[00:00:07] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Welcome to your guide to afterlife, your go to podcast for young widows. I'm your host, Dr Monika Wieliczko, a psychologist and your fellow widow. Each episode brings you insights from world renowned grief experts and authors discussing complex grief issues and their personal experiences of loss. My aim is to challenge the way you think, empower you to face your feelings, and help you develop resilient ways to grief. Move beyond surviving each day and visit guidetoafterlife.com to take part in the grief MOT, your first aid program for grief.
[00:00:49] Dr Claire Plumbly: For many people, return to work after losing a life partner can feel like an uphill battle. Some of us throw ourselves into work as a way of escaping the pain, while others find themselves struggling to function, feeling disconnected and overwhelmed, which often can lead to burnout or a decision to leave job. To help us understand this problem better, I'm joined by Dr Claire Plumbly, a clinical psychologist specializing in burnout, trauma and nervous system regulation and an author of a brilliant book How to manage your nervous system before it manages you which is a practical guide to understanding and overcoming burnout. So today, we will discuss how burnout can manifest after loss, the different types of burnout and some practical strategies how to regain balance. So let's get started! Hello, Claire. Welcome to a guide to afterlife.
[00:01:47] Speaker 3: Hi, Monika. Thanks so much for having me on your really important podcast.
[00:01:51] Dr Claire Plumbly: Yes. It's it's such an important subject to talk about this intersection between grief and burnout. I would like you to start by telling us a little bit about yourself and and your background and your interest in burnout.
[00:02:06] Speaker 3: So I'm a clinical psychologist and I work in Taunton in Somerset, UK. I used to work for the NHS up until about seven and a half years ago for talking therapies and then a sexual assault service. And then when I moved to Somerset with my family and went into private practice, took all my kind of trauma training and started working a little bit more with people who were feeling burnt out. We have a high proportion of teachers and doctors and vets near where I live, so a lot of people in particular struggling in those professions. So I run my own practice which is based here in Taunton but also online and we're called Good Therapy Limited and we have other trauma trained psychologists and CBT and EMDR therapists all offering therapy to people who, you know, are ready to take that one to one step. And most recently and how our paths crossed was that I have worked on a project over the last few years, which was my book which you kindly introduced and have read, burnout, how to manage your nervous system before it manages you. And that's where I brought all my many years of experience working with populations who experience big T and little t trauma. So there's big kind of traumatic events that everybody would agree are traumatic and also that accumulation of little t's and how that might have accumulated into suffering and that I think has been, really well received and it's led to lots of lovely projects like this where I'm coming and speaking to people to kind of spread the word about how you don't need to suffer on your own and it's not your fault and there are pathways out which people like us can support you with.
[00:03:39] Dr Claire Plumbly: And it's so important to have that kind of psychologist representing such important areas of intersection between trauma and how it affects our day to day life and that includes grief in such a profound way. The reason why I really wanted you to come on the podcast is because I hear it time after time how grieving widows and widowers often don't realize they're experiencing burnout and they're struggling to return to work after loss. And often, I think it's because we've been pushed to do something that we're not prepared to do. Mhmm. And sadly, that's the reality of many people's experiences that they have to earn money, they have to keep their families afloat, and and that's a very difficult and challenging situation to face when you're still very much discombobulated by grief and you're having to return to work. So this is why it's really important that we we talk about that and understand what burnout might look like. I suppose my first question to you is how we can recognize that we're having this very unhelpful or maybe unhealthy relationship with work after last. What would we normally notice or what the kind of the signs of symptoms or what would this kind of burnout experience look like for someone who's just returning to work after last?
[00:05:02] Speaker 3: Yeah. So the official World Health Organization definition of burnout is that it's a syndrome. So a syndrome is when symptoms all kind of co occur, but it doesn't mean that there's an underlying kind of burnout gene or the thing that's gone wrong with you. And these three things occur in the context of unmanaged occupational stress. So that's the official definition, and I can run through what the three parts of the syndrome are. So it's not considered a psychiatric diagnosis, like a mental health diagnosis like depression or anxiety or PTSD, just to say that. And it's quite context specific to work overload and being under resourced, although there were other kind of specific risk factors which we could look at later. But in the book and a lot of other kind of burnout authors and people talking about this, are inviting people to think beyond just paid work as the only source of stress because of course a lot of people, experience the work in other places of their life. You know, parents will go home and kind of start their second shift, which is unpaid work. Carers and students are all doing extra work, is quite often unpaid. So there is a kind of broadening out and thinking around burnout as applying to lots of different groups and measures as well now that can be used in different areas. And if you think about bereavement, there's extra work that comes with losing someone, isn't there? That might you might be think thinking about with someone, you know, extra death admin and things that you might take on board as work that the you know, if you had a partner or someone who was in your life who did certain roles, you might end up being weighed down, particularly in the early days where you're trying to work out what your new routines will be. So that's just something helpful to be thinking about when you're thinking about what we mean with this definition of work and unmanaged workload stress. So the three symptoms, if I just run through the kind of clusters, is exhaustion, physical and emotional exhaustion. And I think most people kind of have a good sense of that. It's that heavy, like fatigue where your body is just kind of running on empty. But also the emotional side of that is quite often the way I describe it to my clients is like, you don't have that full repertoire of emotions that you normally have, feeling content, feeling kind of passionate about something. You might just be more irritable or kind of upset more easily. And of course, this is tricky when you're bereaved because it will be quite hard to untangle all of that. So it's kind of holding in mind that, you know, you don't need to try and define and separate everything out. It's just to be thinking like maybe this is an extra thing here to be holding in mind that I could be struggling with. The second one is that we kind of become quite detached and disengaged, so we kind of our work or things that used to light us up stop kind of giving us that joy and we might not get any contentment from the things that we were get getting contentment from before like our projects or our children, things like this. And you can also feel like you're working kind of on an autopilot level. Quite often people describe that kind of just going through the motions and not getting that job satisfaction. And then the third is feeling reduced kind of accomplishment from things you're doing. So, you know, you might be making mistakes. So if your concentration's gone wonky, you might kind of not be kind of attending to things in the same way or cutting corners. Self esteem can really plummet. So these are the kind of three clusters. And what I say to people is when they're saying what to look out for, why it can feel a bit confusing is that there are all the kind of signs of stress in your body quite often showing up, which you've pushed through for quite a long time. Quite often the body might have been kind of whispering to you, you you've got your eczema flare ups or your IBS is kind of saying hello or you're getting lots of aches and pains in your big skeletal muscles. These are stress signs and quite often with burnout, it's such a creeping process that we've pushed through that thinking, I'll rest when I get to the end of my to do list. Rest can be quite difficult for people who are bereaved because that can be when everything all the thoughts pile in. So they might just have other reasons for keeping going, keeping going. And so our nervous system is only designed to be in that place for a certain time and that's where it can tip into that kind of real closed down experience that I've described with those three kind of clusters.
[00:09:12] Dr Claire Plumbly: Yes. And that's really interesting what you're saying, Claire, because I think it's such a difficult question for so many people to distinguish between, is this what I'm experiencing a burnout or is it grief? Because I think a lot of the symptoms you've been describing could be seen as a response to grief. Are we really entering the area of burnout? So so I think this intersection is such a tricky one for some people to, I suppose, to separate out or to know, okay, am I struggling right now because I'm grieving because I've just been through this horrendous change in my life, or are we really talking about burnout? And I think that's the kind of the questions, not to say that this one or the other, but kind of the subtle differences between the two because I think what you're describing is that in your book, you describe that burnout can be not just in relation to work, but also to other activities in life. And and it's just the kind of the overarching kind of subject that really need kind of unpacking a little bit today. But I was just kind of wanting to get your opinion on on those kind of subtle differences. When are we kind of thinking of someone actually experiencing some of those psychosomatic symptoms or the disengagement or difficulty processing that could be related to grief? And when are we really talking about burnout?
[00:10:36] Speaker 3: I think this is a helpful conversation to have because I'm not sure if I have the definitive answer, but I think if someone's lost someone, they're going to be grieving for several months and years, aren't they? Like it's a long process. Yeah. And so to just think about how much balance there is in your life and where pauses are and is that similar to before the loss? Are you filling all the pauses or are they being filled for you because of all the changes to your life losing the person you've lost? Because I think that context is really helpful for working out whether what you're going through is just grief versus this extra layer of distress caused by working, over and beyond your capacity. But I think it's it's hard to sense check. I think sometimes these are conversations in therapy that I have with people. Just somebody telling me about their day and or or like rushing to therapy and when I'm kind of pausing and inviting them to kind of say, you know, what else have you been doing today? And I'm the one saying that's a lot. And then just leaving a pause. Mhmm. And then there's self compassion underneath that that can be felt around, you know, I feel like I have to keep busy because I feel I'll crash if I and I don't wanna feel this stuff when I'm in the middle of a busy working day and so I just don't pause. So, know, just thinking and getting perspectives from compassionate people in your lives.
[00:11:59] Dr Claire Plumbly: Absolutely. And I think what you're saying is that, yes, of course, we can't necessarily know for sure whether the symptoms are just burnout or just grieve, but they they're likely to come together because of the the stress we're under and the pressure that we're under as grieving individuals who are having this extra layer of complexity on top of the demands of day to day life. So in a way, it's a perfect recipe for some kind of a disaster in a form of burnout. I think we're more vulnerable in that way, aren't we, to experience those symptoms.
[00:12:33] Speaker 3: Something I also have said, or, you know, when I've written a letter to an employer or HR or health and support you to think about is that your capacity before the bereavement is different to your capacity afterwards, you know. It takes a lot of it's exhausting grieving. It's physically exhausting. And cognitively, there's lots of changes too. So your ability to juggle all the balls and to, like, deal with intense projects that you might have dealt with pre. And you don't know yet quite often before you go back what your capacity is, but I suppose it's just hold in mind that it will be less and that's okay. This is the time where you have to kind of tend to the grief process. And so, yeah, when I've written a letter, it is to kind of explain to a boss or workplace that actually is not helpful to expect somebody to come back in at a 100% or 110% which usually is what they were doing before the loss anyway.
[00:13:29] Dr Claire Plumbly: Yes. Exactly. I'm hoping that, obviously, today's conversation will be that kind of beginning to understanding that perspective, especially coming from your expertise with burnout, but also trauma and the nervous system, which is something I really feel strongly we don't talk enough about, like, just how our nervous system plays a massive role in things like grief and burnout. And really hearing from you would be so important about this tendency to to go out into this overdrive and and trying really hard to perform well, especially when we're feeling like we are not at our best Mhmm. Or this other tendency to shut down. So maybe if you could tell us a bit more about the role of our nervous system in burnout and and breathe, that would be really helpful.
[00:14:23] Speaker 3: It's interesting hearing just the like those tendencies that you said about overworking or proving yourself or trying to get back to a certain level capacity. And those are threat responses. They're quite common, like that kind of insecure striving, we might call that, which is when we're applying ourselves and trying to motivate ourselves, but that's coming from a place of fear and threat rather than being, like, motivated by the positive, like, reasons that we might feel connected with doing something. And so I think trying to separate out why why what's your why for doing being busy? Is it to avoid pain? That's a kind of a a kind of a threat response reaction. And so, yeah, if you're in a threat mode, then your autonomic nervous system is gonna go into a different gear. So I always think it's helpful just to talk about what what we mean by nervous system in case, you know, some people listening feel like, oh, what is this? So the autonomic nervous system is the bit of kit that we have designed to keep us safe. And to do that, it transmits messages between our our brain and our internal organs and our peripheral kind of senses as well. And it's always scanning for signs that there's a difficulty or a danger or any sign that there's a change. And it does that at a preconscious level, so we're not having to consciously think, is this dangerous? Is this okay for us? We're able to kind of outsource that to our autonomic nervous system. So it's an amazing bit of care looking after us, and it's, you know, very survival is very important to it. So the transmitting of messages that happens between the brain and the internal organs like your heart, your gut is a two way messaging service. So 80% of the messages go in the direction of the body up to the brain. 20% go brain to body. How that is helpful to know is that if you've been taught techniques that focus solely on mindset or cognitive work and they're not working for you, it might be that you're just missing the more embodiment, feeling, helping the body to feel safe in order to kind of get on board with those thoughts challenging or mindset work being more helpful and kind of sticking. So you know your your head can believe it but your heart doesn't. It's that kind of lag. So yes, so when we help our body to feel safe, which we get and I heard your lady who you interviewed talking about the body, I can't remember the author name.
[00:16:46] Dr Claire Plumbly: Mary Francesca. Yes. She talked
[00:16:48] Speaker 3: about co regulation which is all based on this this theory of polyvagal theory it's called, which is that we get our cues of how safe the environment is from those around us. If they're calm Yeah. And feeling okay, we think, oh, it must be okay and I'm okay. And so that's one example then of us kind of coming down a peg or two. And so obviously in grief, you've got this loss of this really central person who was co regulating us. And so grief and loss is a form of really important threat. We've lost someone who was really central to our lives and there's a gap there now. And how will we cope? And even if you're not thinking that, your body's thinking that and feeling that.
[00:17:29] Dr Claire Plumbly: Absolutely.
[00:17:30] Speaker 3: So then the question you had was what happens and how, like, to understand where your nervous system goes in a place like that. So when we're calm and we are regulated, that means we can kind of essentially move up and down into emotions as and when is needed but come back to a place of calm fairly easily. And so kind of there are three modes of operation. We're talking about the vagus nerve, that messaging service that I talked about happens on the vagus nerve. Mhmm. And so the kind of calm setting, I sometimes call it green or if we use the gear metaphors, it's kind of gear three or four in your car where you're poodling along can stop easily and start easily. And this is where we are when our environment is sending cues that there's nothing to tend to or worry about. When we're in that place, we can read facial expressions accurately because we kind of feel like they're not a threat to people around us and their body language. We can think clearly, we can access creative thoughts, the ability to kind of plan and execute that plan and imagination for the future. And so, yeah, that's and our body organs are doing all the things they were designed to. Digestive system is doing all the digestion nicely and we can fall asleep Yeah. Easily because we don't feel concerned that something's gonna come eat us in the night. Think about what our ancestors would have worried about. But if there's a stressor that kind of comes in, so a demand that needs immediate attention for our survival just to to kind of get a resource such as, you know, food or something like that, again, think about our ancestors would have been concerned with, we switch into another mode of operation which is sympathetic nervous system. So this means if you think about the gears, we're back up in a kind of sixth gear, fifth or sixth gear. So you're driving cars, suddenly everything feels urgent and you have to get there quickly and your your cognitions, your thoughts kind of narrow and become very focused on the problem at hand and like a quick urgency to fix it. And so the idea of pausing or taking a moment for yourself just feels impossible. And often the the times you need that rest or pause most, that break is often when your nervous system is telling you most, no, no. This is too too dangerous to pause, too dangerous to rest. And of course, every organ in your body is switching to a different mode of operation. So all of your like, so your blood is pumping more quickly around your body and your lungs are kind of getting air coming in and out has matched that kind of quickened pace of the heart, and that's in order to prepare you for the fight or flight. And so if you stay in that mode for too long, you get this kind of wear and tear inside because the allostatic changes they call, those changes to the organs going into that kind of emergency gear weren't designed to hang around for too long. Were designed to activate us and get to safety and then come back down and regulate into your kind of green mode again. And so if you don't do that over a long period of time where you're kind of, you know, you're tired but wired and you're never taking a pause and you kind of can't think beyond the next problem, you never get to the end to do list before taking a break and you slip into this third place of the nervous system which is called dorsal shutdown. And so if you think about a car model with the gears, that would be neutral. And literally all the energy drains away. We feel really kind of heavy physically and then you're mentally, you're quite zoned out quite often. So this is threat capacity. If you think about why we go here because it can seem a bit odd if your ancestors were faced with a predator and they they kind of go to this place, it would seem like a strange survival strategy. If you've ever seen in any David Attenborough and you see the animal kind of go into this place, they might flop and look like they're dead and the thrill of the chase is therefore not enticing to the predator anymore. And so the prey then stands a chance of being able to kind of live again because the predator might, yeah, wander off. Survive. And so whilst humans don't necessarily kind of flop or stop in that capacity, although they can do, sometimes you get nonepileptic seizures, which look a lot like this. But for a lot of people, it's just that kind of zoning out and feeling disconnected, like you're floating and not really, you know, paying attention and and that can be confusing. If you've got all this kind of procedural memory kind of holding you together and the sign there is that you're not taking anything new on board. So if you kind of go to a training and they've taught you a new procedure at work and you can't remember it, it's probably because you're in that kind of alongside all the other, you know, signs and symptoms. You know, you're living in that kind of quite a shutdown place. But yeah. And I just wanna also just add, it's not about demonizing any of these three parts of the nervous system because they all have a useful role and are important. Yeah. And you can also get blended states where you're kind of you've got your green and amber on line at once and that's about kind of social rest. And you can also get stuck in quest, like, procrastinating, freezey place where you kind of can't see your next step forward. You've got the energy of your sympathetic, but you don't know the next step. And that's more of a kind of amber and red shutdown place.
[00:22:36] Dr Claire Plumbly: Yeah. So they've when they're both kind of the same is it when they're at the same level kind of competing almost and you can't move? It's like, you run away or do
[00:22:45] Speaker 3: you Yes. Exactly.
[00:22:47] Dr Claire Plumbly: Yes. Mhmm.
[00:22:48] Speaker 3: And so you can get these strange blended states. But you can also get, you know, the dorsal shut down if it's blended with the kind of green is very restful. It's very deep rest. And I I often get that when I've had a a warm bath and I come out of the bath, not that I get many warm baths, but when I do get a moment to go and have a hot bath, I'll often come out and I just wanna like lie on the bed and and relax and it's often like the deepest relaxation I can get into. I just can happily just sit and stare at the ceiling. A little bit of time can float past with that and I'm feeling very safe. So it's yeah. It's helpful to think about the the blended states. Obviously, in my book, I do a breakdown of the different places and how to recognize these different parts of your nervous system. You start to recognize in terms of then shifting gear more proactively rather than just feeling stuck. Yeah. Because that's what burnout is, it's when you're stuck.
[00:23:38] Dr Claire Plumbly: Yeah. And you don't know how to navigate that place. And it's the same with grief. I mean, as you were describing it, I think a lot of those analogies will apply to the experience of grief, but obviously, maybe the slightly not as kind of straightforward way in terms of thinking, you have to kind of reflect on that a little bit to get that. But I really like your analogy of driving car and being in those different states and and not knowing how to navigate the system because as you're saying, we're we're we're not necessarily taught how to do it when we're children or or or kind of especially with this environment that becomes increasingly more stressful and if you're having this life event that completely throws you out of your comfort zone, then it's much harder to know how to navigate it. So it's a really helpful analogy of understanding those different gears and and those different states and and how they can mix up together. And, yes, I really it really kind of resonates and you're explaining in a really kind of simplistic way. There's this very complex operating system of our body that basically fuels every action, every system that we have in our body and in our mind. So, yeah, you just made this very kind of complex system sound really manageable, which is I think the purpose of your book is to kind of help people gain some control over their nervous system and bring it into better control. It's a bit like driving, you know. Like, I remember when I was learning to drive the first year, it was a nightmare just to, you know, surviving every journey. Remember
[00:25:19] Speaker 3: That was a good point. That's a good addition to the metaphor.
[00:25:23] Dr Claire Plumbly: Yeah. I remember driving from Sheffield to Manchester through Snake Pass. And for those who don't know the journey, it's basically going through the mountains and it's really, really anxiety provoking for someone who's just passed their driving test. And that was my experience and every every single time I would go on the road, I would have some kind of unusual experience, some wild animals jumping in front of me or just feeling the pressure from people behind me pushing in because, obviously, they're more experienced and I'm just a newbie trying to survive. And and it was just one of those experiences that you obviously, you adapt, you learn if you've got enough support and understanding how to regulate and you get better at it. But as you say, for many people, that might not be the case. And they go into this really dark place of, as you're saying, shut down or being really, you know, going into an overdrive, which often happens I think for many widows and widowers who are put in a position where there's literally they they don't have a choice in a way because of the day to day demands and and the the understanding of how to navigate this process with a compromised nervous system through grief is is a very complex battlefield really, if you think about it this way. No wonder so many people either drop out of work or go on sick leave or they completely lose interest in the what they're doing because it's it's a bit like thinking, well well, why would I if you don't get any joy or pleasure from work, then why would you want to keep doing something? You know, it kind of it loses its kind of meaning and the essence. And and often, one of the other things that I was thinking about in preparation for this episode was really this kind of sudden shift in identity that people often experience after loss that different things starts to matter to them. And they realize that there are more important things in life than what they may be thought of before. A sense of safety and stability is compromised. So you start to reevaluate your life, your yourself as a person. There's a sense of a shift in who who am I as a person if this other person that was so central in my life is no longer there. So you're going through this almost like restructuring process of your own identity, your mind, your body's behaving in ways you've never seen before. And then you've got those demands and you to carry on. So it that's in itself is a huge pressure that was put on our nervous system. And no wonder that, you know, the car doesn't wanna drive the way it used to.
[00:28:07] Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. And hearing you say that about, you know, you're changing your identity makes me think about one of the other risk factors for burnout other than the obvious kind of overload and lack of resources is when there's a conflict in your values. When you're being asked to do things or you are working in a way that doesn't align with what is important to you. And so that makes sense then, doesn't it? That you're at higher risk in those situations where work doesn't really fit anymore with what your aims and wishes and I think taking time to journal and think about these things where you can, giving yourself space to reflect and think about the changes and what they mean to you in all areas of life, including work.
[00:28:49] Dr Claire Plumbly: Yes. Absolutely. It's so important that we don't just dismiss feelings because you know, they are there for a reason. I definitely felt on my journey with grief. I decided to leave NHS because it was just draining me. But plus, I really didn't see the value
[00:29:07] Speaker 3: of
[00:29:07] Dr Claire Plumbly: spending such a big chunk of my life in a place that didn't really yeah. Didn't really fill me with joy. I just felt kind of pushed to the limit, and and I had to I had to leave at the time. And it was a difficult decision to make, but I do feel that private practice in some ways does allow me to be more in line with my values and and with my own body, listening to my body more. So I think that sometimes those decisions are important, how you change, because sometimes it is about changing your workplace. But a lot of times, it's about adjusting those kind of the the environment that you're in to fit more with what you need. So it's not necessary that we're saying that you have to leave your job, but but it's important to have those conversations, to have this space to reflect on where am I now was important to me. So it really kind of that was a really interesting part of your book and your kind of approach to, as you're saying, those risk factors, but also those life transitions because what you're describing is just a situation where you're kind of forced to think about what matters to me and what what what maybe what doesn't matter to me anymore. So they're really important areas to to think about.
[00:30:18] Speaker 3: Yeah. And I think, you know, making sure you're not shy about getting when you've done that reflection, thinking about what your needs are. And like you say, it might not be that you need to leave your job. It just means you need quite a lot of adaptations and different roles in within a job for a while, whilst you take stock and work out what you need and how, you know, the ground lies at the moment. So I don't think there's gonna be anyone at work necessarily unless you've got really thoughtful manager or someone assigned to who might be thinking like that. Mhmm. And usually, literature I write to work is kind of really kind of breaking everything down, all the different types of losses and ambiguous losses linked to the bereavement and adjustments that just won't have been thought about. Yeah. So and asking, being really clear, this is what this person now needs. So find a way to please try and make that work when you can.
[00:31:10] Dr Claire Plumbly: Absolutely. And in your book, you're also referring to the fact that burnout doesn't always look the same for everyone and that there are different types of burnout. And I wonder whether you could explain to to our listeners a bit more about these different ways how we adapt to those challenging situations because I think that seems to be the case where different people work up differently, but the outcome might be the same that you basically burn out. So what are those different types?
[00:31:42] Speaker 3: Yeah. So they were subtypes of burnout that came some work into teachers and therapists. Mhmm. And that showed that the first one was frenetic, which is when you've got this pattern of working harder and harder in response to having too much to do. And it is usually as a result of where the work demands are outweighing all the resources you need to do it comfortably. Right. But also is more likely to affect someone who has that ambition to do well or particularly staff new to their jobs or career where you want to kind of work your way up and prove yourself and there is a pressure to do that, isn't there? So Yeah. That's the first one. As you're listening, hold in mind that you can also oscillate a lot between all of them and and struggle with all of them at once. So Right. But the second one is under challenged, which is when it's less about overstretch and more about the monotony of the work, whether there's perhaps no prospect for self development. Mhmm. Or the work's just really understimulating, repetitive. And there's different trajectories through the the three signs, which I won't go into here because it gets a bit dry to go through at that level of detail, but covers it in the book. And I also give some examples of where you might see this. So if you're not being rewarded for your job in many ways mentally or emotionally, a parent and a carer with high needs dependence can kind of struggle with this, you know, where you're doing a lot of repetition of tasks that not not that stimulating and whilst the end result, a happy healthy child is is lovely, it might not be what you're getting in the everyday kind of way. But also high achieving individuals where there's less stimulation in their job because maybe they're specializing, you know, and you're seeing very similar cases. I don't know if you've ever had that. I've definitely had a time when I worked in sexual assault service where I was seeing very similar cases a lot and and it was quite challenging. And they
[00:33:32] Dr Claire Plumbly: all blur into one, like, not not not obviously in the
[00:33:35] Speaker 3: same way
[00:33:35] Dr Claire Plumbly: because it kind of struggle to kind of distinguish things because of, yeah, the nature of the work. Yeah.
[00:33:40] Speaker 3: And so yeah. And then the last one is worn out burnout, which is again, like how aligned it is with your personal values and sense of achievement. So you might be being asked to do things that just aren't how you want to do things, you know? And the sharp end of that is, like, moral injury, which is an acute episode of maybe witnessing something that's very distressing you disagree with or being asked to behave in a way that really kind of conflicts with your morals and that can lead to that quite foundational shift in your beliefs about the world itself. It's lost trust to others and things like this. So, yeah, I think some roles, like I say, you can get all three of those at once. That's the parenting example or parenting burnout. You know, sometimes you're not able to do parenting in the way that you'd like because you're being stretched too thin having to work and having to do all the other things, which means you can't cook delicious nutritious meals that you'd like or, you know, you're relying more on screens than you want. So, like, there's lots of little ways that you might work with someone to work out what where these might should be showing up without them having realized.
[00:34:45] Dr Claire Plumbly: Lovely. And and just listening to you, was just thinking about a lot of people who might be listening to the episode and and identifying with those different elements, different types of burnout in different settings. So, you know, this tendency to overwork and be kind of frenetic at work or trying to prove that they can deliver, especially if you feel like your your mind's not functioning the way it used to because you're grieving and you're trying desperately to complete all the tasks that are beyond your capacity to function. It's a bit like starting a new career. I definitely remember that moment when I returned to work after having a year off after my husband died and struggling with the simple task of finding documents on my on my laptop. And
[00:35:35] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[00:35:35] Dr Claire Plumbly: Thinking, oh, obviously, this is like the simplest task ever. And I I couldn't I couldn't locate them. I couldn't edit them. It was just taking me so much longer to recover this capacity to function at the level that was pre loss. And I think that that kind of was driving you know, it's almost like you don't have enough oxygen or fuel in your tank, and you're trying to push, but it's not kind of giving you the results you want. Yeah. So that is really quite an experience.
[00:36:06] Speaker 3: And it's scary, isn't it? It's really scary. Yeah. Make you feel like question your ability. So Yeah. To hold in mind to this is it's temporary. It isn't it doesn't last and to go super gently. I also like the book, The Wintering as well. Do you know that one for this? This makes me think of those times when you need to just have more duvet days, eat drink more soup, and all of these things.
[00:36:28] Dr Claire Plumbly: Yeah. You know, we were talking earlier about slowing down and going into a different mode, and you're regulating your nervous system in in that way. It's really important. It really speaks to me how sometimes slowing down will help you to speed up later on, but you really need that kind of recovery time for your nervous system, but also just it might not be straightforward. It's not necessarily what your body is telling you. It's quite sometimes the opposite that you want to just keep going because you're in this kind of adrenaline cortisol driven state. But actually, what what is really important is to slow down and to acknowledge, okay, I'm really I'm struggling with this grief and is really driving me into a place of burnout in that work. But the other thing I was also thinking about is all those single parents who are suddenly having this massive responsibility providing for their children financially when their life partner died and having to look after the children in this you know, when we're talking about underchallenged, in some ways, underchallenged type of burnout when we're looking after someone when it's such a repetitive task and there's nothing stimulating in a kind of relaxing or enjoyable way because parenting often isn't that exciting really when we think about it. There are one Yeah. Many wonderful times. But when you're already grieving, it's much harder to experience joy and excitement Yeah. And pleasure from interacting with other people. So that in itself, I can see how can really drive people into that place of just not enjoying it anymore, whether it's work or or parenting.
[00:38:10] Speaker 3: And of course, you don't then have that partner if you had them before there to enjoy those lovely moments as well, you know, when they when the kid says something funny or adorable and you're like, oh, you know, you know, and you smile together. Those are really hard to to not have in your life and no one is gonna make up for for that gap. But making sure there are people who can take joy in your children like you can, so you can stay connected with those feelings.
[00:38:36] Dr Claire Plumbly: Just reading your book, was thinking because you give quite a few examples of people who've been through burnout and how they've kind of struggled with either recognizing the symptoms or or just even knowing how there's something really powerful about knowing what you're experiencing that doesn't necessarily mean you're you're gonna stop feeling this way straight away, but just even recognizing where you are or what you're experiencing, it can be such a transformative experience in terms of shifting this awareness from, okay, there's a threat outside and I just have to keep going. So it's just kind of this almost automatic pilot kind of behavior where we we just don't know why we're doing things, but we keep doing them because that's the only familiar territory that that we know to then actually being able to step away from that. And I think I I found that really helpful reading your book and just, you know, thinking more about the practical strategies for recovering from those states and how we can regulate the nervous system. Wonder whether you could tell us a bit more about that, what you what we can do really in those states and and and how once you identified which gear you're in, you know, how do you bring yourself back to a better
[00:39:53] Speaker 3: place? Yeah. What you were just saying about identifying, you know, and name it to tame it. And the reason that is an intervention, it might not seem like an intervention, but that is a psychological intervention, is because when we have named our emotions or our emotional state or nervous system state, The reason that it's there starts it's like a messaging service. Like I said, the message has been delivered, you know, so if you're kind of up in sixth gear and in that kind of sympathetic nervous system where you're anxious, if you can say, oh, this is anxiety. No wonder I'm frantic because I'm up here.
[00:40:26] Dr Claire Plumbly: Yeah.
[00:40:27] Speaker 3: It kind of it helps for the energy of that emotion to go, okay, I delivered the the message she's heard. And so, yeah, it takes the the heat out of it. It might not magically just disappear, but you're gonna start making more compassionate decisions about what you need because you can see the process of what's going on rather just being caught up in the content. You know, your brain's churning out like, but you gotta do this. You gotta reply to email. You gotta get, you know, to whatever it is on time. If you can go, here I am feeling really stressed and anxious and actually that then gives you more of a choice around your next steps. You know, I could go and do that thing, but I could also just take a moment to try and regulate myself and like how much anxiety and stress do I need right now? Like, I can maybe do something to bring myself down a peg or two. And the thing that we often start with a lot of therapists is breathing. And the reason we start there is because it's one of the best ways to immediately get to what's called the vagal breaks of the heart Mhmm. Is the kind of pacemaker of the vagus nerve. And so if you can access some soothing breathing, so what we mean by that is regular breathing patterns like box breathing, finger breathing, deep belly breathing, diaphragmatic breathing. There's lots and anyone listening to this could, you know, look it up online or obviously chapter five of my book, I go into detail. You can start to slow it down and that sends the message to the rest of your body. Oh, the danger's passed. It's okay. And your calm thinking comes back on your line online and your body organs start to kind of go back into their calmer place. So that's usually something we start with and not everybody gels with breathing practices and tuning in inwards and so that's why I include other calming practices. But if you think about being up in that state, the naming it is definitely an important step like you say. Some people might need to do something before they get into the breathing which is we call discharging. So if you've got all that adrenaline and cortisol pumping around you and you really just cannot take that step into next being the breath. I might invite people to run up and down the stairs or do some star jumps or kind of, you know, I I also talk about bilateral stimulation which we won't go into detail here, but it's it's it can be helpful at tapping your left and right quickly Mhmm. Sides of the body. But all of that will start to discharge some of that and doing that until you're pleasantly tired Yeah. Is then easier to then kinda go, now I can maybe do the breathing.
[00:42:58] Dr Claire Plumbly: Yeah. That's really helpful, Claire, because I think a lot of people would kind of relate to that state of I remember often talking to my partner who sometimes struggles to regulate himself down. He got very different kind of wiring to mine. Yeah. And I just say, well, why don't you just sit down and and chill out for a bit? Just
[00:43:19] Speaker 3: can't do that.
[00:43:19] Dr Claire Plumbly: Simple. He just needs a a bit of time to unwind and, you and and do it gradually. It's a bit like people who run marathons, like, several marathons in a month, and you can't I think those that ultra marathon runners, they run marathon every day. And you can't just stop running a marathon, can you? It's it's one of those things that you you just can't. It's not physiologically possible even to just stop. If you're in a motorway going a 100 miles per hour, you can't just stop suddenly. You just have to slow down. So it's really helpful actually listening to that that you just need to see where you are, which gear you're in, and what is the gradual process of of kind of slowing down. Eventually, yes, breathing is great. I mean, I absolutely agree with you. That is always my go to place. But if you're in a motorway, you might need a few more steps before you reach them.
[00:44:12] Speaker 3: Exactly. Yeah. You're kind of if you're coming off a motorway onto the kind of smaller roads, you wouldn't just kind of immediately hit the brake, would you? So like kind of Yeah. Trying to wind down a little bit. And I always talk to my clients about when you do this. Obviously, if you're noticing your stress, do it then. But if you can also do it regularly throughout a day, you're you're preventing it from just getting to that point where you're tipping into like full on overwhelm mode. So a good way of doing that is in the transition points of your day. So we have micro pauses, you know, when we finish this recording, I'll close my laptop and I have to go downstairs. My kids are, you know, gonna be waiting for me to make their tea. So, you know, just taking a few moments to check-in. Well, what's my body need from having being sat here still for an hour? I'm already starting to do it now. I'm having a little stretch. My arms are just going up, and I'm feeling really good because I can feel the tension there that I haven't even realized I was holding. But yeah. So it's often something physiological that's needed by the body that we tend to just ignore and override. So those are your moments to kind of release it, move into it, and also just checking what is here. You know, I feel quite relaxed doing this podcast, but, you know, it might come off some meetings or a traumatized client where I've been working and actually holding quite a lot and I might need some gentle soothing. So, you know, my hands have gone up to my chest. I'm holding myself there and I might say that was a hard session. That was difficult and I did my best and I was there for them. And I might just say something warm that I need to hear. So what do you need in that moment? That's the question to ask yourself and tend to that. That's compassion. That's self compassion.
[00:45:48] Dr Claire Plumbly: That's so important. Just almost like developing that language for how to talk to yourself. I think what you what you just described is something that we don't often do unless someone gives us the prompt or you learn it in therapy or you've got had really good parenting growing up.
[00:46:07] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Yeah. You kind of pick up
[00:46:08] Dr Claire Plumbly: on those signs. Oh, what's going on inside you? What is it you need? A bit like parenting yourself as a grown up that's really helpful just to think about that as a skill that you develop, and you won't be good at it straight away. Well, you it's like with everything else, you need to learn how to navigate that language and kind of develop that better way of identifying, I suppose, what is it that's troubling you or how your body feels right now. So that's really, really helpful.
[00:46:37] Speaker 3: There's lots more in the book like that, but these are some little good ones that people just go away for the podcast and start thinking about.
[00:46:43] Dr Claire Plumbly: Yeah.
[00:46:43] Speaker 3: And, you know, just doing that just means your you know, how you move from one activity to another quite often. It's so easy to see people sitting down rushing, eating their food in a rush, man. You don't taste it. You're not engaged. So your quality of living will improve if you do this as well as hopefully managing some of the high levels of stress that you're under.
[00:47:06] Dr Claire Plumbly: Absolutely. And that's so so helpful, Claire, thinking about those little things that people can engage in because you don't have to make a huge difference, huge change straight away. Those little things that you can begin to implement one by one and then see whether it works for you because for some people, it will work straight away. For some other people, you need to try out different things and see what works. Like, I remember times when breathing was the only thing that was a I was able to use to calm myself down. But there were other times when forget about breathing. It was on the motorway. So no amount of breathing was able to calm me down. But but I completely understand what you're saying. And really, those those tiny little steps, really encourage people listening to the podcast to think about maybe one or two things you can take away from this episode and start implementing. And, obviously, your book is a great place to start, you know, whether you're grieving or feeling burnout or both really, and that would be great beginning of that journey of self discovery and self regulation. So could you just tell us where we can find a book or where we can find you? What's the best place to go to for some resources? Because you've got some good resources on your website as far as I remember too.
[00:48:22] Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. So the book in Britain, there's two versions. Mhmm. There's a British one and then The US one has a different title. So we've already mentioned the British one, burnout, how to manage your nervous system before it manages you. And then American one is the trauma of burnout. So those are available on online book shops. You can try on the high street but you might have to order it and they don't always have it available. Mhmm. And then you can get it on Audible and Spotify if you were to kind of consume content in that manner and Kindle. And my website, I'm actually kind of revamping at the moment because I did have on my website a short course called Rewire Your Anxious Brain. It was a kind of kit and because of the the gear metaphor that I've been using with the book, I thought actually I'd revamp the course so that it married up with that. So if you kind of prefer things to be more kind of segmented and like kind of to work along with the workbook and have videos, then that might be more up someone's street and that should be available in the next couple of weeks or maybe even by the time this goes out.
[00:49:24] Dr Claire Plumbly: Yeah. Probably it will. Yep.
[00:49:26] Speaker 3: So Excellent. Yeah. There's some bits and bobs like that which can help people. Yeah. I am on social media like you are. So Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and TikTok, but not so much on TikTok. I made lots of videos a few years ago and they're still on there and lots of like free content that will help people. Some of the, like, bilateral stimulation, for example, tapping, calm space, imagery, techniques to manage worry thoughts, that kind of thing. I've got some kind of quick short videos. So if someone feels like my attention span for anything longer is just not there at the moment, I completely understand. And so something like that might be more what you need in the short term.
[00:50:05] Dr Claire Plumbly: Mhmm. So really, again, it's about finding where you are, which gear you're in, and kind of finding the content that fits your needs. So that's really important. So whether you want a book or you want a little video clip or some kind of strategy you wanna implement. So we will put the links to the in the show notes for anyone listening who would be interested in finding out a bit more about how to self regulate the nervous system and avoiding that kind of the loop of burnout or recovering from it. That would be really helpful for you to check out the notes. Great. And, also, just a reminder to go to guidetoafterlife.com. That could be a good starting point, and we'll also put some links to your book and your resources in there as well so people can check out. So thank you so much, Claire. It's been a real pleasure to speak to you and to find out all those analogies and and how those practical steps that people can take to regulate the nervous system. It's really great to find out a bit more about that and obviously encouraging everyone to read your book. And thank you so much for your time today.
[00:51:11] Speaker 3: You're welcome. Thanks so much for having me, Monika.
[00:51:13] Dr Monika Wieliczko: Thank you for joining us. I hope you found it useful. Connect with me on Facebook and Instagram under guide to afterlife for more brief tips and resources. Visit guidetoafterlife.com to send me your questions and to take part in the grief MOT, your free first aid program for grief. See you next Tuesday for yet another stimulating conversation.
