--(Please excuse any transcript typos -- blame the AI! Thank you!) --

Anna Lindberg Cedar, MPA, LCSW: 

With many sources saying that stress and burnout are on the rise, it's important to know what we're talking about when we talk about burnout. Welcome back to the Therapy For Real Life Podcast. This is not therapy. This is Real Life. I'm your host Anna Lindberg Cedar — Bay Area psychotherapist and international burnout prevention hacker.
I'm happy to join you again for the show today, because today we're going to do a deep dive on burnout. Burnout is one of those words that you've probably seen cited more in the newspaper or heard about in conversations with your friends because we should be talking about burnout. Burnout is a word that gets tossed around a lot. That is both very specific We'll look at some specific definitions of burnout today, and also very general, and we'll look at some of the positives that might come from having a term that is as inclusive as burnout, so that we don't leave anyone out of the conversation around burnout prevention.

Let's define a little bit about what we're talking about. Burnout is not stress. Stress is a fact of life. And I would be hard pressed to find an environment that doesn't have stress. Generally, the definition of stress is understood as any positive or negative change and the adjustment that goes along with it. Did you notice that stress is a neutral concept it's either a positive of And or a negative event. But it's all about the change and adjustment that comes with that stress.

So if you've ever gotten married before, if you've ever experienced the birth of a child, if you've ever gotten a job you were really excited about if you ever finished a project that was really important to you, you know that stress can come out of very positive and beautiful experiences. Stress is not the same as burnout. With burnout, you stop functioning, you stop performing at the level that you're used to, accustomed to, even the things that are important and meaningful to you. become difficult to do. So there are a lot of definitions out there when it comes to burnout. Let's look At some of the most well known.

The International Classification of Diseases came out with its 11th revision earlier this year. And they included burnout for the first time and burnout. Let's be clear, is not a medical diagnosis. It's not a clinical disorder. It is described as a process. I want us to think about that. And, and notice that burnout is a process. It's not a medical condition. Here's how the International Classification of Diseases defines burnout. Burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplaces. stress that has not been successfully managed, is characterized by three dimensions, feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increase mental distance from one's job or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job and reduce professional efficacy. That's that part where you're not functioning in the way that you are used to. The definition goes on to specify that burnout refers specifically to phenomenon in occupational context, and it says, should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life. I beg to differ!  Burnout is not limited to the workplace.

I understand why we might be tempted to do that. It serves a real purpose to limit burnout to the workplace. And it's born out of a real productivity mindset of valuing work that is paid. So I think it's important in our definition of burnout to recognize that there's all kinds of work to be done in this world that is not paid. Just ask any parent in the middle of the night, if they've ever been burnt out—Or a caregiver who's responsible for caring for an elderly person in their family. Just because you're not getting paid for the work that you do, doesn't mean that you can't burn out. And I think that's missing from our traditional definitions of burnout.

I would propose that we expand that definition a little bit farther and say that burnout is a mood regulation problem caused by the interaction of environmental stress and an inability to cope effectively. So notice that  I didn't limit it to the professional field. Notice that burnout is also an interaction of environmental stress and a person's ability to cope. Now it's important to recognize there are times when the environment is so overwhelming, overpowering, that it is either impossible or nearly impossible to cope. In those situations you can imagine. Situations like oppression, violence, mechanisms of control, where no matter what you do, you'd be hard pressed to cope in that situation. But I don't want us to get stuck there because if you press yourself a little bit further, you can realize that even in oppressive regimes, or in cases of political violence, if you are going to maintain any hope of change, you do need to cope effectively to get through that situation. So we can look at extreme examples like the Holocaust. In a former role of mine, I worked with torture survivors. And I have seen this firsthand. I have seen people escape from really horrendous conditions. And this is a testament to the human spirit to leave those situations and still be able to see the bright side. That is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. So with burnout, we are acknowledging there is an interesting tension here, you are impacted by the accumulation of environmental stress and how that impacts you is going to be mediated by how effectively you can cope with that stress. In my opinion, that gives me a lot of hope, because it makes it really clear what we need to do to prevent burnout. We need to attack burnout on both levels. We do need a response to change the environment and change contributors to burn out. And we also need to better equip individuals with the coping that they need to affect self care and change in that environment.

So we know that burnout overlaps with a million different stressors. And those stresses can add up and be compounded. And this is where I really want to acknowledge that burnout is a diversity and inclusion issue. I just went to a really great panel couple weeks ago, and on burnout, and a bunch of HR professionals were there and a really knowledgeable diversity and inclusion consultant was there, Jennifer Kim, she talks about this issue pretty widely and she looks at burnout through a diversity and inclusion lens. And she said something really on point on this panel when she said if you're an organization and you want to know how to solve burnout, you should go talk to your your teammates who are women and people of color because when we look at burnout, and Who experiences the brunt of that experience? Of course, it's going to be people who experience double, triple, quadruple forms of discrimination. And Jennifer Kim said that folks of color and women are really the canaries in the coal mine, when it comes to burn out. So if you sincerely want to know how to eradicate burnout from your organization, you should start by asking the folks who are most likely to be impacted by burnout. So we can't separate that feeling of burnout from other systemic forms of discrimination, violence, intimidation.

So many of you listening might have read that wonderful article that went around earlier in the year how millennials became burnout generation, and explain some of the reasons why we are experiencing more burnout that was through BuzzFeed. And shortly after that, and another author added to the conversation and said, This is what black burnout looks like, and gave a really excellent look at, again, burnout through the lens of diversity and inclusion. So again, I'm a big advocate for not separating burnout out as a separate conversation.

We know that it overlaps with stigma and mental health. And in fact, suicide prevention. So we know that suicide rates very sadly, are going up in every single state. Something that is interesting to notice about that trend is that The CDC released a report called Vital Signs that explains this, they found that more than half of those who died by suicide did not have a known mental health condition diagnosed at the time of their death. And you can look, you can do a deeper dive at that data and think about that, why, why that may be true. We know that some of those people did not qualify for a mental health condition. And some of those maybe did but didn't have the language to communicate or get that support. So sometimes burnout prevention could be dedicated to improving productivity at your work. This is a values conversation. When you decide to dedicate efforts to prevent burnout. You are also deciding what's important to you. So For some burnout prevention might in polite society, be a gentle way of saying suicide prevention. And that's okay with me because what we know about burnout prevention, mental health awareness, workplace wellness, all of these things overlap and interact. So if we extend that iceberg analogy that we talked about before, with burnout as a social construct, what I think would be really neat in that analogy is we could take a big anchor, or sorry, a forklift or a crane, sorry, a crane. If we could take a big crane and lift that iceberg out of the water. I know I'm imagining here, but let's just bear with me a little bit if you could take that whole iceberg and somehow lifted out of the water. And bring it into daylight and make it so that all of those things were okay to talk about all of those different signs of burnout. If you put ice in daylight, it melts away. You see it, you talk about it, you respond to it. And by making burnout prevention, a wide umbrella, it gives all of us space to participate and be part of that conversation.

So before we end today, I want you to start thinking a little bit about what burnout looks like for you and what you might do about it. So I'm going to suggest that you use the burnout prevention stoplight. This is something that I like to use as part of therapy for Life all the time. And it helps people get really clear when they think about the effects of burnout in their life. So as you think about this, what I want you to do is I want you to pull out a big piece of paper. And you're going to draw a line up and down down the middle. And on the left hand side, you are either going to draw a stoplight, or you're going to write red, yellow and green. And what I want you to do on the left hand side of that paper, that first column that's separated into green, red, yellow and green, you are going to jot down what your signs of burnout are.

So in the red category, this would include danger warning, you are in the burnout zone already. In fact, these signs mean that you're already at the point of not operating well, and that could look like wanting to quit your job. With relationship burnout, it could look like wanting to get a divorce, basically giving up and throwing in the towel. So that might feel really down and depressed and feeling of despair, hopelessness, you would have to define that maybe you've experienced that before. So what does the worst of it look like?

Yellow is going to include the things that you should pay attention to. They're not restorative, but it really depends on the day. So you can imagine a scenario where you might burn the midnight oil and stay up really late, answering emails and getting it all done. And this is in the yellow light because Maybe sometimes that's going to help you get a project done and help you feel really good about it and put it to bed. Maybe that you need to do that to sleep really well. So it's not something that you could do every day. But take care with it. Do it sparingly. Okay.

And green light. This is the sweet spot. This is the opposite of burnout. And you have to define that. Sometimes when I come in and do workplace workshops and trainings on burnout prevention, people will ask me what's the opposite of burnout look like? And again, that so values conversation, so it depends on what's important to you. If you weren't burning out and you were very active, doing the things that were important to you, what would go in this this spot, so green, remember, we can be really cool lyst doesn't have to be you know, if I'm in the sweet spot. burnout prevention. You can ask yourself, how would that look and feel at work but also outside of work?

So if things are going really well and you're feeling really sustainable in your work, what would good burnout prevention look like on a Monday morning, on a Thursday evening on the Sunday before it's time to start work again. I want you to write down what that would look like you would have maybe a kicking your staff, you'd be eager to go to your work, because it would feel meaningful to you, you'd have a little energy to spare you would feel like yourself, you might feel like helping other people how you feel good. That takes some time to really think about so that you can recognize what are the warning signs that you are already burned out? What are the things that you need to take care with and take using good judgment out, and then know what your goals are, what would it look like and feel like to be in that sweet spot for effective self care and sustainability is what we're talking about to let you do the things that are important to you, whether that's at work, or anywhere else in your life.

Thank you for joining me again on the Therapy For Real Life Podcast. I welcome you to message me at therapy@annacedar.com with any show suggestions or questions that you have so far. Or of course, check out the TherapyForRealLife.com website, where you'll find all kinds of self care and therapy information resources, including burnout prevention, hackathons, and other great tools for your own burnout prevention. Enjoy and have a great day!