200. Burnout Doesn’t Just Happen at Work
Have you ever felt soooo sick of having the same fight with your spouse day in and day out? Like you just want to tap out and never have this conversation ever again?
Or maybe you find yourself locking yourself in the bathroom, because even though you LOVE your kids, you’re overwhelmed from parenting them gently all day long and you’re at your breaking point?
Or maybe you used to get so excited about phone banking and talking politics, but now, you’re curled up in a blanket burrito, because you simply cannot engage for one more minute?
If this sounds like you, you may be experiencing …
(drum roll please)
Burnout.
Yes, that’s right. Burnout is not just a work thing.
It can show up in your marriage, your parenting, your activism, and more.
Whether you’re like YES, THAT’S ME or I’m not there yet, but I also don’t want to wind up there, this week’s episode of Satisfied AF can help you sort things out.
We’ll talk through some ways burnout shows up in the personal sphere, how burnout can spread from one area of your life to another, and yes, what to do if you’re feeling this way and need some help getting out of it.
Want customized support creating your wildly delicious life? Let’s hop on a free consultation call.
I’ll help you understand the blockers you’re facing and how to handle them moving forward. And I’ll share how a three-month 1:1 coaching package could supercharge your progress as well as your satisfaction.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
Why and how burnout can show up in non-work areas of your life.
How burnout can spread from one area of your life to another.
What to do if you’re experiencing burnout in any area of your life.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about burnout in your personal life.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello, welcome back to the Satisfied AF podcast. I’m your host, Kori Linn and today we’re diving into a topic that I know so many of you can relate to. This week we’re talking about burnout, specifically how burnout can show up in so many different areas of your life.
Generally when people talk about burnout, they mean work burnout. But something I have seen over and over again with clients, friends, and even myself is that you can experience burnout in pretty much any area of your life. Think marriage burnout, parenting burnout, and political burnout as examples. Also, once you’re feeling burned out in one area of your life, you may experience cross contamination where you find the burnout bleeding into other areas of your life as well.
So even if you start out with career burnout, which is something I’ve talked about on the podcast before, that could bleed over into another area of your life. Or if your burnout starts in your personal life, it could bleed over into your work life.
There are many reasons and factors that can lead to burnout, but once you’re in it, there tends to be a particular mindset that accompanies it, one of overwhelm, exhaustion, hopelessness and sometimes even despair. And once you start thinking that way in one area of your life, you may find yourself thinking that in another area of your life as well.
So in this way, the burnout mindset can seep from work to your marriage or from parenting to podcasting. This is obviously unpleasant and it’s also dangerous because it can flip the switch from one thing in my life isn’t working but things are generally okay, to many things in my life aren’t working, to nothing in my life is working.
But before we dig in too deeply, let’s do a quick review about burnout. Burnout can show up as a constellation of symptoms. It may be exhaustion, it may be overwhelm, it may be feeling like you can’t do it anymore, like things are just too much. It may be feeling like you don’t have the mental or emotional bandwidth to just deal with the things that are going on, whether that’s in one area of your life or, again, across multiple areas as the burnout can spread.
According to scientists there are six contributing factors of burnout and they are workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values. And that information alone is really interesting and a lot to unpack, so I actually have a whole other podcast episode about that. And if you want to dig deeper in, go check out episode 184 where I talk you through each factor, what it means, what it looks like and what you can do about it in full detail. It’s a very thorough episode. I think you’ll enjoy it if you want to learn more about those.
And then in my work as a coach I’ve also noticed that folks can wind up in burnout land if they try to use certain emotions to fuel themselves and their efforts. For example, sometimes people try to use anxiety or shame to get themselves to behave a certain way, and this makes sense because that’s how a lot of us were parented. We were like, oh, if you don’t do this, you’re bad. Or if you don’t do this, you’re going to get in trouble.
This can be very effective in the short term, like if you need to bang something out this week. But over time it tends to wear people down. Fear or anxiety as fuel, for instance, tend to feel very stressful and over time people become exhausted by those emotions instead of it continuing to be a good source of fuel and something that allows them to hop up and comply with the workload or meet the deadline.
I’m not a scientist but I think this probably has to do with how adrenaline is probably something that’s going on when you’re kind of in that stressed out state. And adrenaline is designed to help you get out of a bad situation, but you’re not supposed to be in that adrenaline state all the time and if you are it can kind of exhaust the body’s resources.
And then shame can be something that gets you to do something, but then you also feel bad about yourself, and then no matter what you achieve, no matter what goals you reach or outcomes you create for yourself, you tend to still feel that shame and so they’re not enjoyable. And it really can wear you down to feel bad about yourself all the time.
So both of those I have seen also get people into the burnout place. For the purposes of this podcast, I think we can keep it kind of simple and think of burnout as a general sense of like, I can’t do this or this is all too much or something here isn’t working that can manifest in a variety of ways.
As a culture, there’s a growing awareness about work burnout and companies, media, and more are constantly offering tips, tricks, and ideas about how to navigate and recover from burnout in the career world. But what about all the other areas of your life? Because spoiler alert, it’s not just your job that can wear you down. It’s not just in your career that you can feel this overwhelm, this exhaustion, this sense of not being able to do it anymore, or sometimes not even wanting to do it anymore.
As an example, think about your relationships, whether it’s with a significant other, your friends, family, or even your kids. These are the people in your life who bring you joy. They bring connection. It’s yummy. It’s delicious. You love them. But sometimes these relationships can become a source of stress, obligation, pressure. Maybe you’re constantly giving, maybe you feel like you’re not getting anything in return, or maybe it’s just like dealing with conflicts, unmet expectations, or the everyday demands of being in relationships with others.
All of this can be something that sometimes we feel really equipped to deal with the demands of being in a relationship, but other times those same demands just feel so overwhelming. We’re so tired of them. We’re just like, oh, this again, it can get to a point where it can feel like too much to handle.
As an example, I think burnout comes up more than folks realize in romantic relationships. So sometimes this could be because women are socialized to take on so much of the caretaking work, the emotional labor, household management, and that’s both unfair and an unsustainable workload. And those are two burnout factors according to the scientists. Again, there’s the full deep dive on that in episode 184.
But even just the work of turning towards your partner, seeing the positive in them and continuing to give them the benefit of the doubt day in and day out is a lot of work. And I know for one that I have sometimes had moments where it seems like too much to ask of myself where I wanted to like lay on the floor and weep, just thinking about how many times over the course of my life I was going to have to do the careful and loving work of navigating a minefield conversation with my beloved partner.
And add on top of that, like all the other factors, right? This is where that burnout can seep in from one area. It’s like maybe your relationship is great, but then you’re feeling burned out in another area and it gets you worn down and then it’s harder for you to show up and have the bandwidth for that other area of your life.
But let’s circle back to relationships. In a relationship that’s intended to last decades, which is generally what people often want in romantic relationships. Like obviously not always, I don’t think anyone needs to be on the relationship escalator or stay with someone for a long time for a relationship to be valid. I think sometimes the most successful thing you can do is end a relationship.
But like for me, for instance, I’m in a relationship that I want to last a very long time. Like this is my chosen partner. I want to be with her. And I do intend for this relationship to last a long time. And I know that’s also what a lot of people intend when they get married.
So in a relationship that is intended to last decades, it can feel daunting to consider the sheer amount of care that you know is required in order to love well and to support a happy and functional relationship. And I understand why one might feel so burned out in a relationship that they’d be tempted to, let’s say like leave and become celibate rather than trying to sort through all the thorns and brambles of that current situation.
That’s just one example for relationships, but let’s also not forget about other areas of our lives where we may experience burnout. We’re living in some pretty intense times, issues like continued Covid surges, elections, inflation, these all bring their own kind of stress and pressure. And I personally understand how one could be burnt out in any of these single issues, let alone the combination of them.
One risk factor for burnout, like I said before, is unsustainable workload. And sometimes just being alive and even mildly aware of what’s going on in the world feels like it checks the box on unsustainable workload. Whether you’re worried about your health, your financial security, or the state of the world, it can feel like you’re always bracing for the next piece of bad news. It’s a lot and it can weigh heavily on the mind, on the heart. Especially if you consider yourself to be like a sensitive person, it can be a lot just to tolerate the sheer amount of information.
So again, we have awareness that work burnout exists and solutions are needed, but what solutions do we have for the burnout that plagues other areas of our lives, especially areas where it’s hard to get a break of even 15 minutes, let alone enough time to recover from burnout? So often I see folks barely scraping by, either in just one area of their life or sometimes in like all the areas of their lives, simply because they can’t get a break.
Maybe they don’t see any other way of doing things and they’re just trying to get through this day, this week, this month, this year. And I get the impulse. I really do. But what I’ve often seen happen in this situation is that folks spend months or even years of their life just getting by from day to day and moment to moment, never really living the way that they actually want to. And then when they finally get out of that phase of life, they’re like, wow, what have I even been doing? Who have I been living for?
And listen, sometimes this is unavoidable. If that’s the case, all you can do is be kind and supportive to yourself as you get through it. Sometimes the only thing we can do is just get through it. But a lot of the time there actually are options, things you can change so that life is not just a series of moments you have to get through.
Another thing I see people do when they feel personally burnt out is to retreat. With work most of us can’t just quit, even if we might want to. But with personal situations like friendships, relationships, marriages, family structures, even things like activism, sometimes folks get too burned out to deal and they just take a step back.
And they may do this without leaving, like tucking into themselves instead of engaging. Or they may retreat in a more literal way, cutting themselves off from people or activities as sometimes that’s the only way they know to get relief from the exhaustion, the overwhelm, and the sense of not being able to handle certain things or people.
Now, obviously there’s nothing wrong with ending relationships or pulling your energy back, but a lot of what I see in this sphere isn’t about ending one thing in order to protect one’s peace or build something else that works better. A lot of times what I see is people pulling back from life because life is painful and difficult, and that person hasn’t yet learned how to navigate those elements in a way that works for them, that allows them to stay.
So this could be a person ending a relationship with someone they love because it’s easier to walk away than it is to be vulnerable and see if the situation is salvageable. It could be giving up on activism that’s near and dear to your heart because you don’t know how to be engaged in this work without getting caught up in burnout and despair about the current realities of the world.
This is one reason I’m really grateful for coaching because I think when I was younger I didn’t know how to stay. I didn’t know how to have difficult conversations. I didn’t know how to try to put things back together when they felt like they weren’t working. And coaching has really given me that toolkit and I’m so grateful for it. And I think my relationship with my significant other, Alex, I don’t think it would exist if I hadn’t gone through coaching and therapy and learned the skills and tools that I have now to be able to be vulnerable and see if there’s a way through.
That being said, I’m also a big fan of leaving situations if they’re not working for you. But I think it’s so important to have choice. And developing the skills to be able to stay and work it out if you want to, that’s a magical thing. And it gives you an even deeper sense of choice, like I said, because now you have the skills to stay and navigate if that’s what you’d rather do. And you could still leave if you want to. But it’s like if you don’t know how to stay, then leaving is the only choice. Then you don’t actually have as much choice.
And I want you to have as much choice as possible, because guess what? Choice is an antidote to burnout. One of the reasons we feel burnt out sometimes is that we feel stuck or trapped, right? It’s like if you go back to that list of factors that I talked about at the beginning, one of them is control. If you feel like you don’t have any control, which is part of what choices are, it’s like being able to say like this or that, and then you get to choose, that’s your control.
If you feel like you don’t have control, that puts you further into a sense of burnout or it’s a further risk factor. But cultivating your sense of choice and then cultivating also the skills to act on your preferred choice, that puts you in a more empowered position, which feels a lot better. And of course, gives you more options.
And I want to just circle back to something I just said, which is like, there’s a sense of choice of like, what could I choose here? What’s possible. But you also need the skills to follow through on a preferred choice. If you don’t have the skills, then making that choice isn’t going to take you anywhere or get you anything.
And that’s also where coaching comes in because coaching in a lot of ways is breaking down what are the possibilities here. That’s the sense of choice. And then like, what do I need in order to engage with any of these possibilities? What skills do I need to build? Maybe emotional skills, maybe literal skills like, oh, I need to learn how to code if I want to do that project, right? And that is what gives you a sense of being in control of your own life and having possibilities, is being able to see the available choices and then being able to either already have or develop the skills to work on them.
So I know a lot of folks can go their whole lives without learning that specific skill set of being able to stay, being able to see if it’s salvageable, being able to have conflict, kind of all the way through, instead of just assuming that something can’t work. You can go your whole life without that.
But I think doing so results in a less happy, more lonely life. A life where it seems like healthy relationships and good job situations are something that happens to other people or something impossible or like a fairy tale thing, rather than something you simply have to like, know how to choose and then know how to show up for and you have the skills to be able to navigate that.
And I want to be clear that I have no judgment about any of the choices folks make when they’re struggling or burned out. Life is hard. Folks are doing their best with the skills and opportunities that they have. And it can be hard to see the breadth of what’s available when you’re deep in the burnout hole, but that’s exactly why I want to help you avoid burnout land in the first place or get out of it if that’s where you currently are.
I don’t want you to be stuck in a life that feels overwhelming, exhausting, hopeless, et cetera. I don’t want you to be stuck unable to enjoy yourself and go after the things you want. That’s why I do the work I do. It’s why I’m recording this podcast episode. It’s why I work with clients one-on-one. It’s why I do lots of free teaching and free calls. I want to help people. I want to help you learn new skills so you can have a better experience of your life and this wild world.
Which brings us to the next question. If you are experiencing burnout in some area of your life, what do you do about that? How do you tackle and solve the burnout, rather than getting stuck in the just getting by loop or winding up, retreating from life as the only way to handle things?
First and foremost, it’s about awareness. It’s important to recognize that burnout is something that can happen in any area of your life. It’s not just something that happens at work. And if you feel burnt out in one area, that may spread to other areas of your life.
This is really important. So many people who are feeling burnt out, turn around and criticize themselves for it, wondering why they can’t just get their shit together, shaming themselves for experiencing burnout. And listen, I understand why people do that. Like that’s how a lot of us were parented and raised, but shaming yourself for experiencing burnout won’t help. And it will likely make you feel worse and slow down your recovery.
So what if we don’t do that? What if we acknowledge that this is a world in which we face a lot of these risk factors for burnout and burnout is something that comes up for a lot of people sometimes. And if you happen to find yourself in it, that doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you and you have options and I can help you figure it out.
And here’s what the tools are that I recommend for figuring it out. So tool one is the ability to choose useful, new perspectives and tool two is making changes to how you’re doing things, right? So one of these is kind of an internal tool, it’s about mindset. It’s about how we think and how we frame things. And the second tool is an external tool. It’s what we’re actually doing. It’s the choices that we’re making. It’s the actions that we’re taking, and sometimes it’s actions that we’re choosing not to take.
So the first one, useful perspectives, is probably going to focus on your ability to handle things and the possibility that things can feel better and that things can work more successfully in time with some changes, right? So this is like where you’re telling yourself a new story. Hey, it’s hard right now and that’s okay and I’ve got you. And we’re going to take care of this. And we’re going to handle it. And we’re going to make some changes and if you’re going to feel better later. It’s not always going to be the way it is right now, right?
So that’s getting yourself into a more kind, loving, supportive, and yes, positive mindset without lying to yourself. This is not like a gaslighting thing. It’s just focusing on the possibility that things can get better versus getting stuck in the narrative that things are bad and they’re always going to be bad, right? So that’s the internal thing.
Then we have the external thing, that’s the changes to how you’re doing things. And that’s probably going to involve things like shifting habits, having difficult conversations and setting boundaries.
Now, these two are going to work together, right? So you’ve got to believe it’s possible that things can get better, and then you have to figure out what actions you need to take to actually help things get better. And then those actions are probably going to be difficult, so then you also have to tell yourself the story of like, okay, I can do hard things. I’ve got this. I can try. I can learn. I can develop these skills. And then these are going to kind of go back and forth between each other and they’re going to bolster each other and help you get to where you need to go.
So thinking a useful perspective and then doing a useful action and then thinking a useful thought about that and about your continued ability to do that, and then continuing to take the useful actions.
So let’s have an example to help this be understandable. If you’re feeling burned out in your relationship, the useful perspective might be choosing to believe that you can have a better experience, that it won’t always be this way. And that you have what it takes to change things.
And the changes to how you’re doing things might be instituting a new household chore agreement. It might be practicing speaking to each other more kindly and factually during conflict. It could be something like signing up to see a couple’s therapist and getting some professional support in cultivating a better dynamic.
And then whatever those actions are that you’re taking, then we’re going to circle back to the perspectives and think useful, kind of thoughts about the things that we’re doing and our capacity to follow through on them.
So of course, it’s easy to tell you to choose a useful perspective and stick with it, even when the going gets tough and it’s harder to actually do that. And the same goes for shifting habits, having difficult conversations and setting boundaries. Most folks know they should be doing these things and yet they don’t.
And that is why I recommend working with a coach as well. A coach can help you identify destructive perspectives and guide you in shifting them into something more useful. A coach can offer new insights, tools, and strategies that you might not have considered on your own.
A coach can help you find out which actions are actually going to move the needle on getting you into a better space, moving you out of burnout into a more resilient and joyful way of being in whatever area that is of your life. And plus having a coach, just having someone in your corner, cheering you on and holding you accountable can make a world of difference.
So to sum it all up, burnout doesn’t just happen at work. It can show up in your relationships, in your response to social issues, and in just about any area of your life. But remember, just because you feel burned out in one or more areas of your life, it doesn’t mean you’re stuck feeling this way. There are tools you can use to combat burnout and get back to living a life that feels satisfying and fulfilling.
And it’s worth doing that work since burnout can be contagious and impact more areas of your life than the first place it appears, right? So it’s like, as soon as you see burnout, that’s a good time to start doing some work on it because the longer you’re in it, the more likely it is, I think, that it’s going to spread to other areas and have more of an impact and you kind of get deeper stuck in it. So as soon as you see it, or even if you can see that maybe it’s coming, that’s a good time to work on it.
If this episode resonates with you and you’re ready to dive deeper into overcoming burnout, I’d love to support you on that journey. Reach out, let’s chat and let’s get you feeling satisfied as fuck because you deserve nothing less.
Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend or leave a review. It helps others find the podcast and get the support that they need to. Until next time, choose useful perspectives and pick some actions that are going to help you get to where you want to go and just keep going back and forth between those.
All right, that’s what I have for y’all this week. I will talk to you next week. You’ve got this. Can’t wait to see what you do with the things you learned in this week’s episode.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello, welcome back to the Satisfied AF podcast. I’m your host, Kori Linn and today we’re diving into a topic that I know so many of you can relate to. This week we’re talking about burnout, specifically how burnout can show up in so many different areas of your life.
Generally when people talk about burnout, they mean work burnout. But something I have seen over and over again with clients, friends, and even myself is that you can experience burnout in pretty much any area of your life. Think marriage burnout, parenting burnout, and political burnout as examples. Also, once you’re feeling burned out in one area of your life, you may experience cross contamination where you find the burnout bleeding into other areas of your life as well.
So even if you start out with career burnout, which is something I’ve talked about on the podcast before, that could bleed over into another area of your life. Or if your burnout starts in your personal life, it could bleed over into your work life.
There are many reasons and factors that can lead to burnout, but once you’re in it, there tends to be a particular mindset that accompanies it, one of overwhelm, exhaustion, hopelessness and sometimes even despair. And once you start thinking that way in one area of your life, you may find yourself thinking that in another area of your life as well.
So in this way, the burnout mindset can seep from work to your marriage or from parenting to podcasting. This is obviously unpleasant and it’s also dangerous because it can flip the switch from one thing in my life isn’t working but things are generally okay, to many things in my life aren’t working, to nothing in my life is working.
But before we dig in too deeply, let’s do a quick review about burnout. Burnout can show up as a constellation of symptoms. It may be exhaustion, it may be overwhelm, it may be feeling like you can’t do it anymore, like things are just too much. It may be feeling like you don’t have the mental or emotional bandwidth to just deal with the things that are going on, whether that’s in one area of your life or, again, across multiple areas as the burnout can spread.
According to scientists there are six contributing factors of burnout and they are workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values. And that information alone is really interesting and a lot to unpack, so I actually have a whole other podcast episode about that. And if you want to dig deeper in, go check out episode 184 where I talk you through each factor, what it means, what it looks like and what you can do about it in full detail. It’s a very thorough episode. I think you’ll enjoy it if you want to learn more about those.
And then in my work as a coach I’ve also noticed that folks can wind up in burnout land if they try to use certain emotions to fuel themselves and their efforts. For example, sometimes people try to use anxiety or shame to get themselves to behave a certain way, and this makes sense because that’s how a lot of us were parented. We were like, oh, if you don’t do this, you’re bad. Or if you don’t do this, you’re going to get in trouble.
This can be very effective in the short term, like if you need to bang something out this week. But over time it tends to wear people down. Fear or anxiety as fuel, for instance, tend to feel very stressful and over time people become exhausted by those emotions instead of it continuing to be a good source of fuel and something that allows them to hop up and comply with the workload or meet the deadline.
I’m not a scientist but I think this probably has to do with how adrenaline is probably something that’s going on when you’re kind of in that stressed out state. And adrenaline is designed to help you get out of a bad situation, but you’re not supposed to be in that adrenaline state all the time and if you are it can kind of exhaust the body’s resources.
And then shame can be something that gets you to do something, but then you also feel bad about yourself, and then no matter what you achieve, no matter what goals you reach or outcomes you create for yourself, you tend to still feel that shame and so they’re not enjoyable. And it really can wear you down to feel bad about yourself all the time.
So both of those I have seen also get people into the burnout place. For the purposes of this podcast, I think we can keep it kind of simple and think of burnout as a general sense of like, I can’t do this or this is all too much or something here isn’t working that can manifest in a variety of ways.
As a culture, there’s a growing awareness about work burnout and companies, media, and more are constantly offering tips, tricks, and ideas about how to navigate and recover from burnout in the career world. But what about all the other areas of your life? Because spoiler alert, it’s not just your job that can wear you down. It’s not just in your career that you can feel this overwhelm, this exhaustion, this sense of not being able to do it anymore, or sometimes not even wanting to do it anymore.
As an example, think about your relationships, whether it’s with a significant other, your friends, family, or even your kids. These are the people in your life who bring you joy. They bring connection. It’s yummy. It’s delicious. You love them. But sometimes these relationships can become a source of stress, obligation, pressure. Maybe you’re constantly giving, maybe you feel like you’re not getting anything in return, or maybe it’s just like dealing with conflicts, unmet expectations, or the everyday demands of being in relationships with others.
All of this can be something that sometimes we feel really equipped to deal with the demands of being in a relationship, but other times those same demands just feel so overwhelming. We’re so tired of them. We’re just like, oh, this again, it can get to a point where it can feel like too much to handle.
As an example, I think burnout comes up more than folks realize in romantic relationships. So sometimes this could be because women are socialized to take on so much of the caretaking work, the emotional labor, household management, and that’s both unfair and an unsustainable workload. And those are two burnout factors according to the scientists. Again, there’s the full deep dive on that in episode 184.
But even just the work of turning towards your partner, seeing the positive in them and continuing to give them the benefit of the doubt day in and day out is a lot of work. And I know for one that I have sometimes had moments where it seems like too much to ask of myself where I wanted to like lay on the floor and weep, just thinking about how many times over the course of my life I was going to have to do the careful and loving work of navigating a minefield conversation with my beloved partner.
And add on top of that, like all the other factors, right? This is where that burnout can seep in from one area. It’s like maybe your relationship is great, but then you’re feeling burned out in another area and it gets you worn down and then it’s harder for you to show up and have the bandwidth for that other area of your life.
But let’s circle back to relationships. In a relationship that’s intended to last decades, which is generally what people often want in romantic relationships. Like obviously not always, I don’t think anyone needs to be on the relationship escalator or stay with someone for a long time for a relationship to be valid. I think sometimes the most successful thing you can do is end a relationship.
But like for me, for instance, I’m in a relationship that I want to last a very long time. Like this is my chosen partner. I want to be with her. And I do intend for this relationship to last a long time. And I know that’s also what a lot of people intend when they get married.
So in a relationship that is intended to last decades, it can feel daunting to consider the sheer amount of care that you know is required in order to love well and to support a happy and functional relationship. And I understand why one might feel so burned out in a relationship that they’d be tempted to, let’s say like leave and become celibate rather than trying to sort through all the thorns and brambles of that current situation.
That’s just one example for relationships, but let’s also not forget about other areas of our lives where we may experience burnout. We’re living in some pretty intense times, issues like continued Covid surges, elections, inflation, these all bring their own kind of stress and pressure. And I personally understand how one could be burnt out in any of these single issues, let alone the combination of them.
One risk factor for burnout, like I said before, is unsustainable workload. And sometimes just being alive and even mildly aware of what’s going on in the world feels like it checks the box on unsustainable workload. Whether you’re worried about your health, your financial security, or the state of the world, it can feel like you’re always bracing for the next piece of bad news. It’s a lot and it can weigh heavily on the mind, on the heart. Especially if you consider yourself to be like a sensitive person, it can be a lot just to tolerate the sheer amount of information.
So again, we have awareness that work burnout exists and solutions are needed, but what solutions do we have for the burnout that plagues other areas of our lives, especially areas where it’s hard to get a break of even 15 minutes, let alone enough time to recover from burnout? So often I see folks barely scraping by, either in just one area of their life or sometimes in like all the areas of their lives, simply because they can’t get a break.
Maybe they don’t see any other way of doing things and they’re just trying to get through this day, this week, this month, this year. And I get the impulse. I really do. But what I’ve often seen happen in this situation is that folks spend months or even years of their life just getting by from day to day and moment to moment, never really living the way that they actually want to. And then when they finally get out of that phase of life, they’re like, wow, what have I even been doing? Who have I been living for?
And listen, sometimes this is unavoidable. If that’s the case, all you can do is be kind and supportive to yourself as you get through it. Sometimes the only thing we can do is just get through it. But a lot of the time there actually are options, things you can change so that life is not just a series of moments you have to get through.
Another thing I see people do when they feel personally burnt out is to retreat. With work most of us can’t just quit, even if we might want to. But with personal situations like friendships, relationships, marriages, family structures, even things like activism, sometimes folks get too burned out to deal and they just take a step back.
And they may do this without leaving, like tucking into themselves instead of engaging. Or they may retreat in a more literal way, cutting themselves off from people or activities as sometimes that’s the only way they know to get relief from the exhaustion, the overwhelm, and the sense of not being able to handle certain things or people.
Now, obviously there’s nothing wrong with ending relationships or pulling your energy back, but a lot of what I see in this sphere isn’t about ending one thing in order to protect one’s peace or build something else that works better. A lot of times what I see is people pulling back from life because life is painful and difficult, and that person hasn’t yet learned how to navigate those elements in a way that works for them, that allows them to stay.
So this could be a person ending a relationship with someone they love because it’s easier to walk away than it is to be vulnerable and see if the situation is salvageable. It could be giving up on activism that’s near and dear to your heart because you don’t know how to be engaged in this work without getting caught up in burnout and despair about the current realities of the world.
This is one reason I’m really grateful for coaching because I think when I was younger I didn’t know how to stay. I didn’t know how to have difficult conversations. I didn’t know how to try to put things back together when they felt like they weren’t working. And coaching has really given me that toolkit and I’m so grateful for it. And I think my relationship with my significant other, Alex, I don’t think it would exist if I hadn’t gone through coaching and therapy and learned the skills and tools that I have now to be able to be vulnerable and see if there’s a way through.
That being said, I’m also a big fan of leaving situations if they’re not working for you. But I think it’s so important to have choice. And developing the skills to be able to stay and work it out if you want to, that’s a magical thing. And it gives you an even deeper sense of choice, like I said, because now you have the skills to stay and navigate if that’s what you’d rather do. And you could still leave if you want to. But it’s like if you don’t know how to stay, then leaving is the only choice. Then you don’t actually have as much choice.
And I want you to have as much choice as possible, because guess what? Choice is an antidote to burnout. One of the reasons we feel burnt out sometimes is that we feel stuck or trapped, right? It’s like if you go back to that list of factors that I talked about at the beginning, one of them is control. If you feel like you don’t have any control, which is part of what choices are, it’s like being able to say like this or that, and then you get to choose, that’s your control.
If you feel like you don’t have control, that puts you further into a sense of burnout or it’s a further risk factor. But cultivating your sense of choice and then cultivating also the skills to act on your preferred choice, that puts you in a more empowered position, which feels a lot better. And of course, gives you more options.
And I want to just circle back to something I just said, which is like, there’s a sense of choice of like, what could I choose here? What’s possible. But you also need the skills to follow through on a preferred choice. If you don’t have the skills, then making that choice isn’t going to take you anywhere or get you anything.
And that’s also where coaching comes in because coaching in a lot of ways is breaking down what are the possibilities here. That’s the sense of choice. And then like, what do I need in order to engage with any of these possibilities? What skills do I need to build? Maybe emotional skills, maybe literal skills like, oh, I need to learn how to code if I want to do that project, right? And that is what gives you a sense of being in control of your own life and having possibilities, is being able to see the available choices and then being able to either already have or develop the skills to work on them.
So I know a lot of folks can go their whole lives without learning that specific skill set of being able to stay, being able to see if it’s salvageable, being able to have conflict, kind of all the way through, instead of just assuming that something can’t work. You can go your whole life without that.
But I think doing so results in a less happy, more lonely life. A life where it seems like healthy relationships and good job situations are something that happens to other people or something impossible or like a fairy tale thing, rather than something you simply have to like, know how to choose and then know how to show up for and you have the skills to be able to navigate that.
And I want to be clear that I have no judgment about any of the choices folks make when they’re struggling or burned out. Life is hard. Folks are doing their best with the skills and opportunities that they have. And it can be hard to see the breadth of what’s available when you’re deep in the burnout hole, but that’s exactly why I want to help you avoid burnout land in the first place or get out of it if that’s where you currently are.
I don’t want you to be stuck in a life that feels overwhelming, exhausting, hopeless, et cetera. I don’t want you to be stuck unable to enjoy yourself and go after the things you want. That’s why I do the work I do. It’s why I’m recording this podcast episode. It’s why I work with clients one-on-one. It’s why I do lots of free teaching and free calls. I want to help people. I want to help you learn new skills so you can have a better experience of your life and this wild world.
Which brings us to the next question. If you are experiencing burnout in some area of your life, what do you do about that? How do you tackle and solve the burnout, rather than getting stuck in the just getting by loop or winding up, retreating from life as the only way to handle things?
First and foremost, it’s about awareness. It’s important to recognize that burnout is something that can happen in any area of your life. It’s not just something that happens at work. And if you feel burnt out in one area, that may spread to other areas of your life.
This is really important. So many people who are feeling burnt out, turn around and criticize themselves for it, wondering why they can’t just get their shit together, shaming themselves for experiencing burnout. And listen, I understand why people do that. Like that’s how a lot of us were parented and raised, but shaming yourself for experiencing burnout won’t help. And it will likely make you feel worse and slow down your recovery.
So what if we don’t do that? What if we acknowledge that this is a world in which we face a lot of these risk factors for burnout and burnout is something that comes up for a lot of people sometimes. And if you happen to find yourself in it, that doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you and you have options and I can help you figure it out.
And here’s what the tools are that I recommend for figuring it out. So tool one is the ability to choose useful, new perspectives and tool two is making changes to how you’re doing things, right? So one of these is kind of an internal tool, it’s about mindset. It’s about how we think and how we frame things. And the second tool is an external tool. It’s what we’re actually doing. It’s the choices that we’re making. It’s the actions that we’re taking, and sometimes it’s actions that we’re choosing not to take.
So the first one, useful perspectives, is probably going to focus on your ability to handle things and the possibility that things can feel better and that things can work more successfully in time with some changes, right? So this is like where you’re telling yourself a new story. Hey, it’s hard right now and that’s okay and I’ve got you. And we’re going to take care of this. And we’re going to handle it. And we’re going to make some changes and if you’re going to feel better later. It’s not always going to be the way it is right now, right?
So that’s getting yourself into a more kind, loving, supportive, and yes, positive mindset without lying to yourself. This is not like a gaslighting thing. It’s just focusing on the possibility that things can get better versus getting stuck in the narrative that things are bad and they’re always going to be bad, right? So that’s the internal thing.
Then we have the external thing, that’s the changes to how you’re doing things. And that’s probably going to involve things like shifting habits, having difficult conversations and setting boundaries.
Now, these two are going to work together, right? So you’ve got to believe it’s possible that things can get better, and then you have to figure out what actions you need to take to actually help things get better. And then those actions are probably going to be difficult, so then you also have to tell yourself the story of like, okay, I can do hard things. I’ve got this. I can try. I can learn. I can develop these skills. And then these are going to kind of go back and forth between each other and they’re going to bolster each other and help you get to where you need to go.
So thinking a useful perspective and then doing a useful action and then thinking a useful thought about that and about your continued ability to do that, and then continuing to take the useful actions.
So let’s have an example to help this be understandable. If you’re feeling burned out in your relationship, the useful perspective might be choosing to believe that you can have a better experience, that it won’t always be this way. And that you have what it takes to change things.
And the changes to how you’re doing things might be instituting a new household chore agreement. It might be practicing speaking to each other more kindly and factually during conflict. It could be something like signing up to see a couple’s therapist and getting some professional support in cultivating a better dynamic.
And then whatever those actions are that you’re taking, then we’re going to circle back to the perspectives and think useful, kind of thoughts about the things that we’re doing and our capacity to follow through on them.
So of course, it’s easy to tell you to choose a useful perspective and stick with it, even when the going gets tough and it’s harder to actually do that. And the same goes for shifting habits, having difficult conversations and setting boundaries. Most folks know they should be doing these things and yet they don’t.
And that is why I recommend working with a coach as well. A coach can help you identify destructive perspectives and guide you in shifting them into something more useful. A coach can offer new insights, tools, and strategies that you might not have considered on your own.
A coach can help you find out which actions are actually going to move the needle on getting you into a better space, moving you out of burnout into a more resilient and joyful way of being in whatever area that is of your life. And plus having a coach, just having someone in your corner, cheering you on and holding you accountable can make a world of difference.
So to sum it all up, burnout doesn’t just happen at work. It can show up in your relationships, in your response to social issues, and in just about any area of your life. But remember, just because you feel burned out in one or more areas of your life, it doesn’t mean you’re stuck feeling this way. There are tools you can use to combat burnout and get back to living a life that feels satisfying and fulfilling.
And it’s worth doing that work since burnout can be contagious and impact more areas of your life than the first place it appears, right? So it’s like, as soon as you see burnout, that’s a good time to start doing some work on it because the longer you’re in it, the more likely it is, I think, that it’s going to spread to other areas and have more of an impact and you kind of get deeper stuck in it. So as soon as you see it, or even if you can see that maybe it’s coming, that’s a good time to work on it.
If this episode resonates with you and you’re ready to dive deeper into overcoming burnout, I’d love to support you on that journey. Reach out, let’s chat and let’s get you feeling satisfied as fuck because you deserve nothing less.
Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a friend or leave a review. It helps others find the podcast and get the support that they need to. Until next time, choose useful perspectives and pick some actions that are going to help you get to where you want to go and just keep going back and forth between those.
All right, that’s what I have for y’all this week. I will talk to you next week. You’ve got this. Can’t wait to see what you do with the things you learned in this week’s episode.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
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