[00:00:00] 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 this week for an episode on compassion and it's taken me 166 episodes to talk on this. Partly because it's quite a highly discussed subject already and I usually talk about more elusive or contrarian views on burnout topics rather than something you already know about.

[00:00:45] However, compassion is so fundamental to burnout recovery that I will speak about it today. And doubtless I'll be as contrarian as usual. So of course nothing will detract from your favorite compassion expert. But if listening today does bring compassion into more focus in your work and life, then it's all the better.

[00:01:06] You can never get too much compassion. Which reminds me, I must talk about compassion fatigue. I'll come to that in a minute.

[00:01:13] Okay, so compassion. What is it? Why is it important? Why aren't we experiencing enough compassion? And what can we do about that? So of course, I looked up some definitions of compassion and the one I like best is "to suffer with".

[00:01:29] Because "suffering with" really has a sense of equality and gentleness about it. You're willing to imagine another person's suffering and share the load without judgment. I really see it as standing with a person, holding them in your care without invading in thought or speech or action. There's no sense of rescue.

[00:01:55] Empathy by contrast is the ability to sense, be aware of, and emotionally understand what other people feel by imagining what their experience might be. And when we describe empaths as people highly attuned to the energies and emotions of others, really we imply that the empath feels the emotion of the other.

[00:02:21] So in this way, I think it goes further than compassion towards the other person's experience. And that can be a double edged sword. If we actually feel the pain of others, we risk being affected by that pain ourselves. We might soak it up like a sponge. And I believe this is what's usually called Compassion Fatigue.

[00:02:43] We feel a negative energy or emotion synergistically with another person who suffers, but we may not feel what they feel because when we imagine what their experience might be, we'll ascribe our own meaning to that situation, not the other person's. We redefine it according to our own experience, so we may not feel the same feeling they feel.

[00:03:08] And really I see compassion fatigue as continuing to share and support others through their pain, feeling our own version of it, at the cost of not supporting ourselves through our own pain, leaving our own emotions untended. This is emotional service of others, but neglect of the self. We're starving for emotional support, but not giving ourselves that support, instead offering it to other people.

[00:03:37] This is giving from an empty cup. And for anyone in caring professions, doctors, nurses, paramedics, emergency workers, teachers, social workers, and so on. In fact, for anyone in burnout, you're probably doing this. No blame. I'm not judging anyone for doing this, but I think this is, probably the experience that's so painful for those caring professions.

[00:04:01] And it's okay that you do this. It's okay because it's what you've been taught to do. Probably in your training, standards have been set for how you will serve others. And I think self neglect is quite often baked into those expectations. For example, moral injury in doctors. Knowing what patients need and being constrained by the system from supplying it.

[00:04:26] And being unable to service their own personal needs, again, to satisfy that system. And I see this a little bit as the scourge of modern professionalism. Somehow, we all got sacrificed on the altar of capitalism, to give in a way that we can't afford to. Whether you're an empath or not, and, however your own emotions play out inside of you, self neglect has to stop if you will cure burnout.

[00:04:54] A human cannot thrive by suppressing their emotions or their own needs. And I actually consider myself to be an empath and it is very useful in certain ways, but I do remain mindful and also open and gently curious about the other person's experience, since I do not know what that is. I can just feel a sense of some emotional energy and I might draw my own conclusions about that and it might be wrong.

[00:05:26] So I think really compassion can be more powerful because it really leaves the other person to their full experience uninterrupted by me because then I'm just the witness and the receiver. And to complete the picture on that, sympathy. Sympathy is feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune.

[00:05:49] And I think probably sympathy at bereavement is generally accepted as perfectly genuine as a sign of sorrow, but pity is a little bit more difficult. It lacks a sense of equality. It basically places us above the objects of our pity. For example, I pity her lack of education. So as you can see from those descriptions, compassion, empathy and sympathy are near neighbors, but somehow they're still miles apart.

[00:06:20] And the reason I bring that up is to avoid the confusion that we might get into, but also because compassion for me has no downside, because I think compassion fatigue is actually empathy fatigue. And as a student of Buddhism, I understand it as a self replenishing resource, compassion. The more compassion you practice, the more you have, like love and kindness, and the more you experience, compassion then has arguably more benefit to the giver than the recipient.

[00:06:53] The giver has the energy of compassion flooding their heart and their mind, their body and spirit, which promotes well being in them at all levels. Of course, you may disagree with what I'm saying today, as any day. If you do, feel free to send me an SMS via the link in the show notes and let me know. I can't reply directly to your SMS because I won't have your number, but I will respond in an upcoming episode.

[00:07:20] But here's how I think love, kindness and compassion promote well being in the giver. On an energy level in your body, they generate hormones, such as oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine. And these can calm the nervous system, relax the body, enhance mood, reverse a stress state, stimulate social connection of all kinds, increase motivation, pleasure and reward, and trigger endorphins that reduce pain.

[00:07:52] Happy hormones really are driven by a core survival instinct that all animals have. Animals seek pleasure, avoid pain and save energy. So we're wired to seek all of these happy hormones and make them happen. If you're in a chronic anxiety, stress, or burnout state, happy hormones stimulated by compassion can turn off the overtaxed stress response in your ANS. As well as turning down your anxious thoughts and feelings, allowing your body to return to rest and repair state. Which really means important functions such as sleep, digestion, sex, lower blood pressure, tissue repair, and growth can all restart.

[00:08:39] All of these reasons, are of course why other practices such as meditation, yoga, stretching, being in nature, singing, play, being around a pet, being with a baby or young child, they're all good for you in a similar way. Anything that smooths out your overtaxed nervous system will be a welcome reprieve and also restorative.

[00:09:07] And compassion is quite simply an act of kindness. It helps you strengthen your bonds with others. Strong social connections are a great predictor of health and longevity. Married people statistically live 10 years longer than unmarried people. And conversely, loneliness kills. 

[00:09:26] Which brings me really to the main reason you might embrace compassion as often as you can. If you're in or near burnout, you're highly likely to preference performance over well being. Yours and other people's, sad to say. You're likely to have stashed your own emotions in the cupboard out the back after discovering how inconvenient they can be to status, progress, and success.

[00:09:57] Because in your quest to super achieve, if you have the hard driven energy of a Type A human, it's easier to dictate your own terms and be right, than to allow your feelings to steer work decisions and negotiation. Hardening off your emotions, shutting people out, makes it easier to win. It's very painful, of course, but you're used to suffering.

[00:10:22] That's normal. You're a hardworking person. Your will to succeed is strong. You just do what you have to do.

[00:10:30] But here's what Lissa Rankin, MD, said in her TED Talk, which I'll put in the show notes, about the number one public health risk. She says this, "We're tribal beings and when we feel lonely our nervous systems sense a threat, activating stress responses that predispose the body to illness. When we come together in conscious community our nervous systems relax and the body's self healing mechanisms activate, which may be the most important medicine that we need."

[00:11:04] I encourage you to listen to the full episode. It's extremely revealing.

[00:11:10] And here's why you're going to want to choose compassion. If you have chronic stress, you're pushing your system beyond its tolerance every day. Your mind, body and spirit. It's not sustainable and you've probably worked that out by now. And the antidote to that starts with self compassion. We could call it self kindness.

[00:11:32] So knowing that, if you could rate your self compassion out of 10 on an average day, what would you give yourself? And I rate mine against how I would behave towards a very small child wailing in distress. Because if your emotions were switched on right now, that's probably what you'd be doing. So maybe rate yourself against how you would treat that child.

[00:11:55] And by the way, whilst turning off your emotions does allow you to remain out in public, and continue to function at some level, it doesn't delete your emotion. It's just that the negative energy of all your denied emotions is blocked up inside your body, where it backs up like a toxic chemical. And eventually that blocked energy builds up to an explosive level.

[00:12:23] And that's when your physical health will start to go downhill. Insomnia, migraines, neck ache, jaw ache, digestive problems, weight gain, backache, aggression, addiction, inflammation, hangovers, joint pain, nerve pain, nightmares, cognitive decline, mental health breakdown, and so on. That's all this energy trying to find some way to get out.

[00:12:49] So really, blocking your true emotions, it's just kicking the problem down the road. And again, the antidote is kindness. And here's what the Mayo Clinic has to say about kindness. " Kindness has been shown to increase self esteem, empathy and compassion and to improve mood. It can decrease blood pressure and cortisol, a hormone directly correlated with stress levels.

[00:13:14] People who give of themselves in a balanced way also tend to be healthier and live longer. Kindness can increase your sense of connectivity with others, decrease loneliness and improve relationships. It can also be contagious, encouraging others to join in with their own generous deeds. Looking for ways to show kindness can give you something to focus on, especially if you're anxious or stressed in certain situations."

[00:13:42] So really, in burnout, a big part of the solution is to start looking at your relationship with yourself, where you have perhaps neglected your own needs, denied your emotions. Maybe let your diet and exercise go. Overworked yourself until you're exhausted. Withdrawn from nourishing social contact. Allowed scowling or argument or silence to dominate at home.

[00:14:08] Failed to make time for fun or friends. Become entrenched in resentment, anxiety and overwhelm. Given into addictions. Stopped caring about your well being. And criticized yourself black and blue for that whole mess. If you can relate to at least two of those, I recommend self compassion and self kindness.

[00:14:29] Actually, I recommend it to every single listener, for the revolution it can create in your experience of life. It turns out that being mean and neglectful to yourself isn't great for the quality of life, but you may not really have put two and two together. You might just think you're doing what you need to do to survive.

[00:14:49] And all that pain is coming from outside, from other people from work, the organization, the government, taxes. The truth is, if all of those things changed, and you got the wonder job, where the people were terrific, the boss was reasonable, the rules were lenient, you were well paid and you could do your job easily, you could still be burned out.

[00:15:12] Why? Because you wouldn't change your habits. You would still push yourself, neglect your own needs, be mean to yourself. You still wouldn't feel good about yourself and that would still hurt. So really, there's a much better way to feel better. And that way is accessible to you right now. Whatever your situation, it is possible to care for yourself better, without penalty.

[00:15:37] In fact, self compassion really restores your faith in yourself. Your basic goodness, your work, your life, and other people. I call that path of learning and applying self compassion, championing yourself. All you really need to do is stop beating yourself with a stick and starving yourself to death of what you need.

[00:16:01] And you're going to do that by finding yourself good enough, worthy, decent, honorable, or whatever your values tell you that you need to be before you will agree to love yourself. When I compare my self compassion to how I would relate to a small wailing child, it's really because at the height of our depression and exhaustion and stress, in burnout, internally we're all reduced to the reactive state of a small neglected child.

[00:16:33] That's how we're actually behaving in an adult body. And if that youngster inside of you is fed up to the back teeth with feeling exhausted, ignored, belittled, starved, shouted at, if you could see that youngster, or imagine them running towards you, arms thrown in the air, howling, what would you do? Kick them or scoop them up and give them a hug?

[00:16:58] Because deep down inside of you right now, if you are that upset kid, what you need is to fill that backlog of missing emotional support that you always wanted. That you needed but didn't get. It's really that simple. And you, as the adult, can just stop self criticizing. You can do that anytime you're ready.

[00:17:20] And be gentle and kind to that kid inside of you, still waiting to be loved and cared for and approved of and listened to. And that is what self compassion will do for you. It's really choosing to actively care for the emotionally downtrodden you. It's just re inflating that forlorn little person, feeding them kindness, encouragement, support and care, helping them out of the trenches of despair and loneliness.

[00:17:55] Self compassion. If you choose to develop a strong sense of self through self compassion, kindness and appreciation, then I promise you will have the strength to overcome burnout. Otherwise, your workplace is just adding insult to injury and you're continuing to injure yourself. But nothing I've said here is about blaming or judging anyone, because all any of us are doing is getting by in life the best we can.

[00:18:21] That's how we learned to do it. And whatever we learned to do to survive probably worked, pretty much, so we keep doing it. Whatever we had to do. But the problem is in burnout, the things that worked before are not working any longer. So then we really have to change our M.O.. We can't keep trying to create change with the stick.

[00:18:45] It needs to be a bit more carrot. We need to be a bit softer. The self compassion, is how we can encourage our battered self to dare to come back to life. Self compassion, championing yourself, kindness, will bring forth your best efforts again. Because it's where you're going to find and restore your own mojo.

[00:19:06] And once you do that, the problems at work will impact you a lot less. You'll be more resilient, more enthusiastic, and remoulding your life will become a lot easier. Self compassion is how you'll begin to feel safe in your world. Safe enough to uncurl, participate and stand up and be counted. And feel genuinely excited about life and the future.

[00:19:34] And I can't wait for you to feel that way. So if you are in burnout, it is fixable. I would invite you to come and talk to me for free, and let's make a plan for you to recover quickly and sustainably from burnout. And get back to your best performance, leadership, success, and most of all enjoyment inside work and out.

[00:19:54] You can book an appointment at DexRandall. Also, please, I ask of you, if you enjoyed this episode, please help me reach more people in burnout by rating and reviewing the podcast and by sharing it with your friends who are also deep in stress. Thank you for listening today and I will catch you again next time.