Ep 10 Burn Out

Rachel discusses her experience with burnout and the challenges of recognizing and addressing it. She reflects on feeling a lack of belonging and value in her job, leading to job hopping and feeling tired and lost. She also talks about the disconnect between how others saw her impact and how she perceived it. Her burnout affected her personal life and sense of identity. Rachel also discusses the lack of support and conversations about mental health in her workplace. She emphasizes the importance of learning how to have healthy conversations and support colleagues who may be experiencing burnout. Kia Ora and welcome to Bellberg Social Work's Walk, the podcast for all things social worker-y. So this is Rachel and today the purpose of the podcast is to carry on a conversation that I actually started on a different podcast, so some of you may have heard I was recently interviewed by the lovely Janelle Hosking for her Get Confident podcast and we were talking a little bit about how Bellberg had come about and one of the conversations that came up in that was around burnout and I reflected how hard it was for me to actually even use the words burnout because of the stigma that's associated with that and we don't really like to talk about burnout, so I thought that actually it might be worth really exploring that a little bit further from a social work point of view, from a person point of view and really share a little bit of my story. So here we are, it's Sunday morning, I'm in my house, I've got my lovely husband to talk to me and we've got the dogs running around so you might hear a little bit of background noise but this is just a real conversation as we have our morning coffee and I really wanted to just share with you my journey through what I need to get better at actually naming as burnout. So good morning Bob. Good morning, thank you for inviting me back again, obviously I've only had a first time to come back for a second round and it's, you know, you sit here on a lovely Sunday morning and it has lovely blue skies and you know the birds are out singing and making me a coffee, it's hard to think that something like burnout exists in our world when you're so relaxed and lovely right now but you have journey so we'll talk about that I guess. Yes and it's an absolute pleasure to have you back, apparently you were very popular on our last podcast and I was told I needed to have you on the podcast more often so here you are and it's an interesting point when you think, you know, sun is shining, happy days, things are good, it's hard to imagine there is such a thing for burnout but actually burnout was a very real thing that impacted our home, our family, approximately a year or so ago and I think one of the things is that actually burnout was a thing that crept up on us and probably something that, well I certainly didn't recognise and I still didn't really recognise that I was going through it until I was out the other end a little bit and I think part of that is the stigma around not wanting to acknowledge it but also actually when you're in it it's really hard to see things for what they are. And I'll be honest, as the passenger to your life's journey I'm always a couple of steps behind so as you're going through things my awareness is a little bit delayed so I probably see the signals and interpret them differently than if you're actually going through your burnout. Yeah because when I was reflecting on the podcast with Janelle and like I say if you have never heard Janelle Hosking's podcast please do listen to it, she interviews a whole lot of really amazing people, her podcast is called Get Confident, it is a really great podcast but as I was reflecting in that conversation with her I was talking about the fact that actually my lead into sort of being burnt out probably was a couple of years and how it started to manifest for me was a sense of belonging within the job that I was sitting in that actually I was starting to feel a bit like maybe this job's not for me, I'm a great advocate for feeling like you're adding value in a job, feeling like the job has purpose and I started to feel like maybe I wasn't the right fit, maybe this wasn't the job that was really working for me, maybe this is not where I make my contribution, maybe I don't really belong and I made that about the job. I think you also remembering that you felt ineffective, I think one of the things when you're in those moments as a spectator on you is you don't feel like you're doing a good job of what you're doing, you probably feel like you're failing all of the time. Exactly and I certainly remember also crying a lot and in fact it was interesting again as I reflect back because one of the comments I actually even got from a team member was a sense of frustration that she had a manager who was crying and that actually what they wanted was a manager or a leader who had strength and whatever and it was sort of seen as this kind of weakness and so I did feel a bit like well maybe this just I'm just not the right person, I'm not the right fit and so I looked for another job and then I went through a period of about two years, give or take, where essentially I went from job to job and I did not last, I think the next job lasted maybe six months, the job after that lasted six months and then I had a job that lasted three months and that sense of not fitting, not adding value and just feeling very, very tired. It's definitely a perspective thing because you're not feeling like you're adding value, you're not feeling like you're fitting but I know that every time you decide to leave those positions, everyone would be saying how impactful you've been and how they'd appreciate what you've done inside the organization or for the people you're working with and it was in those moments you're able to reflect back and go, oh actually isn't that lovely, I was liked, I was welcomed, I was having an impact here and as me watching, it's so much a shame you're moving on to another job because you're doing such a good job where you were but there we go. And therein lies some of the disconnect because people would sit there and say, oh we really like you or this was really great or you did a good job and I would sit there and be like, meh, not really, not that big a deal, I just didn't feel like what I was doing had any real kind of impact or real value and I think that's, you know, when we think about, when you look at what are the signs and symptoms of burnout, sense of purpose, sense of value, sense of connection, sense of, you know, like actually having that kind of impact is one of the symptoms and yet I absolutely did not recognize that in myself. I've made it about, definitely made it about me and finding the right job where I belonged, didn't really recognize that actually that was an internal struggle and no job was going to fix it. When that was going on, how did you feel in your personal life? How did you feel at home? I just felt very, very tired, is what I remember. I felt pretty lost I think and it's interesting too that this is for me as a social worker, as someone who's been in this field for 20 something years, my job very much is tied to my identity, right? So it was important to me to have a job, to have a sense of purpose. My career is a lot about who I am, what I do every day and so I was kind of desperately hanging on to that. So that sense of kind of identity being wrapped up with what my job was, what I should be achieving in life and just feeling incredibly tired but like soul tired, you know, like just I just didn't know that my heart, my soul could really take much more. I do know that for me with my very much man eyes, I probably wasn't the most insightful during that time because I see the repercussions, I see the emotions, I see the frustration that's interpreted as crying or being frustrated about things around the house. So it takes me, that's my delayed response to pick up on what you're going through. I see the complaints about the mess in the kitchen or that I haven't done enough, which is your frustrations about everything that's going on in your world. So it's you know, I am a man. Yeah and I guess and that's the sense of overwhelm, right? Because it's like I'm barely managing on a day-to-day level and I come home and the kitchen's filthy and the laundry's not been done or the whatever whatever and the simple tasks and it's that, oh I've got to do this as well and I've got to do that and I've got these huge expectations on me, which when you talk about them in hindsight seem really kind of feeble, but actually when you can barely keep your head above water, any extra rain, you know, makes you feel like you're drowning. You work in an industry where everyone you work with is supporting other people essentially. That's the fundamentals of the kind of work you do in social services. What kind of support did you feel like you were getting or even reaching out for support from those around you? And I think that's a really, really important question and I've got kind of two answers to that because one of the things that really became or when I reflect back, something that I think about and I do apologize if my memory is incorrect because this is just my memory and it is a bit of a blurred dark time in my memory, so I apologize if my memory is not correct, but I don't really recall anyone sitting down and saying to me, are you all right? Like, are you okay? What is going on here? You don't seem yourself. I don't remember anyone having a robust kind of strength-based, conversation that actually in a really healthy way enabled me to have some insight. Like, I think of myself as quite a reflective person. In fact, probably I can be too reflective. I can get way deep introspective and the challenge of that is that I overthink everything and I did make it about me, but I never really was able to externalize. Actually, I think I'm not in a good space. So one of the things, this is a side step slightly, but this is one of the reasons why it became really important to me to go out and learn how to deliver the mental health first aid training. So just recently became accredited as a mental health first aid instructor because I don't think as a community, even though surrounded by social workers, working in organizations where there's nurses and other professions, I don't think that we're that great at looking at our colleagues and knowing how to have a healthy conversation that says, I'm a bit worried about you. Yeah. I can imagine that until you've tuned it, until you've gone through it and experienced it, you probably don't understand what someone's going through or understand the signals. And even when you have gone through it and doing it like you have done, maybe, as you say, the tools, maybe you haven't got the tools or skills to actually have that conversation or know what to say to make a difference or help someone. So that's the barrier. Yeah. And I think particularly with burnout, because I don't think we associate burnout as being a mental health challenge, but actually it presents very much the same way. There's such a stigma to burnout, right? That actually it's just, oh, they're not coping or they're not having, they can't hack it. I'm guilty of that. You can see me kind of probably more of an up person. I have had to struggle to understand mental health issues. That's something that when people have depression, I can't necessarily understand that. I've learned more about that as I've gone through life. I can imagine a lot of people in the workplace, they can't understand why someone isn't just doing the job. Well, exactly. And that's exactly it too, because the other side of it is that it becomes a performance management issue rather than a health issue or a mental health issue. That actually it's a case of they're just not performing. They're not doing their job. They're not turning up to work on time. They're not achieving as much as they used to. Maybe they're not dressing appropriately or whatever, whatever, or their attitude is different. They're moodier. The whole kind of impact that they're having in their work is different. And instead of coming from a health-based perspective that says, actually, I'm not sure this person's well. I need to have a conversation to say, are you okay? We come at it from a performance management, which is you're dropping the ball, mate. You're not achieving. You're not performing. You're turning up late. You now are moody. You're not doing what I say we want you to do. And I've had conversations with people in my past, and I've had people who've come to me and said, I just don't have the capacity for more work. I don't have the ability to take on another client, or I'm just getting way behind with the KPIs that I'm supposed to be meeting. And my job as a manager is to try and sit in that space where, yeah, we've got contract obligations. You need to tick those boxes. You need to achieve. You need to hold a caseload. You need to get your assessments done, your whatever's, whatever's. But I've also got to sit there as a human talking to another human and saying, how do I make this achievable for you? How can you cope with this? How do I keep you well? Because if I just have an attitude of, oh, no, we'll take another case. Oh, well, actually, it's a performance management issue. You are not meeting your obligations. People then just focus on doing the bare minimum to tick those boxes in the job, and actually, are they effective? Probably not. No, and it's not the KPIs and not the quality of the service delivery, right? Yeah, okay, fine. We can now focus on, I've got to get the assessment done. Is it a good assessment? No. Is it meaningful? No. And so I think part of that mental health first aid, in the same way, physical first aid, if you are walking down the street or if you're in the office and somebody has a heart attack, you want to know, how do I respond? How do I put them into the position? How do I know who to call or what to do? The same for mental health first aid. It's not a therapeutic course. It is a first responder course, but it's how do I approach a conversation, assess the information that I need to know, assist in being able to provide some support? What are the right questions to ask? How do I listen? Where do I know how to get help? I reflect that I wish somebody had done that for me. I have had conversations with other people who've experienced burnout, and we talk about, would I have been responsive? I don't know. Would it have already been too late? If people are noticing that I'm just crying all the time and I'm jumping from job to job, would that have changed my trajectory? I don't know, but it certainly would have made me feel less alone. You did change jobs a lot. Yeah. It became a bit of a joke in my community. People would be like, oh, where are you now? Oh, have you left already? Oh, you've already done it. Oh, you're back again. Yeah. So you did change jobs a little bit, and then you took a pause. You took a significant pause, and you had a lot going on. I mean, you went off to England to see your family, but during that pause, you didn't have that purpose. You didn't have the work. You didn't have the thing that you had to focus on. So with that, I know it gave you space, but how did you self-heal during that time? It was really hard. Oh, there we go. Yeah. It was really hard. Because I took a pause, as we know, about four years ago, but I did that typical thing of I load my place up with lots of DIY jobs, and that was my therapeutic process. Yeah, and I would say your pause was slightly different. Your pause was around redetermining your career and stepping out of a trajectory in your career and redefining who you were and choosing a different trajectory. So I don't think your pause was mental health-focused. It was more about purpose-focused. Yeah. So your purpose, and you are a busy guy, so yeah, you redesigned our bathroom. It was amazing. Thank you. But during the time when you were there, there was definite space, just you and your emotions, and you as a person, and you as a professional. How did you work your way through that? Because in that, somehow, those were in the first seeds that Bellwood was sowing. That's when you started a new trajectory in your career and your professional life. Yeah, and I think what I realized was that actually there wasn't a lot there externally to help me. So I binged 18 seasons of Criminal Minds. I mean, I watched probably about six episodes a day. So that's super healthy, right? I remember you coming home one day and being like, oh, you're still in your pajamas. And we had a conversation where you said to me, at what point should I be worried that you're not getting dressed during the day? Because actually, I was in a hole. I did not know how to get out of it. I did not know. And I was very, very reluctant to redesign my life because identity is, for me, very wrapped up in my career. And I was thinking, how do I move forward from this? Because do I need to reinvent myself? Do I need a whole new career? Is it time to give up and say, actually, I'm going to go open a flower shop? Or I'm going to move to an elephant sanctuary in Thailand? Am I just going to be someone completely different? But it is like feeling like I was broken. I had broken pieces. There were pieces of me that are forever changed. And I had to learn how to put myself back together again. It's hard, too, because the longer you spend away from your profession, the more like a distant island it feels. The more like, I'm less capable or HR. I'm less worthy of being in that space. And it's really hard to get back on that train. Absolutely. And you're leaving that island in the first place because you already feel like you don't belong there. And it was a really interesting process. And I talked about this on Chanel's podcast. Human connection is really important to me. I am essentially an extrovert in terms of needing connection, needing talking to people. And I do think as part of social work, a big part of my job is going out and talking with people and having relationships. And relationships, obviously, some are very, very good friends. Some are people that I just really enjoy spending time with and align with. Some are people that are more functional. And what I realized is that when I didn't have a hat, I didn't have a title. I wasn't a person with a job who could help you get a referral or could help you access a service. Or I wasn't seen as a functioning member of the social work community. Then a whole bunch of people stopped wanting to hang out with me. More isolation. The island is further away. Exactly. And that's reinforced my whole sense of purpose. I have no value. If I don't have a hat, if I don't have a job title, I have no value to you. So many people identify with that feeling 100%. Absolutely. And it goes to the transactional nature of relationships. But actually, we don't have those types of relationships that are person to person. It is job to job. Yeah. Oh, hi, my name's Rachel. Oh, Rachel, what do you do? First question. Yeah. And part of that is about how do we relate to each other? But it's also how do you serve me? How do I serve you? What is the transactional nature of this relationship? And I really struggled with that. And also, of course, I have to apologize to some people in my life because they would meet me for coffee or lunch. And I remember one lunch I had and my boyfriend, I just cried the entire time. And I think it was just super awkward. It was just super uncomfortable. And for them, it probably was like, holy shit, I just popped out for lunch and I'm going to go back to work. And my whole lunch was somebody in tears. And that was my reality. And I am a leaker. I do cry. But I definitely struggled with what it reinforced for me that sense of what am I contributing? What is my value? And it does isolate. And I think that's the other part that I really want to talk about is the sense with burnout that the solution to burnout is self-care. That burnout is seen as your problem. You can't hack it. You need to go fix yourself. And you need to figure out your self-care. And people always ask, what is your self-care? How do you fill your cup? And the problem is that when you're in that space, I can't fill my own cup. I can't. I don't have the capacity to get dressed, let alone do the things that fill my cup. When we were in one of your book group sessions a couple of months ago, I can't remember who the contributor was, but she made this, talking about her role in the social working field. And she talked about the fact that she saw her job as carrying a light within her. And she shared her light to enlighten other people and help bring back their spirit. And I guess that's the end of word, but to help reignite their light when they had gone dim. And I guess that's kind of, I always love that analogy. And you've kind of said it there that you can't fill your own cup. Sometimes you need other people to bring light into your life and reignite you. Absolutely. And I think that when it comes to burnout or stress or any of these kinds of things, rather than this focus on self-care, because quite frankly, when we talk about self-care and people saying, oh, I take a walk in the Redwoods. I mean, yeah, it's lovely. I mean, one of our favorite things is going out to the Redwoods and walking our dogs. It's not going to get me out of burnout. A walk in the Redwoods isn't going to fix this. So what we actually need is not self-care. We need collective care. We need actually, how do we come together, whether it's as a community, as a group of people, as an organization? And I'd go back to talking about when some of my team members would come and say, I can't take another case or I'm behind with my assessments or whatever. The collective care is what's my responsibility to make that better for you? Do you think now having gone through what you've gone through, you're always very much been an empathetic person. Do you feel you're now more capable of supporting other people or maybe picking up on the signals? I mean, obviously it's done the training, so I'm hoping this year. Well, yes, as a person, I think absolutely. And I think it's a shame, isn't it, that sometimes you have to go through something to be able to recognize it and see it in other people. But I think what it's also really done for me is made me, and this is where Bellbird started to come together, what are the levers that we could put in place to enable that light shining, right? So things that helped me get better was a sense of connection to other people, was a sense of being part of a community. And what's inside organizations? I think I went from organization to organization, and like you say, they said lovely things. Well, Rachel, you were great, whatever. You see how dismissive already I am about that. But what was in those organizations that actually said, we need to make sure that people are well, we need to make sure that everybody has to get supervision, everybody has to make sure that they have a healthy relationship with their manager, that actually if I come to you and I say to you, please don't allocate me anymore, I cannot cope, that behind that comes a conversation around, what do you mean you can't cope? What's going on? How do I help? How do we build cultures that actually promote wellness, even to the point where it is healthy to have a conversation about, how are you? In the kind of field that you're in, do you think most organizations are capable in that sense of actually supporting staff, or do you think there's a lack of capability? I think that's a difficult one to answer. What I think is that it's not normalized. I think everybody's capable. We're humans and we work in organizations that are of service, but I think that there's this huge pressure on our workforce to perform and the pressure between meeting contract obligations, meeting our KPIs, ensuring that actually we're achieving and we get our funding, but also providing a quality of care and service and making sure that what we're providing is meaningful and has outcomes, while also in the process recognizing that actually there's huge complexity and a huge amount of need in our community, which if we don't look after our workforce well, our workforce take home with them. I think every incident is like saying, and I think the analogy I used with Janelle on her podcast was like, if I'm working in child protection space and I'm talking about children being harmed, every time I do that, that's got an emotional toll on me. It's like putting a pebble in my pocket. If I'm not emptying my pockets out, it will weigh me down. I have to have processes where I can empty those pockets. Part of that process is making sure we have time for supervision, making sure we have time for our networking, our relationships, making sure we have time for debriefs, making sure we just have time actually for fun. Michaela did an amazing little workshop for us about being playful. She said, research shows that when we have play deprivation in our lives, the impact on our wellbeing is as significant as sleep deprivation. If all we're doing is always just serious, heavy, important, complex stuff, and we're not able to be playful, if we're not able to have fun, if we're not in a workspace where we're able to actually have a bit of lightness, then that weighs us down too. I think that it's not about capability. It's about a mindset. For me, Bellbird started because one of the first things I wanted to do was to create this book club because I wanted people to be able to come together. It didn't matter. Not everybody who comes to book club is a social worker. It's not about what job you hold. It's about who are the people with whom we have a shared interest. It benefits from different backgrounds, different people, different opinions. I think some of those conversations I enjoy, definitely. Exactly. I think because it's just about bringing together, and I was going to say even some like-minded people, but actually it's about people with a shared interest. We don't have to think alike. We don't have to all agree with each other. We can get some healthy conversation going because we've got different perspectives, different backgrounds. For me, it was about shifting relationships from being what job do I have to who am I as a human, who are you as a human, and how do we talk to each other? Because for me, through Burnout, I was just a human. I didn't have a job. I didn't have a sense of purpose. I didn't have a whole lot of value, but I still felt like I had something to contribute, but I didn't quite know what it was. Having gone through it now, is it always something that's there in the room with you, something that you're aware of, something that you think may happen again? Is it something where actually having gone through, you've built up resilience, and it's outside the room, it's no longer a consideration, and you just carry on normally? I don't know yet. I mean, that's part of a journey, really. The way that I look at it is it's like being a vase or something, and I was dropped and I broke, and I had to work out how to put myself back together again. I am forever changed by that experience. I'm definitely not the person that I was five years ago. You may be better. Who knows? Different. Different, yes. Because I would have said five years ago, I was on a career path I wanted to achieve, I wanted to grow. I had aspirations around where I wanted to see myself. I don't have those aspirations anymore. I've completely changed, and actually the whole focus is, what do I contribute to this community that promotes wellness, that promotes celebration? How do I give? That was why I came up with this crazy, stupid idea about having a conference, because I wanted to have a day where our workforce, our community, could come together and feel celebrated. I wanted to spend a day where we could uplift each other. The whole catchphrase of the conference is connect, share, inspire. How do we connect with each other, connect with what each other has to offer, connect with some knowledge? How do we share space? How do we share information? How do we walk away feeling a little bit more inspired? How do we share that light you talk about? When you bring together a whole group of people who all have, we have such amazing knowledge within our community. We have such amazing people that work hard every day and have so much to give. When you put all of that in a room and you have some amazing guest speakers and some hopefully inspiring and certainly informative workshops, and you have some beautiful food, and you have some networking, and you have some conversations, and you have a sense of, actually, look how flipping awesome you all are. I wanted to create something that we could end the year where everybody walks away feeling like, actually, I've got something more for my kitty. I've got a bit more inspiration, but I also have a sense of I'm not alone. Yeah, I work in an industry where we have value and purpose, and I get that. Yeah, and people care about me, and I care about other people, and that's part of that collective care kind of view, because it's not just about an organisation responsibility. We have a breakfast, coffee catch-up every fortnight. Sometimes there's two people, sometimes there's 20 people. It's really about how do you want to engage in that, but if you need a little bit of support, if you need to even just sit there and not say anything, but feel like you're part of something, come along. It's not got a purpose. It's not about how do we network, and how do we share business cards, and what's the transactional nature of our relationship. It's simply about come and share space, and feel like you're part of a wider community of people all doing good things, and that's really how Bellbird came about, right, because, actually, Bellbird is about strengthening our community, strengthening our social work sector, just being people. I mean, one of the reasons why I wanted to call the conference It Is People is because, again, moving away from that transactional nature, it's not my job, it's not my title, it's me as a person. We have this concept of human library because it's around, as we would borrow a book from the library and share knowledge within its pages, so, too, we can share the knowledge within each other, and so, for me, it's that connection. I will say, too, very proud of probably where you've come from, what you've gone through, but what you're doing at the moment. I wish there were more people like you in my life, but, you know, one's enough. I was going to say, I don't want to share. No, but thank you so much for taking the time to have the conversation with me, and I hope that me sharing a little bit about my journey has been, I don't know, interesting. Maybe it has made you think about, for people listening, maybe it's made you think about your own life or people in your life or people you've known who've been through a similar journey, and so think about what it is that we can do collectively, whether it is around being more literate around mental health first aid, whether it is about participating in events that connect us, or if it's just about what can you do in your daily life to know that the people around you who might be struggling a little bit don't feel quite so alone. Anyway, so this was just my journey, and I really appreciate your time in listening, and I'd love to hear some feedback or stories from other people, so feel free to message us and get in touch. Have a wonderful day.