Transcription:
How to Avoid Burnout

Melanie Cole: With the new year in full swing, burnout is something that can happen to any of us. And if you start to experience those feelings of burnout, what steps can you take to reverse those effects?

Welcome to Its Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole. And joining me today is Michelle Lambarena. She's the Director of Leadership and Organizational Development and a Mental Health First Aid certified facilitator at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital.

Michelle, thank you so much for joining us again. You've been with us before. You're a great guest. And we're talking today about burnout. So, first, kind of define it for us. What is burnout and how do we even know if we're feeling those effects, because we all feel tired from one time or another, you know?

Michelle Lambarena: Yes, definitely. Thank you so much for having me today. I am truly honored and grateful. And to your question, how do we even define it? How would we even know that we are experiencing burnout? It can come in many different forms. And just as we're individuals and unique as our fingerprints are, it will come and manifest itself in various different ways for every individual.

Now, a few of the general themes that we have seen is lack of sleep, short temper, feeling like you're drowning in your work, feeling dread of doing whatever it is that you need to do, feeling tired or exhausted. And in general, it can manifest itself biologically, brain, you feel foggy or checked out; physically, your body, you feel lethargic, no energy, sluggish. And last is a lost sense of purpose or focus or lack of vision moving forward.

Melanie Cole: Okay. So, I mean, as someone who loves my job, and I love what I do, but sometimes I feel tired, sometimes I feel exhausted. But Michelle, as a woman, I think we do so much that we are the caregivers to society and we have to put our own masks on, as they say, which is a little ironic these days, before we can care for our loved ones. So even though some of us may have the short temper or any of those things you mentioned, but still love our jobs, tell us about the effects or things that we can do in our lives, in the circle of our lives, self-care, things that we can do that can help ourselves because we're multitasking and that contributes to burnout.

Michelle Lambarena: Definitely. And it doesn't only happen to women, it happens to everyone. It can happen to someone who is professional, someone who, you know, works four hours a day, 12 hours a day. I mean, it could happen to really anyone. Someone in school. It can happen to everyone and anyone that you might know.

And so, how do we approach to avoid actual burnout happening? And so, like I said earlier, it's really about understanding what it might look like for you and when you feel that you are falling in a sense, falling away or drifting from what your normal is, right? Whatever that threshold is for you.

And so, it's about input and output. So much like we hear from other folks, data in, data out. What are the things and the words that you are saying to yourself? What's that self-talk and what does it sound like and how do you counter it?

And so, self-care is a big piece of that, as you mentioned it. And there are many different things that one can do for self-care. Now, self-care can manifest or can present itself in many different ways. And so just to break it down so we're all speaking the same language, it can be physical self-care, psychological self-care, emotional, social self-care, financial, spiritual, environmental, professional. It can be so many different things, but these are the eight areas really of self-care and it's defined as the activities and practices that we engage on a regular basis to reduce stress and enhance our wellbeing.

I do want to get just a little bit more into each one of those eight areas of self-care because it really, truly does make a difference because the challenge here is how do I keep a balance with all of these eight areas? Well, it just so happens that you're not going to be able to keep a balance with all eight. But whatever it is that's manifesting for you or coming up for you as an individual, that's the area that we need to put more focus on, right? So, it's this bit of a balancing act I take out of here to be able to give into here.

And so for physical self-care, it's movement of the body. It's your health, your nutrition, sleep. Are you getting restful sleep? Because it's one thing to sleep and it's one thing to get restful sleep.

Psychological self-care, it involves learning new things, applying different techniques that maybe you're learning a new skill or you're practicing something where you get to be creative or learning mindfulness or whatever the case may be, starting a new hobby.

Emotional self-care is really navigating through the emotions that you might be feeling at that moment. If you are normally not somebody who's short-tempered and all of a sudden you're finding yourself with a very, very short fuse, knowing and having that sense of self-awareness and saying, "Hmm, I'm not usually one to want to, you know, pop off and have, you know, certain conversations with people that I normally wouldn't normally have. What's going on with me?" And so, having that realization and that sense of self-awareness of, okay, why is this happening and having that deep dive and check-in with oneself is extremely important.

Social self-care. Now, this was one that was really impacted and affected by COVID. Now, things have somewhat normalized as normal as they possibly could be, that was something that has truly affected a lot of people because they weren't able to have their group of people that they would normally go to as a support group. There had to be that social distance. And so, it's being able to have and rebuild those relationships and recover those relationships that perhaps we weren't able to keep a hold of or continue to develop or maintain through that time. It's being able to recover those relationships and continue them.

Financial self-care is a big component of self-care because it involves being responsible with our finances. We're coming up what we hear we call a recession that might be coming here in the next year as we keep hearing, that can be a huge stressor for folks as well. So, it's figuring out how do I develop a sense of relationship with my finances.

Spiritual care. This is the beliefs and values that are most important to an individual. Those principles that guide somebody in their life. They're what some people call their true north, and tying that into their every day and how it is that they cope and work through any challenges that they might come up or that might come up for somebody throughout the day.

Environmental self-care is ensuring that you have a safe place, safe space that you're in, that it's clean, that it's maintained, having everything that you need. And Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but in the environment and having that space that's yours. And so, that's extremely important to be able to have that. Folks that are now working remote, that's an extremely important piece. It can't just be a desk at a dining room table where you get to do your work now every day. It's having an intentional space where somebody can work and be effective and be able to focus and have all the tools that they need to be able to get their work done.

And then of course, there's professional self-care. And this is being able to showcase and share one's strengths, one's gifts or talents, and sharing them with others and helping others or being of service to others, to then be able to enhance that sense of purpose.

Melanie Cole: Wow. I want to give you applause there because that was just an awesome, awesome discussion right there. You just literally sorted it out for us, of all of those areas. And listeners, I hope that you were writing them down and you can just re-listen to the podcast because that was so important. All of those things hit me when you said that. We negative self-talk, and again, I go back to women and I know this is really about everyone. I mean, we talk about physician burnout and healthcare provider burnout, certainly during COVID. And when you were talking about environmental burnout, that really is something that is going to touch a lot of people. Because, again, having that safe space, COVID kind of made it feel like that was taken away from us. And our homes, our places were our really only safe space, and we had to stick together. You gave us so much great information.

Now, as we look to evaluate ourselves and we take those eight terms of self-care and we look at those, how do we attempt to change them? I mean, we don't have hours on this podcast, and this is a conversation that could go on a long time. But as we look at our spiritual beliefs or our professional situation or our work from home or whatever it is, as we're evaluating these, Michelle, how do we start? How do we take what you've just said and say, "Okay. Now, I'm going to tackle it." Because that in itself can seem a little bit overwhelming. And so as a result, I mean, I personally use gratitude every single day. If I'm feeling tired or angry or any of those things, I try and say how lucky I feel and how grateful I am, and then I go from there. I make my lists. How do we start?

Michelle Lambarena: That's a great question. I'd like to start actually, before I dive into that, by saying that everyone, no matter where they're at in their life, will experience burnout at some point. It's just a matter of time and it's really important. And Simon Sinek talks about this. He's all about positivity. He's a fantastic speaker. If anyone gets a chance to look him up, he has Ted Talks, tons of YouTube videos and whatnot. And so, what he talks about, and this is part of that social self-care, is having a handful of people, one, two, three, however many ever you want to have, your go-to people that you can say, "Hey, if I start feeling this way, can you be my go-to person so that I can have a safe place, safe space to go to if I'm starting to feel a certain way? Because I hear that it's going to happen and it's just a matter of time, and I want to make sure that I've got my resources prepared, that I have my people there ready to support me." And knowing that you can go to somebody is extremely important.

So, how do we even get started? That could be your number one thing, is just having a conversation with somebody and saying, "Hey, I don't know what you have going on in your life right now. But I'd like for you to know that I can be your safe place, safe space if you start to feel burned out. And we can help each other through this. And here are some resources that I have come across and I'd like to share them with you. And in return, if you could do the same for me, that would be fantastic." That could be number one.

But there are so many other things that we could do. Everyone has a phone or a smartphone. It's very easy to make note and keep track of how we might be feeling throughout the day. And it's really about taking note and that sense of self-awareness and understanding where we're at. So, it can be a daily prompt that you have for yourself where you just take note, an inventory of where you're at. "How am I feeling?" And you said it, "What am I grateful for?" And "What would I like to practice today?" And you don't have to answer all of those questions. You can just take one of those a day and build on it.

So for example, if you were to use a daily prompt, how would you use it? So if you were to use the daily prompt "Today, I am practicing..." And then, you insert the one area that you would like to begin to work on or create change. If you're going to focus on what you're grateful for, "Today, I am grateful for..." And then, you identify and focus what you're grateful for and how to acknowledge or what to acknowledge, what already exists, and it helps you to positively shift your energy. Now, if you're going to work on a new habit or you're going to create a new habit, or you're going to work towards a new habit, you can use a daily prompt "Today, I am..." And then, you insert your new thought or affirmation for what it is that you would like to change.

Another prompt that you can use is, if you would like to change a certain area, you could say, "Change in this area allows me to feel..." And then, you insert what that new feeling is. So, it's really about checking in with yourself and having that sense of self-awareness.

And lastly, "Today, I'm practicing when," and you insert a new behavior. So to create change, we need to begin by being consistent and noting how and when we're able begin to practice that change throughout our day. And so, it's that check-in with ourselves and that sense of self-awareness that's key to this process.

Melanie Cole: That is so true. And as I said, I'm a list-maker, so I try and get it out of my head." And I do some of the things that you were just discussing. And I can tell you listeners, they help, they really do. Those affirmations, those goals just for the day, even just for the hour, those are the kinds of things that can really help to reduce some of that stress of the what-ifs and what's-coming-next, to feel like you have some sense of control over something if it's not just your own little bubble.

So, Michelle, wrap it up for us. Your best advice for hopefully not getting burnt out of the things that we like to do or the family, the friends, the whatever it is, our jobs, all of these things, to feeling that stress that we're all kind of feeling, by the way. There's a global sort of feeling of, you know, stress and anxiety, and we're not sure what's happening. But give us your best advice as we wrap up about avoiding burnout and helping ourselves, so we can help those that we love.

Michelle Lambarena: Absolutely. So, number one is seek and do things that bring you joy. When you do that and you plan them out on a regular, consistent basis, what you do is you're creating something that you look forward to and that makes you happy. And what that does is it fills-- I read somewhere and I can't give credit right now because it's off the top of my head. I can't remember who said it, but I read it years and years ago-- that it fills your joy tank. And when your tank is empty, that's when you experience burnout.

A neurosurgeon from Lenox Hill Hospital talks about gritflowness. Gritflowness. And what he did is he combined three words and made it into one. And grit is the tenacity and passion that one brings to accomplish whatever it is that you want to accomplish and achieve. Flow is the channel of complete concentration during a challenging task and the optimal state in which the complexity or difficulty of an activity meets your skillset. And then, there's mindfulness. This is maintaining your alertness, your attention, and being able to have the capacity to filter out the constant stream of distractions. And when we combine all three of these things, it's a focus state, a sense of balance and awareness, and a calmness in the face of adversity.

We cannot do gritflowness if we are not centered. And the way to center ourselves is by doing just that, finding the things that make you happy. If you don't know what makes you happy, start exploring what that looks like. Is it reconnecting with an old friend? Is it learning to meditate? Picking up a new book? Is it changing your eating habits? Going for a walk? Going for a hike? Decluttering your closet? Listening to new music? Going to the mall? Whatever it may be, it's going to look very different for every single individual. The most important thing, and I'll end with this, is to start.

Melanie Cole: All of those things. It's all of those things. Like you say, very individual. Thank you, Michelle. Your voice is so soothing and calming, and I can hear the passion for what you do. So listeners, this was great information. Be sure to share it with your friends and family on your social channels. We're learning from the experts at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital together. And for more information on dealing with burnout, stress or anxiety, you can always visit our free health information library at library.henrymayo.com. That concludes this episode of It's Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for joining us today.