Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Overcoming Burnout with Chris Germer, PhD
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:01] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 486 of Live Happy Now. Burnout and stress continue to create tremendous challenges at home and on the job, so this week we’re looking at how we can reclaim our joy and energy. I’m your host, Paula Felps, and this week I’m talking with clinical psychologist Chris Germer, who along with researcher Kristin Neff, developed the world-renowned Mindful Self-Compassion program. Their third co-authored book, Mindful Self-Compassion for Burnout, looks at how self-compassion can help overcome burnout and offers simple anti-burnout tools to de-stress, recharge, and develop your inner kindness. Chris is here to explain what’s causing our burnout and what we can do about it. Let’s have a listen.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:50] PF: Chris, thank you so much for joining me on Live Happy Now.
[0:00:53] CG: Thanks. Great to be here, Paula. Thanks for inviting me.
[0:00:56] PF: Once again, you and Kristin have tackled a really big topic, and that is self-compassion. You’ve done so much in the past to bring awareness to it. Just so we’re on the same page, can you talk about what we’re meaning when we say mindful self-compassion?
[0:01:11] CG: Well, we could spend the whole hour on that one.
[0:01:14] PF: I’ll start with the easy questions, right?
[0:01:16] CG: Yeah. I try to keep it brief. Yeah, so mindfulness is a part of self-compassion, at least as Kristin Neff has defined the term which is used in most of the research, but we say mindful self-compassion just to highlight that self-compassion really is anchored in mindfulness or awareness to what we’re experiencing. Self-compassion means basically being as kind and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer as we would toward a good friend, which is not what we usually do. Usually, we blame ourselves for things. When we’re struggling, we feel alone. We are likely to ruminate rather than having some perspective on what’s going on.
Self-compassion is the opposite of that. In Kristin’s model, self-compassion consists of mindfulness, in other words, being present with what’s going on. A sense of common humanity, which means when we’re struggling to recognize that actually, even in those moments, we’re still part of the human race. Lastly, rather than beating ourselves up or criticizing ourselves when things go wrong, to be kind to ourselves, as I said earlier, as we might with a good friend. That’s what self-compassion is.
[0:02:41] PF: It sounds simple enough. In many ways, it is simple. It’s a simple practice, but it’s very hard to do. Why is it so difficult for us to practice that self-compassion?
[0:02:54] CG: I can perhaps say two things. One is that the negative response to ourselves when we suffer appears to be physiologically based. In other words, when we suffer, we’re in a stress situation. Stress is associated with fight, flight, or freeze. Basically, we feel threatened. There’s a whole physiology around that, with increased adrenaline, increased cortisol, but the physiology of care is usually quite different. For example, we’re more likely to have the love hormone, oxytocin flowing through our veins. We’re more likely to have the endorphins, the feel-good hormones in our bodies.
The physiology of care, which is very natural for human beings, because in order to survive, in order to actually raise children and work together to some extent that we can like survive together, we’ve needed care. We have different systems in our bodies. One is the threat system. One is the care system, but when we suffer and we feel threatened, there’s a whole different physiology that gets kicked in. So, it’s really hard to be kind to ourselves as we would to another, because physiologically, we’re just unsupported. So, that’s one reason, but another reason is culture.
I would say, I mean, I’ve taught self-compassion all over the world. In every culture, people give me an explanation for why in my culture, self-compassion is frowned upon. In other words, you’re supposed to deny yourself and just be compassionate toward others. The research shows that’s a bad idea. In other words, it’s not good for others when we deny our own struggles. We need to be compassionate toward ourselves in order to be truly compassionate toward others.
[0:04:48] PF: In this new book, you’ve tackled burnout. You look at how we can use self-compassion to overcome burnout. Can you give us an idea of how big a problem burnout is for us right now?
[0:05:00] CG: Yeah. There are lots of surveys that have been conducted around the world on burnout. There are different definitions of burnout and different criteria for whether somebody’s actually burned out, but in general, we find that when people are asked about their work experience, a minimum of 25% and sometimes even up to 75% of people say they are burned out or show symptoms of burnout.
I can say that in the last month, there was a study that came out in American Medical Association Journal saying that the burnout rate during the pandemic was like at 58%, something like that. Now it’s down to 48%. They were feeling quite pleased that it’s below 50%, but what that means, Paula, is if you go to a doctor, the chances are 50% that they basically don’t want to see you, because they’re burned out. That’s a frightfully high number.
[0:06:06] PF: What made you and Kristin decide this time around, we’re going to take on the topic of burnout? Was it an academic? Was it a personal pursuit?
[0:06:15] CG: Oh, definitely personal. It was during the pandemic when so many people got burned out. In her case, I mean, she was the one who suggested doing this project. At the time, her child who has autism was home. Her mom had just moved into her house, so she was in the typical sandwich situation. Also, her career was changing. She was moving out of academia and more into a full-time teaching of self-compassion. She had so much on her plate. I think it was –not think, I know, was feeling burned out.
Then she asked me, “What do you think, Chris?” I said, “Well, it’s a great topic, but I’m not so sure, like we can do this.” Because in my case, I had just turned 69. I was trying to write a book, a different book. Book on shame. It wasn’t happening. I just started resenting when people asked me to do things like, give a podcast like this. In this case, I can tell you, I was super happy to do this one, but at the time, I didn’t want to do anything. It was partly related, Paula, for me, a phase of life.
One of the interesting subtexts to burnout is often core values. Whether you’re actually living a chord with your core values, if you’re not, it’s easy to feel drained or kind of, yeah, like this is worthless activity. So, my core values had shifted a little bit. I didn’t want to keep doing the same stuff I was doing. I wanted to shift a little more toward inner life, which is how I started my career with a lot of meditation. So, using self-compassion, I actually, I was able to validate that what mattered most to me changed. That’s what we call tender self-compassion.
Then also to give myself a little fear of self-compassion, which is, “You know Chris, you can do this. You can actually meditate as much as you want until 12 noon. Then you can do your other work.” So, this was basically how self-compassion helped me through a state of burnout, but in answer to your question, both Kristin and I were feeling burned out at the time, which is, of course, why academics write or do anything. They solved their own problems, but we couldn’t write the book, because that was just like one more thing.
Then we asked Chris Benton, who was the editor of our previous book, The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook. If she would be willing to go strike the thing for us, because she knew a lot about self-compassion, and she willingly did that. But then after a while, as we were reading her stuff and getting energized and psyched by it, and as she and I started to solve our burnout problem, we took over the task and Chris Benton graciously and gently said, do your thing. So, as a result, this book ended up being the handiwork of three authors.
[0:09:17] PF: Can you give us the short version of why self-compassion is such a wonderful antidote for burnout?
[0:09:23] CG: Burnout basically consists of three general areas. One is a sense of exhaustion, which most people associate with burnout, feeling like nothing left to give. Then the second one is depersonalization, and that’s when we feel cynical about our work. If you’re a doctor, you’re supposed to love your patients, but you’re starting to hate them, like detached, negative. That’s the second, I would say, key characteristic. The third is reduced accomplishment. In other words, feeling ineffective or inept or incompetent.
What are the factors that lead to that? There are external factors that lead to that. For example, you can have an excessive workload, like a lot of people had during the pandemic or lack of control or unclear work expectations, unfairness on the job, lack of support, or maybe doing work that is conflicting with value. There are a lot of external reasons. Then there are internal reasons for burnout. For example, one of the – like often when people feel burned out, they blame themselves for feeling burned out like, what’s the matter with me, I burned out so and so didn’t burn out, but actually caring about our work.
Also, if you’re in care, giving job caring about others is a prescription for burnout. We’re more likely to tip over if we actually care about what we’re doing. This is an internal situation or not balancing our work-life and the rest of our life, or some people are real tenderhearted and sensitive and they get compassion fatigue when they’re around people who are suffering a lot. It feels like their own suffering.
Other people, for example, struggle with self-worth. They think if I’m not working all the time, I’m worthless. That’s an internal problem. Some people blame themselves when they fail, like self-critical, that’ll wear us down. There are many different, you might say, internal and external reasons for burnout. Then how does self-compassion deal with this? What’s important to know about self-compassion is that there are really two, you might say, pathways. One is tender and the other is tough or fierce, right?
Tender self-compassion refers to comforting, soothing, reassuring, validating. It’s about nurturing. You can probably imagine Paula, as I’m speaking, is that when people are really burned out, they tend not to nurture themselves. They really need to nurture themselves. They need to give themselves permission to nurture themselves. In this way, self-compassion can help. Basically, when we recognize the research, which is that people who are high in self-compassion are way less likely to burn out.
Then they start to think, well, maybe self-compassion is a good thing. What self-compassion can I give it to myself? What does it take to start actually caring for oneself as we might care for others? This is how the tender side of self-compassion is helpful for burnout, but there are also the conditions that in which burnout is more likely to occur, the external conditions that I mentioned. So, how do we address the external factors? That’s fierce self-compassion. That’s tough self-compassion. This is self-compassion in action.
Then if you think about, okay, what about my workplace? The structure of my workplace is burning me out. It could be, for example, that I’m always being asked to work longer than I can bear. Then we need to draw a boundary. We need to say to our boss, “You know, I appreciate that you need this work done, but I just can’t do it anymore. I need to go home at 5:00.” This is setting a boundary and this is fierce self-compassion, right, or maybe it would be helpful to organize and change the workplace norms, or in my case when I was – I needed actually fierce self-compassion to tell myself, “Chris, you can do this.”
Fierce self-compassion has a protective aspect that has an aspect of providing for ourselves, but it also has a motivating aspect like, “You can do this. This is tough, but you can do this.” In these ways, tender and tough ways, self-compassion is a antidote to burnout.
[0:13:54] PF: So then where does somebody start if they – because when you’re burned out, everything just seems immense. It’s like listening to this podcast is probably too much work. It’s just too much. I don’t need anything else. What are baby steps that people can start taking if they want to dip their toe into self-compassion and start trying that on?
[0:14:17] CG: Where does one start? One can start by saying, “I think I’m burned out.” Then one can start by doing something easy, like listening to this podcast or getting the book. We wrote this book in a way that is hopefully super easy to read. Basically, in our minds, we had to thought, okay, this is a book for people who are feeling burned out, or like on the way to burn out, we don’t want to burden them any further. How can we deliver the medicine in a way that won’t add to the burden?
Then really asking oneself, what about my work is so stressful? Burnout is basically stress in the work situation that is getting worse, not better. What is so stressful about my work? For example, is it that I can’t say no? Then I need to set a boundary. Is it that I’m too perfectionist? Then I need to work with shame. Is it that I’m anxious all the time? Well, maybe I need to calm my body. Is it that I have compassion fatigue or empathy fatigue? Oh, maybe I can learn some equanimity. Is it that this job is so not aligned with my core values? What does it take to affirm my core values? Is it that I’m not having enough joy in life? What does it take to learn to savor?
We have chapters in his book on all these subjects, but if a person can identify what it is particularly about the workplace that they’re struggling with, then the solution is like a key to the lock. In other words, like really, we have energy for the solution.
[0:15:59] PF: As we let you go, and people are thinking about their own burnout and how they can use self-compassion. What’s the one thing you would leave with them? Kind of like a little takeaway that they can start implementing now to start working toward making that change?
[0:16:16] CG: Well, the first thing I would say is if you’re feeling burned out, it’s not a crime and it’s not a shame. It’s human. It’s human. So, please, the first thing is just to affirm that that is so. Second is to understand that self-compassion is an antidote to burnout. So, to give yourself permission, permission to be kind to yourself, permission to be compassionate with yourself. Then to think, often when we’re stressed out, we don’t know how to be compassionate with ourselves. We don’t know how like, what does this mean?
There, Apollo, there’s the quintessential self-compassion question is, what do I need? What do I need? When we’re struggling with burnout, we need to ask the question, what do I need? But if we’re so stressed out or overwhelmed, we might not be able to find an answer. An answer to your question, allow yourself to be burned out, ask yourself the question, what do I need? Then if you cannot find the answer, then you can begin to look at this book, but what I would recommend to people at a very, very simple level is when you’re struggling and your body feels really tense, just check in your body. Where do you feel the most tension? Where do you feel in your body the most tension?
Then take a hand and put a hand over that part of your body and just gently massage or rub that part of the body, even imagining kindness flowing through your fingers into that part of your body that’s suffering so much and notice how that feels. That’s a very simple expression of self-compassion. The research has shown that decreases stress as similar to as if somebody was giving us a hug. That only 20 seconds of this kind of touch in the day significantly reduces stress. To start really small, where do I feel it in my body, gently touch or massage that part of the body? Notice what happens. Then if you get inspired, read the book.
[0:18:32] PF: I love it. Well, we’re going to tell our listeners how to find it, how to find you. I think your site has some good little tools that they can download as well. Thank you so much. This is an excellent book. It is an easy read, but a very important one. Thank you both for writing it. Thank you for coming on the show to talk about it.
[0:18:51] CG: Thanks, Paula.
[OUTRO]
[0:18:56] PF: That was Chris Germer talking about how self-compassion can help prevent and overcome burnout. If you’d like to learn more about Chris and Kristin Neff, check out their new book, Mindful Self-Compassion for Burnout, download a free chapter, or follow them on social media. Just visit us @livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode. That is all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps reminding you to make every day a happy one.
