July 3, 2025 • 45 mins
In this episode of the Gladden Longevity Podcast, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden and burnout specialist Charlene Gisele explore the complexities of burnout, its causes, and the societal pressures that contribute to it. They discuss the importance of recognizing burnout as a serious condition, the impact it has on personal relationships and health, and the necessity of creating a supportive work environment. The conversation emphasizes the need for self-care, the role of mindset in recovery, and the significance of evaluating one's relationship with work. Ultimately, they highlight that burnout is not a permanent state and recovery is possible with the right approach.
For Audience
· Use code 'Podcast10' to get 10% OFF on any of our supplements at https://gladdenlongevityshop.com/ !
Takeaways
· Burnout is a sign of dedication, not weakness.
· Many professionals mask their burnout by pushing harder.
· Societal norms often equate busyness with success.
· Burnout can lead to serious personal consequences, including divorce and health issues.
· Finding safety and connection beyond work is crucial for recovery.
· Financial security fears can exacerbate burnout.
· Evaluating your relationship with work is essential for mental health.
· A supportive work environment is key to preventing burnout.
·
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:28):
Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
I'm your host, Dr.
Jeffrey Gladden, and we're here answering the big questions in life.
How good can we be?
How do we make 100 to new 30?
How do we live well beyond 120?
How do we live young for a lifetime?
And how do we develop a 300 year old mind?
And today we're talking with Charlene Gisele.
(00:50):
She's an attorney by trade who has become a burnout specialist based on her own experiencewith burnout.
And I don't know about you, but I've flirted with several times and I've actuallyexperienced burnout, uh pretty severe burnout at one point in my career.
And this is a really interesting conversation because you're going to hear us kind ofdissect what burnout is, how it happens, what's required, uh how to take care of people in
(01:21):
that state.
It's really quite interesting.
And I think if you're a professional and you love what you do, uh
you know, given external circumstances or whatever, you could feel there are times whereyou just have to put the pedal to the metal and the next thing you know, you're flirting
with burnout.
So you're going to find this conversation really interesting.
(01:42):
Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
I'm your host, Dr.
Jeffrey Gladden.
And today I'm sitting across from the lovely Charlene Borleau.
I hope I didn't butcher your name too badly.
She's calling in from uh Bordeaux uh in France.
ah She's not drinking a glass of wine though that I can see anyway.
(02:02):
but uh yeah, welcome to the show, Charlene.
Not on camera, but off camera for sure.
there you go.
There you go.
So Charlene, let's talk a little bit about burnout.
This is something I personally have experience with.
I've gone through burnout probably a couple of times in my career.
I remember one time it became really incapacitating.
(02:26):
I had to take three weeks off actually.
happened close to a meeting I was going to in December.
I couldn't even attend the meeting because uh
I was just so burnt out, quite honestly.
And I realized that, you know, we all push so hard or we think we need to push so hard.
um And we sort of compound the problem by doing that.
(02:47):
Of course, I've, you know, this happened maybe, I don't know, 10 years ago now, but Ilearned a lot from that experience.
And it actually took me about three weeks to recover before I could even think about goingback to work, um which is really, really interesting.
So.
I have some personal experience with this.
I don't know if you do as well, but I know you've become a burnout sort of preventioncoach and maybe a recovery coach.
(03:12):
I don't know.
You'll explain it to us.
So.
Well, the first thing I want to say is actually you did quite well because three weeksrecovery for burnout, I would say, is a pretty tight timeline.
My folks are taking anywhere between three months to nine months to recover.
So it really depends.
I would say, first of all, I really applaud your candor for sharing that with us because Ithink a lot of high flying professional on type A still perceive burnout as a sign of
(03:38):
weakness.
And we know from a psychological standpoint that it couldn't be further away from thetruth.
If anything, burnout is the proof that you are so dedicated, that you've done too much ofthat thing you love for too long with too little rest.
So that's it.
Burnout is a nutshell.
You've done too much of the thing you love for too many hours with too little rest.
(03:59):
You can think of many fancy definitions, but that's really my definition of it.
And the truth is we mask it, right?
I was a master masker.
In other words, I would show up at work, be the one that would be
billing the most amount of hours, asking for more client work.
So can you blame the organization, the company, the firm?
(04:19):
I don't think you can because the truth is when I think back about my years, when I burntout, I was asking for more work.
I was volunteering for more hours.
I wanted to be put up in front of the client.
I wanted to work weekend.
And I know this is going to sound strange, but...
I remember even liking the things you're not supposed to like, know, the all-nighters, thelate night deadline.
(04:40):
I liked it.
I got a kick out of it.
It's like get adrenaline, you feel that you're um of service, you feel that you can do itall and there is something extremely rewarding.
So my...
It's a, let me just interrupt you for a second, because it's really, it's reallyinteresting to hear you say that because ah this idea of doing too much of something that
(05:01):
you love doing um and not taking a break from it.
then, you know, there's, there's underlying reasons why we do that, which are intriguingto me, you know, in the sense of, yes, we do love what we do.
But um in my case, I think there was also a level of.
(05:23):
uh, fear, I would say of I need to be working this hard to actually bring this company tolife kind of thing.
In my case, it was starting a company, right?
So a little different than being part of a firm, but, a similar kind of thing.
You're building a practice inside a firm, whatever you're doing, right?
So, um, but I think for, for me, there's a sense of loving what I did, but also having anunderlying sort of feeling of fear or not being safe.
(05:52):
to where it felt safe to actually take time off.
And I think, I don't know if you experienced that or not, I'm just sharing that with theaudience because it may be that, you know, there's two sides to that coin.
um That there's also this sense of not feeling safe taking time off.
So I don't know, what do you think about that?
I love that you said that.
And in fact, at industry level, there is a lot of prejudice even against the notion ofrest and recovery.
(06:19):
So just think about LinkedIn as a platform.
And I love LinkedIn.
spent a big chunk of my life on the platform and it's an amazing platform for business,but it's interesting to take note of the fact that when you post on holidays or
recovering, depending on the community you are part of,
Yes, you're going to get, you know, a sort of positive engagement.
(06:42):
People are like, oh, wow, beautiful.
Where are you?
But there is a little voice that also goes, wow, you're taking a lot of time off.
Well, you have a lot of time for that.
People work hard, don't have time to take breaks like that.
Right.
And I know that because I was one of the people thinking that back in those years when Iburnt off.
Right.
And the truth is because we have this badge of
(07:06):
busyness and I've learned to take it off and to realize that actually work can be anaddiction.
And that's something that may not be evident, but in my observation, having been a burnoutadvisor now for the best part of seven and a half years coming out, I see the patterns and
(07:31):
the addictive behavior of folks with work.
that is so similar to a substance like drug or alcohol.
Yeah, it's it's kind of the normalized addiction, right?
Like if you talk about being addicted to alcohol or or a drug or a pharmaceutical orsomething like that, it has its own set of I suppose society has put some stigma on it,
(07:59):
but there's also a lot of empathy around it at this point in time around, OK, thisperson's suffering.
They're suffering with an addiction, right?
Whereas when people are addicted to work,
workaholic or whatever, um then there's not that same sort of empathy, if you will.
It's kind of like they're doing this to themselves.
(08:20):
Like they don't really have to be doing this, right?
So anyway, it's interesting, right?
Yeah.
further than that because at a societal level if one knows for example let's say that Iknow or you know that we have a past history with alcohol you're not gonna come up to me
(08:41):
and offer me a whiskey right just out of courtesy and out of respect in fact you're gonnaencourage sober behavior same with drugs if you know I have a history you're not gonna
give out the name of a drug dealer
I mean, at least as somebody who cares about my well-being.
However, how often do you see someone say, me make sure we buffer you from extra work.
(09:03):
Let me make sure that we keep you off that client matter because I know you've got it inyou, but actually I can see sign of work addiction.
I need to take that substance away from you to preserve you from burnout.
No, because at a societal level, more work equals faster track to promotion.
access to bonuses, access to more wealth, more resources, more power, more status.
(09:26):
So we live in a society where more work, more hours equals more success.
In other words, right?
Right.
Which is an interesting thing, right?
Because it gets back to the definition of success, right?
Like, what is the definition of success?
And why do we, what's actually gonna happen when we have more power, more wealth,whatever?
(09:50):
What does that do?
I think for me, the way I kind of think about it is that it makes people feel more safe.
Like they have control, right?
It's like a need to feel in control so that they feel safe on some level.
I think that's still a part of it.
I think there's also a joy in creating and co-creating and being a contributor to where,you know, it's gratifying to help people.
(10:17):
Like I love helping people.
Right.
And I love seeing our clients do great.
Like you love seeing your clients do well, right?
There's a certain joy in that for sure.
But
There's also, uh I think a lot of times there's sort of these underlying ah fears almostthat drive us to try to get to something.
And many times when we get there, we realize that there's nothing there, right?
(10:40):
So you've heard that story like a million times, right?
I made it all the way to the top and I found out there was nothing there, right?
So it's really interesting.
ah I think it's fascinating, yeah.
either nothing there or nothing left, right?
Because maybe there is something, uh but you become the shadow of yourself.
you know, in my line of work, what I say is very often folks come to see me when they'vehit one of the three Ds.
(11:06):
So D number one is divorce.
So either you're thinking about divorce or your wife or your husband is telling you,sweetie, if it goes any longer like this, that's not going to last.
And this is what happened to me in my first marriage.
I had a horrendous divorce and there was a very close connection between my burnout and mydivorce because I was married to my ex-husband.
(11:29):
So number one, number D is that divorce.
Then the second one is the diagnosis.
So that's actually the medical health scare.
So you just had your doctor telling you that you're pre-diabetic or that you're momentsaway from a heart attack or from a stroke or all of the above.
(11:50):
right?
And then the one, I'm sorry for being a bit morbid, but it's death, either death in thefamily or death of a colleague or death of a peer, or even just the thought and
contemplation of our own mortality and the realization that actually we may or may notsurvive our success.
So this is question that I really like to ask my clients is, okay, so I hear you, I seeyou, we've just met.
(12:18):
If you were to continue to work at the pace that you're currently working at, doing thesacrifices that you do for your health and well-being, the sacrifices that you do for your
personal relationship, what are the odds of you surviving your success, high or low?
Hmm.
Yeah.
Good question.
It's a poignant question.
(12:39):
think I have found a different uh solution to it, if you will, uh which is kind of in thepsychospiritual space uh to actually feel safe in feeling connected to source energy, uh
(13:00):
God, purpose.
feeling unconditional love, feeling safe, giving myself safety, realizing that nothingexternal to us can ever make us feel safe, ultimately.
All of it can be taken away, right?
History shows us that everything can be taken away, even our health.
So how do you ultimately feel safe?
So that becomes, for me, that becomes a psycho-spiritual question.
(13:21):
And once you sort of solve that, then you can actually feel safe.
Now you actually have the freedom.
to say, no, I'm safe.
If I take the afternoon off, I'm still safe.
If I take a week off, I'm still safe.
And yet ah there's still a passion to want to contribute and bring things forward andcreate.
think humans are at their best when they're creating.
you know, being able to do all that super fun, but then also realizing that uh that weneed to take care of ourselves.
(13:49):
And the way I picture that is taking care of my little four or five year old self.
It's like.
He can only do so much before he needs a break.
Right.
And so we're kind of like that.
We kind of push so hard that we we we sacrifice our health, even our mental health for thesake of of what you know.
Right.
So I think if you if you solve the big questions about meaning and purpose and safety andconnection and feeling loved, then it's like, OK, well, I'm doing this because.
(14:18):
I'm called to do this.
This is my thing.
And now I can, I can modulate it because it's not tied to my, either my identity, mysafety, my self worth or any of those kinds of things.
That's kind of how I've come to think about it.
I think that's a really good framework and I wonder to what extent do you find that ithelps alleviate performance anxiety or fear of missing out?
(14:42):
Yeah, I don't really have fear of missing out.
um think for me, it's in performance anxiety.
I always ask myself a question.
If I don't feel safe, um why is it that I don't feel safe in this situation?
What about this is not making me feel safe?
And once I ask that question, then it becomes, oh, I don't feel safe because of this orthis or this.
(15:05):
And some of it could be even old archetypal sort of wounds that I've incurred or.
traumas that I've experienced or you know, whatever it is and it's like, okay, well, thisis related to that.
So this is related to that, then.
Okay, now I'm getting a handle on it.
Now I can actually understand where this is coming from.
And I don't have to let it control me.
I don't have to live in reaction to it or even flail against it.
(15:27):
I can actually embrace it as part of what was there and say, okay, I can make peace withthis.
And now let me just choose to go a different direction.
Right.
So yeah.
Yeah.
I love it.
It's very powerful.
And I wonder if that feeling of being unsafe is connected to a fear that is relating tofinancial security.
(15:52):
How do you then...
soothe that fear because there is often with burnout a very, very strong connectionbetween the desire to continue to strive and provide and be productive and the desire to
be financially secure, particularly when one is a provider and the fear of financialinsecurities is huge.
(16:19):
I wonder how your safety framework works with that.
Yeah, it's a great question.
So ultimately, what I've come to understand is that finances, money can never make me feelsafe.
Right.
So if I don't depend on money to make me feel safe, then I'm not beholden to it.
And it doesn't mean that I'm not wise with my financial decisions or that I don't feellike I want to create wealth to have abundance to be able to create with it.
(16:49):
I love doing that, quite honestly.
But but
It's different than feeling like there's a have to or I'm going to or the whole world isgoing to create it.
Right.
It's there's kind of a panic in your soul.
It's like if you made an investment and you lost it, you would think I mean, could, know,really, it's the human that makes the meaning.
(17:11):
Right.
So you could lose the investment.
It could mean one of a million things.
I really learned something interesting there.
I'm going to apply that in another situation.
That's kind of analogous, but I'm going to do it differently.
Or it's like
my gosh, I just lost this.
my gosh.
my gosh.
The sky is falling.
Right.
So it's really how we see it.
um And so when you when you kind of realize that there is no failure, that we're only hereto learn, we're only here to grow.
(17:35):
And then it's like, no, I'll be I'll be fine.
I'll be fine.
If I get hit by a bus, I'll be fine, too.
So it's you know, it's all good.
Right.
And I think that's ultimately where safety comes from for me.
I can only speak for myself, but ultimately that's where it is.
And so, yeah.
Not to say that I don't have financial objectives or sometimes have concerns, right?
(17:56):
Sometimes I do if something's not going the way I would choose, it's like, well, we needto change something about that.
But um but I don't want to get my whole my whole life tied up in it, right?
Because I think that's a trap.
So.
And also it's something that really makes you lose perspective.
(18:20):
That's right.
It makes you lose perspective.
That's right.
That's right.
So I have a lot of clients that are in utterly toxic work relationship.
When they come to see me, one of the reason they hire me as a consultant or a burnoutadvisor is to really sort of decipher from the sort of intricate.
(18:43):
toxic relationship and understand how to navigate that relationship.
And exit is not always a solution, right?
I'm not always towards an exit strategy.
There's a room and space for staying at the firm or the organization.
I actually love it when my clients stay, but I really am very, very wary of fueling atoxic relationship.
(19:03):
And for me, the first step is to always be aware of whether or not that relationship towork, be it the organization, your boss,
from whatever it is, relationship to work with big word work, is it a healthy one or is ita toxic one?
In other words, if you were describing a relationship with your boyfriend, girlfriend,partner, husband, wife, would I qualify that relationship as healthy or unhealthy if you
(19:32):
gave me the same qualifiers, right?
So when I hear you talking about work, is it a sense of joy, motivation, fulfillment,dedication, passion?
Am I hearing those qualifiers?
Am I hearing all those terms when you talk to me?
Do I see you smile?
Do I see this sparkle, this idea?
And I can hear you creating your next big idea.
(19:53):
I can sense that creative juice flowing in you.
Like creativity, I think it's such an important test.
Are you creative or are you completely jaded, right?
Often burnt out, you're jaded, you're...
You're bitter, you're cynical, you're pissed off, you're everything but creative.
When I was worked out, creativity was not even on the radar.
(20:15):
You know, you don't, it's like, it's not...
Survival it's more survival mode at that point, right?
Yeah, there's no room to create.
I'm trying to survive here.
So
is so far fetched.
It's like, sort of, you can't even begin to think about it.
You're thinking about just waking up and not collapsing in the office.
That's kind of, that's a day.
Yeah.
No, I get it.
(20:36):
I get it.
But I think that if we have a bit of a honest, really candid, difficult conversation withourselves, or with an advisor, or with a consultant, and we actually evaluate our
relationship to work, and do an honest assessment and an inventory on all those feelingsand emotions and thoughts, what are they?
(20:58):
And that's really something that I want to challenge everyone listening to today.
Take your pen, take your
paper and evaluate your relationship to work.
I want to hear it all.
I want to hear the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in between.
How is it overall?
It's okay to have a rough day.
I have rough days too and I love what I do and I'm far from burning out.
But if it's overall this feeling of dooms and glooms and anxiety and overwhelm and thisfeeling, I have clients that tell me they feel like it can't breathe.
(21:27):
they walk into the office and they have their heart pounding out of their chest becausethey think they are going to have a panic attack.
Well, really, would you stay in a marriage if that was how you feel every time you walkinto a room with your spouse?
Right?
No, exactly.
No, you're exactly right.
I think it's a really good analogy to uh think of work as another relationship in yourlife, right?
(21:52):
And the people that work as other important relationships in your life.
think, you know, in our work here in longevity, we really have five different areas thatwe focus on.
One is the
life energy circle, is sort of the psycho spiritual space and longevity itself, which arethe drivers of aging, the hallmarks of age and health and performance, which is, you know,
(22:12):
being fit, fast, agile, strong, et cetera.
But the fifth circle is the environments we reside in and architecting those to actuallysupport the mission of being youthful.
So the ideas you end up with a 30 year old body and a 300 year old mind at age a hundred,right?
That's where we're going here.
So.
what kind of environment does it take for you to expand into that 300 year old mind,right?
(22:35):
It can't be a toxic environment.
And yet I think people many times feel trapped.
I'm sure when you talk to some of your clients, they end up feeling trapped because theyhave a mortgage, they have a wife, they have kids in school, they have this or that.
They don't know how they would make a move that wouldn't completely upset the financialapple cart for the family.
(22:58):
And so they end up leveraging their health to try to keep that going.
But they're actually literally shortening their lives by doing that.
Literally, yeah, absolutely.
It's fascinating to see how far I can go.
It's not uncommon at all in my line of work to have a client calling me and telling methey hit the road or they were on a train or they were on a plane and there was a little
(23:26):
part of them, however big or small that part may be, it's hard to tell, but there was apart that was kind of hoping that the plane wouldn't land or the car would.
Hmm.
Yeah.
I'm not saying they were suicidal but they had societal thoughts and ideation right so theidea of just what would be life like if I went around yeah I've had client go as far as
(23:56):
just making sure that you know their life insurance policies were really
good and strong to make sure their spouses were covered because they contemplated thethought of just being gone.
Or when I ask, where do you want to go?
And the client says nowhere and digging deeper and removing the layers and like, well,okay, if somewhere was a place, if nowhere was not an option, like, what can you tell me
(24:20):
more?
Like, what does that look like?
What does that feel like?
It's like.
uh
somewhere I'm not found or I don't have to show up or I don't want to leave anymore.
I don't want to be around.
I don't want to wake up tomorrow.
And then you have all those starts coming up or I would rather just not have to faceanother day.
And you have to interview quickly when you start to contemplate those thoughts becausethey can go very far.
(24:42):
And that's really the sort of the darkness of
of the type A brain, right?
Because it's always small and you're not very nuanced.
So there is an all or nothing mindset with a type A hyperproductive folks and I couldn'tbuy stuff in that.
it's either I'm going to get to the pinnacle of the organization or the whatever it isthat you want now, or I'm going to be gone.
(25:09):
Like there is no room for in-between or nuance or half measures.
Right?
So, and I very much thought like that.
And in fact, if I'm being really, really honest, ah the way I recovered from my burnoutwas not nuanced.
I did all or nothing.
I went from being a high flying litigator at an American law firm to going to an ashram inIndia, total eat my love, right?
(25:36):
Except I hadn't seen the movie, but you know, to throw myself into the deep end ofspiritualism and meditation because I could not see nuances.
Now having built the insight that I've built and being in a state of wellness that I'm innow, I can see how burnt out I was because I could either see, I'm a litigator at an
(26:00):
American law firm or I'm living with a guru in a national home in India.
This is quite extreme thinking, right?
Yeah, yeah, no, that's right.
But sometimes actually sometimes it takes the extremes to kind of reset the system, right?
ah
and I'm so grateful for my experience, but when people hear my story and they say, well,Suga, go and quit my job and leave my wife and go to India and the national, I'm like,
(26:27):
please no, I'm not an advocate for doing that, It worked for me and it served a purpose,but I'm not saying you need to be that radical.
I think there is a little danger in that.
Radical behavior that you haven't done the deep work yet and it's true.
I hadn't done the deep work yet I did the deep work there and then I realized how nonnuanced my brain was and how I needed to sort of surrender to the subtle nuances of Being
(26:59):
a lawyer and being spiritual or being a professional who can work and have a meditativepractice being somebody who can be fit and
sorry.
doing sports and serving my clients.
I had to add a lot of ands to my sentences.
For many, years I thought I can be a big attorney at a big American law firm or healthy ora good wife, but I don't think I can do all of that together.
(27:26):
And if I have to choose, I'll choose being an attorney over being a wife, over being astepmom, over being healthy any day, any time, right?
But...
Over the years with my spiritual practices and my health reset, I learned that actuallynot only there is an end, but also it's a foundation.
So I used to think I can't work out because I need to work hard.
(27:47):
Now I think I work so hard because I need to work so hard.
So if I have a hard workout, then I can do harder work.
It's a foundation, right?
I think of myself as a fit person.
that makes me a fitter professional, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually.
(28:08):
But I didn't used to think that way.
I had a very binary mindset and I think hopefully sharing that makes folks listeningrealize that maybe having more nuances in their life is a gift.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
And in the life energy circle, um the first thing on that is actually mindset, which hasto do with asking, are you married to your questions or are you married to your answers?
(28:38):
And the second part of that is, are you a binary thinker or a quantum thinker?
Right?
So if you're a binary thinker, it's easy to get into a box, right?
If you're married to your answers, it's easy to get into a box.
Now you feel compelled to defend them like, yes, of course I need to work.
Of course I need to do this, whatever, right?
But if you're a quantum thinker and you're married to your questions, how do I actuallylead the best life I possibly can?
(29:02):
How do I actually make the best contribution and maintain my balance and all these otherthings, right?
So it's the questions that will drive everything, I think.
Then it's like, oh, okay, well, there's probably a different way here.
And I think moving away what you did, moving away from the binary thought process into amore nuanced, what I would call quantum way of thinking like, there's a better solution
here at this time in this position for this, right?
(29:23):
Then, then that's super helpful.
That's really, really, that's really, really cool.
So yeah.
It is, but I'm pretty certain, having seen hundreds if not thousands of professionalburning out, that the burnt out brain can't do nuances very well.
No, they can't.
No, it can't.
(29:43):
It's in complete fight or flight.
When people come to the office here, right, we actually measure, we do a couple of tests.
We do uh a personality profile that looks at who they are at age 12, like what's theirsweet spot as a personality?
And then what are they asking of themselves to be at work?
Right.
And sometimes we find massive differences between who they really are.
(30:09):
and who they feel they need to show up as at work.
And that's there's inherent stress in that.
Right.
Just and people normalize it.
That's the other thing.
It's like, no, it's just part of my job is what I do.
Well, not exactly.
Take a look at this because, know, you would be much happier if your job allowed you to dothis or more of that or this or that.
And I think, yeah, absolutely.
(30:30):
It would.
It's like, OK, well, there's the stress right there that you're not.
really able to see, but it's actually you're wearing it in your system because when wemeasure their nervous system, right, we see that they're under tremendous stress and yet
they've normalized it again.
So I think it's really uh it's really interesting how humans tend to normalize theselevels of stress that can be very unhealthy.
(30:53):
And I think equipping them with the knowledge to know, oh, I didn't realize.
Right.
I think that's part of the part of the process of helping people to change.
Yes, and also perhaps changing the perception around what's normal was not.
when you start to normalize not sleeping well as you know, well, who does right?
(31:16):
I remember this, you know, this really unhelpful saying like, who does or you sleep whenyou're dead?
Or yes, if you're working hard, you don't have time.
yeah, I can survive on three hours sleep and all those things that we say that are reallyfueling this narrative of
it's quite normal to not sleep if you want to be a dedicated professional.
(31:41):
And actually, that is just such a contradiction because you're using your brain and yourbrain, you know, from a neuroscientific standpoint, needs sleep.
It's unquestionable.
There is data, there is science, there is evidence.
And yet we think that we're somehow superheroes that do not need sleep and found thegreatest hack of all, but you haven't.
(32:02):
You're just two steps away from the biggest burnout of your life.
And I know that because I used to be an insomniac.
you used to do that.
Yeah.
I wonder if there's another element to this too, which is I wonder, I think in manyrespects, what we do, we do for love in a way that we want to be lovable.
(32:23):
And I think on some level there's a message that in order to be lovable, I need to be agood.
professional, a good provider, I need to have a certain status I need.
And that will make me lovable, not only for myself, but for other people.
I think that's another piece of it, too.
The safety is part of it also.
But then there's that lovability.
And I think people can just leverage themselves into total burnout with the misconceptionsof what it takes to actually be lovable or to be safe.
(32:55):
And so I think it's really interesting stuff.
So interesting field you're working in,
You know, I love that you said that about love because I get this Realization quite oftenin my coaching session or even during clinical hypnotherapy And this is a big moment for
my clients where they have a bit of a breakthrough when we talk about love and actually itreally
(33:21):
transpires that they're in relationship either with work or marriages or friendshipcircles that are not really meeting their love values.
When we meet their values, they're actually not really matching.
And when you get to a position, so if you...
have a trans state through clinical hypnotherapy and you actually get to have a personwhere they meet a part of themselves or they do inner child meditation or they go back
(33:50):
into their life or a past traumatic event and they actually get to meet a part of them orthey get to see their future and you ask them very safe guided question around
And if you wear that other person, so you put them in a third position, like anotherposition outside of themselves, and you ask them whether they would love the person
they've become, or the person they used to be, or the person they're about to be, there isthis moment of, well, either no, or I miss them, or I've lost them.
(34:18):
So, know, get clients break into tears when they get to think about their inner child andwhat that child used to love.
And that child loved to play and loved to build and loved to create and loved to love.
And I'm thinking, and now you're adult, does your inner child love the adult side of you?
If you were in a room where your adult version of self and your in child met, would yourchild play with the adult you've become?
(34:45):
Mm That's a good question.
No, it's a really good question.
You know, the freedom we have as children and particularly if we feel loved as a child, ifwe grow up in an environment where we do feel loved and we have love for ourselves, it's
interesting.
You know, in all these democratic countries, we talk about freedom and yet almosteverybody signs up to become an indentured servant.
(35:08):
Right.
In their personal life, like they now become.
an indentured servant to the job or the firm or the office or the work or the career or,whatever it is, right.
It's fascinating to me that uh we have a hard time actually living free in the sense ofbeing safe, being loved, and then creating from that space as opposed to feeling this
(35:31):
compulsion to become an indentured servant.
So.
Absolutely.
But again, I think that most of the time when we're in a state of burnout, we're so faroff even beginning to realize that or comprehend.
Total fight of light is total sort of collapse of everything that you know, and hence thelack of motivation, the feeling of being jaded.
(35:56):
it's just perhaps to bring a little bit of hope and light to this.
The one thing I would say is
Burnout is not a permanent state.
You know, I've mentioned three months longer, but one thing I know and I'm very confidentabout is you can recover.
You know, I believe in broke.
(36:17):
I know you are too.
And many of us are.
You can recover, but you have to be very mindful that you're prone to burning out again.
So I watch like oil on fire because I do ask myself, am I getting closer to burning outagain or am I getting
closer to staying in this space of balancing my health and my professional career.
(36:38):
And I have to set measures in place.
So I've learned that I can't fully trust myself around work like an ex-addict can't reallytrust themselves around the substance and they need to have sober behaviors.
I need to have sober behaviors around work.
So I need to put back systems and that's how I have safe.
I think that's really wise on your part.
(37:01):
I do think that when people are really burned out, it's almost like they need to be putinto intensive care.
It's very difficult to talk to somebody that's going into intensive care about running amarathon next year.
It's impossible.
like, I can't even, not only can I not even imagine it, I have no desire to even do it.
(37:22):
I think there has to be kind of an intensive care plan around those people to allow themto rehab, to recover.
Do you have sort of an intensive care plan for people when they come to you burned out?
I suspect you probably do.
It might be helpful for the audience to hear what that is.
I do burnout interventions.
So my coaching program is very separate from my burnout intervention, which is really, itdoes what it says.
(37:50):
It's an intervention.
It's usually not between nine to five.
It's usually being facilitated by an external member.
So an organization, a boss, a spouse, a friend, it's...
Happening sometimes that one person self-referred, but it's quite rare.
So an intervention typically is an external observer, be it a company, a firm, anorganization, a family member, who looking at that person A, being very concerned and
(38:20):
worried stages effectively an intervention and that's when I get called in.
So it's an intense work in terms of the tightness of it because it needs to be dealt with
very different frameworks.
So again, like you would not talk about running a marathon to somebody in intensive care.
I am not going to talk about, you know, having very long-term goal to somebody who's goingthrough it because you can't even have a long-term future thinking.
(38:50):
That's right.
So it's, it's, the now and say here and my method and framework is starts with thephysiology.
So I always start with
Physiology, I always go back to the body to have a body can be safe at a nervous systemthe brain the breath and Making sure that your physiological body can be the foundation
(39:11):
upon which we build back your health I always start there You can have psychologicalinterventions and you should have psychological interventions But I need to know that I
have a physiological foundation because if I do a psychological intervention the person islike gasping for hair or having a
right.
It's coming to nervous system is actually getting the nervous system to actually calm downin a way.
(39:35):
Right.
That's the key thing.
And allow it to have rest to where it's not feeling panicked.
um And yeah, all the stress.
Yeah, it's it's it's really it isn't it's a nervous system.
Rehabilitation is kind of what's required before you can even start to delve into the howdid we get here and where do we go from here?
(39:55):
Those are those are.
down the road.
That's like talking to your coach about how do we start training um when you're in theICU, right?
Those are inappropriate conversations in the ICU.
always tell my clients during a burnout intervention, when you hear me ask you about yourpast or talk to you about your future, we're no longer in the intervention phase.
(40:16):
When in the intervention, it's the right here, right now.
mean, where you at and we intervene.
How did your dad and mom influence the way you think, move and talk?
And what do you want to do in terms of your legacy and leadership to the world?
We get to that.
when we can thrive again, right?
(40:36):
So I don't do past or future pacing focus intervention.
I deal with the here and now, the physiological reset, and then we get deeper intopsychology to make sure we don't repeat the pattern and prevent another bout of burnout.
So it's kind of like somatic therapy in a way.
It's really allowing someone to come into control or a feeling of control in their bodyand in their nervous system, as opposed to being sort of out of control or completely
(41:02):
depleted.
Right.
And so it's it's somatic therapy.
If you're listening to that, that's really it's really body based therapy, which is inessence, nervous system slash body based uh therapy.
And that's a really, really important thing to know if you are flirting with burnout oryou're feeling like you might be headed down that path.
That's the best place to start, not with envisioning new horizons or whatever.
(41:27):
It's really about getting your nervous system back aligned, making it feel loved and safeand nurtured.
I think that's a key piece.
Yeah, I love that you said that because when I have folks asking me during the firstmeeting, should I quit my job?
Should I say you're not in a state to even be in, to ask for a job?
(41:48):
Because if you make that decision in the state you're in, I'm not sure this is going to bea decision that really serves you in the long term.
So I actually hold things back.
So even if I'm pushed into, need to make that decision, I know you do, but not now.
But now we're going to work on how you can make that decision being in the most optimalstate you can make that decision in.
(42:16):
Like that is really important to understand.
And of course you get pushed back on objection.
But I think that if you get that self-awareness piece first and you understand thateverything starts with the body and the physiology and the somatic work, you're already a
long way ahead.
And you're certainly ahead of where I was back when I...
and that's why I'm so grateful for my yogic practice in India because it really truly wasa somatic intervention of thought which I didn't realize right but it is what I
(42:43):
That's right.
That's what it was.
Yeah, exactly.
No, that's quite beautiful.
I'm really starting to realize that burnout and flirting with burnout is really, uh it'sanalogous to kind of a medical emergency where someone would need to be in an intensive
care unit.
Right.
I think that it's really, it's that serious.
It's that systemic.
(43:04):
And it's, that important to actually drop away everything else and just focus on.
on getting that person kind of back to a state of equilibrium, healthy.
Everything else can wait, quite honestly.
So, yeah.
even deadlines, would you believe it?
I promise you they can.
I know it's hard to believe but they can.
m
(43:25):
been lovely chatting with you, Charlene.
I know you have another call coming up here in a couple of minutes,
what it is, it's a burnout intervention, so...
Oh, okay.
Well, that's an important call to get to.
yeah, well, great.
Hopefully you feel energized by this conversation.
So.
loved your energy and your generosity through the questions and your insights.
(43:46):
I love the way your brain work and I think you've asked very powerful questions.
I'm very grateful for that exchange.
Thank you.
Beautiful.
Yeah, it was lovely conversation.
really appreciate your insights as well.
awesome.
Well, great.
Well, we'll chat again.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
Bye.
Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
I'm your host, Dr.
Jeffrey Gladden, and we're here answering the big questions in life.
How good can we be?
How do we make 100 to new 30?
How do we live well beyond 120?
How do we live young for a lifetime?
And how do we develop a 300 year old mind?
And today we're talking with Charlene Gisele.
(00:50):
She's an attorney by trade who has become a burnout specialist based on her own experiencewith burnout.
And I don't know about you, but I've flirted with several times and I've actuallyexperienced burnout, uh pretty severe burnout at one point in my career.
And this is a really interesting conversation because you're going to hear us kind ofdissect what burnout is, how it happens, what's required, uh how to take care of people in
(01:21):
that state.
It's really quite interesting.
And I think if you're a professional and you love what you do, uh
you know, given external circumstances or whatever, you could feel there are times whereyou just have to put the pedal to the metal and the next thing you know, you're flirting
with burnout.
So you're going to find this conversation really interesting.
(01:42):
Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.
I'm your host, Dr.
Jeffrey Gladden.
And today I'm sitting across from the lovely Charlene Borleau.
I hope I didn't butcher your name too badly.
She's calling in from uh Bordeaux uh in France.
ah She's not drinking a glass of wine though that I can see anyway.
(02:02):
but uh yeah, welcome to the show, Charlene.
Not on camera, but off camera for sure.
there you go.
There you go.
So Charlene, let's talk a little bit about burnout.
This is something I personally have experience with.
I've gone through burnout probably a couple of times in my career.
I remember one time it became really incapacitating.
(02:26):
I had to take three weeks off actually.
happened close to a meeting I was going to in December.
I couldn't even attend the meeting because uh
I was just so burnt out, quite honestly.
And I realized that, you know, we all push so hard or we think we need to push so hard.
um And we sort of compound the problem by doing that.
(02:47):
Of course, I've, you know, this happened maybe, I don't know, 10 years ago now, but Ilearned a lot from that experience.
And it actually took me about three weeks to recover before I could even think about goingback to work, um which is really, really interesting.
So.
I have some personal experience with this.
I don't know if you do as well, but I know you've become a burnout sort of preventioncoach and maybe a recovery coach.
(03:12):
I don't know.
You'll explain it to us.
So.
Well, the first thing I want to say is actually you did quite well because three weeksrecovery for burnout, I would say, is a pretty tight timeline.
My folks are taking anywhere between three months to nine months to recover.
So it really depends.
I would say, first of all, I really applaud your candor for sharing that with us because Ithink a lot of high flying professional on type A still perceive burnout as a sign of
(03:38):
weakness.
And we know from a psychological standpoint that it couldn't be further away from thetruth.
If anything, burnout is the proof that you are so dedicated, that you've done too much ofthat thing you love for too long with too little rest.
So that's it.
Burnout is a nutshell.
You've done too much of the thing you love for too many hours with too little rest.
(03:59):
You can think of many fancy definitions, but that's really my definition of it.
And the truth is we mask it, right?
I was a master masker.
In other words, I would show up at work, be the one that would be
billing the most amount of hours, asking for more client work.
So can you blame the organization, the company, the firm?
(04:19):
I don't think you can because the truth is when I think back about my years, when I burntout, I was asking for more work.
I was volunteering for more hours.
I wanted to be put up in front of the client.
I wanted to work weekend.
And I know this is going to sound strange, but...
I remember even liking the things you're not supposed to like, know, the all-nighters, thelate night deadline.
(04:40):
I liked it.
I got a kick out of it.
It's like get adrenaline, you feel that you're um of service, you feel that you can do itall and there is something extremely rewarding.
So my...
It's a, let me just interrupt you for a second, because it's really, it's reallyinteresting to hear you say that because ah this idea of doing too much of something that
(05:01):
you love doing um and not taking a break from it.
then, you know, there's, there's underlying reasons why we do that, which are intriguingto me, you know, in the sense of, yes, we do love what we do.
But um in my case, I think there was also a level of.
(05:23):
uh, fear, I would say of I need to be working this hard to actually bring this company tolife kind of thing.
In my case, it was starting a company, right?
So a little different than being part of a firm, but, a similar kind of thing.
You're building a practice inside a firm, whatever you're doing, right?
So, um, but I think for, for me, there's a sense of loving what I did, but also having anunderlying sort of feeling of fear or not being safe.
(05:52):
to where it felt safe to actually take time off.
And I think, I don't know if you experienced that or not, I'm just sharing that with theaudience because it may be that, you know, there's two sides to that coin.
um That there's also this sense of not feeling safe taking time off.
So I don't know, what do you think about that?
I love that you said that.
And in fact, at industry level, there is a lot of prejudice even against the notion ofrest and recovery.
(06:19):
So just think about LinkedIn as a platform.
And I love LinkedIn.
spent a big chunk of my life on the platform and it's an amazing platform for business,but it's interesting to take note of the fact that when you post on holidays or
recovering, depending on the community you are part of,
Yes, you're going to get, you know, a sort of positive engagement.
(06:42):
People are like, oh, wow, beautiful.
Where are you?
But there is a little voice that also goes, wow, you're taking a lot of time off.
Well, you have a lot of time for that.
People work hard, don't have time to take breaks like that.
Right.
And I know that because I was one of the people thinking that back in those years when Iburnt off.
Right.
And the truth is because we have this badge of
(07:06):
busyness and I've learned to take it off and to realize that actually work can be anaddiction.
And that's something that may not be evident, but in my observation, having been a burnoutadvisor now for the best part of seven and a half years coming out, I see the patterns and
(07:31):
the addictive behavior of folks with work.
that is so similar to a substance like drug or alcohol.
Yeah, it's it's kind of the normalized addiction, right?
Like if you talk about being addicted to alcohol or or a drug or a pharmaceutical orsomething like that, it has its own set of I suppose society has put some stigma on it,
(07:59):
but there's also a lot of empathy around it at this point in time around, OK, thisperson's suffering.
They're suffering with an addiction, right?
Whereas when people are addicted to work,
workaholic or whatever, um then there's not that same sort of empathy, if you will.
It's kind of like they're doing this to themselves.
(08:20):
Like they don't really have to be doing this, right?
So anyway, it's interesting, right?
Yeah.
further than that because at a societal level if one knows for example let's say that Iknow or you know that we have a past history with alcohol you're not gonna come up to me
(08:41):
and offer me a whiskey right just out of courtesy and out of respect in fact you're gonnaencourage sober behavior same with drugs if you know I have a history you're not gonna
give out the name of a drug dealer
I mean, at least as somebody who cares about my well-being.
However, how often do you see someone say, me make sure we buffer you from extra work.
(09:03):
Let me make sure that we keep you off that client matter because I know you've got it inyou, but actually I can see sign of work addiction.
I need to take that substance away from you to preserve you from burnout.
No, because at a societal level, more work equals faster track to promotion.
access to bonuses, access to more wealth, more resources, more power, more status.
(09:26):
So we live in a society where more work, more hours equals more success.
In other words, right?
Right.
Which is an interesting thing, right?
Because it gets back to the definition of success, right?
Like, what is the definition of success?
And why do we, what's actually gonna happen when we have more power, more wealth,whatever?
(09:50):
What does that do?
I think for me, the way I kind of think about it is that it makes people feel more safe.
Like they have control, right?
It's like a need to feel in control so that they feel safe on some level.
I think that's still a part of it.
I think there's also a joy in creating and co-creating and being a contributor to where,you know, it's gratifying to help people.
(10:17):
Like I love helping people.
Right.
And I love seeing our clients do great.
Like you love seeing your clients do well, right?
There's a certain joy in that for sure.
But
There's also, uh I think a lot of times there's sort of these underlying ah fears almostthat drive us to try to get to something.
And many times when we get there, we realize that there's nothing there, right?
(10:40):
So you've heard that story like a million times, right?
I made it all the way to the top and I found out there was nothing there, right?
So it's really interesting.
ah I think it's fascinating, yeah.
either nothing there or nothing left, right?
Because maybe there is something, uh but you become the shadow of yourself.
you know, in my line of work, what I say is very often folks come to see me when they'vehit one of the three Ds.
(11:06):
So D number one is divorce.
So either you're thinking about divorce or your wife or your husband is telling you,sweetie, if it goes any longer like this, that's not going to last.
And this is what happened to me in my first marriage.
I had a horrendous divorce and there was a very close connection between my burnout and mydivorce because I was married to my ex-husband.
(11:29):
So number one, number D is that divorce.
Then the second one is the diagnosis.
So that's actually the medical health scare.
So you just had your doctor telling you that you're pre-diabetic or that you're momentsaway from a heart attack or from a stroke or all of the above.
(11:50):
right?
And then the one, I'm sorry for being a bit morbid, but it's death, either death in thefamily or death of a colleague or death of a peer, or even just the thought and
contemplation of our own mortality and the realization that actually we may or may notsurvive our success.
So this is question that I really like to ask my clients is, okay, so I hear you, I seeyou, we've just met.
(12:18):
If you were to continue to work at the pace that you're currently working at, doing thesacrifices that you do for your health and well-being, the sacrifices that you do for your
personal relationship, what are the odds of you surviving your success, high or low?
Hmm.
Yeah.
Good question.
It's a poignant question.
(12:39):
think I have found a different uh solution to it, if you will, uh which is kind of in thepsychospiritual space uh to actually feel safe in feeling connected to source energy, uh
(13:00):
God, purpose.
feeling unconditional love, feeling safe, giving myself safety, realizing that nothingexternal to us can ever make us feel safe, ultimately.
All of it can be taken away, right?
History shows us that everything can be taken away, even our health.
So how do you ultimately feel safe?
So that becomes, for me, that becomes a psycho-spiritual question.
(13:21):
And once you sort of solve that, then you can actually feel safe.
Now you actually have the freedom.
to say, no, I'm safe.
If I take the afternoon off, I'm still safe.
If I take a week off, I'm still safe.
And yet ah there's still a passion to want to contribute and bring things forward andcreate.
think humans are at their best when they're creating.
you know, being able to do all that super fun, but then also realizing that uh that weneed to take care of ourselves.
(13:49):
And the way I picture that is taking care of my little four or five year old self.
It's like.
He can only do so much before he needs a break.
Right.
And so we're kind of like that.
We kind of push so hard that we we we sacrifice our health, even our mental health for thesake of of what you know.
Right.
So I think if you if you solve the big questions about meaning and purpose and safety andconnection and feeling loved, then it's like, OK, well, I'm doing this because.
(14:18):
I'm called to do this.
This is my thing.
And now I can, I can modulate it because it's not tied to my, either my identity, mysafety, my self worth or any of those kinds of things.
That's kind of how I've come to think about it.
I think that's a really good framework and I wonder to what extent do you find that ithelps alleviate performance anxiety or fear of missing out?
(14:42):
Yeah, I don't really have fear of missing out.
um think for me, it's in performance anxiety.
I always ask myself a question.
If I don't feel safe, um why is it that I don't feel safe in this situation?
What about this is not making me feel safe?
And once I ask that question, then it becomes, oh, I don't feel safe because of this orthis or this.
(15:05):
And some of it could be even old archetypal sort of wounds that I've incurred or.
traumas that I've experienced or you know, whatever it is and it's like, okay, well, thisis related to that.
So this is related to that, then.
Okay, now I'm getting a handle on it.
Now I can actually understand where this is coming from.
And I don't have to let it control me.
I don't have to live in reaction to it or even flail against it.
(15:27):
I can actually embrace it as part of what was there and say, okay, I can make peace withthis.
And now let me just choose to go a different direction.
Right.
So yeah.
Yeah.
I love it.
It's very powerful.
And I wonder if that feeling of being unsafe is connected to a fear that is relating tofinancial security.
(15:52):
How do you then...
soothe that fear because there is often with burnout a very, very strong connectionbetween the desire to continue to strive and provide and be productive and the desire to
be financially secure, particularly when one is a provider and the fear of financialinsecurities is huge.
(16:19):
I wonder how your safety framework works with that.
Yeah, it's a great question.
So ultimately, what I've come to understand is that finances, money can never make me feelsafe.
Right.
So if I don't depend on money to make me feel safe, then I'm not beholden to it.
And it doesn't mean that I'm not wise with my financial decisions or that I don't feellike I want to create wealth to have abundance to be able to create with it.
(16:49):
I love doing that, quite honestly.
But but
It's different than feeling like there's a have to or I'm going to or the whole world isgoing to create it.
Right.
It's there's kind of a panic in your soul.
It's like if you made an investment and you lost it, you would think I mean, could, know,really, it's the human that makes the meaning.
(17:11):
Right.
So you could lose the investment.
It could mean one of a million things.
I really learned something interesting there.
I'm going to apply that in another situation.
That's kind of analogous, but I'm going to do it differently.
Or it's like
my gosh, I just lost this.
my gosh.
my gosh.
The sky is falling.
Right.
So it's really how we see it.
um And so when you when you kind of realize that there is no failure, that we're only hereto learn, we're only here to grow.
(17:35):
And then it's like, no, I'll be I'll be fine.
I'll be fine.
If I get hit by a bus, I'll be fine, too.
So it's you know, it's all good.
Right.
And I think that's ultimately where safety comes from for me.
I can only speak for myself, but ultimately that's where it is.
And so, yeah.
Not to say that I don't have financial objectives or sometimes have concerns, right?
(17:56):
Sometimes I do if something's not going the way I would choose, it's like, well, we needto change something about that.
But um but I don't want to get my whole my whole life tied up in it, right?
Because I think that's a trap.
So.
And also it's something that really makes you lose perspective.
(18:20):
That's right.
It makes you lose perspective.
That's right.
That's right.
So I have a lot of clients that are in utterly toxic work relationship.
When they come to see me, one of the reason they hire me as a consultant or a burnoutadvisor is to really sort of decipher from the sort of intricate.
(18:43):
toxic relationship and understand how to navigate that relationship.
And exit is not always a solution, right?
I'm not always towards an exit strategy.
There's a room and space for staying at the firm or the organization.
I actually love it when my clients stay, but I really am very, very wary of fueling atoxic relationship.
(19:03):
And for me, the first step is to always be aware of whether or not that relationship towork, be it the organization, your boss,
from whatever it is, relationship to work with big word work, is it a healthy one or is ita toxic one?
In other words, if you were describing a relationship with your boyfriend, girlfriend,partner, husband, wife, would I qualify that relationship as healthy or unhealthy if you
(19:32):
gave me the same qualifiers, right?
So when I hear you talking about work, is it a sense of joy, motivation, fulfillment,dedication, passion?
Am I hearing those qualifiers?
Am I hearing all those terms when you talk to me?
Do I see you smile?
Do I see this sparkle, this idea?
And I can hear you creating your next big idea.
(19:53):
I can sense that creative juice flowing in you.
Like creativity, I think it's such an important test.
Are you creative or are you completely jaded, right?
Often burnt out, you're jaded, you're...
You're bitter, you're cynical, you're pissed off, you're everything but creative.
When I was worked out, creativity was not even on the radar.
(20:15):
You know, you don't, it's like, it's not...
Survival it's more survival mode at that point, right?
Yeah, there's no room to create.
I'm trying to survive here.
So
is so far fetched.
It's like, sort of, you can't even begin to think about it.
You're thinking about just waking up and not collapsing in the office.
That's kind of, that's a day.
Yeah.
No, I get it.
(20:36):
I get it.
But I think that if we have a bit of a honest, really candid, difficult conversation withourselves, or with an advisor, or with a consultant, and we actually evaluate our
relationship to work, and do an honest assessment and an inventory on all those feelingsand emotions and thoughts, what are they?
(20:58):
And that's really something that I want to challenge everyone listening to today.
Take your pen, take your
paper and evaluate your relationship to work.
I want to hear it all.
I want to hear the good, the bad, the ugly and everything in between.
How is it overall?
It's okay to have a rough day.
I have rough days too and I love what I do and I'm far from burning out.
But if it's overall this feeling of dooms and glooms and anxiety and overwhelm and thisfeeling, I have clients that tell me they feel like it can't breathe.
(21:27):
they walk into the office and they have their heart pounding out of their chest becausethey think they are going to have a panic attack.
Well, really, would you stay in a marriage if that was how you feel every time you walkinto a room with your spouse?
Right?
No, exactly.
No, you're exactly right.
I think it's a really good analogy to uh think of work as another relationship in yourlife, right?
(21:52):
And the people that work as other important relationships in your life.
think, you know, in our work here in longevity, we really have five different areas thatwe focus on.
One is the
life energy circle, is sort of the psycho spiritual space and longevity itself, which arethe drivers of aging, the hallmarks of age and health and performance, which is, you know,
(22:12):
being fit, fast, agile, strong, et cetera.
But the fifth circle is the environments we reside in and architecting those to actuallysupport the mission of being youthful.
So the ideas you end up with a 30 year old body and a 300 year old mind at age a hundred,right?
That's where we're going here.
So.
what kind of environment does it take for you to expand into that 300 year old mind,right?
(22:35):
It can't be a toxic environment.
And yet I think people many times feel trapped.
I'm sure when you talk to some of your clients, they end up feeling trapped because theyhave a mortgage, they have a wife, they have kids in school, they have this or that.
They don't know how they would make a move that wouldn't completely upset the financialapple cart for the family.
(22:58):
And so they end up leveraging their health to try to keep that going.
But they're actually literally shortening their lives by doing that.
Literally, yeah, absolutely.
It's fascinating to see how far I can go.
It's not uncommon at all in my line of work to have a client calling me and telling methey hit the road or they were on a train or they were on a plane and there was a little
(23:26):
part of them, however big or small that part may be, it's hard to tell, but there was apart that was kind of hoping that the plane wouldn't land or the car would.
Hmm.
Yeah.
I'm not saying they were suicidal but they had societal thoughts and ideation right so theidea of just what would be life like if I went around yeah I've had client go as far as
(23:56):
just making sure that you know their life insurance policies were really
good and strong to make sure their spouses were covered because they contemplated thethought of just being gone.
Or when I ask, where do you want to go?
And the client says nowhere and digging deeper and removing the layers and like, well,okay, if somewhere was a place, if nowhere was not an option, like, what can you tell me
(24:20):
more?
Like, what does that look like?
What does that feel like?
It's like.
uh
somewhere I'm not found or I don't have to show up or I don't want to leave anymore.
I don't want to be around.
I don't want to wake up tomorrow.
And then you have all those starts coming up or I would rather just not have to faceanother day.
And you have to interview quickly when you start to contemplate those thoughts becausethey can go very far.
(24:42):
And that's really the sort of the darkness of
of the type A brain, right?
Because it's always small and you're not very nuanced.
So there is an all or nothing mindset with a type A hyperproductive folks and I couldn'tbuy stuff in that.
it's either I'm going to get to the pinnacle of the organization or the whatever it isthat you want now, or I'm going to be gone.
(25:09):
Like there is no room for in-between or nuance or half measures.
Right?
So, and I very much thought like that.
And in fact, if I'm being really, really honest, ah the way I recovered from my burnoutwas not nuanced.
I did all or nothing.
I went from being a high flying litigator at an American law firm to going to an ashram inIndia, total eat my love, right?
(25:36):
Except I hadn't seen the movie, but you know, to throw myself into the deep end ofspiritualism and meditation because I could not see nuances.
Now having built the insight that I've built and being in a state of wellness that I'm innow, I can see how burnt out I was because I could either see, I'm a litigator at an
(26:00):
American law firm or I'm living with a guru in a national home in India.
This is quite extreme thinking, right?
Yeah, yeah, no, that's right.
But sometimes actually sometimes it takes the extremes to kind of reset the system, right?
ah
and I'm so grateful for my experience, but when people hear my story and they say, well,Suga, go and quit my job and leave my wife and go to India and the national, I'm like,
(26:27):
please no, I'm not an advocate for doing that, It worked for me and it served a purpose,but I'm not saying you need to be that radical.
I think there is a little danger in that.
Radical behavior that you haven't done the deep work yet and it's true.
I hadn't done the deep work yet I did the deep work there and then I realized how nonnuanced my brain was and how I needed to sort of surrender to the subtle nuances of Being
(26:59):
a lawyer and being spiritual or being a professional who can work and have a meditativepractice being somebody who can be fit and
sorry.
doing sports and serving my clients.
I had to add a lot of ands to my sentences.
For many, years I thought I can be a big attorney at a big American law firm or healthy ora good wife, but I don't think I can do all of that together.
(27:26):
And if I have to choose, I'll choose being an attorney over being a wife, over being astepmom, over being healthy any day, any time, right?
But...
Over the years with my spiritual practices and my health reset, I learned that actuallynot only there is an end, but also it's a foundation.
So I used to think I can't work out because I need to work hard.
(27:47):
Now I think I work so hard because I need to work so hard.
So if I have a hard workout, then I can do harder work.
It's a foundation, right?
I think of myself as a fit person.
that makes me a fitter professional, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually.
(28:08):
But I didn't used to think that way.
I had a very binary mindset and I think hopefully sharing that makes folks listeningrealize that maybe having more nuances in their life is a gift.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
And in the life energy circle, um the first thing on that is actually mindset, which hasto do with asking, are you married to your questions or are you married to your answers?
(28:38):
And the second part of that is, are you a binary thinker or a quantum thinker?
Right?
So if you're a binary thinker, it's easy to get into a box, right?
If you're married to your answers, it's easy to get into a box.
Now you feel compelled to defend them like, yes, of course I need to work.
Of course I need to do this, whatever, right?
But if you're a quantum thinker and you're married to your questions, how do I actuallylead the best life I possibly can?
(29:02):
How do I actually make the best contribution and maintain my balance and all these otherthings, right?
So it's the questions that will drive everything, I think.
Then it's like, oh, okay, well, there's probably a different way here.
And I think moving away what you did, moving away from the binary thought process into amore nuanced, what I would call quantum way of thinking like, there's a better solution
here at this time in this position for this, right?
(29:23):
Then, then that's super helpful.
That's really, really, that's really, really cool.
So yeah.
It is, but I'm pretty certain, having seen hundreds if not thousands of professionalburning out, that the burnt out brain can't do nuances very well.
No, they can't.
No, it can't.
(29:43):
It's in complete fight or flight.
When people come to the office here, right, we actually measure, we do a couple of tests.
We do uh a personality profile that looks at who they are at age 12, like what's theirsweet spot as a personality?
And then what are they asking of themselves to be at work?
Right.
And sometimes we find massive differences between who they really are.
(30:09):
and who they feel they need to show up as at work.
And that's there's inherent stress in that.
Right.
Just and people normalize it.
That's the other thing.
It's like, no, it's just part of my job is what I do.
Well, not exactly.
Take a look at this because, know, you would be much happier if your job allowed you to dothis or more of that or this or that.
And I think, yeah, absolutely.
(30:30):
It would.
It's like, OK, well, there's the stress right there that you're not.
really able to see, but it's actually you're wearing it in your system because when wemeasure their nervous system, right, we see that they're under tremendous stress and yet
they've normalized it again.
So I think it's really uh it's really interesting how humans tend to normalize theselevels of stress that can be very unhealthy.
(30:53):
And I think equipping them with the knowledge to know, oh, I didn't realize.
Right.
I think that's part of the part of the process of helping people to change.
Yes, and also perhaps changing the perception around what's normal was not.
when you start to normalize not sleeping well as you know, well, who does right?
(31:16):
I remember this, you know, this really unhelpful saying like, who does or you sleep whenyou're dead?
Or yes, if you're working hard, you don't have time.
yeah, I can survive on three hours sleep and all those things that we say that are reallyfueling this narrative of
it's quite normal to not sleep if you want to be a dedicated professional.
(31:41):
And actually, that is just such a contradiction because you're using your brain and yourbrain, you know, from a neuroscientific standpoint, needs sleep.
It's unquestionable.
There is data, there is science, there is evidence.
And yet we think that we're somehow superheroes that do not need sleep and found thegreatest hack of all, but you haven't.
(32:02):
You're just two steps away from the biggest burnout of your life.
And I know that because I used to be an insomniac.
you used to do that.
Yeah.
I wonder if there's another element to this too, which is I wonder, I think in manyrespects, what we do, we do for love in a way that we want to be lovable.
(32:23):
And I think on some level there's a message that in order to be lovable, I need to be agood.
professional, a good provider, I need to have a certain status I need.
And that will make me lovable, not only for myself, but for other people.
I think that's another piece of it, too.
The safety is part of it also.
But then there's that lovability.
And I think people can just leverage themselves into total burnout with the misconceptionsof what it takes to actually be lovable or to be safe.
(32:55):
And so I think it's really interesting stuff.
So interesting field you're working in,
You know, I love that you said that about love because I get this Realization quite oftenin my coaching session or even during clinical hypnotherapy And this is a big moment for
my clients where they have a bit of a breakthrough when we talk about love and actually itreally
(33:21):
transpires that they're in relationship either with work or marriages or friendshipcircles that are not really meeting their love values.
When we meet their values, they're actually not really matching.
And when you get to a position, so if you...
have a trans state through clinical hypnotherapy and you actually get to have a personwhere they meet a part of themselves or they do inner child meditation or they go back
(33:50):
into their life or a past traumatic event and they actually get to meet a part of them orthey get to see their future and you ask them very safe guided question around
And if you wear that other person, so you put them in a third position, like anotherposition outside of themselves, and you ask them whether they would love the person
they've become, or the person they used to be, or the person they're about to be, there isthis moment of, well, either no, or I miss them, or I've lost them.
(34:18):
So, know, get clients break into tears when they get to think about their inner child andwhat that child used to love.
And that child loved to play and loved to build and loved to create and loved to love.
And I'm thinking, and now you're adult, does your inner child love the adult side of you?
If you were in a room where your adult version of self and your in child met, would yourchild play with the adult you've become?
(34:45):
Mm That's a good question.
No, it's a really good question.
You know, the freedom we have as children and particularly if we feel loved as a child, ifwe grow up in an environment where we do feel loved and we have love for ourselves, it's
interesting.
You know, in all these democratic countries, we talk about freedom and yet almosteverybody signs up to become an indentured servant.
(35:08):
Right.
In their personal life, like they now become.
an indentured servant to the job or the firm or the office or the work or the career or,whatever it is, right.
It's fascinating to me that uh we have a hard time actually living free in the sense ofbeing safe, being loved, and then creating from that space as opposed to feeling this
(35:31):
compulsion to become an indentured servant.
So.
Absolutely.
But again, I think that most of the time when we're in a state of burnout, we're so faroff even beginning to realize that or comprehend.
Total fight of light is total sort of collapse of everything that you know, and hence thelack of motivation, the feeling of being jaded.
(35:56):
it's just perhaps to bring a little bit of hope and light to this.
The one thing I would say is
Burnout is not a permanent state.
You know, I've mentioned three months longer, but one thing I know and I'm very confidentabout is you can recover.
You know, I believe in broke.
(36:17):
I know you are too.
And many of us are.
You can recover, but you have to be very mindful that you're prone to burning out again.
So I watch like oil on fire because I do ask myself, am I getting closer to burning outagain or am I getting
closer to staying in this space of balancing my health and my professional career.
(36:38):
And I have to set measures in place.
So I've learned that I can't fully trust myself around work like an ex-addict can't reallytrust themselves around the substance and they need to have sober behaviors.
I need to have sober behaviors around work.
So I need to put back systems and that's how I have safe.
I think that's really wise on your part.
(37:01):
I do think that when people are really burned out, it's almost like they need to be putinto intensive care.
It's very difficult to talk to somebody that's going into intensive care about running amarathon next year.
It's impossible.
like, I can't even, not only can I not even imagine it, I have no desire to even do it.
(37:22):
I think there has to be kind of an intensive care plan around those people to allow themto rehab, to recover.
Do you have sort of an intensive care plan for people when they come to you burned out?
I suspect you probably do.
It might be helpful for the audience to hear what that is.
I do burnout interventions.
So my coaching program is very separate from my burnout intervention, which is really, itdoes what it says.
(37:50):
It's an intervention.
It's usually not between nine to five.
It's usually being facilitated by an external member.
So an organization, a boss, a spouse, a friend, it's...
Happening sometimes that one person self-referred, but it's quite rare.
So an intervention typically is an external observer, be it a company, a firm, anorganization, a family member, who looking at that person A, being very concerned and
(38:20):
worried stages effectively an intervention and that's when I get called in.
So it's an intense work in terms of the tightness of it because it needs to be dealt with
very different frameworks.
So again, like you would not talk about running a marathon to somebody in intensive care.
I am not going to talk about, you know, having very long-term goal to somebody who's goingthrough it because you can't even have a long-term future thinking.
(38:50):
That's right.
So it's, it's, the now and say here and my method and framework is starts with thephysiology.
So I always start with
Physiology, I always go back to the body to have a body can be safe at a nervous systemthe brain the breath and Making sure that your physiological body can be the foundation
(39:11):
upon which we build back your health I always start there You can have psychologicalinterventions and you should have psychological interventions But I need to know that I
have a physiological foundation because if I do a psychological intervention the person islike gasping for hair or having a
right.
It's coming to nervous system is actually getting the nervous system to actually calm downin a way.
(39:35):
Right.
That's the key thing.
And allow it to have rest to where it's not feeling panicked.
um And yeah, all the stress.
Yeah, it's it's it's really it isn't it's a nervous system.
Rehabilitation is kind of what's required before you can even start to delve into the howdid we get here and where do we go from here?
(39:55):
Those are those are.
down the road.
That's like talking to your coach about how do we start training um when you're in theICU, right?
Those are inappropriate conversations in the ICU.
always tell my clients during a burnout intervention, when you hear me ask you about yourpast or talk to you about your future, we're no longer in the intervention phase.
(40:16):
When in the intervention, it's the right here, right now.
mean, where you at and we intervene.
How did your dad and mom influence the way you think, move and talk?
And what do you want to do in terms of your legacy and leadership to the world?
We get to that.
when we can thrive again, right?
(40:36):
So I don't do past or future pacing focus intervention.
I deal with the here and now, the physiological reset, and then we get deeper intopsychology to make sure we don't repeat the pattern and prevent another bout of burnout.
So it's kind of like somatic therapy in a way.
It's really allowing someone to come into control or a feeling of control in their bodyand in their nervous system, as opposed to being sort of out of control or completely
(41:02):
depleted.
Right.
And so it's it's somatic therapy.
If you're listening to that, that's really it's really body based therapy, which is inessence, nervous system slash body based uh therapy.
And that's a really, really important thing to know if you are flirting with burnout oryou're feeling like you might be headed down that path.
That's the best place to start, not with envisioning new horizons or whatever.
(41:27):
It's really about getting your nervous system back aligned, making it feel loved and safeand nurtured.
I think that's a key piece.
Yeah, I love that you said that because when I have folks asking me during the firstmeeting, should I quit my job?
Should I say you're not in a state to even be in, to ask for a job?
(41:48):
Because if you make that decision in the state you're in, I'm not sure this is going to bea decision that really serves you in the long term.
So I actually hold things back.
So even if I'm pushed into, need to make that decision, I know you do, but not now.
But now we're going to work on how you can make that decision being in the most optimalstate you can make that decision in.
(42:16):
Like that is really important to understand.
And of course you get pushed back on objection.
But I think that if you get that self-awareness piece first and you understand thateverything starts with the body and the physiology and the somatic work, you're already a
long way ahead.
And you're certainly ahead of where I was back when I...
and that's why I'm so grateful for my yogic practice in India because it really truly wasa somatic intervention of thought which I didn't realize right but it is what I
(42:43):
That's right.
That's what it was.
Yeah, exactly.
No, that's quite beautiful.
I'm really starting to realize that burnout and flirting with burnout is really, uh it'sanalogous to kind of a medical emergency where someone would need to be in an intensive
care unit.
Right.
I think that it's really, it's that serious.
It's that systemic.
(43:04):
And it's, that important to actually drop away everything else and just focus on.
on getting that person kind of back to a state of equilibrium, healthy.
Everything else can wait, quite honestly.
So, yeah.
even deadlines, would you believe it?
I promise you they can.
I know it's hard to believe but they can.
m
(43:25):
been lovely chatting with you, Charlene.
I know you have another call coming up here in a couple of minutes,
what it is, it's a burnout intervention, so...
Oh, okay.
Well, that's an important call to get to.
yeah, well, great.
Hopefully you feel energized by this conversation.
So.
loved your energy and your generosity through the questions and your insights.
(43:46):
I love the way your brain work and I think you've asked very powerful questions.
I'm very grateful for that exchange.
Thank you.
Beautiful.
Yeah, it was lovely conversation.
really appreciate your insights as well.
awesome.
Well, great.
Well, we'll chat again.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
Bye.
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