Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Flex and Frooms Flex and Frooms. This is the Flex
and Frooms catch Up podcast. Have we ever experienced burnout?
Is it more than just a lot of stress at
a short amount of time? It, unfortunately is. I came
across this video from doctor Claire Ashley that details not
only what burnout is, but her personal experience with it.
(00:22):
And when we come back from listening to that, want
to talk a bit more about the difference between burnout
and stress and if we've ever experienced it.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
It takes on average one to three years to fully
recover from burnout, so prevention really is better than cure,
and there is a known process, stepwise process into burnout
that most people are not aware of, myself included because
I didn't know what was happening to me until I
hit a mental health crisis. So bearing in mind that
prevention is so much better than cure if you can
get yourself before you hit a crisis point, took me
(00:51):
about six months to go from being fully functional, living
my best life, being really really functional at work to
being in a total mental health crisis. And despite the
fact that I'm a doctor with like twenty years now
with clinical knowledge and experience, plus a degree in neuroscience.
I had no idea what was happening to me until
I hit that crisis point, and it has taken me
(01:13):
the best part really of four years to get over this.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
When I first heard that video, I was like, Okay,
maybe some of us just handle stress a little bit
better than others. Maybe it's not that deep. But then
based on watching that whole video, the whole way through
my whole feed became like burnout top very quickly. And
there's this one girl who's documenting her experience of trying
to like unravel her way out of this spiral. And
she was talking about all these changes that she made
on her day to day life, and one of them
(01:38):
was decision fatigue. She was like, I made my life simple.
I wear the same shirt every day, I've got five
pairs of them, the same bottoms every day. I ate
the same food every day. Everything is simple. There's something
flavorful in my life, nothing colorful, nothing creative. Because my
mind just can't handle it. I put all of my
loved ones in one group chat my mom, my dad,
my friends, whoever, who needs to hear from me for
(02:01):
me to like speak outwardly to them like a bulletin
and for them to know that I'm fine, but no
expectation of this two way communication. I said, WHOA, like
what happened to you? That this would need to be
the length that you're taking. So there is a difference
between burnout and stress. Off the top, stress is more
like a sense of urgency, physical toiling, like you know,
my head is scrambled, like I'm making mistakes, I'm clumsy.
(02:24):
That's stress. Burnout, however, is like lost motivation, feeling helpless, down,
et cetera. The difference between burnout and stress when you
put them side by side in a little diagram you
might do then your head or on a paper. You
realize that for the most part, when we say that
high school was stressful, I can see that right. You
get over engaged. You want to do a lot of
everything at once. It's creeping up on you. You feel
(02:47):
really reactive or overreactive when your parents are like why
haven't you studied? Your teachers like stop talking you like
you arc up? You are animated in your frustration. There's
a sense of urgency, What am I going to do
when I finish? Like no one's telling me should I
go to the counselor what's happened. Then you might have
like anxiety about it. But all of this is kind
of like it's a response to your environment, an obviously
(03:08):
stressful situation. You're responding accordingly. However, burnout is being in
these obviously stressful environments or not and disengaging. It's like
the apathetic response. What would have inspired you previously to
engage in conflict or to sort it out, or to
be proactive, you no longer do that. You're disengaged. Also,
(03:31):
you become quite stifled and distant in your emotional expression.
So instead of being the person who's like, oh, I'm
gonna do something about it, you don't do anything about it.
You can feel helpless, you can lose your motivation, which
can lead you to feeling depressed, and it becomes emotionally toiling.
So stress physically toiling a lot reactive, burnout emotionally toiling, introverted, introspective,
(03:53):
like in a cave, vibes in a cave. Oh my word,
do you think you've experienced it? Absolutely? I'm always burnt out.
But there are times when I feel like, because I'm
not really good at like checking my mind body connection,
i can't figure out where it starts to end. Kind
of like a dream. You just end up in one
and you're like, oh that, oh that's so whoa, And
then you wake up and you're like, was that even real?
(04:15):
Because today I feel fine? So what's the what's the deal?
What I was trying to figure out is like, is
burnout on the same spectrum as stress? Like you like
a lot of stress leads to burnout? How does that work?
And then I found out that burnout isn't necessarily separate
from stress, but on like the furthest end of the
stress continuum. So like, it's fine and normal to experience
(04:36):
stress regularly, a bit of anxiety that is responding to
a scenario, but the repetition of that and the intensity
of that leads you to a far right place that
can cause burnout if you don't, like, I don't know,
resolve it. And then it says when chronic stress leads
you to experience more intense and severe symptoms of stress,
(04:59):
it appairs your ability to function, and that's called burnout.
It's like when your ability to function is impaired, I
mean you cannot do the things you used to do
with varying levels of ease anymore because of the level
of stress you're under. Now, I look back and I
think about parents and you observe them being so stressed
they can't do anything, and you're like, Oh, that's wrong,
what's happening? You know when you I remember, like on
(05:22):
one occasion, if I didn't take like the chicken out
of the freezer and then my mom didn't get mad.
I was like, Oh, that's strange. What's that about? Burned out?
And I found out from this article. It was more
like a research paper, but it was saying that the
three main features of burnout are overwhelming exhaustion, cynicism and
detachment from the task, and a sense of not being productive,
(05:45):
accomplished or effective babes. And that's going to take you
one to three years to recover. Get out. Get Out.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
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