#54: When Meditation Isn’t Working: Burnout Recovery with Cait Donovan

Cait:
We just can't feed the brain when the body is just barely functioning. And the other thing about the Ming men being low in the kidneys being weak in Chinese medicine is it increases our tendency toward fear. Fear is the emotion of the kidneys in Chinese medicine. So we increase our tendencies toward fear. When our fear is increased, it sets our nervous system into high alert all the time. Then the amygdala gets bigger than our reactions get crazier. Then we have nonstop tension along the spine.

Michelle:
It's time to stop being the victim of your over-scheduled life and become the most powerful version of yourself. Welcome to she's got power. When I was going through my divorce, I downloaded it,

Michelle:
That meditation app, you know, the one Headspace. So I attempted to do 10 or 20 minutes of meditation every day. I mostly fell asleep, but overall, I couldn't tell if it was really working. It didn't feel like it was working. I assumed I was probably doing it all wrong. I've never really been much of a meditator. And it wasn't until my conversation with Kate Donovan that I realized why it wasn't working for me. And you're going to hear about that today, along with about a million other gems at every high-achieving stressed out, woman absolutely needs to hear. Kate Donovan is one of New York. City's leading burnout experts and acupuncturists she's host of fried the burnout podcast and author of the book, the bounce back ability factor she's been featured on podcasts and online magazines, such as Forbes, elephant journal thrive global quoted in Oprah magazine.

Michelle:
And of course at the top of her resume now proudly states that she's been on the she's got power podcast. And let me tell you, this is a good one. Like I'm listening back going, wow, I'm really glad I recorded this, but before we get there, I want to remind you that the line between burnout prevention and burnout recovery can be difficult to see in yourself, like some stress is normal, right? So how do you know when you've hit that burnt out place? Listen to today's episode and download the free stress assessment quiz on my website at she's got power.com/okay.

Michelle:
It's time to meet Kate. Hey Kate, thanks for being on the show today. Hello. I'm so excited

Cait:
To be here. Thank you so much for having me. It feels

Michelle:
Like we've been doing some parallel work in the world, and I know that F everyone's gonna want to hear about how you're approaching this topic of burnout with all of your clients, but I love hearing a personal story and I know you've gone through periods of burnout. Can you tell us, like, first of all, I assume that's how you got into this. Like, what was so bad? How did it go down for you?

Cait:
You know, for me in the very beginning, the first time, and this is the trick, right? I say the first time it happened and then the second time it happened, and that's what I wrote in my book, that there was a first time in a second time. And then when I really thought about it over the next year or so after the book had been finished and it was being edited, I was thinking, you know, I was probably kind of a little burnt out that whole time. And those were just sort of bigger moments. And so I kind of feel like I was burnt out for about six or seven years. The first time it really hit me. I was gaining a lot of weight. I hated everybody. I was, I was an awful person. And when you get into a service profession and you get into a service profession because you want to serve hating people, not only doesn't feel good because it doesn't feel good to hate people, but it also doesn't feel good because it goes against everything that you're striving for in your work.

Cait:
And you know, that the energy that you're showing up with to treat your patients or your clients is not the kinds that you want to be showing up with. So there's an extra level of judgment there, or there was for me anyway. And so I was getting my acupuncture practice at the time was in Warsaw, Poland. And I was, I had a three month waiting list for new patients and I was getting phone calls every day. And so every day that a phone, my phone would ring and I would see an unknown number pop up on my screen. I would fly into a mini panic attack thinking about the fact that I was going to have to explain to one more person, how I wasn't available, how I couldn't make time for them right now and how I could see them in three months if they wanted.

Cait:
And I just could not have that conversation anymore. I didn't understand why people didn't understand how busy I was, you know, from the outside. I was just like, don't you people know, of course they didn't know. It's not their job to know, but didn't do any people know like how overwhelmed I am and how busy I am. No, I can't stop at lunch and take you in as an extra client. I get these phone calls every day. Like I literally have nothing left and you're still asking me for stuff. And that I was just on that, just angry, just angry and frustrated. And I had built this business because it was the business I wanted and then it didn't feel good. And so that was frustrating on top of it. And then my thyroid crashed. So I got diagnosed with Hashimoto's. I gained a bunch of weight, so it was just sort of all like, that's

Michelle:
So interesting because mostly we hear about, I was working in corporate or I was running my own, whatever financial such-and-such business. And, you know, then people often have their breakdown, their burnout moment and they leave and they start something that sounds nice and calm, like an acupuncture practice. Is that not the case? It is. It is.

Cait:
And then when I started, so, you know, I, we left that country. We left Poland, we moved to Prague. I started a new practice. I changed the rules. I changed the hours I was working. I changed a whole bunch of things to make it easier on myself. I spent a long time healing. I did all the supplements. I never took meds for my thyroid. I got it back under control. You know, I did all the things that I was supposed to do. And then a few years later I found myself, you know, walking up a hill to my apartment and having to stop halfway up because I was so tired and I had to only worked a six hour shifts. So there was no reason for me to be that exhausted, but I was so crushed that I couldn't, and I was thinking, oh my God, it's happening again? How is this happening again? I'm not overworking. Like I have the best life that anybody could ever want. You know, my girlfriends called me at the end of September one year and they said, I think we're going to go to Bali in November. And I was like, cool book, the tickets. And I could take that time off. I had the money to buy the ticket. Like it essentially from the outside I was literally doing and having all the things that people think that they want to do and have,

Michelle:
Yes, it sounds like it to me. Right.

Cait:
I mean, I was living, I was living in Prague. Life was good, you know, technically, but I was exhausted again. And I was just thinking to myself, what the heck is going on. And when I started doing, I dig into research when I'm stressed out, um, because research calms me and I found an article on burnout and I read it and my whole body bursted in two goosebumps and I was thinking, oh my God, this is it I'm burnt out. But then I started digging into the research more and all of the research is based in hospitals and corporations. And they all say that 80% of the fault is the environment that you're in within the hospital or the corporation. And I'm thinking, but I'm

Michelle:
A business owner. Right, right.

Cait:
Like, what do I blame joy now? Blame society. Like who, who do I blame if I'm not blaming the corporation? Who am I blaming? Because if it's not my fault, then it's gotta be somebody.

Michelle:
Right. And then, oh my gosh, does it turn on you? Or are you at fault? Is that something that you have to stress out about?

Cait:
Right. Exactly. And so I dug into things really deeply, and that's why I ended up writing my book because there's no information out there for burnout and female entrepreneurs. It's all for corporate workers and doctors and nurses. And so there was nothing for me for us. And I thought I did all the right things. I followed my heart too into my job. I followed my heart into my marriage. I left a pre-med program to study Chinese medicine. I built a successful practice. I did all the things that, you know, I'm the first year of the millennials. So I'm an 82 and we're told, you know, follow your heart, follow your passion, do all these things. And I felt like I followed all the rules and it didn't work

Michelle:
Now. Do you think, and I'd love to just hear your take on this in general. Do you think that there's something about your genetics, something about your childhood, something about your makeup that left you predisposed to burn out?

Cait:
Yes. And this is something that Mary Beth Highland mentioned in the episode that you did with her recently and something that you said actually in another episode before a solo episode, I feel like when you dig underneath it, deep enough with every client that I've had over the years with acupuncture patients with burnout clients, it's, it's, it all comes down to the same thing is not enoughness. Yeah. It all comes down to that at the end of the day. And we all have it for different reasons. You had mentioned during that, that episode with Mary Beth, that, you know, she had this really demanding father. And you said, well, for some people, they have that same like trauma adaptation of perfectionism, because they have the opposite people that are not paying enough attention to them. So they overwork to do things well to get the attention that they need. So it doesn't even matter really what the big T little T trauma was that created this in you. It's a very common trauma adaptation to believe that you're not good enough. And that if you improve, you can fix the environment around you.

Michelle:
How many people like myself right here? It's just the two of us, but listening right now just got chills. Just that idea that you just said, I just got chills right down my arms. Okay. Please say more.

Cait:
Right. We get into this. It's just a trauma adaptation that so many of us have. And if we just start looking at it that way and saying, oh, okay, I did this to protect myself. And because as a child, I assumed that I had more power over my environment than I really did. Then we can start to forgive ourselves a little bit and drop that mode of functioning. But for me, it was like really tied up in, I grew up in a low-income family and my father was a drug addict until I was about six years old and an alcoholic. And he went through rehab. I didn't find out until I was 35 that his rehab during that period was only two weeks. I thought he was gone for six months. Oh, wow. Right. So my adaptation as a six year old going through this process was now there's no more mistakes allowed in my family because my dad used them all.

Cait:
So I'm going to be perfect. And every time the situation at home is a little bit uncomfortable emotionally, I'm going to crack a joke or say something or do something to even things out. So there we go into people, pleaser mode, right? I'm going to even things out for everybody so that everybody can stay like sane and healthy. And my dad won't go back to using drugs. And my mom won't be so upset anymore. And everybody will be okay. Like I took the responsibility for it. Nobody told me to take the responsibility for it. That was, it was a child's reaction to an adult situation, which all of us have at some point, whether it's not everybody has, you know, a drug addict as a parent, but everybody has a story.

Michelle:
This is true. And I honestly cannot believe same. Like you said, of all the clients I've worked with through the years of all the women I interview on the show, everyone has a story and they are so similar. And then we all end up with similar symptoms that feel somewhat unrelated. Oh, there's some weight gain. Oh, I'm having panic attacks. Nobody thinks that those two things go together. They think they're eating too many calories and whatever. So for you, it started with this one article that you read and I'm dying to know what the article was. Was it? I wish I knew famous. I have,

Cait:
I honestly, I don't remember. Cause this was like 2016 and I got you on your way. Yes. It got me on my way. And I started digging into the research within the next six months. My husband started a post-graduate degree at Cambridge in the UK. And so I had access to the university libraries for awhile. So I downloaded every paper that was ever written on burnout. Wow. I'm an overachiever. You guys, if you haven't

Michelle:
Yet. Yeah, of course. Just throwing that out there. And

Cait:
So I dug through it, the research and that's when I got really disappointed feeling like, you know, there's nobody out there talking to me about this. According to these rules, there's no way in hell that I should be able to be burnt out. Oh, you, how dare you? Yeah, I controlled my schedule. I had plenty of vacation time. Uh, my financial situation was safe, you know, like I had no reason quote, unquote to be burnt out. So I started digging into the internal and external reasons why we burn out. And the external reasons are the ones that have been exposed already. You know, like poor working environments, too many, even too many fluorescent lights in your working environment is, can be a burnout factor. Like that actually matters not getting enough praise, a mismatched value system with yourself and the company that you're working for.

Cait:
And, you know, we can go on and on with these external things. But I started thinking about, okay, well what are the internal things that drive me toward the behaviors that create burnout in my own life? And a lot of it is underneath this sort of like this not enoughness. So I'm trying to please everybody all the time because I want to be liked. And I want to be sure that I'm helpful and useful so that people can say, Aw, you know that Kate, she really helped out. She's a really good one. You know, I need this, this feedback from people to feel good about myself, which comes down to do I have value if I'm not being useful. And so that was the question I started asking myself, like, can I consider myself as worthy and as valuable if I'm not in service to people 24 hours a day.

Cait:
And then I started digging into my service a little bit more so on one hand, you know, I'm an acupuncturist and a coach. So I serve people in that way. But on the other hand, I'm always the girl that's going to hold the door open for the person behind me. And if somebody is trying to get on the tram, I'm going to put my foot in the door to make sure they can get on. And if there's an old lady getting on the tram and there's no seat available, I'm telling somebody to get up for her. And when I started digging into that, this is when things really started to change for me, because what I realized was I was trying so hard to follow some sort of rule that not everybody believes in, in order to be considered quote unquote good by the people around me, who I never know if they think that I'm good.

Cait:
We never know that really on an everyday basis. Like we can't say that. And while I was doing it, most of my energy was spent in judgment. So the person that didn't get up for the old woman, I'm judging them for not getting up fast enough. According to my expectations, the woman that's getting on the tram, who's 85 years old, I'm judging her and thinking that she doesn't can't possibly have a voice and ask somebody to get up on her own because you know, she's old and probably she's been riding this tram for like 60 something years on her own. Like, she's probably fine. She could ask somebody to get up, but I was inserting myself into situations where I was not really needed. And I wasn't actually helpful all under the, the guys in the beautiful little box of being a helpful considerate person.

Michelle:
It's a lovely mask to wear. Right. Really was so nice. Yeah. I mean, it looks really good, so good. Wow. Okay. So I think a lot of people can relate to this, a lot of women in particular, but, but also men. And I'm curious of your clients, how many are men? I

Cait:
Have one male client,

Michelle:
Actually. I

Cait:
Was going to say none, but then I was like, that's not true. I do have one male.

Michelle:
Okay. Should we just have a little pause for a feminist rant on why that might be? I'll always go on. We

Cait:
Are taught more than men in most cultures, not all, but most I have lived all over the world. I speak a few languages. I've seen this in more places than just the U S women are taught to be the people, pleasers women are taught that other people's happiness comes first that taken care of the house. And the environment comes first that everything comes before our own ness, our own self, everything comes before us. And that sacrifice and martyrdom are our way to have even, I don't even mean heaven in a religious way. Just sort of, you know, having in a, in a general like positive light, our only way to that positive light is sacrifice and martyrdom.

Michelle:
Those are held in very high esteem. That is what we can work for and hope for.

Cait:
Yeah. If we think about just thinking about a bituaries think about what we say about people.

Michelle:
Oh yeah. Yeah. It shows up there a lot. Doesn't it? I love loving wife and mother of four sacrificed everything for her children. Yes, God, stop it. Oh, I love this. Okay. So let's talk about what was going on in your body and what's going on in most women's bodies when they are at this place where they're hating everyone and everything, and feel exhausted and probably gaining weight and having some version of panic attacks. Um, usually when I'm talking about this, I'm talking about a stress response system. That's stuck in the on position and then a cascade of hormones and your upregulation of blood pressure down regulation of digestion and things like that. So when you're coming at it from a Chinese medicine perspective, I'm really interested in how is burnout seen from that vantage point?

Cait:
So in Chinese medicine, depending on the system that you're using, but in the traditional Chinese medicine system, all the diagnostics based on Oregon's. So we say things like somebody has spleen sheet deficiency, which means the energy of the system of their spleen is weak, which might lead to symptoms such as poor digestion and worrying for instance. And we use the organs as the basis of the diagnostic system. There are going to be acupunctures out here that listen to this that are going to be like, that's not exactly right. And of course it's not exactly right, but we're simplifying for the lay person audience that does not know anything about Chinese medicine. So we're going to keep it simple. So in Chinese medicine, when it comes down to the time and place where your body's capacity to keep up with the load of stress that it's under, doesn't manage anymore.

Cait:
When we're not, when we are unable to meet our life, where it is, it diminishes our kidney function. So when we say kidney, we're not talking about the actual organ. We're talking about the energetic system related to the kidney. When the kidneys get weak, you ready for this? This is good taking notes. Yeah. When the kidneys get weak, one of the first symptoms is fatigue and low energy. Another one is frequent urination or urination at night, right? So everybody that's like getting up two or three times a night. You're not supposed to, you're supposed to be able to sleep through the night without getting up. This is a sign of weak kidney function in Chinese medicine, low back pain, knee pain, low libido, insomnia night sweats, salt cravings, muscle weakness, fear and worry. Right? Mild dizziness. I don't know if I said that.

Michelle:
No, that's an important one. That's a mild dizziness. That's my go-to

Cait:
Right. So this is just the very basic without getting into, we can break it down into the kidney yin and the kidney young and all of that. We don't have to, for the purposes of this show, those are the basics that say your body's batteries are being depleted faster than they can be recharged.

Michelle:
We all get that analogy. I would even say, it's almost like also when you have, um, a battery like your phone battery, even when you charge it, it just doesn't hold the charge anymore.

Cait:
Right? Exactly. So in Chinese medicine, in the anatomy that is taught in between the kidneys, and of course, this is, this is metaphorical. We don't actually think that there's like a bonfire in your low belly. Okay. So we're not that crazy. But in between the kidneys there lives a fire that's called the Ming men. And this fire is the fire that lights up every function of our bodies without this fire, we are dead. And when you are in this mode and Chinese medicine, it's like you're down to the embers. There's water sort of really creeping up on the embers, threatening to just put them out completely. And it's really hard to get it lit because it's damp, not warm, not dry, difficult to get a fire going again. This is burnout for us. Literally your fire is burnt out.

Michelle:
Your fire is burnt out. Okay. And so then it sounds to me like you're going to suggest dry, warm, like we all need to go to Arizona.

Cait:
Um, it definitely matters. Food, I think is more important and the food can be wet. As long as the food is easily digestible, as long as it's water that we can use easily. So soup is really great in Chinese medicine. One of the first tenants of Chinese medicine is to stay warm. Like they really strongly believe in coldness being a factor toward illness, which they also believe in high heat being a factor towards illness. So really like if we're going to move anywhere, kind of San Diego is like the,

Michelle:
Oh yeah, that is not the middle ground. Right? That the middle ground,

Cait:
The next thing, if you're going to stay warm is to eat mostly cooked food, right? Not a lot. We don't do a lot of raw food when people are weak because the digestive fire is weak. And when you're eating something that's not cooked, your body has to raise its own temperature in order to digest it first, then go through the digestive process, which takes its own fire. So it's like double dosing on fire when you don't have any fire to dose. One of the really interesting things about this is, um, where at being in a Chinese medicine practitioner, I'm not a fan of a raw diet, but we know that raw diets are extremely helpful for instance, when it comes to like chemotherapy, right. It's extremely useful during that time. But that makes sense when you break it down into Chinese medicine, because chemotherapy is heat.

Cait:
So then we're using raw foods to cool down the body to balance out the toxins that are being put into it. Right? So there's always, it's always about balancing this heat and cold. So stay warm, eat, cooked food, drink enough water. One of the things that I think is really difficult about this one is that a lot of the water that we're drinking is so processed and the trace minerals that we need in that water are not there. So adding trace minerals as a supplement to your day to day can be really, really useful when it comes to kidney function in Chinese medicine. Hmm.

Michelle:
Okay. Good tip for everybody there. So San Diego, everybody moves to San Diego better off than her. Um, I love, I just love this alternative way of thinking about burnout, because if you start thinking about like, do I have the fire for this? Yes. Can I digest this quarter pounder? You know, can I digest this idea? Yes, yes, exactly. Can I tell this person? Yes,

Cait:
Yes, exactly. Exactly. And if you don't have the fire to transform things, it's extremely difficult. Not only to get in the right nutrients, it's also extremely difficult to transform any emotional situation that you have. So your emotions start to sit in your body because there's your body doesn't have the strength to actually do anything with them. And then your fuse gets short and we get mad. Yeah. We get mad. We get frustrated, we get resentful, we get sad. We get anxious, we get fearful,

Michelle:
But don't worry. Because if you go to your doctor, they got a pill for that. Yeah. Right. They're like, you're making it up. It's not that, uh, or, you know, it's just part of getting older. Oh, shut up. Right. For so many women, so many women put on so many prescriptions for all of these little, these individual problems, right. Even digestion, just digestion alone. If you can't digest your food, you know? Well then you go to the doctor about your digestion and that's all they're going to talk to you about. Or if you go, because you're feeling blocked and you're feeling resentful and angry. Well, you know, that's all that you're going to be talking about there, but to think about it from this whole body, whole mind illustration of the fire, I really liked that a lot. And I wondered, could you then expand on this for us? Because, you know, you mentioned how then you were diagnosed with Hashimoto's and that is the case for so many women, like a remarkable number of women that I've worked with through the years. And there's a connection there. So how do we go from, what is it called? The men may the makeup

Cait:
Men. M I N G M E N.

Michelle:
I got that all off, but you know what I meant the gate of fire translates to. Okay. So how do we go from our gate of fire, not burning so bright anymore and being damp and wet to now, our thyroid is not producing hormone. Yeah. So when,

Cait:
So when the Ming men has died down, when we don't have the fire to carry through and transform things that are happening in our lives, transform food, transform anything. But when that fire is really down, the further away you are from that fire, the less support you're going to have for functioning, which is why we get things like foggy, headedness and light dizziness, right? Your brain doesn't work well because there's, the fire is all the way down in between your kidneys. So way up in your head, it's not really working. Think about where your thyroid is. There's just no power behind it at all. It has no support. So of course it starts breaking down.

Michelle:
And anything else up there too? I mean, what about

Cait:
All of it? When you look at, when you look at burnout from a neurophysiological perspective, there is a, an enlargement of the amygdala and a shrinkage of the prefrontal cortex, right? So even when you're talking about like real quote, unquote, like real science medicine, I don't mean re I don't actually mean real. That was a terrible word, but like science-based medicine, when there's not enough energy in the body to maintain the shape of your brain,

Michelle:
Ah, that sounds bad. And it feels, and it is, it is bad and it does feel

Cait:
Bad. It's awful, but there's a, there's a reason for it, right? Like we just can't feed the brain when the body is just barely functioning. And the other thing about the Ming men being low in the kidneys, being weak in Chinese medicine is it increases our tendency toward fear. Fear is the emotion of the kidneys in Chinese medicine. So we increase our tendencies toward fear. When our fear is increased, it sets our nervous system into high alert all the time.

Michelle:
Hence that big old amygdala exactly.

Cait:
Then the amygdala gets bigger than our reactions get crazier. Then we have nonstop tension along the spine, the neck and the trapezius, right along the shoulder and the neck, a hundred percent of people that I talked to that fill out a Chinese medicine intake form, whether they're coming in for acupuncture or burnout, everybody says they have neck and shoulder tension. Everybody.

Michelle:
I have no idea what you're talking about me either. I didn't wake

Cait:
Up with sore traps this morning. What are you talking about? Don't judge

Michelle:
Me. I just relaxed all those parts that you just mentioned and it felt good, but that is really interesting, right?

Cait:
Because when we're fearful, we have to activate those muscles to protect us. Right. Because we protect ourselves from our back, mostly because we can see things from our front. We can't see things from our back. So we, we go into this tense shell to protect us. Yeah.

Michelle:
I'm afraid like that. That's part of this, like, um, you know, just the whole, like the woman she's crazy, or even the term hysterical, which comes from, you know, the term for uterus in Greek, it's always a, woman's crazy. But, but when you are in this state where everything feels like an attack and attack yes. And like, literally your body has changed to perceive everything as an attack started as something that was probably real, but it can get out of hand. Right. So, so, so then were, you could say that then we are in a fully burnt out state. Yes. Yes, yes. Okay. So you mentioned, um, before we started recording, you mentioned something really interesting about this difference between recovery, which would certainly want to do and prevention. So how do you think about the difference between those two things?

Cait:
This is so massive because the things that help you prevent burnout will literally not help you at all when you're already burnt out. So you'll start reading information, you'll follow a few people on Instagram and you'll start doing all the things that they say that you're supposed to do, and you're not going to feel any better. And it's going to be really confusing.

Michelle:
Like I'm completely burnt out. I hate everyone. I'm on the brink of, you know, divorcing my husband, wait a minute. I already did that. I'm not talking about me. I just meant somebody. And, and then I go, oh, well, I should meditate. I'm going to meditate for 10 minutes every day, this week. And then at the end of the week, I'm like, I don't feel any different.

Cait:
Yeah, yeah, no, because your body is not feeling safe. So when you sit down to meditate, you're not safe, which means your nervous system is not shifting into parasympathetic state, the way that it's supposed to. And the way that meditation becomes beneficial to our bodies, right? Meditation becomes beneficial when our brain waves slow down. And when our system, when our nervous system switches from a parasympathetics from a sympathetic state to a parasympathetic state, everybody knows that moment. Like you can feel when this happens. If you've ever been at a yoga class and you lay down at the end in Shavasana and they tell you like, relax your jaw, relax your shoulders. And you like melt into the floor. And you're half there and half not. That's a parasympathetic state. That is the state that is necessary for your body to be able to heal itself.

Cait:
But when you do not feel safe, it is very difficult to get into that state. So sitting quietly might not feel safe to you. And if it doesn't feel safe to you, you're not going to enter that state. And it's not going to bring you any benefit. So instead of doing 10 minutes of meditation, which I think if you're burnt out 10 minutes of meditation is like totally extreme. Anything more than three minutes is extreme to me. But even easier than that is to grab a set of headphones, go onto YouTube type in binaural beats and let them play in your ears for 60 seconds. Because those immediately have an effect on your brain waves, whether you like it or not. They're just like getting right in there and changing things for you without any extra effort from yourself. The thing is when you're burnt out, anything that causes that needs extra effort makes you feel less safe because you're already so tired that building up that energy to like, make something happen. Backfires.

Michelle:
Yeah. I have been there, man. I've listened to those beats for more than, for more than 60 seconds. I will say I have

Cait:
To. I mean, I've left. I left them on for the majority of the time I was writing my last book. I would put on my headphones, sit here for a few minutes before getting started and then let myself type in that brain state. So I use them now and you can use them longer if it feels good to you. But the point is that just a minute or two will help. And if you do that multiple times during the day, you're adding in these little mini healing moments during your day, that will help your body start to restore itself, feel a little bit more safe so that other things will start to work better.

Michelle:
Oh, I love this idea. Okay. So it's less about let me put forth great effort to heal myself because frankly I have no effort to give when I'm in a really burnt out state. So it's more of a receiving a more passive form appealing. What's another example.

Cait:
So another example is if you're the type of person who would use to get up in the morning and, you know, run three miles or finish work and run three miles, and that exercise always made you feel better. And now you're noticing that you're doing that same exercise, but it's not making you feel better. You probably have some sort of atrophy in your muscles and you don't really have the energy to be doing that type of exercise. So instead of cardio, we go into things like yin yoga and Tai Chi. I still want you to move movement is incredibly important, but you don't have to be sweating like nasty for it to be healthy for you. And in fact, you can push it too far. Exercise can be the cause of your burnout if you push it too far.

Michelle:
Yeah. All of that racing, you know, it's the same as when you're feeling afraid and your heart is racing. It's that same state of panic in your body in a sense or stress on the body. That's a great example. I remember being in a very burned out state at one point and going to a yoga class and I couldn't get in it. Like I couldn't do the yoga the way I normally would. My mind kept going on this topic and that topic and I'm distracted and oh, you know, none of this is working. And I realized that just by being there, even if I didn't do it all, you know, I just kind of moved my body the way they were kind of suggesting that I should, after a while I felt like the yoga was doing me and I thought all that's so nice. Cause I just don't have the energy to do the yoga right now. Yes. It's still worked. Yes. Let the yoga do you, man. I love that. Just receive it, receive it. Oh, this is so good. So this is how we were cover when we are in that truly, truly exhausted state. Those are another very important example that you want to give, or should we talk a little bit more about prevention?

Cait:
But the other thing that's really important about recovery that I would like to mention is you shouldn't really do it alone. If you need an input from the outside, like if your gas tank is empty, you need to fill it with gas. And so working with somebody, whether you're doing coaching acupuncture, Reiki, dietary changes, whatever it happens to be, let somebody else hold healing space for you so that you don't have to create that space yourself because creating that space is costing you energy that you don't have right now.

Michelle:
Well put, and I just am curious in your own story, who did you look to to hold that?

Cait:
Yeah. I had a coach, a therapist, a functional medicine practitioner and an acupuncturist. Did

Michelle:
He has a personal trainer role? Yes. And

Cait:
A personal trainer. I told you at that time in my life, finances were not really the issue. And that's what I find quite often with female entrepreneurs that I work with. They've built these massive businesses that are really doing well, but they're miserable and they can't keep up with it anymore. And they don't under like they, I, my goal is to help people create the business portion that's sustainable so that they can enjoy it more and heal themselves enough to have the right boundaries and the right communication and the right, so that their business doesn't overtake them. You know?

Michelle:
And I think that's often the case that women who have really struggled, you know, they will end up with almost a team of healers as you described. I see that a and it's not weird. It's really about like borrowing that energy from people who have it to give to you because you know, you just don't have it yourself and, you know, friends and family, that that can also be important too, but really a dedicated team who is there for that hour every week you spend with them or whatever it is, it makes such a huge difference. Okay. So those are all great. And I hope that everyone just wrote all of that down because I couldn't have said it better myself. Would you say that as we recover, we get to a point where it is more about prevention. Yes.

Cait:
Okay. Yes. And then prevention goes to all the normal stress management tips eat well, take your vitamin D and your magnesium and your fish oils. You know, like exercise, do some meditation and some breathing exercises have a good community reach out for help when you need it. Just all the, every day, all the things that we're all talking about all the time, you actually have to do them.

Michelle:
When you were talking about, you know, women entrepreneurs and having like this team of, uh, of healers. I thought, you know, one piece of my own self care strategy is also having a team on my, my team, my business, where, you know, I have people who hold me and provide energy and support about business strategy. And, you know, I have a couple assistants and I have, and this allows the work to go on and be productive without sacrificing my inner fire. Yes, exactly. So those are really important too, and I'm sure that for people in different lines of work, if you don't run your own business, maybe it's not quite the same, but still is there like an intern or, you know, some sort of restructuring of a department or something where

Cait:
It's time to hire somebody to clean your house?

Michelle:
Yes. 100%. I

Cait:
Felt really bad about that for a long time, because I did not grow up in the type of household that had the spare finances to be able to pay someone to clean a house. That was just not a reality for me as a child. And so it made me feel awkward moving into that space and my husband, however, did not grow up like that and has always had a housekeeper. So that was not weird for him thankfully. And I understand that not everybody can do that. I do really understand that. It's one of the reasons that I wrote a book and have a podcast because I need to have enough information. That's going out to people for free or close to nothing so that people can have support and help when they're in situate financial situations that don't make it accessible to them to have a therapist and a coach and a whoever else.

Cait:
Like I understand that not everybody's in that situation, but if you are in the situation to be able to get somebody to clean your house, even once a month, like it will literally save you so much energy and time more than you imagine to not have to think about that. That week of the month, somebody is going to come in and clean all your bathrooms, clean all the floors. It's all going to be done on the same day. Oh, that feels good. It's amazing. I only have it done twice a month. That means that every other Tuesday, I know I'm going to come in from seeing patients all day and my house is going to be spotless and I didn't have to do a thing. Oh, you

Michelle:
Didn't even have to remember to, you know, get the, the, so the paper towels or the whatever, you know what I mean? It's, it's the mental load as well as the actual time that it takes. Yeah. So

Cait:
If you can afford to do it once, once a quarter, I'm too fat, you know, like just do, do whatever you can because taking anything off your plate matters. Even if the only thing that you can do is start trading off pickup days or drop off days with a neighbor so that both kids come home at the same time. And both of you, aren't going, even if it's that BS to make it easy for your life to be supported by other people

Michelle:
That is terrific. Now you've mentioned your book a couple of times. So, um, I wanted to let all of our listeners know they can actually get a worksheet from your book, uh, as a, as a gift. Can you tell us about that?

Cait:
Yes. The first exercise in the book is called the values exercise because you cannot, it's, it's very difficult to recover from burnout. If you are not very clear on what your values are and what that means as far as actions in your day-to-day life. So I do have a values, the living live your core values, worksheet, um, downloadable on my website for everybody.

Michelle:
That's great. And we will put a link to that in the show notes. You also mentioned something about a resentment journal chorus, which I just thought a resentment journal. I need like 12 of those.

Cait:
This one is a PDF version. So you can just do it as many times as you want. Right. But this, yeah, the resentment journal came out of my frustration of seeing gratitude journals everywhere. And that's a gratitude journals are another thing that don't work when you're burnt out. They're very useful and have a lot of brain positive changes when you're in a place to be able to use them properly. But when you're not, they actually are not great for you. There, they can be detrimental. So if you've been forcing yourself to write a gratitude journal and it's not really helping you feel any better, and you know that you quote unquote should be feeling gratitude, but you still hit everybody in everything

Michelle:
Person under your breath while you're writing your gratitude. Yeah, exactly.

Cait:
Then it's time to use a resentment journal. And I have it's, it's a, a short course with a downloadable PDF that just basically teaches you how to take resentment and turn it into boundaries. Beautiful.

Michelle:
Oh, beautiful. Thank you for that. And thank you for sharing so much with us today. I feel like that was a lot of depth and a lot of thought provoking ideas in a very

Michelle:
Short period of time. That was just delightful. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Michelle:
Ah, there was so much goodness in that interview, two things that really jumped out at me first that Kate, like so many women can trace their predisposition. Shall we say to burn out back to childhood, back to not feeling like enough for one reason or another, and the coping mechanisms that come from that. And then second, my head just about exploded. When kids said that she was diagnosed with Hashimoto's disease in this season of the podcast, in particular, even in past seasons, we have talked so much about Hashimoto's and you know, I didn't even know that about Kate until we were recording, but it makes perfect sense. And I'm so glad that she was able to speak to this connection between burnout and thyroid. I hope this episode gave you a new way to think about burnout permission to forgive yourself for not meditating. Perhaps if it's not working for you and a plan to find a team of people who you can borrow energy from when you need it. If you found this episode helpful, I would super-duper appreciate your written review on apple podcasts. All episodes of the show can be found at she's got power.com/podcast with relevant links to everything that we have mentioned and downloads and everything that you need from the shows. And while I am taking

Michelle:
A teensy weensy break, I'll be back soon with another season, all of great episodes. So stay subscribed and keep taking care of you.