You Can’t Out-Charm Burnout

Transcript — S1:E9 — You Can't Out-Charm Burnout

[00:00:00] ♪ Intro music ♪

[00:00:17] Andrew: Hi, I'm your host, Andrew Sanders.

[00:00:19] Flo: And I'm your co-host, Flo LaBrado. Today we're going to explore a topic that is so central to popular culture that it seems like everyone talks about it, and many may not even understand what it is. And that is burnout. Burnout is more than being tired and exhausted. Burnout is something much deeper. It lasts a long time, and it's harder to get out of without the tools and resources to do that.

[00:00:57] Andrew: Yeah. This is an important topic. We say in each episode that we are not mental health professionals, but many of us have experience with burnout and can share from our lived experience. Burnout is deeper than "Oh, man, I need a vacation," or "Ugh, I'm so over this job," right? Burnout has serious consequences for your mental and physical health. It's something you feel in your bones. And I've shared how my lack of understanding about my ADHD, and not understanding the signs of burnout, led to me walking away from a job that I genuinely loved. It started a whole grief process that took me years and years to resolve. Flo, everybody has heard me share my experience of burnout, so why don't you start by sharing yours? Do you have an example?

[00:01:56] Flo: Oh my gosh. There was a period in my life, and not just my professional life, where it was just very heavy. This was earlier in my management career. The part that I fully own is that this was a time when I wanted to lead, but I still operated like an individual contributor. When things got hard, I leaned into "I'm gonna roll up my sleeves and help," which is great, but then I would cross the line into "I'm just gonna take on the job of the individual contributor we were short on the team." And after repeatedly overstepping my role as a leader and manager, and basically doing half the job of an analyst, I began to feel very different. And like you said, it wasn't the kind of tiredness where you take a week or two of vacation and come back to work refreshed. A week or two of vacation would do nothing. I began to lose interest not only in being creative at work, which is one of my favorite things, but I also had a hard time connecting with people. And empathy and people connection, that's my jam, and I couldn't even do the things I'm naturally good at. It began to impact other areas of my life, too. I would start my day like, "Oh, here we go. Another day." And I would come home from work and basically sit on my couch and play Quinn, this Tetris knockoff, on my laptop with my dog. Which sounds like a nice evening, right? But no, I did that because that was all I could do. I felt like I couldn't do my job. I couldn't do anything right. I couldn't inspire my team. It's not even that my cup was empty. It was completely dry. I hit a wall that began to show not only in how I communicated with people at work, but it also began to impact my health. I didn't move as much, and I just felt physically ill. Which, for me, is not a good thing, because I have rheumatoid arthritis, which already has its own complications. Add the stress to that, and I used to feel it literally in my joints. Stiffness in my joints. I couldn't move. And I was young. I was in my early thirties. Like, why is this happening? And that was my experience with burnout, before I knew what it was.

[00:04:50] Andrew: Yeah. So not fun. Not fun at all.

[00:04:58] Flo: Terrible. And it lasted months. This wasn't "Oh, I felt this way for a month, and then I pulled myself out of it." No, I was in this state for months.

[00:05:08] Andrew: Yeah. Burnout really leads to anxiety and depression and dissociation, right? You really take yourself out of your own life. And I have been there. This is still a little difficult for me to talk about, because it led me to lose something I genuinely loved doing, with people I genuinely cared about. But walking away was the only solution I could even see in front of me, because I didn't have my ADHD diagnosis. I didn't understand that a lot of what was happening to me was an accumulation of years and years of masking, and it caught up to me. I could no longer mask my way out of certain behaviors. I couldn't out-charm the reports that were due. You know what I mean? And hearing you recount that resonates with me, too, because we were colleagues at the time you're describing, and I remember the not-happy Flo.

[00:06:14] Flo: Oh, it was terrible. I was terrible. And it impacted the people around me. If someone had met me at that point, they probably wouldn't have thought much of it, but the people who'd known me for a long time noticed the difference. It was like I was wearing a completely different personality. Like I mentioned earlier, burnout is a hot topic, and has been for a while in pop culture. But let's ground ourselves in a definition. I like to lean on the definition of burnout from author Jonathan Malesic, because it really sticks with me. The way he defines burnout is the experience of being pulled between the expectation and the reality of work. Meaning, when there is a gap between what you expect from work and the reality, a frustration sets in. And there are three components of burnout that help us see whether this is really burnout or something else. One is exhaustion. The kind of exhaustion that doesn't go away with a vacation, or with a two- or even three-day weekend. It's a persistent exhaustion. The second component of burnout is cynicism. I like sarcasm. I think it's important. It's a big part of humor. But the cynicism I'm talking about is that super negative, bring-yourself-and-everybody-else-down cynicism. And the third is ineffectiveness: knowing what you can do, and being ineffective at doing it. These three components are a relatively easy way to assess: is this just a rough patch, or a lot of stress weighing someone down, or has burnout set in?

[00:08:35] Andrew: I like having those three components defined, because the goal here is to spot burnout before it gets to the point where someone's crying in their car on the way to work. You don't want to let it go too far. It's way more effective to nip it in the bud, or to change something along the path that's leading that person there.

[00:08:58] Flo: And I remember, when I had my burnout experience, I didn't see it coming. I didn't see myself slipping into it. And once I was in it, not only did I not have the language to describe it, I also didn't have the ability to see what I was in. In that moment, I thought: work is too hard, nobody understands what we're supposed to be doing, people are asking too much of me, I'm exhausted all the time because of the demands. And yes, of course there are environmental factors, but I couldn't see that it was me who was in that place. I thought it was everything and everyone else, and not me.

[00:09:55] Andrew: Yeah, that's a tough one, because we're geared to reward rolling up your sleeves, putting in the work, jumping in and leading from the front. But we don't pay enough attention to the costs of doing that so deeply and for so long.

[00:10:14] Flo: And it's painful. That's me. And I'm curious, Andrew. I know everyone's experience is different, but you recently published an article about this, about what your experience with burnout was as an ADHDer. I know you've shared very transparently before, but will you share a little bit about your burnout experience?

[00:10:43] Andrew: Yeah. So I've mentioned leaving a company that I loved. Just to set the scene, if you're new to our podcast: I worked for a large company for about 17 years. Sixteen years, eight months. It was a place I really loved, and I worked with people I really loved, and Flo was one of them. I really liked my job and the people. I worked really hard to get to where I was. The company did everything right by me. I got to experience a lot of things in life that a lot of people never get to do or see, so I'm really thankful for that experience. But because I didn't understand my brain wiring, I was, as I've often said, trying to fit the round peg in the square hole. I was trying to force my life into everyone else's worldview, and that just didn't work. On the website, differentatwork.com, I also have an article about the twice-exceptional person. Basically, that's a gifted person, of above-average intelligence, who is able to mask their ADHD or neurodivergence. Through their intelligence, they overcompensate for what their brain isn't doing because of ADHD. So they could be more charming, or maybe they prepare for meetings ahead of time so they're always over-prepared, or it expresses itself as perfectionism. So at the end of my career, because I didn't know I had ADHD, it was a lot of those things, the perfectionism, the overcompensations, that built up, and you can only get so far. You can't outrun your ADHD. You can only go so far before you have to pay the piper. And that led to burnout at work. We were both senior managers at the time, in the same organization, and one of the ways I think I survived in the corporate world was by switching my area of focus every two to three years. Whether it was a promotion or learning a new domain, that happened about every two to three years. So by the time I became proficient in something, I had the opportunity to move on to something else. But in the senior manager role, we were in it for two years, and that pattern wasn't working for me anymore, because the opportunities get fewer and fewer as you go up the pyramid. So I couldn't outrun it like I was before.

[00:13:37] Flo: The way I'm hearing it, it's almost like a long-term masking. We've talked about masking in the moment, trying to appear or approximate "neurotypicalness." I think I just made up a word. Like the person who forces themselves to hold eye contact, or tries to sit on their hands, those kinds of things. But what you're describing is almost a long-term masking: running, moving on to something before being found out, before the burnout around the corner catches up.

[00:14:18] Andrew: Yeah. I was trying to outrun the burnout. And long-term masking, yes. Because I didn't know I had ADHD, I had been unknowingly masking my whole life. I think a better way of saying it is the long-term cost of masking. Because every time you mask, there's a cost to your psychological safety or your mental health. And seventeen years of trying to outrun the consequences, seventeen years of that psychological cost building up, caught up with me. I didn't have the tools at the time to even know what it was. All I knew was that suddenly I found myself very sad to go to work. Suddenly, on my way into headquarters, I was literally crying, going to a place that months earlier I'd looked forward to going to every day. It was a sudden thing, but that's how burnout works. It builds up slowly, but once it hits, man, you almost fall off a cliff.

[00:15:28] Flo: And I can understand how hard it might be to manage trying to outrun the burnout while also trying to be present, show up, and do the things that are expected. How else does burnout show up differently for an ADHDer?

[00:15:58] Andrew: That's a great question. I would say, in terms of the hyperactivity or impulsivity, and our brains being interest-based, and think of boredom as having the potential to be physically painful for someone with an ADHD brain, you can imagine how disconnecting from work, not being interested in or enjoying the things you used to enjoy, could become even more difficult. The last leadership role I had was on a team where we absorbed another team from outside the organization I was in, and it was the perfect opportunity to learn something new. A whole new system, a whole new organization. You would think that would scratch that itch of the interest base, the novelty. But because I was on the burnout train, the novelty didn't last that long. And when you're used to racking up quick wins and recognition, and you get the dopamine hits from solving problems and being seen as the dependable, go-to person for solving problems, and that stops happening, you lose the motivation, you get bored and uninterested in what you're doing, and that becomes painful.

[00:17:23] Flo: Literally.

[00:17:24] Andrew: Literally painful. Literally painful and excruciating. Those tears on the way to work were real. That is not hyperbole. I would actually cry on the way to the office.

[00:17:38] Flo: That is such a hard place to be. I remember, in my experience, feeling so incompetent. I had disconnected from my agency, my ability to choose for myself and to act. It felt like it had evaporated, and that is a terrible place to be. And going back to the definition of burnout, the gap between the expectation and the reality of work, I can see how the expectation that work will be a certain way, that there will be certain types of challenges, and there aren't; or that there will be a certain type of support, and it's not there; or the meaning, and this is very subjective, the meaning one expected to find in their work isn't there. Meaningful work is so important. It's central to feeling engaged at work. And when work doesn't feel meaningful, I think of it as carving out a canyon over time. On one end of the canyon is what I expect from work, what I think work is supposed to be like. And all the way at the other end of this canyon, which keeps getting bigger and bigger, is the reality of work. As the canyon grows, the little indentation becomes the Grand Canyon, and you're almost unable to see what work was supposed to be like, or what you even wanted out of work. And if that's how the gap is experienced, add to it the need for novelty, or, I'm thinking of some of my autistic friends, the need for directness, for a direct line to get from A to B, or to see the line from A to B, and then being constantly asked to go from A to J to M to Z and then to B. That frustration adds to the canyon.

[00:19:44] Andrew: Yes. And I would add that ADHDers also have issues with executive functioning. It's almost like a death spiral you enter at that point. You already have a disadvantage with how your executive functioning is impaired, and then you start losing motivation, you start catastrophizing, and there's emotional dysregulation in ADHD people, too. It's a snowball effect. It all starts rolling downhill. The negative thoughts about yourself or your performance, catastrophizing the situation: your executive functioning starts to suffer even more than it already does because of your ADHD. Your impulsivity, making quick snap decisions that maybe aren't the best ones. Low motivation, or no motivation, to do things. Struggling to keep focus on the things you should be focusing on. Again, it all snowballs. It's a hard nosedive to pull out of.

[00:20:50] Flo: But let's talk about it, because it is very possible to pause and pull out of that snowball. Let's talk first about how to identify burnout in yourself, going back to the three components, leaning on Maslach's work: exhaustion, cynicism, and ineffectiveness. These are direct ways to assess: am I experiencing, or heading toward, burnout? One way might be: is the weekend no longer refreshing? Everyone has a weekend that's really packed where you don't get to recharge. But if, weekend after weekend or vacation after vacation, there isn't that refresh, if the exhaustion persists, that's a sign.

[00:21:42] Andrew: Yeah. Maybe a Sunday night gut check. How sad are you that the next day is Monday? Are you more sad that tomorrow is Monday, or that the weekend is over?

[00:21:51] Flo: Yeah. Or even not feeling anything anymore. Again, we're not mental health professionals, but I can share from my experience that that flat emotion was one of the signs for me of, ooh, the sads are becoming a little more than the sads, and they're persisting. That flatness, that exhaustion, not wanting to do things because I'm too tired: those signs are at least an orange flag that the exhaustion is not just "I'm tired and stressed out."

[00:22:28] Andrew: Yeah. And another big one you touched on, before the sads and the depression, is ineffectiveness. Are you feeling ineffective at your job? That's a pretty big one. If you're feeling like your contributions don't mean anything, maybe that's the time to implement the power of the pause that Flo just mentioned.

[00:22:53] Flo: Yeah. And not only that your contributions don't mean anything, but even feeling like you can't contribute. I remember feeling like what I was doing didn't matter, it wasn't making a difference, and part of that was that my view at that point was just completely clouded. But then I eventually reached a point where I couldn't even try to contribute. I felt like I could try, but it wasn't the right things. I wasn't prioritizing well. My judgment was off. My critical thinking felt like it was running five minutes slower than it needed to. That ineffectiveness, I felt terrible. And that ineffectiveness also adds to the exhaustion. And the third piece is cynicism. Again, I'm here for the sarcasm. It's fun, and it's important to have fun and banter at work. But then there's the cynicism that sets in, where you might find yourself saying, "This doesn't make a difference anyway," or "This whole ship is going down, so who cares?" It goes beyond lighthearted sarcasm to a really dark cloud, where the humor isn't even humor anymore.

[00:24:17] Andrew: No, it's got teeth.

[00:24:18] Flo: Exactly. It has teeth. And it's not to say that if you experience exhaustion, it for sure means burnout. But start to notice those things in yourself. Now, that said, when you're in it, it's hard to see. And that's why it's so important to notice your colleagues, your team members, the people around you. Whether you work virtually or co-located, pay attention, notice, check in on each other, because someone may be heading toward burnout, and they may not notice it. But you do.

[00:24:59] Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. Can I add one last thing about spotting burnout in yourself? And that's a feeling of guilt.

[00:25:08] Flo: Oh.

[00:25:09] Andrew: Feeling guilty about not delivering your best, or not being enough, or whatever it is you feel guilty about related to your work. If you're feeling guilty about something, that's a big sign.

[00:25:23] Flo: Huge sign. And let's separate this from impostor syndrome. Impostor syndrome, the way I talk about it, is when you have a seat at the table, and you're worried you're going to be found out, that you're not as good as people think you are. This is different. This kind of guilt is: I am unable to contribute. I am unable to do this or that, and I feel terrible about myself. That's very different. And in my experience, that guilt was a huge part of my ineffectiveness. I felt like, man, I was promoted into this role, and I did really well, and now I'm just not cutting it anymore, and I felt really crummy. Mind you, the people around me didn't see it as badly as I did. But in the moment I felt terrible, which goes back to noticing each other, being able to spot the signs and check in on someone: "Hey, man, how are you doing? We haven't talked in a while," or "Hey, I'm noticing you don't seem like yourself. Want to talk?" And I want to lean on social baseline theory, which is super complicated, but it's essentially about how important it is for us to be connected with each other. There are two elements of this theory that are so practical to me. When we're connected with each other socially, one, stress drops, and two, we're able to share and alleviate the emotional labor, the emotional burden of work, whether that's having a lighthearted conversation or making a joke when the systems are blown up or the launch didn't go well. That connection is so important, and without it, we can't even see and notice the signs in someone else.

[00:27:19] Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. I think a big sign, as a leader, is if you've got a high performer, a rock star on your team, who suddenly stops performing, or isn't meeting even their own standards. That's a big sign. So there are things you can definitely keep an eye out for. And a few episodes ago, Flo, you shared an example of someone on your team who would consistently catch 100% of testing defects, on time. They caught everything, and it was because they were spending way more time focusing on work than a human should. So that type of situation is also something that, as a leader, you should maybe pause and question. Your high performers might be performing at a very high standard, but is it coming at a cost?

[00:28:09] Flo: And that's the difference between someone's work performance and someone putting on a mask and performing. That double meaning. And that, for sure, can lead to burnout. In hindsight, I could see it in the crash and burn. He would work a zillion hours over three days, and then crash on the fourth day. And I think about this with some neurodivergences: cool, hyperfocus, do your thing, enjoy it, and then take some time off. What I'm talking about here is different. It's feeling so driven, and then crashing and burning, and then that repeated cycle of recharging, being driven, hyperfocusing, overworking compulsively, crashing and burning, and doing the cycle all over again. I can see how that could be so draining.

[00:29:05] Andrew: Yeah. And that crashing and burning really drives in the guilt. "I am not delivering." And add RSD on top of that, too. It's a whole cluster of fun. And the reason I mention guilt, and I'm talking about it again now, is that it took me years to get over, because I felt so bad for the people on my team who reported up through me at that time. I wasn't giving them my best, and I wasn't even giving myself my best. I wasn't even giving myself a chance. I was responsible for shepherding these people onto a new team, and I couldn't even keep my own light bulbs on in my brain. I was just kind of checked out at that point. And that's a common phrase we use to describe people we think are burnt out: checked out, right?

[00:30:01] Flo: Checked out.

[00:30:02] Andrew: And if your gut tells you that someone's checked out, check on that person, because they can probably come back from the brink if they get a little help. Just a little bit of care.

[00:30:16] Flo: I always go back to a time, and this wasn't related to burnout, when one of my closest colleagues, maybe five or six years ago, around the COVID time... I was working many hours. It was obviously a difficult time for everyone at a global level. And he reached out: "Hey, are you okay?" That is the moment I finally acknowledged that I wasn't okay, because I thought, "Oh, somebody else can see it, so I need to do something." That question surprised me, but it also became the trigger for me to say, "You know what? Maybe I'm not okay right now." It's hard to be vulnerable and say, "I'm not okay." It's a little less difficult when somebody asks, so it's not "I'm gonna stand on a soapbox and say, 'Hey, everyone, I'm not okay.'" That sounds ridiculous. So it is important to check in on each other. I want to add one more thing about identifying burnout in yourself. It can be really difficult, whether it's burnout or another emotional experience, to even name how you feel, and that is okay, because words are not required to identify that you feel a certain way. I'm putting my coach hat on here. This is when it's important to notice. Notice your body: where you feel the tension, what feels heavy, what doesn't feel steady, what feels off. Start with your body. Pay attention to that, and then look for the word to articulate what it is. I love using the Feelings Wheel, feelingswheel.com, completely free, because you can first check in with your physical experience, and then look for the word you may need to describe it to someone else. Start there. At this point, I think almost everyone has felt it, but if we don't have the language for it, how do we tell someone else what it is?

[00:32:39] Andrew: Yeah, exactly. And I can attest: I used to be a naysayer about positive psychology, because it felt hippie and granola, like magical fairy dust. But I've been practicing taking a minute before a meeting or a high-stress situation and, like Flo said, just being with that moment, recognizing your body, yourself, the things around you, and clearing your mind. It helps. So I'm becoming a believer in positive psychology. Begrudgingly. But I am on board.

[00:33:20] Flo: And this is not to be confused with toxic positivity. This isn't "Everything's fine" when there's a dumpster fire. This is about believing in investing in ourselves, believing that we can thrive, and moving in that direction. Instead of always looking at what's wrong with people, moving toward the good, the beauty, the health. And as a byproduct, we move further away from the not-so-pretty things, the really difficult things, the constant pathologizing of everything. My goodness.

[00:33:53] Andrew: Yeah. We're not asking Donnie Darko to put an X on the love-hate line.

[00:33:58] Flo: Yeah, no. Let's not. But I do genuinely believe in our potential and capacity as human beings to be well, to thrive, and to experience joy. Not everything's happy-go-lucky all the time, but we do have the capacity to experience joy, even alongside a multitude of other emotions. And that also means that when we're in burnout, or headed in that direction, it is possible to stop. And if you're there, it is possible, as you said earlier, Andrew, to be pulled back up. There are resources and strategies that can help.

[00:34:38] Andrew: I just want to point out, too, for managers and leaders out there: just because your company has an EAP line or resources for your employees to use, that is not enough. That is not enough.

[00:34:52] Flo: It's not. We need more. We need to take care of each other. And again, if you're the person with the most power, you have the greatest responsibility to act, to intervene. And I do want to remind everyone that we are not mental health professionals in any way. We're sharing from our experience and some of the research we do. We encourage you to do your own research, too. It's really important to be informed. As we wrap up this episode of Different at Work, we've talked about what burnout is and what it isn't, some ways to identify it in yourself, spotting it in your colleagues and team members and checking in with them, and making those connections to either help prevent burnout or help someone pull themselves out of it. I love what you brought up, Andrew, those mindful minutes, so that we can feel more grounded and connected with ourselves, instead of being driven and letting that canyon grow. And for leaders, remember the responsibility you have. If you're in a formal management role, you have a responsibility to intervene and create a workplace in which burnout is the exception, not the rule, and where there are resources to help the people in your care. Thank you so much for joining us for this conversation, and we hope that you keep being you, different at work.

[00:36:24] Andrew: One final note. We are not mental health professionals, and nothing you hear on this podcast is meant to replace therapy, diagnosis, or professional care. We are just two people sharing what we've lived and learned. If today's episode brought something up for you, or you're just looking for support, visit our website at differentatwork.com for additional resources. Again, that's differentatwork.com. Just click the Resources tab. Goodbye.