Secret Burnout... are you suffering from it? by Taylor Short

Automatic Summary

Understanding Secret Burnout: How to Identify and Overcome it

Have you ever felt like you're experiencing burnout – physically and emotionally exhausted, struggling to fulfill personal and professional obligations, and constantly worried about work-related matters? If yes, then you're not alone. This is an apt time to delve deeper into a topic rather untouched but experienced by many - Secret Burnout. So, let's dive into understanding what it is and how you can overcome it.

What is Secret Burnout?

Burnout is a state of chronic stress that results in emotion, physical, and mental exhaustion. But what distinguishes secret burnout from regular burnout is the individual's attempt to keep their struggles private and the added layer of guilt and shame associated with it. The constant need to demonstrate perfection and avoid being perceived as weak can lead to this secretive aspect of burnout.

Recognizing the Indicators of Burnout

This might start with obsessing over work, not being able to mentally check out even when you're not at work, and experiencing frequent bouts of guilt related to performance at work or at home. Additionally, feelings of resentment and a low tolerance level towards people or situations that would normally be manageable also start to creep in. You might also find a need to numb your senses through various methods, such as scrolling on phones, excessive consumption of alcohol, binge-watching or indulging in comfort food. Moreover, health issues related to stress, such as anxiety, insomnia, ulcers, and even depression, might start becoming apparent.

Identifying Secret Burnout

However, secret burnout comes with a hidden, albeit harmful, dimension to it. Here are a few indicators that could suggest you're experiencing this comorbid burnout syndrome:

  • Constantly making excuses for your burnout.
  • Moving the goalposts – waiting for an event in the future when things will supposedly become better.
  • Gaslighting yourself – downplaying the burnout you are experiencing.
  • Feeling like you can't be honest with others about your struggle – a fear of appearing weak or not being able to handle your responsibilities.

Overcoming Burnout

The journey to address and overcome burnout, especially its secret aspect, can be quite daunting but absolutely necessary. Here are a few steps to help you on this journey:

  1. Pause: Recognize the signs of burnout and take a moment to acknowledge them. There's no shame in feeling burnout; acknowledging it can be the first step in recovery.
  2. Self-awareness: Become aware of your tendencies to irresponsibly push your boundaries and question yourself – when will addressing burnout become a priority?
  3. Self-leadership: Recognize that the responsibility to address your burnout lies with you. You need to put yourself and your needs first, always.

Remember, it's important to seek help if you feel consumed by burnout. You don't have to endure it in silence, and there's plenty of support available to help navigate these complex emotions and stresses. Addressing burnout doesn't invariably mean you have to give up your job or industry. It simply means feeling refreshed in your current job and exploring ways to navigate through your career that aligns with your happiness and well-being.

Finally, and most importantly, remember to be kind to yourself. Burnout, in particular, secret burnout, isn't a sign of weakness. It's a sign that something in your life needs to change, and recognizing and accepting that is already a step in the right direction. Connect more with issues such as these, and seek help if needed.

For more assistance, you can explore resources like the book "Your Relationship with Your Job," a step-by-step guide to reset your feelings about your work, available on Amazon.

Remember, you're not alone in this journey. Reach out, connect with others, and seek help when you need it. Conquering burnout begins with recognizing and acknowledging it. Here's to a healthier, happier you!

Connect

If you are seeking help with burnout or just wish to connect and share, reach out on LinkedIn and join the discussion about combating secret burnout. It's a journey that many are on, and your voice is important. Don't let secret burnout remain a secret. Let's bring it into the open, deal with it, and move forward to a healthier professional life.


Video Transcription

Um we are here talking about secret burnout and I'm excited to talk with you about this subject and I'd love for you to start by just taking a moment to think about yourself and you can write something in the chat if you feel um open to it, but just start to think about.Are you, do you feel like just in your gut, in your own intuition, in your own knowing? Do you feel like you're currently or you have experienced burnout? So we're gonna get this conversation kind of going and starting to think around this. So feel free to share in the chat if you've experienced it, if you're experiencing it. Um Maybe the number of exclamation marks that you use is like the level of it. No, I'm just teasing. Um Absolutely. Yes, I'm seeing things roll in as we go. So I'm totally not poking fun at it. Um But I just know how um prominent burnout is. So I wanna jump in really quickly to give you a little bit about um who I am and why am I talking on this subject? My name is Taylor Short and I'm a job reset. Coach and consultant. And I came from 15 plus years in the corporate world where I graduated from my undergrad and started climbing the ladder because I thought, hey, what else do you do to find happiness in your life? Um, other than climb the corporate ladder? A lot of money and you'll be successful and therefore happy. Right? How many people I can't see you but how many people have done that? And I hustled, I was really great at hustling. I climbed the ladder quickly.

I got the salary. I got the title. I had all the things externally. And then I looked around and said, wow, I have all of the things that I should be happy with and successful with. But internally I was totally burnt out. Um And no one would have ever really have known it. My husband maybe a little bit but not so much. Nobody really at work knew. Um It was really kind of something that I was holding within. So this um this work and this experience that I had um was really the catalyst to help people. What I do is I help people find their true happiness in the careers that they have right now without leaving. So, one of the things that I do is really help people find a true success that feels in alignment with them in the jobs that they have right now. So that's what we'll be diving into a little bit today. And what is secret burnout is what we're going to be talking about. We've heard a lot about burnout, but then we're also gonna be talking a little bit about this secret aspect to it. So there's this what I call an outdated belief of kind of a hustle or fail work culture and let me know if the in the chat, if you've kind of heard any of these things that any of the companies that you've worked at.

Um And maybe it's not said out loud more so is, is, it's kind of um just a cultural belief within organizations that you really have to hustle to succeed. You have to prioritize or at least pretend to prioritize that work is more important than anything else in our lives above our families or friends ourselves. We have to prioritize this, you know, this thing um of work or we have to at least act like it is a priority in our life, which it is. But I would argue that it's not the most important thing in our lives. Being overworked is a badge of honor. I don't know about you. But some of these things that I saw in my corporate life was, you know, kind of floating people not taking the time off that they had um earned, um you know, people really um vocalizing that they had been overworking and working so many hours, right? It's kind of creating this, this culture in our work um environment where it's like if you don't kill yourself for the work that we do, then are you really successful? And I'm here to talk about how this is an outdated belief. And we have a too much problem.

We have swung too far in the pendulum of really over exerting ourselves where it becomes unproductive. It's burning us out emotionally, physically, mentally, right? All of these things. So these are kind of the outdated hustle or fail work culture that is creating and really cultivating this burnout.

Yes, I'm kind of trying to double look at some of the chat things. The phrase I don't take lunch. You don't have time. Yes, we are rested and refreshed. We have to be our own self leaders. So that's what we're going to dive into more. So I wanna quickly just touch on some of these indicators of if you are experiencing burnout and I will say this with the caveat of um, don't freak out if you, if you can check off all of these because I've worked with so many people over the years and it's like, whoa, this can be a sense of burnout to say that I have all of these things, but it's something to be mindful of and we'll, we'll talk a little bit more about this, but some symptoms perhaps that you are experiencing burnout.

A lot of you already said in the beginning. Yes, I'm, I'm already know I'm experiencing burnout or I know what that feels like. But if you're not quite sure or if you want to be able to start getting into being more mindful around when you're starting to fall into burnout, here are some things that you can look out for. The first point that we're gonna talk about is obsessing over work. This is both you are there physically. So if you have your laptop or if you're at, at the office or wherever you work, if you're physically there over hours, right? You're kind of obsessed about it. But more so this is what I see in people is they can't mentally check out from work. So they are with their loved ones, they are with, you know, by yourself or whatever it is, you're not presently at work, but you can't stop ruminating about work, the projects that you're working on, the things that have been been said, something that came up at work, you just can't stop talking about it or you can't stop thinking about it.

And another key indicator is with when you go and talk to people outside of work for fun or your family or friends is work. The only thing that you're talking about and you kind of feel like you have to vent about it. This is a key indicator that you might be starting to experience or are experiencing burnout. Um The next point here is really feeling guilty about work. So, has anyone experienced this where you feel like you've got all of these projects or things that you're working on and you, normally, I'm sure that every single one of you is super amazing and high achieving in your careers otherwise you wouldn't be here. But here's the thing, what happens to us that are high achievers and really amazing in our work is that we start to take on too much. We're spread too thin and then we can't really do anything to the best of our abilities. And so we can kind of feel like we're doing everything a little bit less than as much as we would like to put into it, right? A little bit less for that. So and on the flip side, we can also feel guilty about our home life. So we can be so hyper focused at work that we feel like our families are suffering, our partners are suffering, our own self care is suffering. We want to be able to have the energy to make dinner after after work, but we don't have that energy.

We want to be able to be present for our friends and family outside of work, but we just don't have the mental capacity. So it can be feeling guilty about work and it can also be feeling guilty about home. Um A few other things here is being resentful. So this is like, I like to say that when you, if you look at your phone, right? And you look at the top right corner where your battery life is, this is how I identify myself as like a battery pack. So if you're operating at 1% battery, which we offer are when we are burnt out, you have no juice to give to anything to any of your work. And what happens is we start to begin to feel resentful towards not only work but outside of work. So this can be seen as some people will snap. So you're just like some things that you could normally handle, just everything seems to really set you off and we either snap at people or we shut down. Um You really know when you're kind of feeling testy, right? Um This also goes in with the low tolerance level of just really not being able to handle things that would normally not bother you or kind of roll off of your shoulders. Um The second to last bullet here is really the need to numb. So if you are experiencing burnout, you're having kind of this mental exhaustion as well as probably physical exhaustion over a long period of time.

So this will be seen like when we go get home from work and all of us have our, our vices that we like to numb out with, but it can look like something like some of us, maybe I'll raise my hand like to have a glass of wine or two or three after work because we just wanna kind of shut our brains down.

Some of us will scroll on our phones for endless periods of time. Maybe we're numbing out by just, um, logging into Netflix and, you know, watching that and letting our brains kind of relax that way. Some of us, um, indulge in food. Some of us like to go online shop. But it's, it's your brain's way of saying too much. This is too much. I need to shut down. I need a break. And so it's not just like beat ourselves up and say shame on us for doing this. This is a survival technique that our brain is indicating to us we need to stop and then this leads into the last point here is health issues. So it can contribute to so many different other things than I have listed here. But things like it can contribute to our anxiety. So many people I work with have insomnia, um just anxiety and insomnia based on work stress that's going on, we can have physical um health issues such as ulcers, depression, all of these things, stress has a huge impact on our physical body as well. So these are all indicators for you to say, OK, if I'm seeing these things consistently, maybe it's time to do something. But I want to now transition into the part that could be secret, right?

Because I feel like we all have a really great um just intuitive sense that we are burning out. I feel like for the most part, we kind of know, but let's go into this double whammy of the key indicators that you're experiencing secret burnout. So this is we're going to the previous slide, you've got some of those indicators. So say you're not sleeping well, you know that you can't stop ruminating at work and you've kind of identified for yourself. Yeah, I'm burning out. But here's a, the, here's the part that makes it even more complicated is we are starting to add on another layer of keeping this secret is check in. Are you making an excuse for your burnout? Are you saying? Yeah, but it's this thing, you know, or yeah, but I just have all of these projects going on, like just notice your tendencies and while you're doing this, have so much grace for yourself, right? This is not an opportunity to beat yourself up for it, but it's an opportunity for us to become self leaders and self-aware and say, OK, are these my tendencies and how can I help myself? So, are you also, do you also have a tendency to keep saying someday it will be better moving the goalposts? Right? I hear often like, OK, well, when I sell the house and when this one project wraps up, then I'll finally be balanced.

I hear this all the time when the kids graduate. When um when I get a new boss, when I get a new employee, whatever it is. It's like someday, right? We're never quite there. Um, you're feeling the burnout but you kind of gaslight yourself. I just did a little reel on this, on Instagram about gaslighting yourself. Like you're feeling your burnout. But then you're like, yeah, but it's not that bad or yeah. But so, and so has it worse. Yeah. But yeah, but like, it's really not validating what's going on within you. And then also another aspect to the secret piece of it is you feel like you can't be honest with others, maybe it's your boss, maybe it's your employees, maybe it's your partner, maybe it's your family.

And this happens when we are high achievers and really amazing at our careers is we don't want to look like we can't handle it. All right. What if we tell people we can't do all of this, then what will happen? What will happen at work? What will happen at home, all of these things? So I feel like I'm speeding through this lightning speed because we're getting through this in 20 minutes. This is just scratching the surface. But these are a layer that can keep us in the secret burnout is ourselves not feeling like we're able to fully say what's truly going on with us and that we need support. So what are you to do when you start to notice you're not only experiencing burnout, but you're also layering it with OK. Some of these secret aspects. Like, no, I've got it. I'll get through it someday. What do you do? First of all, we need to take a moment to pause. And all of the work that I do with my clients is simple by design because we have a too much problem. So we work to simplify. And when you, when we do this, we can often say, yeah. Yeah. Pausing. That's like we all know that and we, we skip that step, but it's so important to pause. Even right now, pause. How am I doing right now and check in, is this a trend that you see for yourself and be super honest with yourself?

You don't have to share this with anybody. But do you have a tendency towards some of these things and then ask yourself is now the time to do something about it or are we still pushing the goalposts? Right? Maybe not, maybe it's truly not the right time, you know, maybe you have a lot going on. But then when will it be? So if not now, then when will the burnout and the secret burnout? Get to a point where you're ready to say I need help, I need to change. And this goes into my last point of self leadership. This really, really um kind of a hidden belief, maybe that someone else is going to save us that maybe our boss will help us with our balance or maybe our spouse will help us figure it all out. But the truth of the matter is, is we want to move towards self leadership and being so ruthless with what we need first before work before anybody else, we have to fill our cups first. Otherwise we'll always be last. That's how it's going to be. So I know we ran through this so fast and you guys are bear with me in the first three minutes of um technical difficulties. So I want to just give you a little taste. So if you're interested in diving deeper, of course, connect with me on linkedin.

I do a lot of content there um to support you. And then I also have a book that's a catalyst to the work that I do called your relationship to your job. And really, this is a step by step process and how to really reset how you feel in the work that you're doing right now. And it's available on Amazon. What else do we have? Here's all of my contact information. I know we're at time. Um And I was seeing, oops, excuse me, I was seeing all these awesome comments go through. Um And so I so appreciate your time. I wanna be honoring other speakers times. Um If you want to connect with me, I would love to hear from you and just know like I said, have so much grace for yourself if you're experiencing this and also know that there is a plethora of amazing support out there for you that is just waiting and it doesn't mean that you have to leave your industry and it doesn't mean that you have, you have to leave your salary and it doesn't mean that you have to try to figure out something else on your own.

But there's a way to feel refreshed in the job that you have right now. So I'm so, so grateful for your time and your patience with me and I hope to see you on linkedin. Have a great day.