[00:00:00] Dex: Hi everyone, my name's Dex Randall, and this is the Burnout to Leadership podcast, where I teach professional men to recover from burnout and get back to passion and reward at work.

[00:00:22] Hello, my friends. This is Dex with you again for this week's episode on hiding from yourself. You might not be keen for it, but I'm here for you. I don't usually make a podcast today. It's Thursday, but I just had this burning need to get this one out. So it's coming at you. And it is for anybody who feels they are stuck and shrinking in chronic stress or burnout, because in burnout, we actually become increasingly afraid of life, of work, our problems,

[00:00:56] our peers, probably our spouses and our family, but most of all, ourselves. We're scared, we're not good enough and we're not going to pull through. The game's over, we might have been brilliant, invincible, quietly powerful perhaps, sneakily charismatic before, we got away with everything, but then something broke.

[00:01:20] We probably discovered in ourselves a streak of mortality. We might have experienced loss, failure, perhaps divorce, illness, addiction, accident, or any other situation that we couldn't conquer. And being unable to control our universe isn't fun for us people who have a tendency, shall we say, to burnout.

[00:01:48] We start feeling raw, vulnerable, unsafe, unprotected, and unprotectable. Suddenly people can see our private broken part and we feel quite alone with our dilemma. It's really impossible to discuss it. And in the face of this fall, once we've experienced it, how can we now succeed? And be seen to be succeeding?

[00:02:13] How can we keep shouldering every burden, fix every problem? How can we resume our rightful, hyper achieving place in the world? It's all shattered. And I think it becomes a running nightmare. It's a bit like the vision that popped up in my head when I thought this was careering madly around hospital corridors, butt out in one of those hideous gowns.

[00:02:39] And I'm laughing, but I know it's not funny. On one level, it's the worst thing that's ever happened to us. We can't hide. And if you can relate to any of this, me too, when I was in burnout, I could be writing this episode about myself back then. And perhaps I am. In fact, when I think about it more deeply, I spent quite a lot of my childhood hiding as well, from who I was, because who I was turned out not to be very acceptable.

[00:03:08] And I got into a lot of trouble. So I did do quite a lot of hiding and shutting down then too. Anyway, never mind all that. Luckily for you, I think, here I am now. Help is at hand for you, because what I've learned is how to transcend all of this problem myself, and this is how I now work with other people as well.

[00:03:28] This episode is for you, with my slightly bruised compliments. And I think burnout is that moment when we're no longer able to hide our pain. Our tender underbelly. The lead up to burnout is when we started privately watching things getting away from us. People starting to give us the hairy eyeball, pointing out our shortcomings, overlooking us for new projects.

[00:03:59] Maybe relationships with influential people at work have been souring a little bit and we're working like the clappers to patch up all the holes. Because we're smart, intelligent, problem solvers. With a Herculean work ethic, we know how to solve problems. It's just what we do. And normally we do it by throwing more firepower at them and soon enough, the problems go away.

[00:04:24] Is that your experience at all? But we've hit this point now, we're almost imploding with it because right now we're feeling pretty slaughtered, pretty exhausted, pretty out of steam. And the run that we're in now of problems has probably been more than usually arduous. We're starting to let things slide a bit maybe we've copped a bit of flack, maybe we're feeling jaded, friendless, full of dread, and the problems still aren't shifting.

[00:04:53] No amount of effort or late nights, excuses, strategizing, sweet talking, maneuvering, avoidance. All of those things, they're not really moving the needle very much. And as that situation becomes more and more painful, our feelings too become more and more painful, don't they? We stop being able to manage our feelings.

[00:05:17] And we might have a whole slew of negative feelings like anxiety uh, imposterous, doubt, We might feel stuck or trapped, a failure perhaps, frustrated, irritated, impatient. We might have anger, rage, shame, guilt, humiliation, maybe resentment, often resentment. And alongside all of that comes this flavor of helplessness, hopelessness, defeat, and despair.

[00:05:49] So if you picked up a whole bunch of those and you're not sure if you're in burnout or not, it might be the time to consider that for yourself. But in the back of all those kind of torrid negative emotions, we're criticizing ourselves a blue streak right from our waking moment every day.

[00:06:06] We're probably calling ourselves names we wouldn't dream of using on other people. Ratcheting up the pain and then trying to escape the pain that we're creating. And there's three main ways to try to escape this emotional pain. We can run, we can hide, or we can act it out. And probably, especially if you're in burnout or chronic stress, you will try all three.

[00:06:30] So running away. Running away is, for example, into alcohol or Netflix or porn or whatever, into, slamming a set of weights or some kind of extreme experience. Hiding, on the other hand, is really numbing our emotions. Attempting to pretend we don't feel guilty, usually by assigning blame elsewhere.

[00:06:54] So we might be a bit defensive, but also we'll be out on the attack. And then the third one is acting out. So this is you screaming in rage in the privacy of your car stuck in a traffic jam. Or tearing a chunk off someone you really care about. Or being a bit impatient with the kids. And in burnout, of course, it's natural that we get pushed to extremes.

[00:07:14] We're having an intense experience and when we're in this and when we're overwhelmed by negative emotions, our behaviors change as our view of life becomes more and more jaundiced and we feel more and more trapped. And sometimes we can act out of character. And there's no judgment here about that. I've been there too.

[00:07:37] I can't say that my behaviors in burnout were exemplary. I'm really doubting that anybody's is, but if you do feel that you're in emotional turmoil, you're having a difficult experience, and that your coping behaviours are of themselves harming you or others, then please do seek whatever help you need.

[00:08:02] Call a helpline, seek professional help, find the help that you need with whatever you're struggling with. But that aside, the good news is, most burnout related addictive coping strategies will calm down and become easier to manage during burnout recovery from the simple fact really that you'll no longer need to escape your emotions.

[00:08:27] The whole scenario will calm down. But, having shared those coping strategies that we use to escape our pain, my perspective on them is none of them really work very well. Do they work for you? It's temporary relief at best or dimming of the pain or numbing of the pain temporarily.

[00:08:47] And then the pain comes flooding back. Shut down as we might, into a tighter and tighter ball, hiding from the world, hiding from ourselves, the knowledge of our failure and our feelings, hiding from our new truth or new perspective about life, we isolate ourselves from people, places and things.

[00:09:07] Not just emotions. We remove ourselves from community and from home life, for example. And then, full of bristling resentment about the whole thing, that we don't know what to do with, and are secretly, of course, a little bit ashamed of, we curl up so tight, we shut down our minds, our bodies, our feelings, our spirit.

[00:09:31] Our interface with the outside world. We shut down as tight as we can. And if that's what you've been doing, perhaps you've come to the same conclusion that I did, that is when things get a lot worse. Because what we're shutting off really is, the very oxygen we need, the milk of human kindness, the nourishment of human companionship, even just the ability to unburden our worries to our friends.

[00:09:58] Suddenly, we've got absolutely nothing left to offset our canvas of bleak despair. That's all we can see. And we feel empty, alone, valueless, non contributing, unsupported.

[00:10:16] Because the bottom line is, people can't live without people. We're wired for connection. Human life is really not designed to be a solo act. And when we tried to shut down our negative emotions, Sadly, we shut down the positive ones too. We can't selectively shut down one emotion and not another. So now we've got no joy, no empathy, no humor, no tolerance, no gentleness.

[00:10:43] And the crowning insult, we can't even be pain free because pain, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, has a function. It's really a message designed to tell us that something is wrong and it needs fixing. And pain won't leave until we listen to it and take some remedial action. So the problem is in burnout, we feel futile to solve the problem.

[00:11:16] We're unable to fix things. So we're getting the pain messages, but we can't fix the problem. We can't make the pain go away. We can't. And finally, I think it hits us that we're in some sense confronting bankruptcy really. We're empty and in burnout we see this at work, but also we might sense that we've lost our grip a bit at home and in growing panic we get scared that things have gone too far wrong.

[00:11:46] We worry that our mask of invincibility is about to be yanked off our face. Taking our skin, and by this time our shit eating grin, with it. This isn't really us, is it? Surely, we're mighty we're capable people. So what the happened to us? And at this point, of course, hiding doesn't work. If you've been hiding from everything and everyone, including yourself and things only got worse, you may have had that experience.

[00:12:18] So time to change strategy, possibly. At this low point, when you've collapsed under the whole weight of wrongness you're drowning in, and it feels so desperately unfair, I've got good news. Burnout is a hundred percent recoverable. Your energy, temper, performance, relationships, leadership, passion,

[00:12:42] friendliness, sense of humor, desire to collaborate, self esteem, career prospects, fulfillment, mental powers, joy. The whole bundle. Everything you think you've lost at the moment is all recoverable. And I think really better than that. In many of those areas, when you get into burnout recovery, you're going to render yourself into a state that allows you to exceed your previous best.

[00:13:09] You come into a new, mature sense of capacity that is easier to deploy in the world, and you will outshine yourself with less effort than before.

[00:13:20] Because really, I think the thing is, when you've been preoccupied with hiding from yourself, shutting down, hiding from the world. When you've been in full on self protective mode, repelling all borders, I think you can see for yourself what that got you. Bloody miserable, probably. Because in shutting down, you will have eclipsed any notion of yourself as a good person.

[00:13:45] You forgot or ignored, belittled, bashed the fundamental wonder and worthiness of you. You simply chose to view things in the worst possible light all the time. It doesn't sound like fun, does it? So when we're in that, when we're in this kind of negative state where everything looks bad, we only really notice the bad.

[00:14:12] And then when we only notice the bad, well, what you see is what you get. So you notice the bad, then you'll experience the world as bad. Confirmation bias, they call that. And here's what that brought to mind for me. When I was a wee small thing and I visited my grandparents house, which was opposite, the greenfields of a dairy farm.

[00:14:32] It's a very pleasant place. And I remember my grandma would trundle into her hallway every morning and gently tap on this big stately wood encased barometer on the wall and she would tap gently on it in case better news was available. How about you? I think you've probably stopped doing that if you're in burnout or chronic stress.

[00:14:56] Your barometer probably isn't even in your hallway. It's probably a fixture in front of your eyes. As you wake up in the morning, and your damp despair has made it rusty, it's got the needle stuck perpetually in Stormy. Am I close?

[00:15:12] But even if that has happened, right? So it really doesn't mean that sunny is not available to you. If you open your windows, it will for sure be sunny somewhere. So burnout recovery, when you finally feel like opening both eyes and choosing to look for the sun, carefully oil your barometer, dust it off, let it swing back into sunny.

[00:15:36] In fact, your very own energy will have influence on how you look. over how much time the barometer spends in sunny. Because it's your weather and you like sunny and in your limitless and easy new flow state you're going to create sunny. You're going to have that new skill. You probably think I'm a bit balmy.

[00:16:03] Either that or you think I'm kidding. I'm not kidding. Ask any client who's worked with me, right? They're breathing new air. Sunny air. So I think that's my usual long, meandering way of conveying, if you feel stuck, despairing, failing to thrive, and you're shutting down, hiding from yourself, from your pain, as damage control, hoping it will hurt less.

[00:16:27] Then that is your fear based life right now. Now you know what that's like. Perhaps you might choose that concludes your grisly experiment. And I really don't want you to suffer. I truly don't. So I beg you to stop now if you've had enough and try the opposite. This is something that I can teach you.

[00:16:49] And in fact, I can teach you in a way that feels increasingly safe, refreshing and joyful to you. Almost like it's your true nature. Hey, I have laughing because I've been on this same journey myself and when I was in burnout, everything looked black as your hat, everything. So when I'm laughing, I'm really laughing at my own experience.

[00:17:14] Not yours, for sure not yours, but this, what I would teach you about swinging the barometer back to Sunny is it all comes from love. The love you have inside you in abundance right now, that perhaps you've been hiding from. Perhaps not feeling you deserved it, or feeling that it was too raw to let out in public.

[00:17:37] Or maybe you've had it squeezed out of your psyche sometime in your life, or you've had your heart broken. Whatever the reason, a measure of love is essential to life. It's your oxygen. You need it. So please, let it back in again. Find the way. And I can make that process really quite easy for you. I've got your back on that if you would like help, but really open up, find a way to free yourself from the prison of your fear.

[00:18:07] Throw the windows wide open. See what the fresh air carries in. Goodness is coming for you when you open back up, I promise you. Especially now you've got these new, hard acquired life skills of, the path of chronic stress and chronic negative emotion. A burnout recovery really starts by finding what is Likeable, decent, honourable and admirable inside you.

[00:18:34] And boy, there's a lot once you start looking. Don't doubt it. Hiding from your own goodness was never the plan for you in this life. You were not intended to live this way in suffering, in pain, in burnout. So in a nutshell, if you're in burnout, don't worry, it's fixable. And I would invite you to come and talk to me for free.

[00:18:58] And let's make a plan for you to recover quickly and sustainably and get back to your best performance, leadership, success, and most of all enjoyment inside work and out. If you'd like to book an appointment to speak with me, you can do that at DexRandall. com. Also, if you enjoyed this episode, please do help me reach more people in burnout by rating and reviewing the podcast.

[00:19:23] And sharing the podcast with your friends who may also have chronic stress. Thank you for listening. And lastly, if you like, SMS me your thoughts from today's podcast episode via the link in the show notes. I do read them, I promise you.