A Better Job Wont Help The Truth about Burnout

[Music]

does this

sound familiar i’m too

burned out to cook i’m

way too burned out to exercise

i’m too burned out to get my house

organized

i’m too burned out to

you fill in the blank how many times

have you found yourself feeling

too burned out to do life as a high

performance coach

the most common thing my clients tell me

is that they’re

too burned out to take the steps

necessary to do the work to create

an exceptional life they’re too

burned out to write that book to work

towards their dreams to live their

passion

to fill their bucket list imagine my

delight when i read that

the world health organization proclaimed

in 2018

burn out as a legitimate medical

diagnosis

finally i thought a real diagnosis that

explains why

so many of my clients feel trapped in a

cycle of joyless living that

impacts not only their creativity

but their physical vitality when i read

the full description from the world

health organization which said that

burnout is related to employment issues

applies only to work related

circumstances and

shouldn’t be applied to other life

situations

i was confused this didn’t match what

was happening with my clients at all

most of my clients didn’t hate their

jobs they didn’t feel

overworked and they certainly weren’t

underpaid in fact

many of my clients really loved their

work but they felt exhausted and burned

out because of

underlying patterns of self-sabotage

linked to traumatic events from their

past

this started me exploring the question

what if

the real cause of burnout isn’t

overworking

low pay or hating your job but

unresolved

trauma i decided to survey the people

who subscribed to my weekly newsletter

i sent out the survey to about 20 000

people

and approximately a thousand people

filled it out now

obviously this wasn’t a scientifically

targeted random group this is a

group of self-selected people who were

interested in high performance living

and who liked my writing and my work

97 of the survey participants

described themselves as having low

self-worth

92 percent describe themselves as having

experienced

some sort of trauma and 87

reported themselves as being burned out

some of them

so burned out they literally couldn’t go

to work

according to the harvard school of

public medicine unresolved trauma is a

significant cause of low self-worth

and motivational dysfunction something

my survey

seemed to bear out according to the

diagnostic and statistical manual of

mental disorders the

gold standard for mental health

assessment

the psychological diagnosis of trauma

requires

actual or threatened death serious

injury

or sexual violence obviously these kinds

of events

are extremely traumatic but this

diagnostic criteria

also didn’t fit what i was seeing in my

coaching practice

even though most of my clients felt

somehow

traumatized by life very few of them had

actually experienced

these kinds of major traumatic events

the trauma i was seeing wasn’t always so

obvious

one of my clients amy was a burned-out

journalist who was

struggling with an exhausting autoimmune

disorder

after working with a therapist amy

uncovered a memory of her father

discouraging her from pursuing a career

in creative writing while she was in

college

because he was concerned that creative

writing wouldn’t pay

well so in response amy changed her

major to journalism

now you might think that changing majors

and

landing a job that pays the bills isn’t

that big a deal

but amy lost her sense of value around

the one

thing that she perceived was her

greatest gift her creative writing

ability

eventually this sense of loss deeply

hurt her career and

ultimately took a toll on her physical

health

amy was able to resolve her sense of

being traumatized by her father’s

well-intending advice and

once she embraced the idea that it was

okay for her to be a creative writer

she was able to return to work and

started writing for

fun again she’s currently working on her

second novel

because the traditional definition of

trauma

wasn’t really addressing my client’s

pain

i created a new definition of trauma

based on my research

my definition of trauma gives us a

better way to get to the root cause of

burnout

and gives us a broader base from which

to tackle healing the relationship

between

trauma and burnout i define trauma

as any event perception or experience

that causes us to lose our connection to

our sense of value

and to our unique gifts that we have to

bring to the world

when we’re working with people and we’re

only looking for the evidence of

big trauma such as violence and we don’t

take into account that

most people have in some way perceive

themselves as being

judged criticized or told that

they can’t do what they want to do with

their lives and what they dream of doing

it can have a similar effect on their

self-worth

as major trauma if we use this more

expanded definition of trauma it also

explains why

so many people feel burned out even

though they haven’t experienced

textbook trauma one of my clients

mark was a businessman who had a

terrible fear of failing

mark’s father had been a very successful

businessman and

also deeply critical of his son growing

up

mark who in spite of being very capable

and brilliant in his own right kept

sabotaging his success

he consistently miscalculated the time

it took him to complete

projects causing him to either submit

proposals late

or rush through projects with poor

quality work that really didn’t

represent his brilliance

he eventually was so exhausted from this

self-generated chaos that he completely

stopped trying to work at all

when we explored this pattern of failure

we discovered that

mark’s bad time management skills were

actually a way of controlling his

crippling fear of failure

rooted in the trauma from his

hypocritical father

if he could basically fail in advance

then he didn’t have to take the risk of

discovering that his best effort

wasn’t good enough once mark healed

his trauma from being criticized and

judged by his father he was able to

really express his own talents and

define success on his own terms

trauma doesn’t only make becoming

successful a struggle

it creates a stress response in the body

causing the body to produce the hormone

cortisol

putting the body in a state of chronic

fight or flight and at risk for many

other health issues

i’m in the middle of researching the

relationship between trauma

elevated cortisol and resiliency it’s my

hypothesis

that high cortisol levels make it

difficult to

bounce back from the twists and turns

that life inevitably throws at us making

us

less resilient i assess resiliency using

a scale that includes

nine core characteristics called the

resiliency keys

eight of these keys including your sense

of self-worth

your sense of empowerment and your sense

of lovability

need to be functioning at a high level

in order for you to experience the ninth

resiliency key

vitality is having the energy to

take action and to be able to do what

you need to do in life

when you have low vitality it’s hard for

you to do things like

keep your house in order exercise or buy

and cook healthy food

it’s even harder to do those things that

give your life meaning like

writing a book contributing to society

pursuing your passion

or checking things off your bucket list

when you can’t

access your vitality you burn out

understanding the components of

resiliency and how trauma affects

resiliency

helps us understand why some people can

work terrible jobs and never burn out

and others can have amazing dream jobs

and still

struggle with burnout one of my clients

alan is a highly successful surgeon

he owns several medical technology

patents lives in the large mansion in a

thriving metropolitan area

sets his own hours works about 20 hours

a week and receives an enormous amount

of respect

and acknowledgement for his job yet when

i first met alan

he reported himself as being burned out

he gave himself a very low vitality

score on the resiliency key scale

he was struggling to even get out of bed

in the mornings and he developed a

strong

coffee addiction just to help him stay

alert

during surgery allen had gone through a

very contentious breakup of a business

partnership that had really left him

doubting his worthiness of having

success

when we worked on restoring his sense of

self-worth his vitality returned

and he was able to reclaim his normal

state of productivity

not only was he able to get back to his

normal vibrant self with a new sense of

self-worth

the quality of his relationships

improved he’s now happily married with a

brand new wife

and a brand new baby daughter if we’re

not

helping people heal from everyday

trauma and only focusing on extreme

trauma

we’re not only missing the boat on how

to help people tap into their

ability to fulfill their life’s

potential

we’re actually limiting the chances that

we can

find the solutions to the challenges

facing humanity today

people who are burned out and have high

levels of cortisol are more reactive and

less

creative high cortisol levels put the

body

in a chronic state of fight or flight

and when your body’s in a constant

survival mode

it physiologically shuts down the more

creative parts of your brain you don’t

need those parts of your brain when

you’re running from a bear

or fighting for your life when we

feel vital we can access a more

expansive brain state that makes us

more creative we’re better able to find

groundbreaking solutions to problems

without this kind of creativity we

never would have gone to the moon had

light bulbs or discovered electricity

a world facing issues of sustainability

equitability and other challenges such

as

global warming and finding a vaccine or

a cure for a virus

needs healthy creative people in order

to access the elegant solutions

necessary to peacefully resolve

the challenges facing humanity today

burnout accounts for an estimated 125

to 190 billion dollars in healthcare

spending according to an article

published in the harvard business review

the number of people reporting

themselves as burned out is

on the rise every year if the root cause

of burnout is

not work related issues as the world

health organization

suggests but rather unresolved trauma

we’re tackling this debilitating and

costly syndrome the wrong way

getting a better job won’t help

most of my clients are white

middle-class people who want to improve

their performance in life

if these people are feeling traumatized

because somewhere in their life

they got disconnected from their value

imagine what it must be like for people

who face the daily impact of things like

institutionalized racism who don’t feel

safe

driving in their cars or walking through

certain neighborhoods or going to school

when people lose touch with their sense

of value

and the gifts that only they can bring

to the world

not only do they suffer we lose the

potential that the person whose destiny

it is to find the solutions

to the challenges facing the world today

might never get to tap into that destiny

because of trauma we must ask the

question

what exactly is causing so many people

to experience burnout

and we’ve got to do better research to

understand the relationship between

unresolved trauma and burnout we’re

going to have to start looking at

serious sources of trauma including

things such as

institutionalized racism which can cause

an entire

group of people to lose connection with

their value and to the unique gifts that

only they

can contribute to the world we need to

find

a better way to heal the root causes of

burnout

and we need to explore which groups of

people in our society

are being disproportionately traumatized

by

racism sexism gender bias

and other divisive behaviors and

policies so that

we can change our actions and lift

all of us up to the same degree of

vitality

and creativity you never know who might

be carrying the next elegant solution to

the world’s challenges

and the world needs all the help it can

get