but it's not. You still had that response. So at some point you need to take that back off

whatever mental shelf it got stuck onto and complete it. And so how do you complete it? Well, the most effective way is, of course, you're being chased by the hippo. What do you do? You run. So physical activity is the most effective way for most people to complete the stress response cycle. Emily tells stories about how she would go bike riding through the hills of Pennsylvania and she'd be cresting a hill and the sun shining and she'd feel like at one with the universe and these cows over there. And I literally thought she was making that up because how could that feel like that? Because for some people, exercise is just not it. Exercise is not the thing that's going to help them

feel that complete stress response cycle. It just, everybody's different. So for me, that was not the way in. Luckily, there are many, many other ways to complete the stress response cycle. The next most basic physical one that people certainly need access to is sleep. This is another one that I didn't quite believe because they said, sleep on it. You'll feel better in the morning. And I thought, well, why? Because my problem is not going to go away in the morning. But it turns out that while you were sleeping, of course, your body heals from the work it did that day. And your mind processes not just what it did that day, but a lot of stuff from your whole past gets brought up. You've ever had those crazy dreams where your eighth grade situation in school, that's your brain still knowing that you've got stuff and information and that process

actually can move you through and finish old stress response cycles. So sleep in many ways, one of the most important and effective ways to complete the stress response cycle. And rest is important for so many other reasons. We mentioned sleep in chapter one, where we talk about completing the stress response cycle. But then there's just a whole other chapter about rest. So people have written whole books about rest. We really like Matt Walker's Why We Sleep. So obviously, if you only change one thing after reading the book or hearing us talk about anything, we recommend it be making sure you get enough sleep. Yeah, I'm a big fan of that. I think sleep solves so many problems.

Well, not solves them, but it can help with a lot of things and obviously offers so many other benefits. And I think, well, tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure you mentioned that one of the other ways to close the stress cycle is through hugging. Yeah, there's actually research by a relationship therapist named John Gottman, and he talks about the 20 second hug. I'm going to name another. I'm going to name a lot of scientists.

So there's a research psychologist named Jonathan Haidt, H-A-I-D-T. And he describes humans as 90% chimp, 10% bee. We are a hive species. And the overwhelming majority of humans can find comfort and safety with other people. And there's actually studies that show a hug with someone you love and trust enough to hug for 20 seconds, because that could be an awkward hug with someone you don't really love and trust. So the key to it is both of you support your own center of gravity. You put your arms around each other and you stay together and your bodies feel the proximity of the other body. And you gradually will feel a shift where your body says, oh, right, I'm home,

I'm safe, I'm cared for and protected. And yeah, a 20 second hug. It's not about the 20 seconds. It's about making it long enough that you feel the physical shift. Another one that people really love is the six second kiss. It's not about the six seconds. John Gottman describes it as long enough to be a special moment, not long enough to make the kids late for school, which I think is funny. But again, it's about staying really close and intimately connected with someone long enough that your body understands that it shifts into the state of safety. Yeah, absolutely.

And I guess in the last year, it's something that we didn't really have is that human connection. Yeah, the good news is that we don't need to do this with humans. It is probably the fastest and most effective for the most people. But I, for one, I'm autistic. And that is not sense of safety can come from connection with anything. It's not actually physical human presence that necessarily does the trick, although it is helpful for most people. Anything you have a relationship with that makes you feel seen, known, protected. So that can be nature, a loving divine presence. It can be animals, or it could be just your own internal self and experience. I have conversations with my own subconscious all the time. I don't know how weird that is, but I feel a sense of connection with a part of me that is not on the surface. And that you can also get a sense of connectedness from. It does not have to be other people. Connection is a human drive. We need it like we need food, like we need water. And unfortunately, there is some shame associated with it. Our culture says that you have to do things independently and autonomously to be a fully

developed adult. And that's just not true. 90% chimp, 10% bee, as Jonathan Haidt says, we need each other. We need to be a community. And the pandemic has stood as a physical barrier where we just haven't had access to other people. And that has required people to kind of reach out and find these other ways of getting connection. But the fact that we have had not have access

to this really primal first line that most people will default to is extremely difficult. We say in the book that wellness is not a state of mind, it's not a state of being, it's a state of action. Wellness is the freedom to oscillate through all the cycles of being human. So from effort to rest, from autonomy to connection, and lockdown is the opposite of the freedom to oscillate. When we've been just in one state and denied freedom to oscillate, to change states, that's trauma is what that is. It's a year-long worldwide trauma against every human who's had

to change their lives. We need to take the time to mourn that and to move through all the stress response cycles that have definitely been built up as we hopefully start to come out to the other side, having access and recognizing just because the pandemic's over doesn't mean everything's fine now. The good news about the stress cycle and being able to deal with the stress in your body separately from dealing with a thing that caused your stress is that you don't have to wait for the thing that caused your stress to go away before you start to feel better. So even if you're still in lockdown, you can still do the things that complete the stress response cycle, even if you can't get rid of the thing that caused your stress. But it also means that once this stressor

is over, that doesn't mean you've dealt with the stress in your body. Just because the pandemic's over doesn't mean that you're not still experiencing pain and leftover stuff from what happened. It's going to take us a long time as a society, as a planet to recover both at each individual level, but also as a large-scale culture. The event ends and then we have to keep making sure that we're attending and caring for people as they heal. Healing takes time and it is not straightforward. You have to be okay with it. It's going to be hard and it's going to take a while.

It's not just going to magically poof, now everything's better. Absolutely. And so if someone does burnout, how can they recover? Place to start is with completing the stress response cycles. I mean, that's if you don't learn anything else from burnout, if you learn like the things you could do to complete the stress response cycle, we already talked about physical activity and sleep, but also creative self-expression or even without expression, just like imagination, reading books that give you emotional experiences, take you through a hero's journey,

belly laughter, wild sobbing. These can all help you complete the Stretches Bond cycle. And if you do that first, get some of the feelings out first, that is going to be, you can't do anything else without that. That's the starting place. And I'd say the second thing to do is to create or find your bubble of love. We call it create some connection around you to make sure there are people who are helping you, as we talked about early, defend your boundaries

and remind you that despite all the cultural messages that you're a tube of toothpaste to be squeezed until you're empty, to contradict that message, even though everything you see is telling you that you have to be thinner, you have to be faster, you have to be whiter, you have to be thinner, you have to be faster, you have to be whiter, you have to be richer, you have to be more educated, that you have to be all

these things in order to conform, that pressure, that sense of unmeetable goals and unceasing demands can be counteracted. You can't do it alone because it's just too much mental pressure to fight all those external messages. So when you're surrounded by other people who care for your well-being as much as you care for their well-being, they can remind you, no, you don't have to be anything. You, as you are now, are worthy of love and care. Remembering that on your own is extremely difficult and can actually be a source of stress trying to fight the external messages all on your own. But when you have someone to tell you, you deserve joy, you deserve pleasure right now. You don't have to change. You, just as you are, deserve to be comfortable, deserve to have whatever resources you need in order to feel whole right here, right now. 100%. And I guess one thing that, you know,

we keep bringing up the concept of boundaries. And I think something that I've personally struggled with, and I think a lot of people also struggle with is setting boundaries initially, but also dealing with the guilt of implementing them, the guilt that people impose on you, like, can't you just do this? Or like, yeah, that's human giver syndrome. Yeah. And the cure for human giver syndrome is the bubble of love is to surround yourself with people who will reinforce for you the idea that no, no, no, you don't owe anyone your time, your life. You do not have a moral obligation to give until you have nothing left. In fact, we all have a moral obligation to make sure you don't do that. And when you recognize that someone

in your life is a human being, is treating you as though you have a moral obligation to give to them and that they have a moral obligation to acquire whatever resources you have, it's easier to disconnect from that person and say, aha, this person feels entitled to my timeline, my life, my body, and they are not. Now, it's reasonable for them to have that delusion. In particular men, in particular white men, in particular cis, straight white men who are educated and rich have been taught by society that they are absolutely entitled to all the resources around them and that there's no reason for anyone to say no to them. They believe that because they have

been taught it. And you and everybody in your bubble who understand as you do that that dynamic is unhealthy for the world are creating a different world around us. And it's easier to detach from that person and say, oh, that person is wrong. And they do around us. And it's easier to detach from that person and say, oh, that person is wrong. And they do not actually. And when you really deeply believe that you do not owe anyone your time, your life, your body, your wellness, you do not have a moral obligation to sacrifice your health on the altar of someone else's convenience. You truly right now already deserve to sleep. You deserve to be cared for. You deserve all of that right here, right now. And when you know that sense of moral obligation that the world is pushing on

you is a lie, it's so much easier not to feel guilty because you know that there is no guilt to be had. It does take disconnecting from the lie that is being told to us and to the people who feel a sense of entitlement to us. It's really much easier once you are aware of the dynamic and you can just be like, oh no, that's not true. And I, just as I am, am worthy of care and worthy of resources. Yeah. And I think maybe the hardest place to implement that is in a workplace setting when there's a hierarchy and bosses and things that you need to, I guess, work under. And sometimes it can feel difficult to be the person who says this workload is unattainable and I can't sustain it. And maybe that goes back to what you said initially, where it takes one person to

make that change. Absolutely. Yeah. But I guess I'm just thinking out loud, like, that's not an easy thing to do. No. And in medicine, in healthcare as an industry, in education as an industry, burnout is rampant. I think the average career of a teacher before they burn out, I think is seven years last I checked. What these careers have in common is that they are giving professions. They're professions for caring where historically these have not been prestigious jobs. This is not glorified work. This is considered women's work, and it is dismissed as sort of unvaluable labor. Medicine has changed a little bit in that doctors are seen somewhat more valuable than, say, nurses or home care workers, who are also primarily women. But yeah, in these structures where not only is it company hierarchy,

but also existing within a culture who has mixed feelings about how much they value that person's work. It's not just about the hierarchy of the company is what I'm trying to say. It's about the fact that these careers and these companies exist in a wider culture. And my experiences with academia, because I've been in grad school for years and years, and I've worked in colleges and universities, and the same thing happens where, you know, there'll be a faculty meeting saying, and the dean of the college is saying, here's what I need all go along with it. And then one young chair, and it's her first year as a chair, and she's by far the youngest person in the room, says, wait, I can't ask my department to do that. And that one person now has spoken out.

Will anybody else speak up and say, yes, she's right. This is not doable. This is not okay. Even though they all know it, will they speak up? Will they take that risk? And it is a real risk you can face negative consequences for standing up for things that are just true um fortunately in the field of education public education in the united states teachers are unionized so that

the really egregious logistical impossibilities that have been demanded of teachers can no longer stand up in court. Unions, by their nature, are about empowering the whole group of people who don't have much power when they work together against the power that is above them who are smaller but have legal resources. Then you can create large-scale change. And that's an official legalized bubble of love is what a union is I don't know how that works in other countries or what other kinds of professions but the union is a bubble of love and action yeah that's very true and I think I think after the year that we've had there will be closer examination of like what's going on or at least I hope so especially within like you mentioned those professions

medical professions education where people have been literally working 24 7 across the board and I think working from home has also blurred the lines between work and life like a lot of my friends who usually work in offices have been working at home but then they're working longer hours at home and I'm like how like you don't have your commute. And they're like, well, you know, you feel like you can't switch off. And, you know, there's no, there's nothing, I guess, to close that stress cycle between going to the office, coming home from the office and then going to your home. Yeah, there's nothing, there's nothing to draw a boundary, except you and your confidence and surety that you deserve to have that time for yourself

and that you don't have a moral obligation. It's impossible to do alone. You can't just be in your house and decide, I am worthy of time and love independently of what my boss tells me because your boss is telling me, I need you available 24-7. Who are you to say no to that? Well, who you are is a human being, blessed and given life and the spark of spirit and soul on the planet. You, just because of your existence, are endowed with the right to live and to be a person and to care for others and to care for yourself just as much. That's the right you have. You don't have to change anything. But holding on to that moral confidence alone is the problem. When you're working from home, there is no physical barrier that you can use as an excuse

to say, I'm not working right now. When you're at home, the only barrier that you can set up that says, I'm not working right now, is your own beliefs. And that's not considered as worthy as a physical logistical boundary. And that's the large scale cultural thing. So if you surround yourself with other people who are going to convince you that message you're getting is wrong, it's much easier to stand and to say, no, no, my work hours have ended I am no longer working yeah you know I'm saying no I completely get that and I yeah no it's it's good you know sometimes I'm working from home and it applies there but from from speaking to people it just seems to be

that they feel almost obligated to constantly be online. And previously, it may not have been possible for them to actually do their jobs from home because they didn't have maybe the right software or whatever it might be. But then obviously, when we're pushed into this pandemic, and we're in the situation where we have to work from home, things are made possible. And now that they're made possible, and everyone's going back to the office you've got big companies who are like actually you can continue to work from home and you have people who are really burning the candle at both ends because they don't have like that clock off time at 5 p.m where they have to get the train home and so yeah it's a I think we're going through this transition between our work and our life and the whole world has been turned upside down.

And so navigating our way out of that, it could go one or the other way. This might be a good thing about the pandemic that it has pointed out. Look, this question of boundaries of who's allowed to demand your work at all hours, this is not new. It's just been made visible by the pandemic. This attitude from employers that, of course, we can demand that workers do whatever is physically possible. Of course, we can just ask them to work at all hours. That has always existed. And now kind of the veil has been pulled back from it so we can see it more explicitly. But it's not a new problem. And now maybe this is an opportunity not to rely on the excuses, but actually to demand to say, you don't have the right to my time work I'm going to do. I will do my best to do that, but I am not obliged to give you everything I have. I am not a tube of toothpaste to be squeezed until I'm empty. Yeah, that's it. And I guess what I'd really love to kind of round up the podcast on is, like you mentioned, there's a whole chapter of unrest in your book, Burnout. And I wonder,

are there any kind of practical exercises people can do or with their diary, with their calendar to integrate more downtime and rest into the schedule and be really firm on that? Yes. One of the most valuable things that I think is in the book is a worksheet where it's just a 24-7 calendar, 24 hours each day, every day for seven weeks. And you write down what you actually do with every moment of every day. When are you at work? When are you commuting if you are? When do you do childcare stuff? When do you do taking care of your house and grocery shopping? When do you sleep, et cetera? And you fill out the whole thing and you look at your actual real life

schedule. And then you fill out another one that is your dream schedule. When would you like to work? When would you like to do childcare? When would you like to clean your house, go grocery shopping? When would you like to sleep? And you compare these two. For me, this was eye-opening. I did the two and I went, no wonder I feel like crap. I'm getting like half the sleep I need to have. I'm trying to do way too much. And just seeing those laid out helped me see, oh, these are the changes I have to make. Because seeing it on a page, it's then easier to see the things you can cut out. Well, obviously, I'm working 14 hours a day. I need to stop that. Now, just saying I shouldn't be working 14 hours a day is easy to do. I'm just going to say that. Actually, making that change is more difficult.

But once you see it laid out, it really becomes more clear about what the priorities are that have to change. But also don't take for granted little rests, a 20 minute nap, even just a short daydream where you just sit and let your mind wander. That is rest. For people who are exercisers naturally, physical activity can be rest. Anything that is shifting gears using a different part of your brain or a different part of your body is rest for the other one that was working. So it doesn't mean you have to stop doing anything. It just means that you shift gears. Yeah, I love that analogy, just the kind of shifting gears and changing attention. And I guess I'm thinking

of the other benefits when you say that, like even the 20 minute nap or a short burst of exercise, whether it's, you know, very low impact or what it might be, also can like help improve your concentration and probably improve your productivity or it just improve your mood. And so you're kind of getting all of these benefits, but we don't really have that flexibility in our work schedules anymore it's something that I'm trying to achieve I know in my life and also my personal life like now that the world's opening up over here in the UK we've just kind of had lifting of restrictions so you can actually go inside a restaurant and have food now and yeah it's very exciting um You're also allowed to hug people. So closing the stress cycle that way

as well. But suddenly my diary is like booking up really quickly. And there's like this pressure to be doing things and seeing people and the introvert inside of me is like, Hazel, you need to dedicate some time to just being by yourself. And that's hard. Yes. Well, I'm here to tell you, you not only need to dedicate time for yourself, but you deserve to dedicate time for yourself. Other people have needs and they're going to want to meet you for drinks or dinner and they're all excited to be out and they're extroverts and they want other people, but you don't have to give that to them. You do not have a moral obligation to give more than you have. And if these people care about you and want to see you, they are going to be thrilled to know that you are caring for yourself.

When you say, you know what? I've been out twice already this week. I need tonight to do some introvert time. They're going to be like, good for you. That you deserve introvert time. And if they care for your well-being as much as you care about theirs, they're going to make it really easy. And the only pressure that's just coming from inside you.

And they can help you get rid of that. Totally. And I think like when you flip it on its head, like if someone turned around to me and said, you know, Hazel, like I just really need an island by myself. I'd be like, you do that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

And they feel the same way about you. When people care for each other, they can have that kind of interaction. That's how we change the world. Because then those people, you, your friend who you were happy for, you both feel better and cared for. And you have a little more energy in your life to give a little more forward to someone else so that they feel cared for and safe. And then they have more energy. And now you can all go on marches and fight for social justice and create large scale change and unionize. And you know what I'm saying? Those little interactions build upon each other and create large scale systemic change. Large scale systems are made of individual choices. And that's how we begin. That is wow.

What a conversation. I feel like I mean, I'm sure people listening to this are thinking, well, hopefully going away with a lot of things. And it's really empowering to listen to you. And yeah, validating, I guess, is the word to have. I'm so glad. It's been a therapy session for me, Amelia. So I guess for people who want to read the book, is it available in kind of on online on all major retailers? Yeah, it's it's it's basically I think in the UK, the title is burnout, the secret to solving the stress cycle. In the US, it's burnout, the secret to unlocking the stress cycle

because I get I guess the British publisher enjoyed alliteration more. Yeah. We're also doing a podcast called the Feminist Survival Podcast. And in the next few weeks, we'll be talking about how to listen to your body. And I have just started a YouTube channel about burnout prevention for autistic people. Oh, wow. I love that. Yeah. It's called Autistic Burnout. It's easy to find.

Okay. It's brand new. That's amazing. Great. But thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. And for all the work that you're doing. Okay. It's brand new. That's amazing. Great. But thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you. And for all the work that you're doing. Oh, it's my pleasure.

Okay, guys, that was Amelia. I hope you enjoyed the podcast as much as I did. I found it so therapeutic just speaking to her. And so validating, as I mentioned in the show. But if you do want to learn more about Burnout, like I mentioned earlier on in the show, you can check out their book, Burnout, which is available online to purchase. But hopefully this did offer you some insights. Maybe it helped you understand how you're feeling or maybe you know someone who could benefit

from this podcast episode and if so please do share it with them as always if you enjoyed it please leave a rating and a review because it really does help I'll see you again next week