Are You Ignoring These Burnout Warning Signs? Psychologist Warnings.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 00:00

People talk about the sweet spot of work-life balance, but what if that is hard to achieve? What if both of those pressures feel like they are meaning that you are heading towards burnout? Let's take a deep dive looking at all of the different types of factors that can contribute to you or someone you care about. Feeling burned out. I hope you find it so useful.

(: 00:29

Hi, welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. I am Dr. Marianne Trent, and I'm a qualified clinical psychologist. For the last five episodes, I have been bringing you a special, special, special series on burnout or more specifically what burnout is and how to avoid it both for yourself, for those that you might be working with and or those you care about. It has been my pleasure to work alongside Dr. Claire Plumbly, who is also a qualified clinical psychologist and the author of a brilliant new book on burnout. We have evidenced during this series that teamwork makes the dream work and it's always okay, have people support you. You don't need to worry about me, I'm not going anyway. It's just that over the summer it can be a little bit of a juggle with the children. I wanted to make sure I was still providing you super brilliant, useful content. Whenever you are ready to listen or watch it. Claire is really spoiling us with our final instalment of The Burnout Bites. Absolutely don't need to have listened to the previous five episodes, but I would recommend that you do because they are exceptional. Let's dive in and hear our final burnout bite with Dr. Claire.

Dr Claire Plumbly (: 01:46

Hello and welcome to the final of Burnout Bites. This has been a series of six short episodes that I brought to you all about this topic of burnout in the hope that we can understand it and take collective action to looking after ourselves and protecting those around us as well. I'm Dr. Claire Plumbly. I am a clinical psychologist. I work with people who have experienced trauma and are feeling anxious or burnt out, and I have a clinical practise both online and in Taunton Somerset and I have recently written a book the book's called Burnout, how to Manage Your Nervous System Before It Manages You. The link is in the show notes and a lot of the nuggets I've brought to you over this short series has been from that. So today I wanted to bring you this idea of the difference between external and internal pressures because on the surface you'd think it would be simple if we are feeling stressed that we would slow down and pace ourselves and pause and rest so that we don't then tip into this more closed out, overwhelmed burnout out place.

(: 02:53

But there are two reasons that we don't. There are external pressures that come from the people and situations around us, and there are internal pressures that come from within us. So I'm going to break that down today so you have a little bit more of an understanding of it. External pressures includes the types of demands in our lives that are really hard to escape from. So it's the boring adulting type of things that we have to just get on and do unfortunately. So bills to pay high caseload dependences like children or elderly parents, it might be quarterly targets or questions and wants from the people in our lives who we really care about. The thing with these external pressures is that sometimes they're super obvious, but sometimes there's a little chipping away effect that can go on. They can just start to mount up. And when I worked in my NHS job, this happened in a really gradual way and often on their own.

(: 03:46

Each little demand felt almost inconsequential and like I would be creating a bit of a fuss if I said anything about this. So for example, when I first started to work in the NHS as a full-time equivalent, you were expected to see about 15 clients a week. When I left that position, which was almost seven years later, a full-time equivalent was expected to see 25 clients in a week. Not only that, but we were expected to do measures at each session and provide more reports. It was just a lot and it hadn't become quite clear to me until I sat down and really thought about it how much more I was being asked to do. So here's a list of the common external pressures so you can just check in and see how many of these you've got going on. Holding in mind that this won't just be at work, this will be in your personal life and friendship life and any maybe voluntary commitments that you have as well.

(: 04:41

So take it as a broad brush. Stroke time pressures. So this might be deadlines, completing projects or on a day-to-day basis where you've got to get somewhere at certain time and get the kids to a club at a certain time. Any conflicts or disagreement where you're kind of feeling this constant pressure of being up against someone else or friction any high emotional labour in your job. So tending to others a negative emotions and not having emotional support for your own. This is a really strong external pressure that can be a bit more invisible workload, just having too much to do and obviously that ties in with the time pressure, often not enough time to do it. This is an interesting one, role ambiguity. So when you are not quite sure what you should be doing or you don't want to step on the toes of others, there can be a lot of energy that gets used up there with decision-making and trying to work out the best course of action when we don't have a control over our situation or the resources available to us or the demands being made, excessive criticism from others.

(: 05:38

This is a really tricky one. Again, that can feel like it's beyond our control and it links into the next one, which is lack of positive feedback or appreciations if we're doing all of this work, but without this extra of people noticing and seeing what we are doing when there's any insecurity in our life. So uncertainty can really drain us. So job insecurity, not knowing how long we're going to be in a post or having to continually reapply for work. This is really hard for us complex tasks or a lot of complex tasks. So we can't just automate out certain things and just know this is how I'm always doing things. If we having to always wrap our head around more complexity and new instructions. This is really again, an external pressure coming in and at us from the type of work that we're doing.

(: 06:25

Of course, last but not least is financial worries. So a lot of external pressures are visible and obvious, but not always. There can be some cultural ideals or ways that we expect men, women, carers to behave in a certain way that can also add to the type of external pressure certain people are under. I go into this in chapter seven in my book, but I just want to introduce that idea right now that not all external pressures are easy to put your finger on. Some of them might just be almost an expectation that you don't recognise that this could be something that you question or hold at arm's length to look at and decide actually, is this something that I do need to always be responding to? So some of these are really practical external pressures that we might be able to do something about.

(: 07:12

Sometimes we do have more control than we realise, and if we stop and spend some time working on what those options are to reduce external pressures, then that's a really valuable piece of work. But there are some external pressures that are less visible to us and they can often come from ideas that are woven into our culture. So for example, about our roles, what's expected from us, for example, that's different for men and women. It might also be different depending on your role in the family, your role at work. So for example, women as carers, men as breadwinners. That's a very common one that most people can see as really unhelpful. And I go into this in one of the chapters in my book, trying to help people understand the narratives that might underlie all of this, but just know for now that there are very obvious visible external pressures that we might be able to do something about.

(: 08:00

And there are others that are harder for us to fight on our own, and actually this takes collective understanding and action to challenge. The second type of pressure is internal, and this comes from pressures inside us such as our emotions and our thoughts. This can motivate us on through stress even when we're feeling really quite tired and we don't have much more to give. It can be informed partly by our biological and psychological makeup, such as a personality traits, core beliefs, any sensitivity to stimuli and temperament, and it tends to show up as things like emotions, guilt, anxiety, shame, thoughts such as, well, I'm responsible for keeping everything together or I've not done enough yet to deserve a break. And also unpleasant sensations in the body which are linked to stress, such as that rush of adrenaline. Everything then feels urgent, muscles are tense, your heart's racing, you feel fidgety.

(: 08:53

The idea of trying to pause or slow down just seems to go against what your nervous system is telling you. In my book, I talk about three patterns of internal pressures that I see a lot in burnout in my work. So the first is people pleasing. So obviously being nice and kind to people isn't bad in and of itself, but people pleasing is when it tips into feeling like you are worthless unless others are happy. Your needs are bottom of the pile and so all of the thoughts and emotions and internal sensations are linked to that. If you have any sense that others aren't feeling okay about things that you are doing, you will feel an urge to fix that and people please. The second is perfectionism. Again, the wish to do things well isn't in and of itself a bad thing. It's when this tips into an exhausting pursuit of perfection at the expense of your wellbeing.

(: 09:48

So not resting and not pausing and never delegating for fear of others, getting things wrong. And this is usually fueled from a negative place fearing the worst if you don't get things just so the others will reject you or you'll be criticised or put down. And so again, the internal pressures will tend to revolve around specific worry thoughts about exactly that. What will happen if things aren't perfect and you get all of the internal sensations linked to moving on, always keeping your foot on the gas. Third pattern that I go into in my book is this avoidance of emotions by using busyness. So if you fear your own body, you fear your own emotions, which can be really common. Negative emotions are really unpleasant as we know pretty much a lot of our work in psychology is about helping people develop a more compassionate relationship with their emotions.

(: 10:41

But it's really understandable that we would try and avoid negativity and when we haven't had experience growing up of this, building up our confidence in our ability to be attuned and respond to our body. This can cause people to overuse work as a strategy. You might have these internal thoughts of, I can't cope with negative anxiety or other emotions. What if this tips me into a really difficult place that I can never come back from? So I hope this is helpful for separating it out beginning to think about what are the areas where I have control. Yes, there are some areas of external pressures that I might benefit from stopping and trying to problem solve, maybe getting some support with, and that might involve practical and investment as well to try and get external pressures down. And then there are internal pressures that is more role of self-improvement and self-healing and the role of a psychologist can help with this.

(: 11:39

Again, absolutely these areas are things that we can do something about, but you've got to be aware of what your internal patterns are and know how to slow it all down before responding. Before you do that, so possibly reading my book if you've got time or listening to it on Audible or doing any of your own continued work that you might already have up your sleeve, like your mindfulness practises or any other therapeutic approaches, compassion, focus, therapy and act. These are all really, really helpful for trying to move through these patterns in a way or change your relationship with them. I really hope you found this series of six episodes on burnout helpful. I'd love to connect with you in my social media if you would like to find me. I'm on Instagram, I'm on TikTok, I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn. You can also, like I say, check out my book and if you're on my mailing list, I love to get replies, so do check out my mailing list. You can access that via the website. All of the links to these are in the show notes and I will now hand you back to Marianne who is going to bring you her next episode as usual, the slightly longer episodes that you are more accustomed to. Thank you very much for having me and Marianne, thank you for allowing me this platform.

Dr Marianne Trent (: 12:53

Oh, thank you so much Claire, and it's been lovely having you head up the podcast for this last six weeks and you've done a beautiful job. So thank you for sharing so generously with my audience and please to you, my audience, if you have found it useful, please do join Claire's mailing list and of course grab your copy of Burnout, how to manage Your Nervous System before it manages you. If you've already bought it, please do rate and review on Amazon. I hope you found this to be a really, really wonderful use of the last six weeks of your time. I would love any feedback that you might have about it. Please do come and connect with me and discuss in my free Facebook group the Aspiring Psychologist Community with Dr. Marianne Trent. Come and connect with me on my Happy Hangouts on socials. I'm always on LinkedIn, so that's a great place to follow me.

(: 13:48

But I'm everywhere. Dr. Marianne Trent have come and follow me on Insta, TikTok, all of those great places and let me know what content you would like. Don't forget that we have Marianne's Motivation and Mindset sessions, which happen weekly for free, exclusively in the free Facebook group. And if you love what we do here on the podcast, I think you will adore what we do in the Aspiring Psychologist membership. If you would like to access that, you can do for just 30 pounds a month with no minimum term. And do remember the Free Psychology Success Guide, which you can get by going to my website, www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk, and then head to the top for free resources. If you have already read the Clinical Psychologist Collective and the Aspiring Psychologist Collective, please do drop me some ratings and reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads. I am so privileged that you are part of my world and I will look forward to bringing you the next, which will be along from 10:00 AM on Saturday on YouTube, and from 6:00 AM on Monday wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you again. Be kind to yourself and to those around you, and I'll look forward to seeing you very soon. Take care.

Jingle Guy (: 15:07

If you're looking to become a psychologist, let this be guide with this podcast. You'll be on your to being psychologist, Dr.