Tess Brigham, Therapist & Coach
🎙️ Gen Mess with Tess | Episode 1: Overcoming Burnout with Cait Donovan 🔥
Welcome to the very first episode of Gen Mess with Tess! 🎉I am your host Tess Brigham as we kick off the podcast with an incredible conversation featuring Cait Donovan, a leading expert in burnout recovery and emotional intelligence.
Cait, known for blending Western behavioral science with Eastern wellness philosophies, shares her personal journey from burnout to healing—and how she now helps others do the same. Together, Tess and Cait dive deep into:
✅ What burnout really is and why it affects Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z differently.
✅ The role of societal pressures in shaping our stress and mental health.
✅ Practical strategies for resilience, boundary-setting, and emotional intelligence.
✅ Why burnout recovery matters more than just prevention.
Whether you're struggling with workplace stress, personal growth challenges, or just trying to find balance in today’s fast-paced world, this episode is packed with insights and actionable advice.
💡 Don’t miss this empowering conversation! Listen now and start taking control of your well-being.
🔗 Subscribe & stay tuned for more real, raw, and relatable discussions about the “Gen Mess” we’re all navigating.
🎧✨ #BurnoutRecovery #MentalHealth #Podcast #GenMessWithTess #BurnoutRecovery #MentalHealthMatters #PodcastEpisode #OvercomingBurnout #EmotionalIntelligence #WorkLifeBalance #SelfCareTips #StressManagement #MindsetShift #PersonalGrowth #WellnessJourney #MillennialBurnout #GenZMentalHealth #GenXStruggles #BoundarySetting #ResilienceMindset #WorkplaceWellness #PreventBurnout #MentalWellness #EmpowerYourself #HealingJourney #PodcastLife #SelfImprovement #HealthyMindset
[Music] ever feel like different Generations just don't get each other certified coach licensed therapist and speaker Tess Brigham tackles the generational challenges shaping our personal and professional lives on the Gen mess with Tess listen in as Tess and experts around the globe provide insights and practical strategies to help you bridge the gap and Thrive no matter your generation now here's your host Tess briam welcome to the Gen mess with Tess this is the podcast where we dive into the fascinating and sometimes messy world of generational Dynamics I'm your host Tess Brigham so let's start cleaning up this Jen mess and today I'm thrilled to welcome Kate Donovan to the Gen mess Kate is a leading expert on burnout and emotional intelligence known for her unique approach that blends Western Behavioral Sciences with Eastern Wellness philosophies as a keynote speaker she has inspired leaders to tackle burnout head-on fostering bold cultures where individuals flourish and performance sores Kate is also the host of fried the burnout podcast which I been consuming it's amazing which ranks in the number 1% of podcast globally her insights have been featured in Forbes on NPR and in numerous other media Outlets welcome to the show Tess thank you so much I can't believe we're doing it yay all right so let's start I want to start with you tell me a bit about how did burnout become your focus and tell me a bit about your own Journey yeah so the the short version of the story is super boring and sounds exactly like everyone else's I burnt out and then I moved into a space of helping people the the thing that I don't say is um of helping people avoid burnout because I really do very strongly believe that those of us that burn out we're going to burn out anyway because anything that you could have told us before we burnt out to prevent it we would have heard because we think you're talking about other people so that wasn't about me like that was about that was that was for you other people like that wasn't for me yeah so um I don't I don't really work with burnout prevention I do work with recovery and my background is as um you know you mentioned like Eastern philosophy and a lot of people sort of imbue different Eastern ideas into their work these days it's not super crazily unpopular but I am an acupuncturist with nearly 20 years of experience so this is was actually my whole world and how I view systems and people and bodies Etc um so I yeah so the boring the boring part is that I burned out and then helped other people the bigger part is I burned out while doing having a life that was actually like on paper pretty amazing I lived in Europe for 12 years I started my first acupuncture practice in Warsaw it was incredibly successful I was paying off my American student loans with Polish money which is like exchange rate disaster area but it was working for me like I was I was over earning I was all the things and I had always I grew up in I was born in 82 so I was born at that time where they we started to be told like you can be and do anything you want you know like you can do anything um Follow Your Heart Like that's important Care Bear power and so I did that and then it didn't work I was terribly burnt out my thyroid was shot I gained all sorts of weight I was an absolute wreck my husband almost divorced me I was a disaster my emotions were all over the place my energy was in the toilet all the things and I sat there and I was thinking when I realized finally it was burned out I was like I'm a Stress Management expert right but this is the thing all of the information I Learned was for other people it wasn't for me I didn't need that because I had all this knowledge I didn't have the practice I could teach somebody else how to do taichi to lower their stress levels but I wasn't doing taichi at home M you know like yeah I said I'm a meditator but I didn't really meditate regularly I just knew a lot about meditation if I'm honest yeah yeah so I got caught up in that and now it's my world and I love it being a therapist myself I know this one well which is and I say this to clients all the time which is like listen I'm suggesting this to you do I get up and do this every day sometimes not always but sometimes yeah you know I'm I and I will say I've tried this practice this works for me this doesn't but we you know people that work in this space anything in I will say Health Care Health in mental or emotional or physical space there right we get into that compassion fatigue we get into that and and and this I think that we believe that because we teach it we should know we should it should just be automatic for us like it should be in there and I think that's one of the pieces that has you know you have to kind of release your ego a bit and that's one of the pieces for me in the last especially in the last 10 years of just letting that go and being able to say yeah I too am human I too make mistakes I am beyond those things while I can teach you these things and I understand these things implementing it is a different story yeah um so tell me a little bit about because it's I I I talk about burnout a lot and companies I'm very fascinated by this because this is something that all organizations number one this is the thing they are trying to figure out and solve um but I I love what you said about prevention because you're absolutely right knowledge is important but it's not the full picture no so is is this what you're finding across the board with um the people that you're working with that that there's a tremendous amount of knowledge but just a lack of implementation yeah everybody I work with is smart yeah everyone I work with is smart a lot of them are fellow acupuncturist therapists lawyers yeah I'm working with people that have like high degrees make good money you know and just didn't notice so and I think this is a twofold thing one is the like this can't happen to me because I know better in a lot of a lot of areas the other part of it is if there's any level of Aces right adverse childhood experiences that interfered with brain development so my set my other degree is biobehavioral health and so if if there's anything that interferes with brain development at time what what we've noticed is that your ability to intercept to read what's happening in your body and respond appropriately is diminished so you miss the signs of burnout not because you're not looking because you don't see them because that part of your brain is not fully active and you have to as part of your recovery process tap into it on purpose and and like make it grow so that you can stay out of this so I I think that some some part of it is that those of us that are going to burn out you know don't think the information is for us so we don't do as much listening and those of us that going to burn out tend to have lower levels of natural interoception so we just don't notice the red flags as they go until they are like multiple and all burning yeah that's usually what leads someone into getting that help and and and in a perfect world right so long before but sure and you don't notice it that's not gonna happen yeah and then there's a tremendous amount of shame in that there's a tremendous amount of shame that we place on ourselves yeah with that piece of it as well yeah so let's talk about I want to talk about um because we're committed to solving the Gen mess here so I want to talk about um what you see across the generations because you mentioned you were born in 1982 that makes you a very early Millennial um I was born 73 which makes me a gen xer and I that was I think I got those same Messages Plus that was during the time where our mothers were very much like you have to have a career don't write don't rely on anybody you got you know do this but also if you want a family that's great too you can have it all yeah you can have it all and it sounds like maybe you got those same messages so I'm very curious of what you're seeing across the board with the various Generations is everybody dressed at the same rate or is there a huge difference I think Millennials at the current moment especially the Elder geriatric Millennials so my counterparts are in a real dangerous Zone they're in a real dangerous Zone because of the follow your heart follow your heart follow your heart also but have stability and and build a f I didn't have kids because I was I couldn't figure out how all that was supposed to work together I I just never made sense to me that that was all possible my parents as an example though chose time over money so they both worked very lowp paying jobs that gave them access to time freedom and so I went the opposite way and I was like screw that I want some I'm GNA be bougie like I want a nice car and I want all the things I couldn't have so I pushed for the money and was not convinced of my value so overg gave all of my patients all the time right so know kind of a mess so I think for the Millennials we're stuck in this world of um we are when parenting got much harder so the about you're you know just short of 10 years older than me right that was still like when people were having kids at quote unquote normal ages like sort of mid to late 20s that was still happening for your people like for your counterparts a lot of them and there weren't as many activities for kids push that 10 years later every kid has activities if you don't go to all of them you're a jerk you have to meet everybody's emotional needs all the time or else your kid is going to grow up and have a neurod Divergence that you can't fix and they're not going to be able to get a job and everything's going to be a disaster and all the therapy is your fault and all of those things and then we have the people coming up behind us right so now we're is that we're going Z that we're going towards Z right so we went X Millennial Z when we go into gen Z the the the issue there is that they were missing a lot of the emotional resilience so you probably know this but people may not know this the in order for the the research on secure attachments is like super fascinating and so in order for a child to form a secure attachment that leads to normal brain development their needs have to be met 51% of the time that's average which is like totally fascinating yeah Millennials did not get that gen Z probably got a little too much yeah so now they don't have the capacity they don't have the coping mechanisms they don't know how to self Soo they don't know how to face things and I don't think they should face all the things that we decided to face yes you know like don't I don't no that's a big one too yeah right I don't want you to have to I'm not one of those people that's like well that's how I did it so you should suffer too no like if we can avoid some of that let's do it but some things in life no matter how beautiful your life is and no matter how privileged you are no matter how much support you have life is going to throw some stuff at you that's going to get messy and they're missing skills to deal with that yes well I think I think Millennials I always say that Millennials have always gotten the worst rap from from the world they were so you know we really just threw you all under the bus and um because as I try to when I go and I talk to older Generations about what's going on I said you know stop for a second here you know this Millennials were the first generation that came of age came of age when everyone had a platform where they could share their opinions I said listen you go back they were criticizing us that we were Slackers we were you know lazy we were this we were we were entitled we were blah blah blah blah blah exact same things were said and exact same things were being said about jenzie I mean every single time we complain about youth but unfortunately you all got a lot of this hate and then it became the story of Youth is entitled social media right and then this becomes the tale and what I see with my Millennial especially female clients is that because they have they're so that they're all about finding ways to maximize time you know how do I maximize this time like getting apps and then I'm going to get this app and the app's going to do this for me and then I'm GNA do this and that and that way of just thinking just thinking about time because there's so much to do and I've got to get it all done and I've got to look fabulous and amazing and wonderful while I do it and then that pressure I mean it's it's it's so it's so interesting because it's that and it's the social media and the fact that now you have to put every life event on film for everybody and so this was the other thing that I saw was these weddings getting out of control people spending thousands of dollars just to go to a bachelorette party because the bachelorette party has to be fabulous and because you're in this group of women of five you know and you're each each other's you know each one it's like when it's your turn you're like no you're going to pay for that now right yeah you can see so clearly how what's happened with um that's so interesting that you're thinking so is it do you work with many people my age or older yeah okay and what are you seeing with them um in that group of people what I see a lot is resentment toward Millennials and jenz for not having to go through the things without any recognition that we've had our own issues like we we all Every Generation goes through the same things and different things but everybody's got their own bag of tricks just whatever it's just life like that's what life does and um that so I see a lot of resentment for like well I didn't have that available well that wasn't available to me well I couldn't do that when I was in that I couldn't X I couldn't why I couldn't X I couldn't why and so and think that that's one part of it the other part of it is and I see this in in the older Millennials more than the younger Millennials is still the like very traditional mother role H that they're holding on to like real strong that things should be a certain way that mothers should um there's a lot of weird working patterns because it was like really normal for moms to work then but then also like there's just a lot of weird ideas for me about like what's go like how much you have to do for your kids and that's I think the Elder Millennials like my friends are in a similar place like I had a client x amount of years ago and she was um she was a gen xer and she at the time had a daughter that was like 12 so she had a later um she had a later child and she was super resentful because every day she was picking out clothes for her daughter to wear at night and ironing them and putting them on a chair and her daughter was getting up in the morning and wearing something totally different that didn't match and probably smelled bad because like she was like she didn't care you know and I said but I was like Remind Me Maybe I for maybe I have this wrong but your daughter is like like 12 M and she was like well yeah I said well why are you picking out a 12-year-old's clothes and she was like well and I was like well yeah what what are we doing yeah so I think there was a lot of like trying to emulate things that there weren't actually time that time for didn't exist anymore H yeah it's so interesting that is so it's it's just so interesting it's so interesting how people get very stuck on one thing or two things and and they cannot like it's so clear to everybody else but it's just like and every day she's getting up and doing this and you know this is she sees the clothes sitting there she's pissed she's mad you know she's doing this every single every single school day she's going through this what are you doing yeah when we really dug underneath it right there was it turned out that she had been bullied as a kid for her clothes wow yeah and I was like well okay but she's not you and she clearly doesn't care if her clothes match or are ironed or like she does not care it's not bothering her and she's not getting bullied for it yet so she's probably not going to it's probably too late like it's I mean you can get bullied at 12 but like this kid has clearly made her Mark and made her decisions Yeah well yeah and she can be bullied for a million different things and and I think that that's a very natural parent reaction I have a 17-year-old and it's that reaction like you you don't want your kids to go you know how painful that is you know how difficult that is and you're absolutely right that my generation we probably because I think we felt like we were so feral that we were just thrown to the wolves that were just like okay bye you know and I always say genx raised on hose water and neglect I mean just and so we've had such a a huge reaction to how we felt that we really did want to do all those things for our kids we wanted them we wanted them to feel safe we really did and physically huh physically physically we wanted them to feel physically safe so and all of this happened at the same time that technology was increasing and increasing and increasing and I'm going to get back to jenz in a second but for Millennials what was happening is and I really think this is my theory on why Millennials are so burned out and you can tell me I'm right or wrong so is because when they entered the workforce we were Now find we had technology that we did not have before and in some ways it was really like my Millennial clients had opportunities to make money that I could have never made at their age because of Technology because of some of these other things I had clients that were going off to Paris for the weekend I was so jealous I was like you know I I was I was changed to a desk when I was 20 some odd years old but here's the biggest thing is that my you know my first job out of college we worked 9:30 to 5:30 at 5:30 we switched we we we were done I left the building and I was done my boss had no way of getting a hold of me the only way she could find me is if she called me at home so I would have to be at home and pick up the phone and so that never happened so we had a whole generation of young people entering the workforce with zero boundaries or understanding of boundaries and here we are and and then we have this generation right behind them it's kind of almost overreacting to it right well I think overreacting to it and also like there was a little bit of that fight that says you know from that says you know we had to put up with different stuff and and maybe you are entitled but now I'm going to call you at 8:00 mhm like yeah right so there was a little bit of like push back in that way and we definitely did not know how to handle it and we still don't know how to handle it yes this is one of the biggest things I have to like leaders I'm constantly saying like you can schedule emails they you they don't need to go out when you write them if you're on your computer at 11: p.m you don't have to send it at that time oh it doesn't my team knows they don't need to respond I was like no girl no no they don't yeah like no they don't yeah well and that's what was happening because 15 years ago I would hear from my clients about how their boss was texting them and and the thing is is that the problem is the yes the boss thinks that like oh they know to ignore that but it's like no they don't this and this is their livelihood and they're new in the industry and also being female I want to say like you know when I was 20 some odd years old in the working industry I just you know sexually harassed I was a bartender through college please yeah I mean and so you're just kind of accept it you're just like okay I'm just going to keep my head down and keep going so this is what I love is I love all these people that are saying that some 25-year-old kid I mean and still a kid right is supposed to be able to say and supposed to be able to say no my boss didn't want me to do any of that I'm going to put that off and then what get it out of their mind until Monday morning right because it's now looming it's looming so won't answer it Alphas are like because it goes right Z then Alpha right yeah and then generation Alpha and now we have a new one behind them yeah but the alphas are a little bit different because they're not as attached to their devices even like the younger z's are not as attached to their devices they don't want to be like beholden to like missing the world because because of devices and they are much more protective of their time so they're not they will shut down their phones in the afternoons they'll just shut them off yeah which is like can you I mean as a millennial as a millennial like gosh we grew up with a different level of addiction because when when it started when the internet started I was like 11 10 11 and it was you know you could like all of a sudden talk to people online and in my house you know the phone was not could not ring after 9:00 p.m. and I was in my bedroom like in bed at 9 o'clock but now all of a sudden you have access to things and people and like you can you know we learned how to research for papers and I went to school with computer I went to college with a computer like my own computer so you we were attached to those things because they were such big deals now they're like get that thing away from me I can't be on that all day I'm like what I thought that kids were addicted and I know some are you know but it's just like it's that's shifting now too so I think that every generation brings in something beneficial that we overlook because we're stuck in that narrative that you mentioned before that was like oh this generation is entitled this generation doesn't work as hard this generation won't do this and it's like you said it's it was they said the same thing about the Boomers oh yeah the same conversation I love doing these talks and I get these Boomers yeah like hold on a second they said the same thing about you yes yes yes absolutely we just keep repeating the same nonsense so I think the mess part of it is can we stop repeating the nonsense and just look at how we can learn from each other yeah yeah and it sounds like that's a lot of what burnout is too a little bit right like we talk about let's can we get rid of the shame the shame of what you know we think I should have had or what you have and how things are because it's never going to feel Fair nothing's ever going to feel Fair nothing's ever going to feel like you know you got everything that you wanted all the time so how do you then fix it and so I want to I would love to hear from you just about I know that you said it's not about prevention but I would love to hear from you a couple different things which is you know what are your recommendations for Burnout and then you know what are your recommendations if you have some for each generation when it comes to burnout so I think the one that goes really well for Gen X and Millennials is the resentment piece I have like a small thing that I sell called the resentment Journal it's just like like a many and this is the emotion that I see pop up so frequently that people are not willing to look at nobody will admit that they have it especially if you grew up with any sort of religious anything you're evil like resentment is like evil so you don't have it and what's interesting is it was the thing that kept coming up the most during my own recovery when I was writing Pro doing proprioceptive writing which is a technique that involves basically like doubling down on questioning yourself so you start writing a little bit stream of Consciousness but then you interrupt yourself say oh like I was so stressed the other day and when I say stressed what I really mean is and like really digging into specificity around what you mean around emotion words what you mean around when you make sort of broad statements like what are you really talking about and the more I did that the more I kept coming down to feeling resentful that other people could do this and other people could do that and I you know all this stuff and then when I took the resentment and I went another level deeper deeper with it and I spent five years with it I found that it does two things one it shows you where your boundaries are off sometimes it's you Crossing them sometimes they're being crossed sometime you know whatever the combination of in there the boundaries are off so they need to be addressed some a sometimes that's not a conversation with anyone most I would say 75% on average is just is that you have to stop doing yeah like you just have to you don't have to say no you don't have to say yes you don't have to explain any you just have to stop like don't take your daughter's clothes out tomorrow night stop it it stop doing it and nothing will happen the only thing that will change is that you will not spend 10 minutes every night ironing your daughter's clothes that she's not going to wear that's the only thing that changes in well no additionally what changes is your relationship with your daughter because you're not mad at her all the time yes right so we're changing two things by you not doing something so a lot most I think I would say the most of the boundary issues are with that and sometimes there's some conversations that need to be had the other thing that resentment teaches you every single time is where you are engaging intentionally but subconsciously in self- neglect and abandonment MH a lot of times when we are mad at our partners or our friends that they are able to do something that we're not able to do we are able to do it we just don't let ourselves do it and we think that other people let themselves do it either because if I can't do it then you shouldn't be able to do it and if why can you do it and I can't do it but it's mostly you're just not letting yourself you are forcing yourself to do the dishes instead of lay on the couch where the dishes are still going to be there in the morning you can do them in the morning if what you really need right if you are resentful that your partner is laying on the couch knowing that there are dishes that need to be done you can also lay on the couch mm if that's what you you know like that's it yeah so so the two things so boundaries and self-abandonment and self- neglect and we are gen um I keep going backwards Gen X and Millennials are queens and kings of self-abandonment for the perceived value of other people that other people often don't feel or are not grateful for because they didn't ask for it or whatever so we're we're famous for that I think with the younger Generations it's a lot more about helping them find a balance between having a job that suits them and being able to like fully adult yeah and saying like it's like you're going to have to make some sacrifices and you're going to need some coping skills I don't want you to have so many coping skills that you'll burn out because that's what happens but you need to have enough to be able to handle some stuff like you can't just you can you can quit anything you want all the time but I want you to be able to live a life that's fulfilling and A Life That's fulfilling includes challenges and so sometimes they're not they are underchallenged and a little bit bored so their flavor of burnout looks a little bit different yeah yeah you know what's so interesting is that my son has been home since the pandemic he's got a lot of anxiety and and um depression and so we've been homeschooling him and he's going to take the equivalency test so what's been interesting is I've noticed that he is very resistant to adulthood and I really started digging into it I'm like wh why and I think the thing is is that he has been observing my husband and I exactly running around like crazy people and they're like no thank you yeah and and they and they're like oh the lot looks sucky right now this is good mom's making all my meals yeah why would I want this to go yes and and this is the big thing because I'm constantly amazed with my son like I could wait to get out of the house I love my parents they're great people but I was ready to go and for my life and do all this stuff and I think that the the fact that we live in this world where people are home more which there is more flexibility of that is that really is it good for your kids to see you all day long stressed out and I do know that I'm also probably you know if if I just picked him up after school or if I came home and he was there I think I would obviously be in a different head space than I am at noon and I'm trying to shovel food down my throat before I have to get back to the next thing yeah and so there's all these these consequences or I don't want to call them consequences but effects from everything that's going on in our worlds that we're not even quite aware of yeah and I think that's what you said is absolutely critical like the the kids are just looking at us and saying No thank you if that's the way it's going to be like no thank you and I'm like well you have but we don't change this unless you come in and say uh-uh that's how it starts changing like you are going to be in charge within 10 years midle you will be the mid-level managers in 10 years because I'm 42 I'm almost done of in that like my high time in corporate structure yeah is almost passed yeah already you're going to be in charge soon so you need to stick around long enough to know what you want to change and then Implement those changes and you have to have the energy to do it and you have to have the ideas to do it and you have to have the creative problem solving to do it and you have to have access to your brain faculties to make that happen and get people on board and create buyin and do do all those things but there is a lack of there's a little bit of a lack of resilience which I hate saying in that way because these poor kids in the pandemic and the oh my God I can't imagine schol shootings and the oh my God I don't really feel like like Coline happened while I was in school but it felt really far away because like even the internet then was like not that big so it wasn't everything kind of in your face with the pandemic yeah shoot there is a certain amount of resilience you have to have in order to get through that but then I think a lot of them were just like I'm done yeah and I'm like you're 17 girl you got to get a dum well and they're done and then they've got parents Gen X parents who are just feeling of course now guilty and bad and like oh wait hold on and and um I I'm reading this book right now the anxious Generation by Jonathan hay am I saying his last think so so fascinating so so fascinating and I think this is the other part too is with Millennials they were you unfortunately were the guinea pig group of so you know being and so then j z looked at that and going oh we don't want to do this like this we're gonna do it like this and I think unfortunately gen Z is another guinea pig group I often say like these two groups have been real guinea pigs for for technology and show up because I because know what was it two years ago that the Surgeon General came out and said you know I think these phones aren't good for kids you know Under 12 or something 14 had no kid in and it's like but my kid now is old like wait a second hold on you you know and so but we feel parents we feel such guilt we feel bad but it's like no like we were just B booing along in society like when I was growing up I mean all my veget not all but most of my vegetables were canned yeah and I ate Lunchables yeah or how much water did you drink none no one was talking about water water I drink water maybe at gymnastics you know and maybe at field hockey like maybe during sports activities particularly but outside of that yeah no I was drinking powdered fruit punch with red colored 40 or whatever yeah yeah and we're here yeah I mean I'm not doing too hot to be honest people are all always like but we're fine I'm like are we I've been an acupuncturist for a long time and we are like not okay folks we are really not okay yeah but you know what are you gonna do the last question I want to ask you is about companies and because I think this is one where I really do think there are a lot of organizations and a lot of managers and a lot of leaders of organizations that really do they don't want their employees to be burned out they care about this I mean I've you know I'm sure you give burnout to I'm sure you've talked to leaders who are like H okay what do we do so let's say I'm a leader of an organization and I have a mixed group of people but maybe probably um you know maybe my age or your age and I'm leading a group of younger people what do they what can they do to help with burn this is a a huge conversation okay that's for the next episode that that's a huge conversation but I will start with this you really need to understand and this is my first keynote that I give in almost all the companies that I start with and I do like a series of things and this is always the first one I believe that burnout has six different buckets of causes so I don't believe in like a cause of a root cause of burnout that terminology makes me want to yell at people on the streets but I think there are six different buckets and two of the buckets are work the workplace and personal traits and characteristics those are two not that burnout is anybody's fault because we create those personal traits and characteristics often times because of childhood coping mechanisms trauma whatever you know culture not your fault but they still belong to you and you have control over them is so those are yours and then the workplace stuff and I think what's happening right now that people really need to understand is that the the line between those two buckets needs to be drawn very strongly because leaders are saying leaving the responsibility on the employees saying well if you're burnt out then that means you can hack this place a lot of times that's sort of idea behind it and employees are saying well you're not giving me enough support so while they're both feeling Shame about the situation they're throwing blame at each other and my first goal is always to draw that Line in the Sand and say Hey you over here you're responsible for this stuff and you over here you're responsible for this stuff and when you're both doing that stuff what we create in the middle is better than the sum of two parts so I think that's the a critical thing to understand yeah and then the next thing outside of the bucket of six things that burnout researchers have said for 40 years are the most important things in the workplace that you know we could do a whole conversation about that but outside of that bucket underneath that bucket the thing that needs to hold that bucket is trust in psychological safety which is huge hands down huge that's first because you can't really work on the rest of the stuff mhm and actually make it impactful and effective if people don't trust why you're doing it or that you're doing or that it's going to work yeah yeah because it is very real and true that people who set these kinds of boundaries that leave the office by five or six I had a client recently who was what's the tech term for it she was something leveled mid like like leveled basically what that means is she should have gotten this higher level but because she's not working till 11 o'clock at night they sort of pass out now she'll probably get it next year but it's there's a little bit of that right you know there's there's these these um hidden consequences that aren't so hidden but they're there exactly if you don't feel safe yeah exactly absolutely I could talk to you for another hour two hours three hours about all of this thank you so much for being here so tell me a little bit about you know tell me about what you're excited about right now tell me what you're working on and yeah and tell us about you and how people can find you yeah working on a new speaker real which is super exciting um that's a fun thing to promote I love speaking more than any other job I've ever had and I'm obsessed with acupuncture so that should tell you something I'm really into it I just updated my branding so now my basic like tagline is burn bold like if if we're gonna burn out anyway we might as well use it yeah like let's figure out how to make that happen so that's super fun for me um I've made an energetic decision that is paying off in Spades of really only work working with leaders who are not afraid to talk about burnout who are like no no no this is an issue I'm afraid of it and I don't know what to do with it and I need help I'm like I'm your gal so that is super fun to me because now the people that I get to work with I'm not convincing them of anything I just get to come in and shine and do my thing and it's just the most Joyful Way of working that I ever experienced um and in addition to those things uh the podcast is growing and lovely anding so and if there's people looking for us I think fried the burnout podcast is the thing to look for and then you'll find links to me in all the places but that's like a that's that should be the starting point yes it's anaz it's a wonderful podcast I recommend I had a client sign up you know she just she just downloaded I'm like great you're on it there too it's such an important resource and I love that you you interview people and then you do these solo episodes I was listening to a bunch of the solo episodes about and and that's the thing too I have to put my ego inside and say well let me you know okay let me hear this and yes you you don't do that well you do need to start doing those things so no matter who you are how much you know we all need this sometimes I listen to somebody said recently gave me a piece of like feedback that was like oh my God I got this episode it was it like changed my life this one sentence and she wrote the sentence down and I was like oh I should probably that's a really good advice oh no that's I get that cuz I've been I've been working with people for 20 years now and I get that all the time which is it's so funny because the things that land with people are never think you think you've come up with this brilliant thing and you're like oh my God this is gonna wow them and then and then some random thing that you said three months ago and you're like wait what was that again you're like oh I should write that down that is good I said that me oh man okay well thank you so much for being here and um yes we will have all of your information in the show notes as well please go download fried the burnout podcast thank you for tuning in to the Gen mess with test remember we're fixing the Gen mess one conversation at a time until next time stay curious and don't let the Gen mess mess with you thank you you've been listening to the Gen mess with Tess with your host Tess brigam make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast and make sure to follow Tess brium on all social channels to learn more about Tess's books courses or to have Tess speak to help clean up the Gen mess at your organization head on over to test bam.com thanks for listening [Music]
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