EP4 - Finding Your Ground: A Journey Through Burnout to Self-Rediscovery

SEASON 2, EP 4 - I Just Don’t Feel Like Myself: Recognising Burnout

In this episode, Gayle explores the subtle signs of burnout and offers simple practices to reconnect with your inner peace. Whether it’s immersing yourself in nature or finding your “natural medicines,” this episode is your reminder to pause and reset so you can find your stamina - naturally."

In This Episode, We Cover:

• Recognising the signs of burnout and overwhelm, even when they manifest in unexpected ways.

• The importance of self-awareness and understanding your unique emotional landscape.

• How a simple act of immersing yourself in nature can be a powerful circuit breaker.

• The power of connection—both with yourself and with supportive friends or family.

• Finding and incorporating your “natural medicines” into your daily life, even if you can’t physically be in your favorite place.

• The importance of seeking professional help when needed, and recognizing that you’re not alone in your struggles.

 

If today’s episode resonated with you, take the next step and join The Toolkit – a free resource to help you deepen your self-discovery: https://courses.soulcarehealing.com.au/thetoolkit

 

Timestamps / Chapter Markers

00:12   The Overwhelming Heaviness

01:45   A Trapped Bird in My Chest

02:42   Claustrophobia in the Car

03:24   Out of Body Experience

04:06   A Birthday at the Beach

05:25   A Cleansing Baptism

06:34   A Circuit Breaker

07:02   Remembering to Ground

07:42   Unraveling and Coming Back to Centre

08:30   Coming Back to the Why

09:04   You Don’t Have to Stay There

09:30   Finding Your Natural Medicines

10:44   Bringing Nature to You

11:27   Understanding Yourself

12:13   Show That You Care

12:29   The Rest Is on You

Resources & Links:

• Soul Care Healing Website: http://soulcarehealing.com.au/

• Soul Care Healing Instagram: http://instagram.com/soulcarehealing_

• Soul Care Healing Facebook: http://facebook.com/soulcarehealing

• Email us at: [e-mail]

If you enjoyed this episode, SUBSCRIBE or FOLLOW. We’d be so grateful if you’d leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify—it helps more people find the show and join our Soul Care Healing community. Be curious, be brave, be you, and thank you for being part of something bigger with us.

 

Episode Transcript

(00:12):
Welcome back for another episode, Sally's. As always I like to lean into and reflect on how something came to be the way that it was. So in the last episode, I mentioned about the exhaustion I felt in writing the book and being through the darkest chapters of my life, literally in the book and in life, and how that created a level of burnout.

(00:35):
I didn't recognize necessarily what it was at the moment in time. And then one day I've wrapped up work. I'd been working with clients all day long at Soul Care, and I got home and I just felt this overwhelming heaviness on me, like someone had taken the world's heaviest blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders and it was just another load to carry.

(01:03):
I felt warm and cold all at the same time, and my kids were spitfiring all these questions for me and about me, and I just didn't have any more answers. And I remember raging at them and going, “I don't know, why do I need to know everything for you guys all the time? Can't you figure something out yourselves?”

(01:25):
And then going, oh, oh, that's a bit unlike me. So again, taking that moment to reflect on there was an out of character behaviour that was happening and then I could catch it and recognise it that way. Can we plan to go to the beach? And it was also the week before my birthday,
and I remember being in the car.

(01:46):
And normally when I have a feeling of heaviness and I can mark it off as tiredness, I have a full night's sleep and I wake up and I'm fine. But I woke up and what had shifted from a weight felt like a trapped bird inside my chest.
It wasn't like a sense of doom.
It was more like a sense of I don't know what I want, I don't know where I want to be, do I want to go to the beach? But I don't want to be here. It was this trapped feeling. Trapped in my decisions, trapped in my obligations, trapped in everything.

(02:15):
And I didn't correlated at the time that it was probably tied in with my emotions and how trapped I felt in our family circumstances.
I packed the car and kept moving forward with the commitments that I made. And I packed the kids bags and I got the car. But I could not support this feeling in my chest like I was going to blow up. And as we got in the car, this feeling came over me that all of a sudden the five of us in the car, which we do all the time, felt like claustrophobia.

(02:50):
Like I was way too close to people. And I normally love people. So again, it's another time for me to go, oh, this is different. This is a different experience that I'm having.
I can actually say I had visions of opening the car door and rolling at at 100 cars. Now, it's not that I wanted to hurt myself.
It's not that I wanted to be injured or die anything. It was nothing like that. It was just I needed to get the hell out of there. I've never felt like that before.

(03:18):
And it made me think how many people feel like this every single day.
And it make my heart have a little bit of an ache.
As I got down to Ocean Grove. And with family and people who normally light me up, I could not string sentences together. And my sister in law finally said to me, is something wrong? I'm really worried about you.
And I said, I don't, I don't know. I'm having this out of body experience. I feel numb, but then I have a racing heart.

(03:42):
I feel angry, but then I feel sad. I said, I'm just all over the place and it's literally just hit me like that.
And I explained to her about this feeling like this blanket was getting draped over my shoulders and everything. Every step I took, my legs got shorter and shorter and shorter. And if you know me, I'm already bloody short enough.
I got to have this little metaphoric thing happening to my soul as well.

(04:06):
So she said to me, look, tomorrow morning I'm going to start my day at the sunset down at the beach.
And that was the day of my 42nd birthday. And I thought, maybe this is what I needed. As I talked it and unpacked it with her and we talked and we watched the kids play.
I recognize that, okay, maybe I had bitten off more than I can chew. Writing a book, starting a new business. Doing further training. Being on content creation. Starting a new course.

(04:39):
I had been setting myself up for an energetic failure, even though it felt so good in the moment. And it made my heart sing like, yes, this is what I want to do.
Yes, this is direction. I want to go in. There was a level of everything happening at the same time. This level of obligation, and it just kind of hit me, but it hit me in a way that I had never experienced before. Often it would hit me with like my immune system bottoming out, and I just would get a terrible cold or a terrible chest infection or something like that.

(05:12):
It didn't do that this time. I was actually really well within myself, but it was this energetic, soul filled as well. So lacking experience is all I can put it down to.
The morning of my birthday, I woke up very easily and I followed her and we went down to the sea and we sat with our cups in our little tin cups.

(05:37):
And we decided as a bunch of people who do this practice where they go down and have some breathwork and get in the water. They were going to get in the water and I can tell you, the person that went into those waves, it was like I had some level of baptism. Water has always been a form of healing for me.
Whether I sit in it, swim in it, bathe in it. It doesn't matter. It's very cleansing for me and for many other people in the world. But there was something about turning up for myself, because it could have been really easy to stay in bed. We were up at 5:30. It was pitch black. It was fucking freezing.

(06:17):
It was just the start of autumn. So were coming out of the winter as the days are still warm, but the mornings are starting to get really cold and slow starts to the sunshine. So it was really cold and we got down there and I was thinking, oh God, I really don't want to get in that water. It's going to be cold and then I'm going to be cold afterwards.
And then I thought, no, you need this. You need a circuit breaker. You need a sudden jolt to your system.

(06:43):
So I made my way to the water with her because sometimes you just need a buddy. And I took the first few steps. Lo and behold, the water was not as cold as I told myself it was going to be.
I went even further, and I felt that sensation of that water on my skin, and it felt like it was home.
And I realized that everything I'd been doing had not been grounded. I'd been so up with all these spinning plates in the air that I'd forgotten my day to day core strategies that I use to keep myself in the moment and keep myself fulfilled and balanced.

(07:18):
I am naturally a fairly flighty person. I am naturally high energy with lots of ideas all the time, and I have to work really hard to create a level of grounding.
Now, as I've gotten this level of grounding, it is getting easier for me. It is getting easier to stay here, but when it unravels, it unravels a long way.

(07:42):
And that's what had happened, unraveled a long way. And I hadn't been supporting myself in the simple ways that I know how to do that. I just forgotten. I got so busy chasing that I forgot the stillness.
And as I came out of that water and touched my hand across the surface and the sky was pink because
the sun was just coming over the edge of the bluff.

(08:03):
I'm going to be okay. And I remember what I need.
I remember what serves me well to make sure I can make a shift,
that I can cleanse myself of the junk and the gunk that can get stuck to us.
And in that clarity, I can take my time to journal and do my breath work and do some yoga stretches and come back to my intention and my purpose.

(08:30):
Come back to why I'm doing everything, not how I'm doing everything.
And it was so powerful for me. And again, as what normally happens, like, oh, that was easy or that was simple, but it wasn't initially. And I know it's not that easy for other people. Some people can't just walk into water and feel better.
So what I'm saying for you is If you're normal things that serve you and are your natural medicines aren't working for you, and if you're flickering and fluttering, or you're the person with the heavy blanket around your shoulders, you don't have to stay there.

(09:08):
You don't have to stay in that space of yuck.
Reach out to a friend. Reach out to a family member, and just say, I've been feeling a bit shitty lately and open up a beautiful conversation. And if you've been here for a long time and nothing you do finds any joy or lightness in the world, it is time for a GP appointment.

(09:30):
to see what avenues you might need in the interim, until you can find your natural medicines.
And I want you to recognize that, you know, when we used to go to a GP and everyone when they were sick had a broken arm,
and now you go to a GP and you recognize that no one actually looks sick.
Recognize it? Half the people in that room are there with a sick mind or a mind that just cannot get itself back on track. And then you can recognize that I'm not alone. There's nothing wrong with me.

(10:00):
I just need a little help and if this is a kid that come to me and said, hey, mate, I need a little bit of help.
Who are we to deny ourselves? If we wouldn't deny a child?
So please take care of yourself. Please learn from my words
and whatever it is that lights you up. Whatever it is, it's your natural medicine. I hope that you can incorporate it in your life more often.

(10:22):
And it doesn't always have to be that you go there physically in your body.
It can be that you bring photos of it into your home. If it is something like a waterfall or the sea and you live hours away, can you listen to music that mimics that sound? That when you close your eyes and you're in the shower, you can imagine yourself to be there? That is still just as potent for the soul.

(10:44):
Is it that you love the sounds of the birds in the bush, but you just don't have a chance to get out there as much as you'd like to? Can you listen to music that would instill that with you? Can you cut some branches from a eucalyptus trees somewhere in your street, in your neighborhood, and fill your vase and shove them in there and smell it,
bring you back to home?
I really hope that you have seen the value in my vulnerability in me calling out when things were tough for me and recognizing that even if I walk with a smile each day, I too have moments that are challenging. But I could catch them and I could witness myself and say, oh, that's not normal.

(11:24):
Me and all that's out of character.
when you learn to understand and know yourself so well that you don't necessarily need someone else's capturing of you,
because the reality is, for my sister in law to be brave enough to say I'm a bit worried. Normally most people, because of manners, will wait months before they make a comment like that, but I was so far removed and she felt so safe and comfortable because I've been such a vulnerable, open hearted person this time that she could say it as soon as she witnessed it

(11:58):
as soon as she witnessed it, she felt brave enough to say, and I thank her for that.
I knew deep down, and I knew that. That's why I maintain the trip down to the sea, because I knew at some point I would get to the water.
But let's take this time to think about two things.
If you're witnessing someone and you're worried so. So show that you care.
Show that you give a shit and you're a safe space for them to open up and to. If you're the one that's struggling,

(12:23):
can you question how long this has been going on for? Can you question where and what path you need to take moving forward?
The rest is on you.
it can't just land in your lap.
Thanks all. Have a great rest of the week. I will be talking to you again very soon.
And that is all for today folks. I feel so grateful and blessed to be able to share these stories with you and to bring us together as a community. I'm Gayle Wilson and this is So Kate's podcast, naked. You can find further resources at my website, silk healing.com today here.

(12:56):
These resources are designed to support you and your family as you experience big emotions through this journey back to empowerment, healing and self connection.
Don't forget to follow and subscribe so that you can get notifications on the next episode as it lands.
Take care and just be kind to yourself.