Show Notes
Patricia and Nicole chat about the not-so-secret primary causes of burnout and what you can (and can’t) do about it.
This episode is based on Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice Volume 1, Issue 5: Prepping for Meltdowns, Volume 3, Issue 18: On Burnout and Individual Responsibility, and Volume 4, Issue 7: Filling the Well
Mentioned on the show:
- Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski, PhD and Amelia Nagoski, DMA
- Spell Slot Theory episode
- Already Enough: A Path to Self-Acceptance by Lisa Olivera
- Yousician
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Sound editing by Jen Zink
Transcript
[Intro music]
Patricia: Hello, my fellow pleasures to have in class! Welcome to Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice, the podcast for folks who would rather curl into the fetal position than lean in. I’m your host, Patricia Elzie-Tuttle.
Nicole: And I’m your co-host, Nicole Elzie-Tuttle. We are recording this show on February 12th, 2024.
Patricia: Woo!
Nicole: Woo-oo!
Patricia: [Laughter] Every two syllable word in our house turns into the Duck Tales theme song.
Nicole: Yeah, I gotta be careful. I don’t want to get, like, busted with some sort of Disney copyright.
Patricia: Yeah,
Nicole: situation.
Patricia: We gotta be careful about that. But a little bit of housekeeping. Ideally, by the time you are listening to this show, we will have all of our episodes uploaded on to YouTube, so you could listen to us on YouTube and YouTube music. We know Google Podcast is doing a weird thing, so, and we know a lot of people like to use YouTube for listening to shows, sometimes watching videos. We’re not necessarily right away gonna have videos of us, but, uh, we might, we might have something up there, but we’ll definitely have the audio.
Nicole: Yeah, we’ll figure out something to make it look good.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: It’s not just our faces. Well, maybe the faces that are drawn on the, uh,
Patricia: Logo?
Nicole: Logo. Yeah, that’s the word.
A big shout out and thank you to RE7&18 RE7 and 18? On Apple Podcasts. Thank you for the written review. It was really great, and we are so happy to continue to keep you company on your hot girl walks.
Patricia: I’m so excited that we are somewhere else doing a hot girl walk with someone.
Nicole: You know, hopefully my Apple Watch will start logging that as part of my exercise. I would like to get
Patricia: You’ll start just getting steps.
Nicole: I would like to get credits for these hot girl walks that I’m, uh, evidently going on.
Patricia: Ditto.
Nicole: [Laughter]
Patricia: And also, a little update. So, we are recording this on February 12th, and we have made our appointments for our nose piercing, so by the time you’re listening to this
Nicole: We’ll have some extra holes in our faces.
[Laughter]
Patricia: Like, consensually?
Nicole: Yes. Definitely, consensually. I already signed paperwork saying I consent.
Patricia: Likewise. There was a lot of paperwork for this, so. Hopefully, I don’t chicken out.
Nicole: Yeah, same. We’ll hold each other’s hands and be brave together.
Patricia: Okay. Buddy system.
Nicole: Definitely the buddy system. That’s how we’re kind of doing this whole life from this point.
Patricia: So for today, we have possibly a lengthy show. Today, we’ll see how long this goes. As much as we are trying to distance ourselves from stereotypical self-help, I feel like this show can’t go on much longer without talking about burnout. I’m inclined to think that anyone listening to the show is already familiar with the term burnout, but just in case when we use the term burnout, we’re referring to prolonged physical, mental, and/or emotional stress.
Nicole: Right, and if you look into the research on burnout, there are three main components of it. The first being a chronic feeling of exhaustion, either physically, emotionally, or both. A loss of enthusiasm, empathy, caring, or compassion, and a decreased sense of accomplishment or inability to do things that need to be done, either at work or to maintain your home life, and this is particularly due to a sense of futility.
This can affect many people in different ways, and it can be different for everyone, but some typical identifiers of burnout are things like disrupted sleep, and this can be either too much or too little, and this was something when I was taking EMT classes to be an EMT, gosh, over a decade ago, this was one they really warned us about was to watch out for the people you care about or, you know, your partner mentioning that they’re having trouble sleeping or something’s changed in their sleeping. That was always a big red flag for us, but it can be other things too.
There can be kind of this crankiness or there can be changes in appetite or digestive problems can also have like a mental or physical kind of collapse. Definitely a feeling of emptiness, isolation, but also neglecting personal needs or sometimes even substance abuse.
The other thing about burnout is it’s most commonly discussed in relation to people’s work or job or jobs, plural, but it can really come from any aspect of your life in which you’re facing chronic stressors that particularly tax or exhaust you emotionally.
Patricia: I think it’s important to point out that it’s not necessarily just a singular one of these ways it shows up. Like it’s not necessarily just exhaustion or just irritability, but it is a combination of more than a few of these things over a prolonged period.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s really one of the keys is that prolonged period, particularly with that chronic feeling of exhaustion, but any of these other things can show as a kind of result or in combination with that.
Patricia: So, of course, we can Google all kinds of suggestions for curing burnout and you’ll get books and articles and listicles.
Is listicles even a word that’s used anymore?
Nicole: It might be an old timey internet word.
Patricia: Ye olde listicles.
Nicole: [Laughter] Whoa.
Patricia: [Laughter] Never mind.
Nicole: [Laughter]
Patricia: You’ll find snazzy images on Instagram made with Canva, and you’ll find all these myriad ways to cure your burnout. And I’m going to say something that I’m sure you don’t want to hear.
I don’t believe there is anything we can do as individuals to cure burnout. For most of us, if not all of us, burnout is caused by systemic issues, even if it’s caused by our jobs. It’s caused by not earning a living wage, or not enough pay, or inadequate paid time off, or understaffing, or inadequate child care options.
Burnout is caused by misogyny and anti-fatness and ableism and racism and the constant fire hose of violence we consume by being on social media.
Nicole: And there is so much talk about burnout, in particular as it relates to the labor we produce under capitalism. But I really think that the things you just mentioned are bigger drivers of burnout that we are seeing in this kind of epidemic of burnout today, and the causes for it are multifactorial. It is, of course, the big picture things like patriarchy and white supremacy and anti-trans legislation and threats to reproductive rights. But it’s also the things that make it difficult to live, like high costs of healthcare and childcare and food and housing, which, okay, I know, I know, these ones really are all just caused by unchecked greed and capitalism. But it is difficult to continue to care and hold emotional space, let alone be a, quote, productive member of society, when there is a genocide happening, and…
Patricia: Multiple genocides happening.
Nicole: Multiple genocides happening, and everything is so expensive that you aren’t sure if you’re going to be able to eat three times a day next week. And then Jesk, go over in the next cubicle, still gets your name mixed up with the other person of color in the office.
And there is nothing we can do as individuals to fix most of these things. And even if we tell people, go get a new job, that really isn’t realistic for most people. That’s also not going to fix things like institutionalized white supremacy.
Patricia: Yeah, we are not going to spa day ourselves out of burnout caused by capitalism. We are not going to workplace wellness ourselves out of prolonged stress. We are not going to yoga retreat ourselves out of patriarchy. We are not going to therapy ourselves out of white supremacy. And this is literally a conversation I’ve been having with my own therapist.
Burnout is caused by systemic issues.
Nicole: Ugh. Now how am I supposed to sell you my 90 days to extinguish your burnout seminar and then get you to subscribe to my daily meditation and journaling prompt sub stack? That is definitely not gonna magically get everyone healthcare, is it?
Patricia: Probably not.
Weirdly enough, I have alleviated some of my own stress by practicing a bit of radical acceptance, that is, to recognize and accept that this is the reality I am living in.
Some of my additional stress was coming from beating myself up over not curing my own burnout. From being upset at myself for not taking enough walks, or not doing enough breathing exercises, or not doing the right things during my days off, or somehow not cultivating enough gratitude. For a long time, I’d successfully convinced myself that it’s my fault I was subject to burnout.
Sure, there is always too much on my plate, so I’m not fully absolving myself of responsibility, but being on an additional committee or hiring panel is totally not the bulk of my stressors.
Nicole: And it is totally a feature of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism to gaslight us all into thinking that we ourselves are at fault for how we feel under these oppressive systems.
If we each are trying to fix our burnout on an individual level, then that keeps us from turning an eye toward the systemic issues that are the real source of all of this. But also, we’re not going to fix the fact that it’s unsafe for the two of us to travel to over half the states in this country overnight.
How do we deal with the burnout we’re feeling right now, Patricia?
Patricia: I know I just said that there’s no cure for burnout, and I really, like, the cure is that there need to be some major shifts in power, and I think there are things that we can do to mitigate the effects of burnout, while also trying to tear down the systems that are making us feel this way.
So, Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski wrote Burnout, The Secret of Unlocking the Stress Cycle, and I do appreciate their research based approach. They talk about the difference between the stressors and the stress and how getting rid of the stressor, that is the thing causing the stress, still doesn’t necessarily help get rid of the stress itself that is living in our bodies.
They offer concrete ways to complete the stress cycle, like physical activity, breathing, positive social interaction, laughter, affection, crying, and creative expression. And they get into details in their book, and they absolutely do not shy away from acknowledging that patriarchy is one of the primary things causing so many of us to suffer from burnout.
Nicole: Whenever I’m having a rough time or a bad anxiety or a burnout meltdown, I’m usually not in the position to go find that particular book on our, what, at least ten bookshelves in the living room alone, but then find that book, flip to whichever page has a list of suggestions, and then say to myself, “ah, yes, I’m having a bit of a meltdown. I should drink some water. Maybe take a spin on the exercise bike. Then maybe I’ll have a snack.” It’s uh, not in the best mind to do that kind of thing. So it’s actually helpful to make a list of things that can help yourself in those moments.
Start with basic needs like, are you in a safe place? Have you eaten? Have you had any water? Have you had any rest? Are you at a comfortable temperature? Maybe you just need to have a good cry, or maybe you do need to move your body, especially if you’re like me and you sit like a shrimp at a desk all day. Maybe you need to go look out a window, or actually step outside for a couple minutes and not look at a screen. I know sometimes for me just a hot shower helps.
Patricia: Maybe you need a hug. Brainstorm all of these things and write them down in a place that is accessible and brainstorm these things when you are not at the height of your discomfort. Do them when you’re feeling okay or okay ish. And write them down maybe in a couple of places.
Maybe in your notes app and also on a piece, like a physical piece of paper. Or if you’re a planner person, then maybe write them in your planner. I know for me, and at least a couple of listeners, we hoard notebooks and journals, so we can totally use one for this. I actually have a daydream about a craft project I want to do, which is to make, like, a Guide for Caring for and Feeding Your Patricia, because also if you have a spouse or a roommate or a best friend or another adult you live with or around frequently, give them this list too. Make a zine. Do whatever you need to do to let them know these things, so that in your really tough moments, they have a starting point with how to help you. Another thing you can do in these is make a playlist. Make your feel good playlist. Just start gathering those songs that never fail to lift your spirits.
Nicole: Do we need to make one for both of us and put them together in a tabbed three ring binder like some of those emergency preparedness situations? We can also include some of those weird Spotify scannable playlist link things.
Patricia: Uh, we could also include, like, some QR codes to cat videos.
Nicole: Yes. Definitely.
Patricia: I’m imagining, like, Ikea instruction type graphics.
[Laughter]
Nicole: Not even words, just like…
Patricia: Not even words.
Nicole: funny, like, line drawing person wrapping the other in a blanket.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Holding a plate of food.
Patricia: Perfect.
Nicole: Great. I am not an artist.
Patricia: I can play one on TV.
Nicole: Good enough.
Patricia: So, in addition to that care and feeding guide, which hopefully gets you back to some baseline of functioning, I also think about refilling my well.
By that I mean reclaiming some energy, bandwidth, spoons, spell slots, hearts, hit points, whatever you want to call it.
Nicole: For our frequent listeners, you know that in our home we use the term spell slots and We shared extensively about our use of that term in a previous episode titled, Spell Slot Theory.
Patricia: [Laughter] Your voice is killing me.
Nicole: [Laughter]
Patricia: I was inspired by Lisa Olivera, author of Already Enough, A Path to Self Acceptance, when she posted a list in her Instagram stories last April that she titled, Places to Get a Dopamine Boost Other Than My Phone. I started making my own list and realized that it would be helpful for me to break things down into categories.
And a little side note for the internet here. I’m going to use the phrase, filling my well. And I know that is not how a water well works. You don’t walk up to it, pour water into it just to get water back out of it. But I’m using the term well in the other definition, like when a person is going to make pasta and they have all their flour in a pile, and then they make a little well to put the egg yolks in before combining.
Anyway, I categorize these ways of filling my well into cups, buckets, and garden hose.
Nicole: And when you made this list, I, I seem to remember some discussion about making sure you in particular did not include things that involved participating in capitalism or spending long amounts of time in front of screens, right?
Patricia: Yeah, I did mostly stay away from screens. I definitely tried to not involve capitalism in my list, but if I’m gonna use a screen for any of these things, it’s going to be really deliberate. And in a way, again, that fills my well and doesn’t deplete it like doomscrolling.
Nicole: That makes a lot of sense. Doomscrolling typically does not refill one with…
Patricia: What you don’t feel better after doomscrolling?
Nicole: Are we still even using doomscrolling? I don’t know.
Patricia: I don’t know, but I still do it, so.
Nicole: Okay, so we have cups, buckets, and a water hose. All for dumping spell slots into a well?
Patricia: Eh, all for replenishing our spell slots, or all for filling our well of, I don’t know, dopamine? Maybe?
Nicole: Oh.
Patricia: So I make the differentiation by imagining the ratio of effort and accessibility versus the payout. So, cups are things that take minimal effort to do, and I can do most of them anytime without leaving the house, and they don’t take a large amount of time to do. Cups are also things I can do every day, or multiple in a single day, like putting on a song I like to sing to and singing along, or texting a loved one to tell them I appreciate them, giving you a hug. Eating some cheese, reading something fun.
Nicole: For me, this would be things like dancing around to a fun song for a bit. Side note for long time listeners, you’ll remember I mentioned that I don’t dance on an earlier episode.
Patricia: Wait, so, so did you just lie?
Nicole: No, I don’t dance for other people.
Patricia: Okay.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Just for me.
Nicole: Yes.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: Um, but other things would be like going outside and admiring the plants in our garden.
Patricia: Things I would consider buckets, like the next size up, take a bit more time and resources, whether it’s physical resources, internal resources, time, or a combination. They involve a bit of planning and have some restrictions.
They also have a bit of a heartier payoff than the things in the cups group. So, things that I would consider as a bucket are maybe baking something, or cooking a meal that takes more than a little effort, like beans. Maybe doing some plant care, or going for a walk, writing some snail mail, or even trying a new restaurant for takeout.
Nicole: Oh, definitely trying a new restaurant. We should do that soon.
Patricia: We should.
Nicole: Yeah. Buckets is where a lot of my little creative projects fall into, and this is things like writing snail mail, or working on some of my super secret projects.
Patricia: Your super secret projects that I can’t know about?
Nicole: Not until it’s time to know about them and they won’t be super secret anymore.
Patricia: Hmph! Well, garden hose things are things that take planning and can have multiple variables and moving parts. It may also depend on other people’s schedules, like having guests over for a meal or going to see a show, which means possibly buying tickets well in advance. Or also something like taking the cameras for a spin at the aquarium.
Nicole: Yeah. This is definitely where things like little day trips to places like the beach at low tide to poke around and find shells and rocks or go on a little hike and take some pictures and stuff like that. That’s where this falls for me. So we just talked about a lot of things. Really fast. What do we want to make sure everyone takes away from this episode?
Patricia: Oh, well, I think my first takeaway is if you’re feeling burned out, it’s probably not your fault and there’s unfortunately not necessarily a magical cure for it. We’re living under systems that depend on us feeling like garbage so that we continue to be distracted instead of investing in each other and focusing on tearing these systems down.
Nicole: That being said, there are many ways we can mitigate the effects of this. And it’s important that when you make your own lists and guides, that you share them with your trusted loved ones, that you have them in accessible places, and that you can do this when you’re not in the middle of a meltdown.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: So, I probably shouldn’t keep mine in the freezer behind the ice cream.
Patricia: Probably not.
Nicole: Although ice cream totally helps.
Patricia: Ice cream might be a cup. I wonder if that’s a cup.
Unless we’re making
Nicole: Yes!
Patricia: the ice cream ourselves.
Nicole: Unless we’re making ice cream. Then does that fall into a bucket?
Patricia: Maybe unless we’re also picking the fruit to make the ice cream ourselves.
Nicole: Oh, then it’s a day trip and now we’re into a garden hose. Do y’all see how this works? All for ice cream to help alleviate your burnout.
Patricia: We’ll do almost anything for dopamine.
Nicole: [Laughter]
[Intermission Music]
Patricia: So I kind of mentioned our resource for the week, which is Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amilia Nagoski, they’re sisters. And I do want to say, it’s one of those times when you read something, or you get a bit of advice, and you’re like, that can’t possibly work, or it’s something you don’t want to do, and then you get upset that it actually does work, which, in my example with this book, they really talk about exercise as unlocking the stress cycle. And it got me to get an exercise bike, not a Peloton, just a simple foldable exercise bike inside the house.
And I am distraught with how much it helps with stress, because it’s, it’s so helpful. And yeah, I’m just bothered because it’s like, wait. That’s it. That’s what I had to do. And of course, like I mentioned, they have a bunch of other recommendations as well, and it’s not one size fits all, but.
Nicole: Yeah, I’m not as good at riding the bike as you are, but the times that I do, it’s definitely like, “Okay, got that out.”
Like,
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: It’s almost annoying in how it works.
Patricia: I’ve, I’ve definitely gotten on the bike after I’ve gotten an email that annoys me or something. I don’t reply to the email. I just like pedal for five minutes. Just like work it out.
Nicole: Okay, so aside from things in general, like putting on a song that you like to sing or hugging me. What is filling your cup, particularly this week?
Patricia: This week, it is learning piano. After my mom passed away last year, I was on, what, Facebook Marketplace or something. I had been keeping my eye out for a full size keyboard, and this is a full size keyboard, and someone was selling it because she was moving out of state, and so I got a keyboard, and I only took piano for maybe a year during college, and then after I graduated from college, I took a few more lessons from, uh, a, actually a retired nun that I found. A retired nun who gave piano lessons and I took some lessons, but I never really learned really how to play anything other than sounding out the melody because I was a singer.
And so my goal is to eventually learn how to play enough to accompany myself singing. And I’m just using like a piano learning app. I’m, I happen to be using Yousician for anyone. They’re not sponsoring the show, but for anyone who wants to know I’m using Yousician and I’ve just literally been doing C major chord, right hand stuff.
But they gave me a little certificate the other day that was like, congratulations, you’ve passed level one. And I was ridiculously excited.
Nicole: Yeah, you definitely jumped up to like, show me.
Patricia: I screenshotted it and sent it to my dad like I’m five years old.
[Laughter]
Nicole: Do we need to print it out and put it up next to the written reviews?
Patricia: Maybe, yeah.
Put it on the
Nicole: fridge?
Patricia: Yeah, put it on the fridge. We need to make a, we need to make a spot and print out those reviews and also my Yousician certificate. How about you, Nicole? What’s filling your cup right now?
Nicole: It finally stopped raining for a couple of days. And I went outside and my chaos garden is already sprouting up.
So last year, late spring, I bought a packet of California wildflower seeds. And we had a patch of dirt in front of the house. And I just threw all the seeds down and I let everything just grow wild and go to seed. And now those seeds are already starting to grow up. Right now it’s really a lot of California poppies.
But I can go out there and I have all these soft little plants and I can just spend a couple minutes and like pull out a weed or two and it’s just been a really nice little, little way to stop my day. If anyone wants to check in on Instagram, I usually put out little videos, but I’m just very excited to see what happens to it this year.
Patricia: I cannot wait for all the poppies to bloom because at the risk of sounding like a weirdo. California poppy orange is like the perfect orange to me. Like the color, it’s just like the perfect orange.
Nicole: And it, it’s so bright.
Patricia: Yeah. Meanwhile, because of climate change, my tulips began sprouting in, at the end of December. And so…
Nicole: That’s not the right time, is it?
Patricia: That’s not the right time. These, these tulips were actually supposed to be late season tulips, so they were supposed to come up at like, I don’t know, April or something. So uh,
Nicole: Oh no.
Patricia: We’ll see. We may have some early tulips or, or something. I don’t know, but they’re coming up, so.
Nicole: Oh dear.
Patricia: Oh, dear.
That’s our show for today. We’d like to thank our awesome audio editor, Jen Zink. You can find her at loopdilou.com. We’ll leave a link to that in our show notes.
Nicole: You can find the full show notes and transcript at eedapod.com. That’s E E D A P O D dot com. There you can also find a link to our Patreon, our bookshop link, the podcast email list, and a link to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter.
You can also find us on Instagram and BlueSky at eedapod and email us at eedapod@gmail.com.
Patricia: We are nothing if not consistent.
Nicole: We would also appreciate it so much if you would subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts that allow ratings. It really goes far in helping other people find us.
Also, thanks again to RE7&18 for their written review on Apple Podcasts.
Patricia: We would also appreciate anyone who can subscribe to us on Patreon. Support is going to help us keep the show going, especially without ads. You can find us at patreon.com/eedapod.
In the meantime, we hope you find ways to be kind to yourself. Drink some water and read a book. We’ll be talking to you soon.
Nicole: Ice cream helps with burnout. Woo-oo!
Patricia: Wow.