Are You Burning Out? What Burnout on Moms Really Looks Like with Sasha Shillcutt | Ep. 130

0:00Hi, mom friend. Welcome back to the Learning to Mom podcast. I'm Layla, your official mom friend. Around here, we don't shy away from hard conversations. We talk about the real and the hard parts of motherhood, but we don't stop there. We give tangible advice for moving past the hard. I started this podcast because I didn't have anyone to ask my endless first-time mom questions to, and I wanted to create that space for you, but do so in a positive light rather than just like, harboring on all the hard and you leave an episode leaving more angry and resentful and bitter than you were before listening to an episode.

0:39So if that is your kind of vibe, you are going to love it here. Now let's take a deep breath and we can dive into today's episode together. Each expert guest comes with their own background and perspective. So please note that the content presented in this podcast is designed for general educational purposes only, and it's done to substitute for first-line professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Dr. Sasha, welcome to the Learning to Mom podcast. Hi, Layla. I'm so happy to be here. Oh, thanks so much for coming on. Before I start asking all my gazillion questions, because I have a gazillion for you, could you introduce yourself to us and tell us what Brave Enough is all about?

1:19Sasha Shillcutt:Yeah. So I am a cardiac anesthesiologist by training. So I am a doctor who basically takes care of people that are undergoing open heart surgery, keeps you alive, does all the things. And I started about a decade ago, I found myself having four kids under the age of seven and being a very busy doctor and thinking, what did I do to my life? Like, is this the life that I thought I was going to live? It's not. And I was burned out. I was exhausted. I was constantly feeling emotionally and just physically frayed at the end of my day. Like I, I just, I was in this chronic state of burnout, like such severe stress and burnout, but I didn't have any language around it.

2:07Sasha Shillcutt:I knew I had to make changes. I made some really small changes in myself that had big impact and that we can talk about, but basically the biggest one was just spending some time daily with myself and having some self-reflection. And at the end of that year, a lot of things had improved. I had boundaries. I felt stronger in my marriage. I felt closer to my kids. But I was really, really lonely. And I recognized I was well enough to realize how lonely I was, if that makes sense. And I had just lost track of friendships and connection with other women. So I started a text group that really grew into a Facebook group of 12 ,000 women.

2:50Sasha Shillcutt:And that then became my current company called Brave Enough, where I empower women on time management and how to set boundaries. And I specifically help women take back their time. I'm so excited to dive into all of this. Something that you said at the beginning there was discussing your own journey with burnout. and you said that you didn't have the language for it then. So can we just dive into what burnout is and maybe give language to someone who needs it? Yeah, so burnout is an actual diagnosis. A lot of people don't know that. I didn't know that. And it really comes down to three things in your life where three different symptoms, let's call them.

3:34Sasha Shillcutt:One is disengagement, like totally emotionally disengaged, just like so tired emotionally, so empty that somebody could just say, hey, how are you doing? You know, you could run into someone at Target or in the hallway at work and you literally just shut down because you don't even have the emotional energy to engage in the most superficial fashion with someone. So it's emotional exhaustion. And women tend to have that symptom be the strongest. The second one is inefficiency. So because we're so exhausted, we just become completely inefficient in our work. And that can hurt us because we may get labeled as lazy or we don't care or unmotivated, but we're so burned out that our body and our mind just kind of shut down to energy savings mode.

4:21Sasha Shillcutt:It's like putting yourself on like low battery mode on your phone, right? You're not off, but you're not like using everything and you're doing it to save your energy, but other people might be like, what's up with Layla? She just doesn't even come to any meetings anymore. She's so lazy. She doesn't even, you know, like do her hair anymore or whatever. Even the people that we love around us might be looking at us like, what's happening with you? But we're just in energy protection mode. So we're very, very inefficient. Tasks that we used to be able to do like 30 of those in an hour, we can maybe get to one task in an hour.

4:57Sasha Shillcutt:And then the other thing is like, we just become very disillusioned with people. Men tend to kind of go down the angry route. We tend to just feel hopeless and like, nothing's going to change. This is my life forever. This is where I'm stuck. And we kind of put people and see people as objects. Okay. That was actually very helpful. Thank you. And what you just said very easily transitions into one of my first questions for you, which was, why do you think so many moms today experience burnout? I think it is part of our culture and our society to put undue pressure on women, moms, and ourselves.

5:42I think we have a lot of messaging that is out there that we should

5:48Sasha Shillcutt:look like we didn't just have a baby. We should be the mom that does Pinterest crafts. And we should, you know, one of my favorite quotes is, you should mother like you don't have a job and you should work like you're not a mother. And that is the expectation that not just society puts on us, we put it on ourselves. And there's so much comparison, even at school pickup. You know, you're like comparing yourself to the next mom and this mom, and you're like, oh, I don't look as cute as her. Oh gosh, she's on this committee. Oh, she's a working mom and I stay home. Like there's so many things. Like the working moms are comparing themselves to the moms that stay at home and the stay at home moms are comparing themselves to the working moms.

6:34Sasha Shillcutt:And because of that, we just find ourselves easily on a path to burnout. If you're the kind of mom who likes to understand the why behind what you do, this is for you. Because the mom club on Patreon isn't only about giving you extra content, even though holy cow, there's a lot of it that only mom club members have access to. But it's also a place to really learn, grow, and feel more confident in your decisions. You get the full uncut podcast episodes. That's 15 to 30 more minutes every single week of every single episode, plus an extra exclusive episode every month, our monthly book club meeting, and the sweetest community of moms who love learning together.

7:18So come join me at learningtomompodcast.com slash join. As always, the links in the show notes below for you. We'll grab our coffee, sit down on the couch like we would if we were together and dig deeper. I love you, friend, and I can't wait to become real mom friends with you inside the mom club. Again, that's learningtomompodcast.com slash join. So talking about that path to burnout, burnout, what does that path to burnout really look like?

7:49Sasha Shillcutt:It can look very different for different people. But one thing that is common is the over-functioning. So I always say people that are low performers don't burn out. And I don't mean to sound harsh, but it's true. They don't, you know, lazy people, we all work with lazy, a couple of lazy people here, there, you know, a couple lazy people. They don't burn out. Like they just don't burn out. It's the high functioning people that burn out. So the people that put a lot of pressure on themselves or they can, they feel like, well, I should be able to do more. And so I'm going to do more. I'm going to say yes to this people pleasers, very common to burn out.

8:28Sasha Shillcutt:A lot of times people that were adult children burn out because they took on the responsibility of caring for other people as a parent, as a child, And then when they become a parent themselves or when they become an adult, they just think, well, I've been doing this since I was like age seven or eight. So I'm just going to keep doing it. And I'm so good at it that everybody expects it of me. And so those are the people that are at risk for burnout and find themselves burning out. Okay. This is a very good conversation for me to listen to, Dr. Sasha, because here I am. Right. Obviously, I have this podcast.

9:04But then I'm thinking of like this other thing. I'm like, oh, I really want to do that too. And now I'm like, wait, but if I do that, will it lead to burnout? Oh my gosh. So when you're in a state of not burnout, but you want to prevent burnout from happening, what do we need to do?

9:22Sasha Shillcutt:Good question. We need to ask ourselves, what are we going to end? What are we going to quit? Okay. What are we going to swap? Okay. So for example, let's take you. Okay. You have this amazing podcast, like you're reaching all these moms. You're helping. I can't swap this. this is my business. This is your business. But let's say you want to add a book. You're like, I'm going to write a book. Okay. There's no way that you're going to add a book to your writing to your life and be able to deliver the same energy without swapping something else out. And what we don't do is we don't swap. And so people come to us and they're like, hey, will you be on this committee?

10:05Sasha Shillcutt:Because you're amazing and you'd be so good on this committee and we're planning this event. And instead of us going like, we know immediately in our gut, like before they've even finished the sentence, we know like, oh my gosh, this is, I don't want to do this. I don't have time for this. This is so stressful. Like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, we're running the list. But then over here, we're like, oh my gosh, they're asking me. This is amazing. Like they love, I love this person. They love me. Okay. Okay. Instead of that, like A or B, we don't realize that we have the agency to say, that's awesome that you're asking me.

10:40Sasha Shillcutt:I don't have time to do it or I don't have the capacity. Give me 24 hours because I'd either have to drop something to do what you're asking me. And I don't know if I have anything to drop, but I'll get back to you in 24 hours. Or we don't just say no right away. We take on the guilt and then we delay it and becomes a yes because we don't know how to swap something out. I'm currently doing that right now. I'm delaying. Yeah. It's the delayed no that kills us in the end because a delayed no always becomes a yes. Okay. So what do we do if we are actively experiencing burnout? So the first thing you need to do is just own it and recognize it.

11:21give yourself a little space to go, wow, I am in the space of burnout.

11:28Sasha Shillcutt:Like I'm not just stressed. I'm not just tired, but I'm actually totally burned out, which means I got to take the prescription and get better. And I have to give myself space to do that. So I think number one, like giving yourself the permission to accept that you are burned out is huge because it's a mindset shift, right? Like if someone said, Layla, you have cancer. You wouldn't be like, I don't know. Do you think I have cancer? I'm not sure about that. You'd be like, what? Okay. What do I need to do? Right? So first you have to accept that you are in that place and give yourself massive grace about it because a lot of us find ourselves there and it's out of good intentions.

12:17Sasha Shillcutt:We want to help people. We want to serve. We want to be the best mom, the best wife, the best employee, the best fill in the blank, sister, aunt, whatever. And so just giving yourself space to go, I'm burned out. And to get better, I got to make some changes. So I always tell people when they come to me, it's when they're burned out. What they're doing isn't working. And I say, okay, we have to really get lean right now. We got to only do what's absolutely necessary for the next few weeks in your life. And they're like, I can't do that. I have this coming up and this coming up and this coming up.

12:53Sasha Shillcutt:And I'm like, no, no, no, no. Like you have a diagnosis and we need to get better. And so we're going to just get rid of all the things that are not necessary. And we're going to focus on spending time alone with yourself in your thoughts, reflecting every day to until you get out of the fog, The fog is lifted and you're like, oh, no wonder I'm burned out. I'm doing 50 things and expecting to do 50 things at 100 % instead of doing five things at 100%. So it's really a whole exercise of getting rid of things. But first comes that clarity. You have to have the clarity and the mindset shift of I'm burned out and I have to get better.

13:36Sasha Shillcutt:So I got to get rid of anything that's not absolutely necessary for me to do in the next three to four weeks to give myself space and time to figure out what my next moves are. Interrupting this week's episode real quick for this week's segment of MomMail. If you're new here, this is the part of the show where I answer a listener submitted situation or scenario. Basically, you write in your tricky situation and I give you advice only a real mom friend would give. Here's the email we're answering today. Hi, Layla. I know you don't post pics of your kids on social media. So I was wondering how you handle when family members do.

14:13We also don't post pics of our kid, but both our moms, but both our moms post pictures of our kids. What did you do to get your family members to stop? Thanks for your help and for the podcast. It's my favorite podcast. Okay. Uh, this I'm so glad you asked. Um, because I do think that this, you are like definitely not alone. And this is a topic that I could just, oh, my whole entire podcast could be designated to this. And that's how passionate I am about this. But I will say that for me personally, we are just really lucky that both family, like sides of the family, we don't really use social media.

14:57So it's not something that we have to worry about really at all. Like our siblings. So my children's aunts and uncles use social media, but their grandparents do not. And the aunts and uncles, we have been really lucky, don't post them. I think they did at the beginning. And then as we just stayed consistent with making it known that we don't post our kids and kind of being like blatant and vocal about it, they got the hints and stopped. Or if a picture was posted, it would be like on their story and it was with our permission. So I really do appreciate that. So really, I mean, I know I can't speak from my own personal experience with this since we just kind of got lucky that our parents who would be the ones to post pictures of their grown kids like aren't on social media, so you don't have to worry about it.

15:53But I would truthfully just tell them like, we're not posting pictures of our kids. We would appreciate you not as well. And I wouldn't really ask, like it would definitely be a tell. It would be like, this is our boundary. We as a family are not posting our kids on social media. We do not feel comfortable with you posting our children on social media. This is our family rule. Similar to like, if we had a family rule that we're not going to have our kids watch TV show XYZ and they go over to grandma's house, we expect that they're not going to be introduced to TV show XYZ there, right? Like same things.

16:32Um, I probably just a tip. I would most likely have the, who like you talk to your mom and your husband talk to their mom about it. And also I have an episode about this. I kind of forget when it was.

16:54It's called The One Parenting Hill I Die On. It's episode 117. It was released November 24th. Again, it's titled The One Parenting Hill I Die On. I would send that to them because in that episode, I talk so much about why we don't post our kids on social media. And I got so much feedback from that episode from listeners of like, either, you know, all your, all your points were spot on. I'm sending it to my mom to, you know, you've convinced me not to post my kids on social media. So I just think it's a comprehensive episode that your mom's and your husband's mom is going to have some understanding as to why this is the boundary that you've had put in place.

17:42And then we'll hopefully, most likely follow it after you've had that boundary conversation in addition to you having that boundary conversation because not only are you asking, but then you're providing another resource and it's not like you having to educate them, but they're kind of hearing it from a third party. So they might even listen more. We all know that it's hardest to get our families on board with something when it's like we're the ones trying to convince them. So that's kind of what I would advise. I'm so proud of you for not posting your kids. I know it's really hard, but your kids are going to be so, so grateful for you protecting their digital footprint.

18:22Sasha Shillcutt:So well done. Thank you. And thank you for your kind words about the podcast. Now, if you're looking for advice, email me at learningtomompodcast.mommail at gmail.com with the subject line, mom mail, and then keep your ears open because we might just answer it on an upcoming episode. Again, that's learningtomompodcast.mommail at gmail.com. What are some things that people can prune that maybe they're not aware that they even can? So you would be amazed at, I have women do this exercise where I primarily coach a lot of women who work outside of the home in like traditional corporate or industry.

19:04And some of

19:06Sasha Shillcutt:them are entrepreneurs also or own their own businesses or they have like a side hustle or something. They're doing, you know, a million things. And I'll say, OK, I want you to write down everything on a list that is overwhelming to you and like a task that you have to do that you're like, oh, my gosh, like you think of this task and you just shut down. All the things that stress you out. It could be anything from making your kids lunches every night to going to the grocery store to finishing this project to I have to go give this talk in two months and go to this conference. I mean, just whatever it is, just list it all.

19:44Sasha Shillcutt:Okay. And then I asked them to X out the things that number one, they get paid to do. Okay. So cross out all the things that you actually get paid to do. Like someone pays you money to do these things. So you got to do them. Like you can't just stop doing them. Right. Like for me, it's putting people to sleep, waking them up. Like I can't just say tomorrow I'm not going to go to the OR. Like I'm not going to be an anesthesiologist tomorrow. Like I would get fired. Right. So like X out all the things that you get paid to do. And then I want you to X out things that like someone is directly like depending on you for like feeding your children.

20:28Sasha Shillcutt:okay um something that only you truly can do like nobody else can do this thing i mean even feeding your children you can probably find someone to do that if you really needed to but like only you can do these things so whatever it is and then look at what's left and you would be amazed at how many women have very little things to cross out because they're doing number one unpaid work women get asked we know this i have actually published this research women get asked to do work that no one's paying them to do men don't do that work because they actually don't even get approached to do that work so fascinating and so much sense yeah yeah so we are we end up doing a lot of things in our life that we don't get paid to do some of those things we want to do like Maybe we want to volunteer for our kids' school to do this event or do this thing.

21:25Sasha Shillcutt:But a lot of it is actually associated with our work and our jobs. And that's the first thing you got to get rid of. Stop doing unpaid work. Stop doing other people's work. Okay. That's the next thing. We often, you know, I'll say, oh, you do this. I didn't know you do that. Oh, well, I have to do it because nobody else will do it. If I don't do it, it doesn't get done. That's a very common thing women say, right? Or, well, I have to, you know, there's lots of those things that other people that we live with would actually do if we expected it of them. Or if we said, I'm going to just do these things and I need you to do these things.

22:05Sasha Shillcutt:But we don't even have those conversations because we put pressure on ourselves as women that we should be able to do it all, right? Yeah. What about when you have pruned these activities? what tips or how should we go about then really communicating with our husband to be like I'm not going to be doing xyz anymore yeah so I talk about this in my first book um a really funny story about this because the very beginning like I told you about 10 years ago when I started to burn out I realized that I had to start spending time with myself and so I started getting up early in the morning because that was the only time I had during the day ever to spend time with myself.

22:49Sasha Shillcutt:And I realized like, okay, I got to go to bed earlier because I'm getting up at like 4.30 in the morning. So I got to go to bed really early. And at night, I would always go to the kitchen and clean up the kitchen and go through the school papers and pack the lunches and do all the things. And my husband would work out at night. And so he would be working out. I would be cleaning up everything, starting the dishwasher, doing all that. And then I would just, and then I would like crash into bed every night. And he didn't even know what needed to be done at night because he was always working. That was his workout time.

23:20Sasha Shillcutt:And I just thought, I'm just going to bed. So I just didn't do any of that. I didn't pack lunches. I didn't clean up the kitchen. I didn't start the dishwasher. Nothing. I just went to bed. I do not recommend this approach, by the way. Okay. So I just went to bed and my husband came back and he woke me up and was like, are you sick? I was like, no. I would be so mad to be woken up. What are you doing? What are you doing? I was like, I'm going to bed. He's like, the kitchen is a disaster. Nobody's made the kids' lunches, all this stuff. I was like, oh, I don't do that anymore. He's like, who doesn't?

23:58Sasha Shillcutt:And I was like, I don't know, but not me. It's not me. So then what happened was he started doing those things and then he stopped working out. So then he was grumpy. And in about three months, our marriage started taking hits and falling apart because the bus was falling, like the wheels were falling off the bus. And then we realized we are more than a 2.0 FTE family. We need help. You want to get up early and work out and spend time with yourself and have your you time. And you got to go to bed early. I work out at night and I don't have an hour of my time to do all this stuff. So we started hiring someone to come in the morning before the kids went to school for an hour and a half a morning.

24:42Sasha Shillcutt:She would do all those things. I paid her cash. She was a neighbor girl. Before she went to school, she made money. And then she would go to school and it worked out. So you need to communicate what your boundaries are and what you need with your partner. And then not just push all that work on your partner. Sometimes there's a major imbalance. It's really dependent on your household. And your partner does need to pick up a lot of the slack. Sometimes, though, you need help. Like, you both need help doing some of these things. But communication is key. Communication is huge. So good. As an extremely busy mom, my house gets messy so fast, and I don't have time for cleaning products that kinda work.