Identify Your Burnout Habit Loops With Dr. Judson Brewer

We are facing an epidemic of burnout. Healthcare providers, teachers, caregivers, and service providers are exhausted, feeling detached, and seeing their performance decline. Short-term solutions to treating burnout don’t work.
In this episode, Dr. Jud and Diana Hill explore the link between anxiety and burnout and 5 common habit loops that keep you stuck in burnout cycles. Burnout is both an individual and a systemic problem.

Transcript

How does burnout relate to anxiety?

And what are some of the common habit loops that keep you stuck in being burned out?

That's what we're going to explore today with Dr.

Jed on Your Life in Process.

We're back with our frequent contributor,

Dr.

Jed Brewer,

The New York Times bestselling author of Unwinding Anxiety,

Thought leader in the field of habit change,

And director of research and innovation at Brown University's Mindfulness Center,

As well as the executive medical director at ShareCare.

Before Dr.

Jed and I do these episodes,

We usually chat about a topic,

And today's topic really came from him because he is passionate around helping health care providers deal with this epidemic of burnout.

Today's episode is about the individual factors that can contribute to burnout.

Dr.

Jed is going to talk about these five habit loops that people do to manage their stress and anxiety that actually trigger more stress and anxiety and burnout.

And then next week,

I'm going to be talking to Dr.

Christina Maslach,

And she has been studying organizational burnout for over 50 years.

And she's really looking at workplace factors and how toxicity in the workplace and poor fit can be contributing to burnout.

Our mental health and physical wellness is both what we do at the individual level,

Our habits and behaviors,

And it's impacted by what's happening to us at a systemic level.

So today,

Dr.

Jed will talk more about those individual factors.

And next week,

We'll talk more about systemic factors contributing to burnout.

We mainly talk about health care providers and teachers today,

But really anyone can experience burnout.

And a lot of the habit loops that Dr.

Jed talks about are relatable to parents,

Caregivers,

People that work in professions that have high levels of stress and demands on them.

Burnout is not only happening in health care.

And I certainly have experienced burnout at different points in my life and can relate to the habit loops that Dr.

Jed talks about.

I'll meet you on the other side to personalize this episode for you with your daily practice.

I don't know,

Maybe some of us are burned out on this topic,

Because it's so everywhere,

Which is burnout.

We're kind of burned out by talking about burnout.

But maybe you can give us a different angle,

More of a neuroscience angle.

And,

And I can give a bit of an act angle.

So burnout,

Why did you want to talk about burnout,

Dr.

Jed?

Well,

My profession and your,

You know,

Our profession,

I'll say that if we zoom even in on just physicians as a,

As a smaller cohort or a smaller population,

Physicians are facing an epidemic of burnout.

And so as a physician myself,

I really wanted to explore this and also see how I could help.

And so,

You know,

As a,

As a researcher,

I put on my research hat and say,

What don't we know about burnout that we can learn?

And then as a clinician and a treatment development person,

I ask,

You know,

What can I do to help?

And so maybe we could maybe start there,

You know?

So I have to say there's,

When I first started looking into this,

There has been a lot written about physician and clinician burnout.

And a lot of it is aimed at the patient.

And so anecdotal,

You know,

These compelling stories,

These case studies,

You know,

Some statistics that are generally survey driven and those surveys are scary in terms of how many,

You know,

Physicians and nurses intend to leave their profession in the next two years.

I think I read one recently where it's like,

You know,

Something like 40% of nurses or 45% of nurses plan to leave and it's like 25% of physicians.

And if all these folks leave the workforce,

Because they're burned out,

We're going to be in even bigger trouble with healthcare.

You know,

I don't know about you,

But if I want to get in to see my primary care provider,

It's a long wait,

You know,

Unless it's an emergency or a urgent visit.

And that,

You know,

So if folks are leaving the workforce,

It's going to be even worse.

The backup's going to be longer and the folks that are sticking around to help are going to get even more burnt out.

So that's striking,

You know,

What is causing this.

And the other thing that I'd seen a lot was that people talked about anxiety contributes to burnout,

Anxiety contributes to burnout.

And as we've talked about before,

You know,

Anxiety is a big problem,

Not just for physicians or nurses or,

You know,

Other clinicians,

But for everyone.

So I looked and it turned out that there weren't any actual studies on burnout and anxiety,

Which surprised me.

You know,

People had written about this anecdotally,

But there weren't any studies.

So we,

When we did our first study of our Unwinding Anxiety app,

We actually measured anxiety and burnout to see if this was a true phenomenon,

Or if something,

If this was just something that sounded true and felt right,

But nobody had data for.

So we used math like burnout inventory questions and at baseline,

This is anxious physicians,

We just looked at the correlation between burnout and anxiety.

And we found that there was a very strong correlation.

It was something like 0.

7 and the P-value is very small.

So we could see that there is indeed,

You know,

We could kind of prove what everybody's pointing to anecdotally.

And that's nice to see,

But it's not nearly as nice as,

Okay,

You can see the problem,

What are you going to do about it?

So just in the,

You know,

Just regarding anxiety,

What we hypothesized was that if we treat the anxiety that's correlating with certain aspects of burnout,

That might help,

You know,

Help people with burnout itself.

So in that study with anxious physicians,

We got a 57% reduction in anxiety,

Which is great,

But we also got a 57,

We got a 50% reduction in certain aspects of burnout,

Like depersonalization or,

You know,

People using a self-protective mechanism of callousness,

You know,

Becoming callous toward their patients.

So if you look at that from a,

You know,

From a mechanistic perspective,

This depersonalization or callousness is a protective mechanism in a very simple way where,

You know,

Our brains are set up so that when there's something unpleasant,

You know,

Our brain says,

Ooh,

That's unpleasant,

Make that go away.

It's kind of like danger,

Get away from the danger.

And so we apply that negative reinforcement process to helping quote unquote manage,

Or at least cope with,

I'm going to use the word cope with,

So cope with burnout or cope with anxiety.

But the problem is that that's actually what,

It's only a bandaid,

It doesn't actually help the problem.

So short-term gains of avoiding the problem don't actually uproot the root issue.

So for example,

If it's,

You know,

If we cut ourselves and there's a wound and we just put a bandaid on it,

You know,

It might feel better,

It might help with the blood,

But if we don't clean out the wound itself,

It's going to get infected.

And I think that analogy works for anxiety and burnout.

If we don't treat,

You know,

The underlying issues,

It's going to get worse.

So if we treat the anxiety,

We can actually see reductions in burnout.

So that part makes sense from a mechanistic perspective,

But there's actually a whole lot more to burnout than just,

You know,

Just that fear of the future or these coping mechanisms that we talked about in terms of avoidance.

And so I'll pause there.

I'm curious,

You know,

What your experience is with that.

And then maybe it would be helpful to kind of look at some of these other self-protective mechanisms because we've,

My lab has now gone back in and specifically has been interviewing physicians and other clinicians to see what their burnout habit loops are,

Like what their self-protective mechanistic habit loops are.

And then,

You know,

How can we,

How can we help them?

Yeah.

Well,

I work in another area of burnout where I see a lot of burnout,

Which is I work with schools and teachers.

So I've been,

So I've been called into a number of schools,

Both at the end of the year to help them kind of process what's happened.

And then also in preparation for the school year.

And they're similar to what we're seeing with physicians.

Their rates were closer to 30% of teachers are saying,

I don't want to work as a teacher anymore.

So if we lose 30% of our teachers and 40% of our healthcare providers,

We're done for,

We're like,

This is going to be a problem.

And it is a problem,

But what do we get instead,

Which is what you're talking about this,

These characteristics of burnout in terms of being exhausted and becoming cynical,

Sort of like,

I hate this job.

I,

You know,

Kind of this like curmudgeon and detachment.

And then you also get either a decrease in performance or perceived decrease in efficacy.

So you also feel like you're not doing as good of a job.

And it becomes this,

You know,

Like you said,

This cycle of I want to avoid those,

Those,

The feelings of exhaustion,

Or I want to avoid the feeling of,

I'm not,

My performance is not as strong as I want it to be.

And so I detach myself even more.

Another area that I work a lot with as parents,

And we see parental burnout is happening more and more,

Especially during the pandemic.

So the,

This increase in demands,

The workload imbalance,

And then the strategies that we use when,

And it's not just workload,

It's all sorts of things.

It's also not feeling like you have a sense of control or autonomy in your environment.

It's also toxicity within the environment,

Like toxic people that you're working with,

Which also may be burned out.

But these,

You know,

You mentioned Maslach.

So the,

The sort of six things that when you have a mismatch that contribute to burnout with,

So there's workload imbalance,

Your resources don't meet the demands of the workload,

There's not feeling autonomy control,

There's you're not feeling like your values match the values of the environment that you're working in.

And that can happen a lot,

I think,

For physicians,

As well as teachers,

Like I'm not on the same page with what I'm,

What I'm being told that I should be doing.

There's also a feeling of not being rewarded or appreciated.

And I think with teachers and with physicians,

You're not getting the appreciation for all the work that you're doing,

Or maybe you're not even being rewarded financially for the work that you're doing.

And then a fifth one is not feeling that community,

Like you're not feeling like you belong,

Or there's conflict within the communities that you have in your workplace.

And then the last one is fairness,

That there's a sense of certain people are getting promoted over others,

Or it's unfair.

So I think all of those could contribute to anxiety and then avoidance in response to that anxiety.

It's so interesting you mentioned those,

The autonomy piece is something that's directly in line with what we see in healthcare,

Especially as physicians are mandated more and more to follow algorithms or guidelines,

As compared to their,

Well,

Not that algorithms and guidelines aren't helpful,

But it really takes them away from feeling like they're making those decisions,

Where they might follow a guideline anyway.

But as compared to saying,

You have to check this box,

It's very,

Very different.

And I'm thinking of these five,

We've found five common habit loops around this.

And I'm wondering if you named all five of them.

So I'll just name them and give you an example.

And let's see if we actually went through them.

This will be so interesting,

Because I see teachers basically as in the same vein in terms of helping profession,

Just like physicians and nurses,

Et cetera.

So here,

One of the biggest ones that we found with physicians was this over-empathizing habit loop.

So for example,

If their patient feels anxious or frustrated or hopeless,

We're taught to empathize with them,

But as we empathize,

We're kind of get sucked in,

And then we feel these feelings too much.

And then when somebody's suffering and now we're suffering,

That burns us out pretty quickly.

So that's the first one.

The second one is this self-protection habit loop,

Which we talked about a little bit.

We armor up or we distance ourselves,

And we never learned this well in medical school.

And I'm guessing that the teachers don't learn this either.

It's like,

We put on our armor so that we can get to work every day.

And it gets pretty heavy pretty quickly.

Another is this fix it habit loop,

Where we jump into action.

We have an urge to do something,

To do anything to help.

And I could see this a lot in all professions.

And then here's one,

I think,

This take it home loop,

Where we can't stop thinking about our patients,

But it could apply to students,

Coworkers,

Whatever.

And then there are these anger loops where we get frustrated and we lash out at our coworkers as a protective mechanism,

When it's not about them.

It's more about the situation.

So those five are the most common that we saw,

But I think I'm hearing several of those in what you just described as well.

Am I getting that right?

Yeah.

Well,

I would say what I just described comes from the research by Christina Maslach at Berkeley.

But I think those are what I was describing may be the conditions and then what you're describing are the behaviors.

Oh yeah.

Right.

So yeah.

So it's like the conditions are that there is unfairness in the workplace.

The behavior is you ruminate on the resentment about the unfairness and you get angry about it and then you take it home and then you try and work really hard to fix it,

But you go nowhere with it.

Those may be the habit loops of behavior that are in response to real things.

Like I think that there's a,

Obviously in psychology,

We have the overemphasis on the individual and we don't look at,

Okay,

Yeah,

You're in a toxic workplace.

You're in a,

This is,

This is unworkable for most people.

And that's why a lot of people are feeling the same way.

40% of the people are feeling the same way as you.

It's not just you,

But the ways in which you're responding behaviorally to these contents may be digging your hole deeper and leading to more burnout and then just physical exhaustion to the point where you don't have anything left.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know,

It's interesting you,

You differentiate the,

The individual versus the system.

We,

When we looked at two of Maslach's questions,

You know,

One was about callousness or depersonalization and another was emotional exhaustion.

What we found was we got a 50% reduction in callousness and we only got a 20% reduction in emotional exhaustion,

Which I think fits beautifully with what you're describing is we have to,

You know,

An app is,

Might help somebody step out of a habit loop of being callous because that's a personal factor,

But it's an individual factor,

But it's not going to suddenly change the system.

And that system might be contributing more to emotional exhaustion than personal factors or individual factors.

So it,

We can start to see institutional versus individual,

Even in these,

How these,

How these questions and how these factors change based on doing an individual treatment as compared to an institutional treatment.

Yeah.

I was actually asked to be on this summit that's coming up in October and it's for physicians and it's called the anti-wellness retreat for physicians.

And there's a number of good folks on,

I think Rhonda McGee is doing something on it,

But the,

The reason why they called it the anti-wellness retreat is because oftentimes I think when people are feeling burned out,

They're given suggestions like just take a break or,

You know,

Take more time off or think about it differently as opposed to actually some interventions that may be helpful systemically to change the system that you're in.

Like you have to take the stone out of your shoe.

That's a very classic metaphor that's used.

If your foot is hurting,

Take the stone out of the shoe,

But also maybe there's something that you're doing that is making it hurt worse.

So let's,

Let's talk about the interventions that you're using.

Like you're,

Are you using the app,

The unwinding anxiety app with folks,

Or what is the intervention that you're using?

Well,

Certainly,

You know,

So with the unwinding anxiety app,

What was interesting was,

You know,

We got these reductions,

We got a 50% reduction in callousness and 20% reduction in anxiety.

And then we got a 20% reduction in emotional exhaustion without mentioning the word burnout.

So the idea there is if you treat an underlying issue,

And I think of it more broadly as if we can train people to understand how their minds work,

We can help them work with their minds.

And so they can apply the knowledge that they're learning around anxiety to more broadly,

And they develop wisdom where they can say,

Oh,

Here's how my mind is working around,

You know,

The take it out,

Here's,

You know,

My anger habit loop or whatever.

So that can certainly be helpful for people,

You know,

Who have a big pain point of anxiety.

But I've,

You know,

We wanted to develop a little something a little more specific for clinicians.

And so I,

I was fortunate,

I have a postdoc,

Postdoctoral fellow,

Her name is Leah Antico,

Who was funded by the European Union to for a couple of years to actually develop programs for for clinicians and physicians.

And so we've been on this project.

And we were fortunate enough to have ShareCare buy in where they're like,

Yeah,

We'll,

We'll set up an app for you to that can be developed and distributed for free,

We'll just make it free for everyone,

Because,

You know,

We do want to help people.

And so,

So they're,

They're in the process of actually reworking our unwinding by ShareCare app.

So they have this app that's different than unwinding anxiety,

Not to be confused with,

But we're gearing it specifically toward clinicians.

And we get to do all the fun work where it's like,

Let's do user centered design,

Where we work with physicians and clinicians and really see what their primary,

You know,

Habit loops are,

Can we identify those.

And then we developed a seven,

Seven part series that's,

You know,

Short,

We're also thinking what's pragmatic.

So most clinicians don't have time to do extra things.

And then they feel guilty for not doing them when they're like,

Oh,

You should meditate,

You should exercise,

You should take care of yourself.

So we developed it in a way to help them be able to digest it and,

And to actually consume it in a way that wouldn't take extra parts of their day.

So we basically set up as a podcast,

And delivering in a podcast style format.

So they can be this mini course through this app,

But it can also be delivered through where they can get CME credits.

So for example,

Brown just put this course online for any clinician that wants to get,

You know,

It's free,

It's they can get CME credits for it.

And the idea is we go through these seven different short modules that are digestible and consumable,

You know,

Bite sized pieces,

Where we can really focus on,

You know,

Like,

What's the difference between empathy and compassion,

Because,

You know,

Empathy can lead to burnout,

Whereas compassion is empowering.

And if we don't know the difference between the two,

We can get stuck in these over empathizing habit loops and get burned out,

Whereas we can actually take that caring energy and basically make compassion a habit.

So we focus on that.

We also talk about,

You know,

How life gets in the way,

Working with intrusive thoughts,

That's something that clinicians identified a lot,

Judging ourselves and others and how we can actually bring in the antidote of kindness to judgments,

You know,

If we've got these self-judgmental habit loops,

Or even habits of judging our patients or our co-workers,

That can be toxic for ourselves and others,

Working with uncertainty.

And then also,

You know,

One thing that we felt was really important,

You know,

Emotional contagion,

As well as bias,

Working with implicit bias.

So,

For example,

In healthcare,

We can form a lot of societally conditioned implicit biases around treating pain.

For example,

There are some well-known studies with medical students and residents from just a few years ago,

Where they still believe that Black people have thicker skin and have a higher pain tolerance than white people,

Which is not true.

But it's still this belief that's deeply ingrained in some medical systems.

And so I think it's really important to be able to be educated around like,

Hey,

Wake up.

You know,

It's 2022,

And we still have these deeply held societal beliefs,

And we need to move on from those.

But also,

Not just,

Oh,

You should stop being biased.

That's not how our brains work.

But it's how can we recognize and compassionately work with bias?

So,

You know,

Really just trying to set up pragmatic ways based on what common pain points there are and starting from there.

So,

What I like about the description of each one of those different modules,

And this is what I sort of believe in general around any kind of treatment,

Is that it shouldn't only just treat the disease,

Like the disease of burnout.

It should have some benefit beyond that.

So,

You're also,

You know,

You're treating the disease of burnout or the condition.

We should not use the disease,

But the condition of burnout.

But you're also benefiting the physician,

And maybe they are actually becoming more effective at their work because they're more aware of their biases.

Or maybe they're becoming more effective at their work because they're more compassionate.

And we know that a compassionate physician is a better physician.

So,

This has these nice side effects.

You're going to get better at your work,

And then also you may start to feel better.

And that can become sort of a,

As you often describe,

Sort of a different habit loop,

A more positive habit loop for the physician and the teacher and the clinician as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And those are synergistic.

You know,

If we have more energy ourselves,

Then we're going to be able to help people more because we have more energy.

If we're helping people in a better way,

We're going to have more energy ourselves because we're not going to be dealing with fires that we've created.

And so,

I'm glad you picked up on that because that was really our intent is how can we pick the things that are going to be low-hanging fruit in terms of targeting,

But things that will generalize to wisdom and hopefully be helpful.

These are general principles that could be helpful to anyone,

Way beyond being in the healthcare profession.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm going to pause you here.

I have to go get my power cord,

But I'm going to pause you with a question,

Which is when have you experienced burnout and which one of those habit loops are the ones that you got stuck in?

Great.

I'll be back.

If you are burned out,

Sometimes the best thing that you can do is take a break,

A big break,

Unplug,

Step away and recharge.

And I invite you to come take a big break with me in Costa Rica,

Nosara,

Costa Rica at Blue Spirit this April.

It's for the general public and healthcare providers.

And we will be exploring psychological flexibility,

Compassion,

And how to take care of ourselves so that we can take better care of each other.

You can learn more at my website,

Drdianahealth.

Com.

Before I ask you a question about,

Like a personal question about you and burnout,

I just want to connect the dots for folks that are ACT practitioners,

That there's a lot of overlap of what you're talking about in terms of these habit loop cycles and in ACT we call it experiential avoidance or experiential attachment.

So the idea of something negative shows up that you don't like,

And then you try and avoid it and you avoid it through maybe some of these examples that you're talking about in terms of either resentment or detaching or taking it home is actually more of like a worry behavior.

You're avoiding through worrying because if you think that if you worry about it at home,

Then maybe that will change it.

You'll come up with a solution.

Yeah,

I'll come up with some kind of solution.

But what about you,

Dr.

Jed?

When have you,

Or have you experienced burnout or maybe been on your way to burnout and turned it around?

Do you have any examples of that?

Yeah.

I would say which of these habits have I not fallen into?

It might be more accurate.

So the over-empathizing one is certainly one that is very easy to slip into,

Especially when I have a patient who's really,

Really suffering and just feeling their pain.

That's really tricky,

Especially when there are no clear solutions.

So what is the problem with that?

What happens for you if you over-empathize?

Why is that a problem?

So I think there's a branch point,

There's a fork in the road of where that can become problematic and where it's not a problem.

And this is the difference between empathy and compassion.

So empathy is around,

Let's operationally define as really putting yourself in somebody else's shoes.

And so if we put ourselves in somebody else's shoes and they're suffering,

Then we're suffering.

And that's about us.

We are suffering because they're suffering.

The difference,

The fork in that road is if somebody is suffering,

We can walk alongside or we can be with.

Compassio literally means to be with suffering.

So we can be with the suffering,

But not take it personally.

And that's the critical difference between empathy and compassion is if we take their suffering personally,

Which is until we train ourselves not to do that,

That's just our habit as a human.

We relate to people based on how we think,

Our brain kind of models what it would be like for us to do that.

And that's how we can empathize with people.

At the same time,

If we learn to notice the difference between taking something personally and being with it in a real true way,

But not taking it personally,

That is makes a world of difference because as much suffering comes at us,

If we're not taking it personally,

We're never going to,

We're never going to take it on as a burden because there's no us there to do that.

And I'm not trying to sound existential.

This is very practical.

So as we learn to feel emotions,

We learn to not habitually react to them in self-protective ways.

When we learn to,

This is about,

I think,

I'd be curious to hear what your thoughts are.

It's like a way to train ourselves to work with experiential avoidance.

If we can learn that the experience doesn't need to be avoided and that avoidance is actually worse than feeling an emotion.

So if we can learn to turn toward,

It's like the obstacle becomes the way,

It's the only way out is through.

All those sayings,

I think,

Point to this,

Where we learn that,

Oh,

I can be with a strong emotion as compared to I am that strong emotion.

I am anxious versus I'm a person who feels anxiety.

The same is true.

That's the difference between empathy and compassion.

When we're taking these things personally,

We get stuck with that empathy burden and then we get burnt out.

Whereas if we can learn to be with it compassionately,

The more suffering there is,

The more we're moved to help in a way that is helpful.

Does that make sense?

What can happen,

Especially with empathy fatigue,

Is we also really hinge our feelings feeling of okayness based on the other person getting better and the other person not feeling pain.

Then that has a bit of a boomerang effect because,

Especially in therapy,

Sometimes in therapy,

A client won't tell a therapist something because they don't want the therapist to worry about them or they don't want the therapist to feel bad or feel grief or they don't want them to be disgusted or all sorts of things.

They basically don't want the therapist to have too much empathy.

If you can demonstrate compassion,

Then all of a sudden your clients will tell you things like,

I'm suicidal,

And they won't get the response that maybe they've gotten by other people,

Which is to quickly fix the suicidal thought or go through the suicide inventory and make sure that you're safe and you have any guns in the home.

You need to do it before the client leaves the room.

Right.

But talk about breaking connection.

That's a great way to break connection and not develop and break trust.

Yeah,

And break trust.

It is something that once you can start to be more with your own emotions in an act,

That would be some of the acceptance processes,

Right?

And also the self-processes of being able to see yourself both as connected and differentiated.

Like,

I'm here with you,

But you aren't the whole of my experience,

Right?

That can be helpful as well.

What have you done to get out of that habit loop?

What's been useful for you when you start to feel like you're over-empathizing with a patient?

I think the big thing is awareness.

So just seeing that I'm kind of getting caught up in it,

It feels contracted,

It feels heavy,

And it also can trigger the fix it habit loop too,

Where as that weight starts to get heavier,

My brain says,

Do something,

Do something.

So that can also be a sign as well.

And the nice thing about this is just the seeing and bringing some awareness helps me from being caught up in it.

It's that observer effect.

By observing,

You can't be as identified with an emotion or a thought or a patient.

So by observing the emotion and observing the feelings,

That naturally kind of pops me out of that habit loop.

Yeah.

Yes.

The fixing habit loop is the one that I relate to very much as a clinician.

And then I've seen it in physicians and even seen some,

What was that?

There was a study that showed that physicians tend to prescribe more medications towards the end of the day and less medications at the beginning of the day.

And I think it probably has to do with this,

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I Well,

Thank you.

Any any last thoughts you want to say on burnout?

I would say the key to all of this is curiosity and kindness.

So the more we can develop curiosity,

The more we can develop self compassion and kindness,

The more we're not only going to help ourselves,

But we're going to help the world as well.

So when you're burned out,

It impacts your health,

Your productivity,

It has consequences for your family,

And nobody experiences burnout exactly the same.

But there's three components that we talked about on this podcast,

The component of feeling physically exhausted,

Which is your stress response,

You may feel like you're dragging physically fatigued,

You feel like you can't turn your engine on.

And then the second component has to do with a negative,

Hostile,

Cynical attitude that you can develop about your job.

And this leads to low motivation.

The third component of burnout is that you have this negative sense of yourself and your own efficacy and your ability to do your work.

Burnout is different from depression.

It's different from anxiety.

Dr.

Judd today talked about how it may be related to anxiety.

And it's actually not a DSM diagnosis as much as it's a phenomenon that you may be experiencing.

And there's different degrees of burnout that you may be experiencing.

This week,

I'd love for you to focus on the five habit loops that we can get stuck in in our attempts to manage our stress that make things work.

You can download the list of the five habit loops from your daily practice,

But I'm going to list them here.

And want you to take note of which one you think you tend to do the most because that's the one that I want you to work on and notice this week.

Awareness of your habit is the first step in changing the habit.

So the first habit loop is over empathizing.

The second is self protection,

Putting up your armor.

The third is the fix it habit loop.

The fourth is the take it home habit loop.

And the fifth is the anger habit loop.

Which one of those do you tend to do most when you are getting burned out?

Notice your habit loop this week.

And when you notice it starting to happen,

Pause,

Name it and do something different.

Dr.

Judd suggests curiosity and kindness as a wonderful alternative to these habit loops.

I would add in with psychological flexibility,

You could practice noticing the feeling of burnout in your body,

The feeling of exhaustion,

The feeling of overwhelm,

The feeling of too much to do,

And tend to it,

Take care of it,

Have compassion,

You are not the only one experiencing burnout.

And then ask yourself,

What could I do that's aligned with my values right now?

How can you notice burnout a little bit sooner and take action to care for yourself instead of getting caught in the habit loop?

I'll list these habit loops in the show notes and stay tuned for part two next week.

We'll have a lot more information and tips on burnout with Dr.

Christina Maslach.

And that one in particular will be really helpful if you are in a leadership role in your organization.

Because when we're considering burnout,

We need to think beyond the individual.

It's not just you that's the problem.

It's often because our workplaces have a lot of problems associated with them.

And the more that we collectively say that this is not okay,

Then maybe there can be some changes at the corporate level to work towards preventing burnout.

Alrighty,

I'll see you next week.

If you liked this episode or think it would be helpful to somebody,

Please leave a review over at podchaser.

Com.

And if you have any questions,

You can leave them for me by phone at 805-457-2776,

Or send me a voicemail by email at podcast at yourlifeandprocess.

Com.

I want to thank my team,

Craig,

Angela Stubbs,

Ashley Hyatt,

And thank you to Ben Gold at Bell and Branch for his original music.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only,

And it's not meant to be a substitute for mental health treatment.

Reviews

Very informative. Thank you both!

Thank you, Dr. Hill, for this podcast! You've given much to contemplate and be aware of. Much appreciated!