Speaker 1: Flex and Frooms Flex and Frooms. This is the Flex
Speaker 1: and Frooms catch Up podcast. Have we ever experienced burnout?
Speaker 1: Is it more than just a lot of stress at
Speaker 1: a short amount of time? It, unfortunately is. I came
Speaker 1: across this video from doctor Claire Ashley that details not
Speaker 1: only what burnout is, but her personal experience with it.
Speaker 1: And when we come back from listening to that, want
Speaker 1: to talk a bit more about the difference between burnout
Speaker 1: and stress and if we've ever experienced it.
Speaker 2: It takes on average one to three years to fully
Speaker 2: recover from burnout, so prevention really is better than cure,
Speaker 2: and there is a known process, stepwise process into burnout
Speaker 2: that most people are not aware of, myself included because
Speaker 2: I didn't know what was happening to me until I
Speaker 2: hit a mental health crisis. So bearing in mind that
Speaker 2: prevention is so much better than cure if you can
Speaker 2: get yourself before you hit a crisis point, took me
Speaker 2: about six months to go from being fully functional, living
Speaker 2: my best life, being really really functional at work to
Speaker 2: being in a total mental health crisis. And despite the
Speaker 2: fact that I'm a doctor with like twenty years now
Speaker 2: with clinical knowledge and experience, plus a degree in neuroscience.
Speaker 2: I had no idea what was happening to me until
Speaker 2: I hit that crisis point, and it has taken me
Speaker 2: the best part really of four years to get over this.
Speaker 1: When I first heard that video, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe some of us just handle stress a little bit
Speaker 1: better than others. Maybe it's not that deep. But then
Speaker 1: based on watching that whole video, the whole way through
Speaker 1: my whole feed became like burnout top very quickly. And
Speaker 1: there's this one girl who's documenting her experience of trying
Speaker 1: to like unravel her way out of this spiral. And
Speaker 1: she was talking about all these changes that she made
Speaker 1: on her day to day life, and one of them
Speaker 1: was decision fatigue. She was like, I made my life simple.
Speaker 1: I wear the same shirt every day, I've got five
Speaker 1: pairs of them, the same bottoms every day. I ate
Speaker 1: the same food every day. Everything is simple. There's something
Speaker 1: flavorful in my life, nothing colorful, nothing creative. Because my
Speaker 1: mind just can't handle it. I put all of my
Speaker 1: loved ones in one group chat my mom, my dad,
Speaker 1: my friends, whoever, who needs to hear from me for
Speaker 1: me to like speak outwardly to them like a bulletin
Speaker 1: and for them to know that I'm fine, but no
Speaker 1: expectation of this two way communication. I said, WHOA, like
Speaker 1: what happened to you? That this would need to be
Speaker 1: the length that you're taking. So there is a difference
Speaker 1: between burnout and stress. Off the top, stress is more
Speaker 1: like a sense of urgency, physical toiling, like you know,
Speaker 1: my head is scrambled, like I'm making mistakes, I'm clumsy.
Speaker 1: That's stress. Burnout, however, is like lost motivation, feeling helpless, down,
Speaker 1: et cetera. The difference between burnout and stress when you
Speaker 1: put them side by side in a little diagram you
Speaker 1: might do then your head or on a paper. You
Speaker 1: realize that for the most part, when we say that
Speaker 1: high school was stressful, I can see that right. You
Speaker 1: get over engaged. You want to do a lot of
Speaker 1: everything at once. It's creeping up on you. You feel
Speaker 1: really reactive or overreactive when your parents are like why
Speaker 1: haven't you studied? Your teachers like stop talking you like
Speaker 1: you arc up? You are animated in your frustration. There's
Speaker 1: a sense of urgency, What am I going to do
Speaker 1: when I finish? Like no one's telling me should I
Speaker 1: go to the counselor what's happened. Then you might have
Speaker 1: like anxiety about it. But all of this is kind
Speaker 1: of like it's a response to your environment, an obviously
Speaker 1: stressful situation. You're responding accordingly. However, burnout is being in
Speaker 1: these obviously stressful environments or not and disengaging. It's like
Speaker 1: the apathetic response. What would have inspired you previously to
Speaker 1: engage in conflict or to sort it out, or to
Speaker 1: be proactive, you no longer do that. You're disengaged. Also,
Speaker 1: you become quite stifled and distant in your emotional expression.
Speaker 1: So instead of being the person who's like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do something about it, you don't do anything about it.
Speaker 1: You can feel helpless, you can lose your motivation, which
Speaker 1: can lead you to feeling depressed, and it becomes emotionally toiling.
Speaker 1: So stress physically toiling a lot reactive, burnout emotionally toiling, introverted, introspective,
Speaker 1: like in a cave, vibes in a cave. Oh my word,
Speaker 1: do you think you've experienced it? Absolutely? I'm always burnt out.
Speaker 1: But there are times when I feel like, because I'm
Speaker 1: not really good at like checking my mind body connection,
Speaker 1: i can't figure out where it starts to end. Kind
Speaker 1: of like a dream. You just end up in one
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh that, oh that's so whoa, And
Speaker 1: then you wake up and you're like, was that even real?
Speaker 1: Because today I feel fine? So what's the what's the deal?
Speaker 1: What I was trying to figure out is like, is
Speaker 1: burnout on the same spectrum as stress? Like you like
Speaker 1: a lot of stress leads to burnout? How does that work?
Speaker 1: And then I found out that burnout isn't necessarily separate
Speaker 1: from stress, but on like the furthest end of the
Speaker 1: stress continuum. So like, it's fine and normal to experience
Speaker 1: stress regularly, a bit of anxiety that is responding to
Speaker 1: a scenario, but the repetition of that and the intensity
Speaker 1: of that leads you to a far right place that
Speaker 1: can cause burnout if you don't, like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: resolve it. And then it says when chronic stress leads
Speaker 1: you to experience more intense and severe symptoms of stress,
Speaker 1: it appairs your ability to function, and that's called burnout.
Speaker 1: It's like when your ability to function is impaired, I
Speaker 1: mean you cannot do the things you used to do
Speaker 1: with varying levels of ease anymore because of the level
Speaker 1: of stress you're under. Now, I look back and I
Speaker 1: think about parents and you observe them being so stressed
Speaker 1: they can't do anything, and you're like, Oh, that's wrong,
Speaker 1: what's happening? You know when you I remember, like on
Speaker 1: one occasion, if I didn't take like the chicken out
Speaker 1: of the freezer and then my mom didn't get mad.
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, that's strange. What's that about? Burned out?
Speaker 1: And I found out from this article. It was more
Speaker 1: like a research paper, but it was saying that the
Speaker 1: three main features of burnout are overwhelming exhaustion, cynicism and
Speaker 1: detachment from the task, and a sense of not being productive,
Speaker 1: accomplished or effective babes. And that's going to take you
Speaker 1: one to three years to recover. Get out. Get Out.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to the Flex and Frooms Daily podcast.
Speaker 2: For more, tune Indicater on DAB or stream it on iHeartRadio.