[SPEAKER_00]: you deserve more than feeling constantly fried to a crisp.

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Fried, the burnout podcast, where you get the understanding, the community, and the information you need to end burnout for good.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host Kate Dunovan, and all of my work focuses on hashtag ending burnout culture.

[SPEAKER_00]: Outside the pod, you'll find me on stages at conferences, giving keynotes, in offices, providing corporate trainings, doing virtual VIP one-on-one work, or supporting our group program on Friday that is run by my right-hand woman Sarah Vosen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Both Sarah and I have been through burnout and came out stronger, happier and more fulfilled.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we want that post burnout growth for you too.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, fried fam.

[SPEAKER_00]: today we get to talk about something we have never talked about on the podcast, which I find hard to believe that we can still there are still topics that we haven't covered after all these years and all these episodes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet I find them typically because of something else that happened in my life that I think, oh, there's a correlation here to burn out recovery that we haven't explored and probably should.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here's what happened.

[SPEAKER_00]: I injured myself.

[SPEAKER_00]: I injured my shoulder.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was in a lot of pain.

[SPEAKER_00]: I went to the doctor.

[SPEAKER_00]: The doctor did an MRI and did some testing and said, you have a tear in one of your tendons.

[SPEAKER_00]: I need you to not row for the next couple of months.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, typically, I row on the river three times a week in the mornings when I'm in town and it was I was unable to do that.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, I don't want you to do that right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be too [SPEAKER_00]: some of the rowing that I had done recently.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I stopped for two months, and in that time I had some acupuncture treatments and I was taking care of it, but I hadn't started physical therapy yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: And after two months, I was still, it was just still not quite right, even though I hadn't rode, I hadn't done any other exercise, I had really rested, like I really rested my shoulder in a great way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I decided, okay, well, it's time for physical therapy because I have brought this as far as I can without it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm gonna go to physical therapy enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I walk into physical therapy in the therapist, goes through a bunch of different tests, and he said, well, your original injury is healed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, okay, good.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, the only thing that's holding you back now is that you're weak and you haven't taken the time to rebuild your strength.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it floored me because when he took me from the, like testing room from the exam room, and then we went out and started doing some exercises, he handed me one pound weights to start with.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if I'm honest, the exercises that he gave me, I couldn't get through all of them even with those one pound weights.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here's how this correlates to burnout.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the beginning of burnout, there's a lot of rest, well, burnout recovery anyway.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of rest and you're sort of stopping everything.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you are slowing down as much as you possibly can.

[SPEAKER_00]: You might still be working but you're sleeping more and other things.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you're doing this like deep, deep reset.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then you may be start to go back to work and you might have the ability to go back on a gradual return to work schedule.

[SPEAKER_00]: So say you're in that mode and you're thinking along the way, like I just can't go back to full time.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's never going to work for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hear this all the time in the Facebook group and in some of the communities that we're running.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hear this all the time that people are like, well, I just can't do what I used to be able to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I honor my body more now, etc.

[SPEAKER_00]: And while I agree that you should be honoring your body more after a burnout recovery.

[SPEAKER_00]: You should be paying more attention to the signals.

[SPEAKER_00]: I also know from experience that once you get through the core of burnout recovery, which is just the resting and restoring phase, there is a rebuild phase where you can and should [SPEAKER_00]: Expand your capacity slowly not to be able to manage everything everywhere all at once, not to be able to handle any single stressor that comes your way, not to be so strong that nothing bothers you, but in order to continue to grow and change you will need to build some strength.

[SPEAKER_00]: back.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just about the rest.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is also a rebuild.

[SPEAKER_00]: The frustration that I hear a lot in the book is like in the group is like, well, I thought I was healed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why can't I do all the things I used to do and or I've gone through burnout recovery, but I just can't work more than 25 hours a week anymore.

[SPEAKER_00]: Both of those things are opposite sides of the same problem and neither of them have to be true long term.

[SPEAKER_00]: We do have to go through the period of rest, then we have to go through the period of recovery.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the rebuilding capacity.

[SPEAKER_00]: part of burnout recovery is getting back into gentle movement.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe you start doing some light yoga and then you bump it up to some walking and then that walk turns into after a few months.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you're doing walk for two minutes jog for 30 seconds.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you start a lightweight training exercise.

[SPEAKER_00]: So some of this is just actually physically rebuilding capacity.

[SPEAKER_00]: The reason that that part is important is because as you grow your muscles as your muscles get stronger, you're mitochondria get happier and stronger and your mitochondria are your batteries, right, for your body.

[SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes we do need to actually engage with exercise as part of our recovery process.

[SPEAKER_00]: But like way down the line.

[SPEAKER_00]: right way down the line.

[SPEAKER_00]: We introduce it.

[SPEAKER_00]: We do it really slowly.

[SPEAKER_00]: We might start with one pound weights.

[SPEAKER_00]: The whole one pound weight part.

[SPEAKER_00]: when he gave them to me I kind of smirked and I was like yeah but I'm pretty strong like I'm a strong person.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've worked out my whole life.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was like yeah just give it a try.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was five reps in and I was almost dying and I thought you know over the past couple of years I tried to get into strength training a few times and I ended up so sore that I couldn't continue and it didn't hit me until that day that I had done too much [SPEAKER_00]: at one time I've been strong my whole life so I've never picked I haven't picked up a weight that was like under eight or ten pounds in ages and here he is giving me these one-pound weights that I would have thought were wimpy and ridiculous but I couldn't even get through a whole set of the exercises that he gave me so oftentimes this rebuilding process happens a lot slower than we want it to and and requires a lot simpler [SPEAKER_00]: movements and slower build, then we might expect from ourselves because I used to be able to do X, Y, Z, because I used to want to blah, blah, blah, blah.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter at this point.

[SPEAKER_00]: So some of the some of the recovery is...

[SPEAKER_00]: muscular.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then some of the recovery is about like when you're rebuilding is about the kind of food that you're eating, I often don't ask people to change their diets in the beginning of a burnout recovery process because you're so exhausted that you can't think about whether or not you're getting a fiber or protein.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when you're mostly recovered and you have to start to really restore and rebuild your energy, we have to really think about the components that we're putting into your body.

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you getting enough carbohydrates?

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you getting enough protein?

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you getting enough fiber?

[SPEAKER_00]: Are you getting enough fats?

[SPEAKER_00]: What are we fueling you with so that your energy can be at its best?

[SPEAKER_00]: But again, these are things that happen later in burnout recovery.

[SPEAKER_00]: The next part of rebuilding your capacity happens in your mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you might be back at work and going through things and you find yourself falling back into sort of nasty comments in your head.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like the inner critic episode with Sarah is a good one to listen to if that's a consistent habit, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: And you start to understand that there are actions and activities [SPEAKER_00]: that gives you more than it takes.

[SPEAKER_00]: And adding more of those things when you can will allow you to have the energy that you need to do the bullshit that you don't want to do, but that has to get done, because we live in a world where shit has to get done.

[SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes it's about learning to judge how draining or how boosting a particular action or activity is and then learning to rebalance that as you go so that some of the things that look like they cost energy are things that actually boost you.

[SPEAKER_00]: So all of that to say that just like my shoulder.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once your initial sort of injury is gone and you've recovered from burnout and your nervous system is pretty balanced and you're sort of doing okay, you might still need some rebuilding some strength building some energy building that is done on the foundation of the work that you just completed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Recovery is not always the finish line, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a training ground in the foundation for whatever chapter comes next.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I wanted to share that with you because it was a huge realization for me and I was sort of really thrown by it for a second and I thought that you might need to be reminded too.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if this was helpful, please let me know.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can comment in the Facebook group or send us a review or send us an email, however you want.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be around, all right?