Learning to face the fear of burning out again
The Bouncebackability Factor: End Burnout, Gain Resilience, and Change the World
I was drawn to Caitlin Donovan’s ‘The Bouncebackability Factor: End Burnout, Gain Resilience, and Change the World’ book through her podcast Fried. The Burnout Podcast. I appreciated Caitlin’s international perspective (she lived in China and Europe), as well as her enthusiasm for learning; she is studying currently for a biobehavioral degree. She practiced as an acupuncturist for many years. Caitlin describes her experience of repeated burnouts which was particularly important for me to read. I want to prevent burnout if I can, while also realizing I have certain traits that might make me susceptible to multiple episodes, including as she describes being brought up being told you are not smart and not good enough. The ultimate definition of ‘bouncebackability’ is the resilience to weather the burnouts and that you have less fear when burnout rears its head. The feeling you get from the book is Caitlin has your back and will teach you how to be that person for yourself; to be able to trust yourself no matter what. Caitlin’s book and podcast is for passionate women entrepreneurs. This was a good fit for me.
Caitlin describes caring for her patients more than she cared for herself. She was a people pleaser who followed the rules but still burned out. She explains how the stress we endure changes our brain creating a self fulfilling prophecy, it reduces our ability to cope. This is why it is so important to stop the cycle to prevent that downward spiral. In particular, she suggests looking for signs of this type of stress so you can interrupt the process. For example, while I am working I don’t necessarily feel stress, but when I drive the car on the freeway to collect the kids from school I often feel a tightness in my chest. I believe this a signal of impending burnout for me.
Caitlin’s description of the burnout process validated my own experience. You are working but it is no longer important or engaging. You experience profound disappointment in your ability to be of service. Your inner critic takes over and prevents you seeing your accomplishments. You lack self belief and lack belief in the recovery tools. You step onto the self help hamster wheel; you are trying to help yourself and be positive, but because you are not processing the sadness you are experiencing and instead minimizing it, the false positivity is not effective. She describes trying to minimize your sadness and trying to comfort others to stop the discomfort in yourself. Your stop trusting yourself and don’t trust that others will still love you if you want something different from them. Being uncomfortable with emotions was something I grew up with from two perspectives; a mother who would not let herself feel emotions and a father who could not control his anger and who did not let anyone else feel emotions. My parents still invalidate my emotions to this day. To overcome this, you need to ‘sit in the muck’; sit with your story until you are sick of it. I really resonated with this process. I remember complaining, and complaining about not being able to blog, till I got so sick of myself saying this to myself and other people that I just let go of that narrative. An important lesson in this book was just because you aren’t speaking your needs doesn’t mean others aren’t. We can make more progress looking after our own needs when we assume others are looking after their needs.
In addition to Maslach’s definition of burnout exhaustion, low performance, and cynicism, Caitlin adds other relevant symptoms including: overwhelm, resentment, tired but wired, desire to run away, frustration and impatience, judgmental of self and others, negative self talk, and suicidal ideation. Caitlin also has a useful list of causes of burnout including; culture, bypassing your problems, following someone else’s rules, not being honest with yourself, working environment, poor boundaries and unresolved trauma. She takes each cause in turn and provides exercises to help resolve the issue.
For burnout culture: she suggests a deep values exercise, not only finding out what values motivate you but also turning these words into verbs so you can discover what actions you would take to live these values. You can then review the list anytime you have a decision to make. In addition, a gratitude exercise is recommended where you write down very specific things you are grateful for and feel the gratitude spreading through your body when you do this. If you are not feeling the latter, you may not be ready for this exercise.
Bypassing problems: Caitlin suggests using a filter method, but only with old recurring stories, for example, ‘everyone has it easier than me’. By admitting there can be multiple views of an issues, yours, someone else’s and some objective truth you can start to see that you can filter the story through a different lens, if you chose to. You process your story through multiple possible filters to discover alternative truths that can help you see different points of view, or even reduce the feelings you experience when you tell the story.
Living by other’s rules: a way to detect this is through your list of ‘shoulds’ that make you sigh or feel resentful. You first note the times it occurs, you then observe the habit for a week, you then decide if it is serving you and what alternative story, like the filter, would serve you better. You try to make the new way of thinking a mantra and if that is still difficult, you write it down and see if it starts to manifest itself anyway.
Being honest with yourself: as Caitlin explained, it is hard to bounce back to yourself if the shape you are trying to return to is a lie. The first word she suggests you focus on is ‘fine’. Notice it for a week and then question: what were you really feeling when you said something was fine? She suggests ‘fine’ is an indicator for when you are not being honest. Other words you can use are busy, stressed, and fat. For example, you can’t really feel fat. You can feel bloated or unattractive or depressed. But what feeling is the word fat hiding?
Boundaries: I love the analogy that Caitlin provides to focus on your own needs; your knot. She describes a fishing net covering everybody and above each person is a knot in the net. Your business is your knot, not trying to fix other people’s or judging how good their knot is holding up, it’s to focus on your knot. When you do not focus enough on your own knot you lost track of what you need, want and desire. Not only does this drain you but it does not necessarily help the people you are trying to fix. If you tend to react to others’ discomfort by trying to fix, then either remove yourself from the situation or say do you want some help figuring this out or do you just need to vent. A key to discovering when you need to re-evaluate your boundaries is to note down when you feel resentment. Resentment can indicate when you are doing something outside of your knot.
Unresolved trauma: Caitlin provides several tips and suggestions for meditation, but given that many people struggle with this she provides an alternative ‘sitting in the muck’. First you need to recognize the emotion that was triggered, refocus by describing something else in the room, come back to the emotion and try to find out where it is in your body and try to describe it. I have done this type of exercise. Caitlin’s twist is to imagine what a 5-year-old would do to get rid of the emotion and to go with that, rinse and repeat.
Another technique Caitlin recommends to help us refocus, rest, and avoid life’s constant distractions and need to be ‘on’ is using the Pomodoro method to get work done – 25 minute timed bursts.
I enjoyed reading Caitlin’s book, listening regularly to her podcast, interviewing her for my podcast, and being a guest on her podcast. She’s very honest about her struggles and very compassionate. She provides well-founded advice with new slants to help you process the information and use it in your life. When you interact with her you know she has your back, because she trusts you to have your own back. She believes you can bounce back.
