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ADHD reWired
543 Overcoming Burnout - Personal Reflections
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And We're Back!!! In episode 543 of ADHD reWired, host Eric Tivers returns to mark a new beginning for the podcast. Eric focuses this episode on recognizing and overcoming burnout. After 10 years of weekly episodes, plus other stressors in business...
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Adhd Rewired Episode 543 Since 2014, this has been the podcast for ADHD adults who have really good intentions at a slightly wandering attention. I'm Eric Tivers. I'm a licensed clinical Social Worker and an ADHD Certified Clinical Services provider by training and a coach by design. I am your host and I have adhd. ADHD Rewired is more than just a podcast. We are a community. Visit us@adhd Rewired.com to learn more about our award winning coaching and accountability groups. One on One Coaching One on one Therapy if you are in Illinois Adult Study hall, our membership community for virtual co working, sign up for our monthly live Q&As and get additional resources including any links mentioned on today's show. You can also support us on Patreon and sign up for our email newsletter all@adhd rewired.com we are wired for connection and you are not alone. And if this is your first time listening, welcome home. Remember to hit, subscribe or follow on your podcast app so you never miss an episode. We know that starting is the hardest part, so let's get started. Hello and welcome back to ADHD Rewired. Welcome. Where we explore the many facets of being an ADHD adult. I'm your host Eric Tivers, and today marks a new beginning. If the first 10 years of this podcast were to be considered our first season, then consider this the premiere of season two. And with this new season, we are embracing change, shifting to a seasonal format to bring more depth to our discussions and to ensure sustainability on my end. Now, today's episode is particularly close to my heart as we're going to be talking about recovery from burnout after a decade of weekly episodes only missing two weeks. In all of that time, I hit a point where I realized that that pace was no longer sustainable. So this episode is all about recognizing the signs of burnout, making necessary changes, and the tough lessons learned along the way. Whether you're feeling this yourself or you've been there before, this episode is for you. So let's dive in and start this new chapter together. You know, I think we often hear this phrase kind of thrown around. I'm so burnt out. But understanding what burnout is is really important to understand the complexities of it as well as understanding what we can actually do about it. So when we think about burnout, we can define it basically through three distinct areas. One is emotional exhaustion. Number two is depersonalization or or cynicism. And then three is a reduced personal Accomplishment. So let's break these down a bit. So the first one, emotional exhaustion. Now, this is not just the feeling of being tired after a long day. It's about feeling so drained and depleted that the usual means of recovery, like a good night's sleep or a weekend off just doesn't really cut it anymore. It's a deep seated fatigue that impacts your ability to engage with life fully. And as I've shared on past episodes before the break, the last couple weeks or months, however long it's been, that's kind of where I was. Where I have been really kind of pushing away, pushing down that feeling. And after a while it just became unsustainable. And so while I wasn't necessarily planning on taking as long as a break, as I did, what I kind of realized is I really needed it and I allowed for it because I was starting to feel that healing and I knew I needed a bit more. So, yeah, that emotional exhaustion piece, it's. It's way bigger and it kind of encompasses everything. And kind of unlike our adhd, I think that for me, that emotional exhaustion of burnout was not something that felt inconsistent. It was this ever present, always there feeling that, you know, I guess for a certain, to a certain degree, I was getting used to. And that is a problem. All right. The second thing talked about is depersonalization or cynicism. Now, over time, constant stress can lead to a growing detachment from our work and the people around you. You might even find yourself developing a negative, even cynical attitude towards tasks and interactions that used to be either neutral or even positive. This was definitely happening to me. There are so many things in my work with ADHD Rewire that I do truly love. And I kept finding myself as I was showing up to do, you know, whatever the given task was. I was having so much resistance and things were taking me so much longer and I just was kind of lacking that, that sort of energy and vitality that I brought with just so much of the work for so many years. Um, and so I was just kind of feeling. I don't. Just kind of discouraged. And, you know, there were times where I was feeling kind of cynical just about the, about even continuing of what I was doing. And what I really needed was some real rest. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. The other piece was around understanding burnout. Is this kind of overall just reduced personal accomplishment. You know, this can involve significant drops in our sense of effectiveness and satisfaction with our achievements. Um, you might even feel that no matter how much effort you put in, it might never quite feel like enough. Now, that can often be something that's more connected to systemic shame. Um, you know, living in a very ableist society or ableist world. But that feeling of, like, it's not enough, and comparing it to what you were doing at one point, you know, this is. I. I saw that my. Not only was my productivity kind of plummeting, I was kind of indifferent to it. And that was really frustrating as well. That was part of how I realized that this is more than just, oh, I need a vacation. This was something much deeper that was burnout. And I knew that, you know, from just talking to so many different people over the last year or so, that if I did not start to really, really address this issue, I was gonna. I was gonna be in trouble. Like, I was seriously going to be in trouble in the sense that, like, I don't. Don't know what would have happened. Like, the idea of, you know, we all had those days when the things that we usually do without much difficulty feel impossible. Well, I guess a lot of. Almost all of my days were starting to feel that way. So when we think about this idea, I actually did a virtual summit for. For the ADHD toolbox a couple weeks ago, and the topic that I chose was the Inconvenient Truth About Burnout. And this is really the first time I kind of organized some of my thinking around this. And I got asked this question about, well, how do you diagnose burnout? Well, diagnosing burnout involves more than just identifying these symptoms. It's about understanding the roots of these symptoms. Now, therapists like myself or other therapists out there can play a key role here, helping to rule out other conditions like depression or anxiety, which can absolutely have overlapping symptoms. Looking for patterns of chronic stress and emotional fatigue, and assess factors in your workplace as well as your ability to recharge when you're not working. Now, I think I was really starting to. To experienced burnout, probably early 2020, when. The very beginning of 2020, before COVID I knew that I was going to be getting divorced. And, you know, as I share a lot on the podcast, I also, you know, for me, there's always this kind of line between what do I share of myself that is helpful for others? And if I'm still kind of working through and processing something for me, I really try to sort of keep that closer to the chest until whatever the issue is is kind of more in the rearview mirror, and I've made some peace with it. So a lot of things that have happened over the last handful of years, I have kind of kept a little bit closer to the chest than maybe what I usually would. I guess the feeling that I would describe is that I was feeling burnt out and because, you know, needing to keep the business going with. With this impending divorce, knowing the finances were going to be tight, I just kind of said, this is not a good time to be burnt out, and literally just kept pushing it down. And the way I. The. This analogy that I've come up with, this metaphor is it felt like I kept scarring over burnout scars, right? So you re scar the same thing over and over again. You kind of start to feel numb. I went on, in 20, early 2024, I went on a vacation. I went to. To Mexico to see fish for the second time ever. I saw them back in 2022 in Mexico. I did not get the restoring recharge that I really needed from that trip. You know, there were other complicating factors in there. You know, my. My partner at the time that I went with was also having some mental health stuff, and I just really wasn't able to hold space for my partner. And I almost like, resented that they were getting emotional, you know, and we, We. I've reconnected, but we take some time apart, but we have reconnected. And, you know, it's. It's really. You know, part of this is burnout. Part of this is also. You know, I've shared on this podcast that since it's been a little over a year, I've been doing EMDR therapy for. For complex ptsd. And so all these kind of factors combined is that I realized that I. Even though I have the ability to be emotionally sort of present and hold space, I didn't have the capacity. That capacity was really. Had really become increasingly diminished, and that was affecting many, many areas of my life over the last. This past summer, one of the most kind of illuminating moments ahead for me came after I did a motorcycle trip to see Fish in Indiana for three nights, and I went by myself. And I've always, always identified as an introvert. And a lot of people find that surprising because I can be very outgoing, but being outgoing doesn't necessarily mean that you have a. That you're energized by being, you know, around people. But it was on this ride back, taking the back roads, where I actually, really understood what that actually meant for me, what that need to introvert almost as a verb really meant for me. Now there's. There's something About, I guess, the. The quiet of less traveled roads and the rhythm and the. The experience of being on that, on the motorcycle, that for me just clears my mind. And as I wound my way through scenic routes away from the highway, I had this moment where it was this strange yet vaguely familiar feeling. And it was this feeling of just layers and layers of stress kind of melting away. And it was replaced by this kind of profound mental spaciousness. Now, this wasn't just a break from routine. It was a deep meditative reconnection with myself, facilitated literally just by the hum of the road and the space to just be. To be without having to be responsive or, you know, kind of on call to anybody other than myself. And that ride home really crystallized something vital for me, that realization of how much more introverting time I genuinely need to recharge and function at my best. Anyway, since then, I have made it a priority to integrate meaningful alone time into my routine, ensuring that I have this space, that mental space to thrive and not just survive. And that's been a really big shift for me. You know, I would experience often this sort of feeling of mental fogginess, you know, after I had too many meetings in a day and sort of recognizing the impact and not just like the immediate impact, but that sometimes having a day of a lot of meetings can affect me for several days afterwards. And so I'm being way more choosy now with my time both in work and my personal life. Protecting my alone time is critical. And it's been a critical part of coming out of this long period of burnout that, that I do now feel. I wouldn't say I'm fully out of the clear in this, but I feel I'm at a much healthier place where I feel spaciousness and I feel vitality. But I cannot take my eyes off this, this idea that we've all heard in maybe the land of productivity, that you can't really manage time, you can only manage energy. And that has never really resonated more true for me than it has recently. So a couple other things I want to share. So I know I've been getting a lot of emails about when's our next coaching group. We are currently in our fall season. We. We did fill up this season, so, which is great. We just had one. We're doing one season, one section this season. But in line with my own realizations about the need to kind of slow down, I've decided that I want to put more space between our coaching seasons nor the hustle of Running a group, starting registration mid season, and then launching into a new season just two weeks after the last one. At this point right now in my life, it has just proven to be unsustainable. So going forward, what I'm going to try to do is take a more measured approach. The hope is that this will not only help me maintain my energy and focus, but, but will also enhance the quality and impact of each coaching season. It means that I can take a moment and breathe and reflect and prepare properly for each new journey together because I truly believe that this change will be beneficial for everyone involved, ensuring that we're all ready to engage fully with a fresh, energetic perspective. You know, I think at one point I kind of was looking at our registration cycle and, you know, the more sort of sessions and seasons we can squeeze into a year, the, you know, the better the bottom line. But another huge realization that I've been having around Burnout is that if the bottom line is the only focus, I'm focusing on the wrong things. As someone with adhd, when we experience success and, you know, with ADHD rewired, you know, I felt so. Just grateful and, you know, kind of almost got. I don't know if I want to say they weren't addicted, but kind of to the success that I was having because I kept. Kept wanting more and more and more and doing more groups and, you know, and all that. And, you know, it's. It's all right for, for a sprint for a short period of time, but I'm realizing so much more now that that is so unsustainable for a marathon. And I'm 44. How old am I? No, I'm 43. Going to be 44 years old next month. And I still have 20 plus years of work ahead of me. So if I'm going to do work that I love, and I think that is so important as a person with ADHD that we do the work that we love. I have to slow down and, you know, that might mean changing some lifestyle things that I'm kind of reevaluating and reexamining so many things in my life. I think that when I did that, telesummit where I talk was An Inconvenient truth about Burnout. That was kind of one of my thoughts around why I called it that because, you know, I enjoy having money in the bank where I don't have to worry about money. You know, I think most people would say that they do because what does that do? That gives you choices, that gives you freedom that allows you to, to hire people when for to do things that aren't, you know, your strengths. Right? So like yeah, I, I want to build wealth, all of that kind of stuff. But I also realized that this hustle to constantly doing more, I am reevaluating that big time. And that's a pretty significant shift for me. There is more to life than making money. And so I'm kind of looking at a bunch of different things right now as I'm trying to figure out how do I rebalance not just my, of my accounts but, you know, my energy and my life as a whole as I continue to do this work that, that I love while doing it in a sustainable way, healthy way. The next season of our coaching groups, I think we're probably gonna aim for end of January, maybe early February, um, you know, so, but I'm right now I'm in the midst of our, our fall season and I'm not focusing on registration for the next season yet. I'm focusing on being present with the members of my group and in my community. So one of the things that I want to do as well is, you know, being able to bring more attention to our Adult Study hall virtual co working community. Now one of the things I've been doing for the last several years in our alumni community is I leave these yearly planning sessions. It's typically five weeks of sort of guided and facilitated planning workshop sessions. You know, for years people have been telling me, you know, in my community that I should offer this as a standalone thing. So here's what I want to do. Any member of Adult Study hall, so you can sign up right now, you can sign up today, can join me starting Wednesday, November 20th. And we're going to do this for five consecutive Wednesdays at 2:30 Central, 12:30 Pacific, 3:30 Eastern. So it's gonna be November 20th, 27th, December 4th, 11th and 18th. And I'm gonna walk you through all the stages of yearly planning. These sessions will all be 75 minutes with the exception of the final one which will do a two hour session. But I'm telling you that our yearly planning sessions are extremely popular because they are effective. You know, being able to think about what kind of year do we want, what do we want to be focusing on, what are the themes that we want to be kind of centered around, what do we not want to be doing? You know, so we take a look at all these different domains of life, from work to our relationships to our hobbies and recreation to our, to wellness and our physical and Mental health, our finances, all of these. We look at all these domains, we'll be talking about themes for the year, priority goals for the year, and really how to identify organizing your year around your values and what's important to you right now. So there's. There'll be no additional charge to access this and we will also make the recordings available as well for all members of Adult Study Hall. So now is a great time to either join for the first time or come on back. If you were once a member and you've let your membership lapse and you can join monthly for just 1999amonth, or I'm going to be offering something here, announcing this for the first time. You could also sign up for an annual plan, which I still have to set up, but by the time this comes out, that will be set up. I'm going to offer an annual plan where you can commit to being a part of our adult Study hall community for $150 for the year. It comes out to only $12.50 a month. So that's a great deal. And we're going to be having more and more things available in our adult Study hall community. I think that's all we got here for today. I will be back in probably two weeks. I'm also in the process of hiring, I'm interviewing a couple overseas editors to get a pace back so we can get some content out there. Because, look, I. I do love creating this podcast. Um, I'm just looking to, to kind of rebalance life and, you know, so I want to encourage you to join me for our Adult Study hall annual planning that we're doing and maybe I can help you rebalance your life as well. Hey, and if this is the first time you've ever heard this podcast just now, this is actually not a typical format. Although I may potentially do more solo episodes. Not sure yet. I do have a bunch of recorded episodes that have not been released yet. But either way, I want to welcome you and I'm glad that you found this. If you are a returning listener, you've been listening for a while. Thank you so much for all of your support. You can also provide additional support for this work, either by becoming a patron by going to our website, go to patreon.com ADHD Rewired, and you can even join us for a monthly coaching call that we do on the fourth Tuesday of every month at 3pm Central. And while the podcast has been on break for a little bit, we have still been doing our live Q&As and our next one is this coming Tuesday, November 12th and we do it at 12:30pm Central. That's 10:30am Pacific, 1:30 Eastern. And you can sign up for that at ADHD rewired.com events or just click on the Events tab at the top of the page. And if you haven't left a review yet on Apple Podcasts or any podcast app that accepts those reviews, I'm always, always appreciative of that. Hey, if you are going to the the Chad Conference, the International Conference on adhd, which is next week in Anaheim, I will be there. So come say hello. I'm giving a talk about accountability. I'm going to be part of innovative programs session regarding our coaching groups. I'm going to be co facilitating a queer support group and I'll also be in the talent show. So come find me. And I also understand that there's a pickleball court at this hotel, so I'll be bringing my pickleball paddle. And if you're up for a game, come invite me and reach out. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening and for all of your well wishes. I've heard from so many of you during this extended break and we're looking forward to getting back to regular episodes. Looking at probably every other week. We're going to continue this life where we experiment and learn and grow together. Because the one thing I know talking to you right now that you and I, that we can do hard things and we don't need to do them alone. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. I'll catch you next time.