What to Do When Work Hijacks Your Life | Dr. Guy Winch - EP 767

27:01And that creates, and we know there's research, for example, that demonstrates that when one person is severely pressured and stressed at work, their partner will start to develop symptoms of burnout, even if their work is not stressful or they're not working, because that's how much it can transfer from one person to another. Moods are extremely contagious, as when somebody comes home irritable or preoccupied or anxious or worried or tense, it radiates to the, it creates that vibe in the home. And so there are all these ways in which we really bring work home, not to mention that so many people are dealing with after emails that they have to check in all the time.

27:46So they're not even, they're still really at work. They're still dealing with it. They're still in that mindset. They don't even get the evenings or the weekends to fully detach and to be somewhere else mentally, physically. And for all of those reasons, we absolutely bring it home and then it really infects the home. I work from home. And so from one aspect, I love the convenience of it. I love that I get to spend my day with my two dogs and all those things. But on the flip side of it, I feel like I can never get away from it. And it's so convenient when your spouse steps out of the room and is doing something for five minutes and you know on your mind that there's a million things you haven't gotten done to just walk down the hall and get back into it.

28:31And then before you blink, an hour has gone by. So sometimes for me, I wish I would have a job or be in an office environment where I didn't have to bring it home or live with it at home because it does complicate things. What's your advice for a person in that type of situation on how to get away from it? Well, first of all, I do want to say that when people actually, I work from home as well, but when people work outside of the home and they come home, it's very hard to escape from that as well because they're preoccupied with work, their emails to do. When they have five minutes, they'll open a laptop at home and if they work in the office to do that thing, the same temptations.

29:09are there but the two things people need to understand number one the research is very clear in terms of emotional health and physical health when you have a very stressful and demanding workday it is a physiological and psychological necessity to recover quote unquote from that workday after hours you actually need the after hours to not be in stressed mode to not be activated to not be in fight or flight because from there comes the wear and tear to all your systems, mental, psychological, physical, and otherwise. So you need to be in a relaxed mode. You could be in an excited mode, but it's different than feeling the tension of the workplace.

29:50So that is an imperative. And then the problem is that when you're dipping into work throughout the evening, you're not coming down from that because you're in work mode. When you work from home, there are reminders of work all over the place. So you're likely to think about work. You're likely to start processing the difficult, upsetting, distressing events of the day and to start ruminating about them in ways that are quite harmful and are stressing you out. And to think about all the worrying things that you have coming up and you're at work again. I always say to people, like, I don't care what time you finish work.

30:21You don't finish work when you leave the office. You do not finish work when you close your laptop. You only finish work for the day when you stop thinking about work. And for many people, that's never. So that's one thing that they have to understand, that the goal there is to disconnect, is to detach from the workday. And then the other thing I try and point out is when we talk about work-life balance, people always say to me like, oh no, I added an hour of yoga, so I'll have a better work-life balance. And I'm like, nope, you're not understanding what work-life balance is. The life part is not the hour of yoga.

30:55The life part is regular life. The life part means making dinner with your partner and walking your dogs and doing homework with your kids or putting them to bed or watching a show with friends. That's what life is. You want to be present for that because that's life and not preoccupied and not detached and not there in body, but not in mind and not in spirit because you're actually thinking about something else. So the other part, other reason that's important is because you want to be, otherwise life goes by and you won't remember any of it because you were detached. but you weren't actually there.

31:32Can you talk a little bit about who Tony in the book is, so I can reference him through a couple of questions? Sure. In the book, I follow five people from the start of the book to the end. We see their stories. We keep dipping back and forth between the five characters to hear what happened to them, because I want to talk about the science and I want to talk about the tools and techniques via, through their lens. And so the first person I talk about is Tony. Tony's a trader. And these are all like fake names, right? The people I work with. But Tony was a trader and he encountered office politics that were very difficult and problematic.

32:09And traders have a very stressful job. It's all very high pressure. And for him, the trading part of the work was like, ah, that's a piece of cake. it's the interpersonal politics that he really couldn't handle well. And so we find out what happened to him in this period in his work life. And people always say to me like, oh, when I start reading the book, these characters are nice and interesting. I hope nothing bad happens to them. And I'm like, well, there wouldn't be a book if nothing bad happened to them. So yes, you might anticipate bad things happening to them because bad things did happen to them.

32:44So you tell the story about Tony, who you just mentioned, screaming, sell 20 million, yet being calm a second later. What does that reveal about how stress actually works? Stress is very specific for us. I've dealt, for example, in other words, we develop a stress tolerance for, which is not general. It's specific to certain kinds of stresses. Tony did that for a living. So he could get on a call. And by the way, he was screaming because the trading room is very loud and busy and you just need to get their attention. So he's, but he could scream, sell to him in and he's done in other words it wasn't it his stress response was very well well sharpened in that domain i've worked for example with veterans in war that did not have ptsd went through difficult things but their stress response for those situations was incredibly sharp they could deal with them without and but put them in a emotional argument with their spouse and they would go to pieces because that's the resilience was not there it was in other places and so how we respond to stress is a matter of training when somebody when doctors first start they they spend their rotations they get extraordinarily stressed out they're not used to that level of chaos i worked in a locked psychiatric ward i talk about some of that in the book and when you get there the chaos the screaming the shouting the babbling the hallucinations It's like you get so overwhelmed because I am not used to this.

34:18But one month later, you can walk through like people screaming and then doesn't touch you because you're used to it. So our stress tolerance is quite adaptable and it's quite elastic. And so we can adapt to certain situations. And the ones we are more familiar with, we adapt well to and we can get deal with stress and then come down from it quickly. And the ones that we don't, we're going to have a much poorer response to. So another character in the book is a woman named Sally and Sally's parents died, unfortunately, within a very short period. One from, it appeared to be causes from being in the military and the other one from cancer.

34:57But you use her to talk about rumination. Can you expand upon that? Yes. To ruminate means to chew over. That's the literal meaning of the word. It comes from how cows digest food. They chew things over. They swallow. They regurgitate, chew. that's how they extract nutrition. When we ruminate, we brood, dwell. So ruminate is the psychological term for that. We tend to do it about distressing, upsetting things. And we tend to do it in a way that's extremely unproductive. So if you had an altercation with somebody, a big argument with a coworker in the office, because they literally, they were trying to stab you in the back or they were trying to do something underhanded and you get home, you're going to brood about that.

35:38You are going to ruminate about that. It's going to be really upsetting to you. Your boss shoots you down in a meeting. It was embarrassing. You feel humiliated. You're going to get home. And the way we churn, the way we do that rumination is extremely unhealthy because what makes it unhealthy is we just go over the upsetting part. We just relive it, rethink it. We imagine it from different angles. We imagine you have fantasy arguments that we'll never do. We imagine, oh, I wish I could go back there and tell off my boss and say, you know what? I hate you and everyone hates you and we are terrible.

36:10We're never going to do it, but we can spend hours imagining mic drop moments that will actually never happen. What happens when we ruminate in that way is we actually are stressing ourselves out. We are flooding our body with cortisol and we are reactivating all the upset that the incident caused. The incident might have lasted two minutes and we were upset at that point for two minutes. We're going to be upset for two hours at home because we're rethinking and reliving and relitigating, and then we'll rumination surf. We'll think of all the other times the boss said the bad thing, and we'll get upset about that, and we can spend hours.

36:45And what makes it very unhealthy is there's no product that comes of it. It is literally churning in an emotional hamster wheel. We're not getting anything out of it. Healthy self-reflection, on the other hand, is a process of problem solving, of gaining insight, of deciding on action items, on getting perspective on doing something that actually eases the stress and distress of whatever it is that we're thinking about. If we got home and thought about our colleague and thought, you know what, let me think about how to manage that person. Do I need to have a conversation with them? Do we need to go to HR?

37:22How can I get my ducks in a row here? Same with the boss. How do I need to think about it? Then we would ease because we're actually trying to figure something out. But when we're ruminating, we're not figuring anything else. We're just churning. And Sally, this character in the book, had such a stressful job situation. She was a single mom. She got home and her precious time with her young daughter, she was checked out for all of it because she's just doing the things, diapering and feeding and putting, doing all the things, but actually completely somewhere else. And it distressed her terribly.

37:52She goes, I'm working so hard to be able to have time with my daughter. I'm missing it. I'm not there at all and I can't shut it off. Ruminations are involuntary thoughts. They're very compelling and they're very difficult to stop. You can't just say to yourself, I don't want to ruminate. Yeah. And speaking of her child, what are the ramifications speaking of passing things on to the child when the parent is ruminating like that and checked out? Well, her child was quite young. I think she was five or six at the time, but children can tell when the parent is checked out. Mommy, mommy, I said something and you're not responding.

38:28But But again, as the kids get older, they will start to avoid you when you get home and you're ruminating because they can see the tension in your face. You're thinking about something very upsetting or distressing. If you've ever sat by someone, been in a room with somebody who seems extremely preoccupied with something upsetting, and you're not in an upset mood and they don't want to talk to you about it, you'll be like, I will go to another room because that is stressing me out, upsetting me, making me tense. I don't want it. really causes these disconnects in families and in relationships and in friendships.

39:02From the work I've been doing that exact age, four, five, six, from a developmental standpoint is exactly when kids are forming their identity and forming their value system. And from what I've seen in the research that I've been doing, almost four out of 10 kids that age today feel like they don't matter. And I think a lot of this has to do with that social mirroring, the person from a neuroscience standpoint who reflects our worth back as our parent. And when that parent isn't doing it, it creates a huge void, which is where I was going with the question. So I think it's doing far more damage than what we think.

39:44Right. Because when you're on autopilot as a parent with a kid of that age. It means that you're listening in semi and yes, yes, sure, honey, but you're not going to show any curiosity towards the kid. You're not going to actually look at them in a way that they feel fully seen. You're not going to get the nuance of what they're saying and explore that more with them. And yeah, they will not feel that scene. They'll feel like you're there doing something robotic and disconnected, and that will have an impact. Guy, you've alluded to this a few times throughout the interview today, but one of the most profound ideas I found in the book is that every stressful situation is either a challenge or a threat.

40:24Why does it matter so much to realize that difference? And how is it not only psychological, but physiological? So the challenge threat theory, it's not mine, it's the prevailing theory in sports psychology. And it's a really interesting theory because the idea is that when you have a situation in front of you like you have a big game coming up you have a big presentation at work you have an important meeting happening at work then how you perceive that meeting and how you perceive your ability to manage it can be very nuanced but those nuances make a critical difference specifically if you see that as a challenge to which you can rise the idea of the challenge state it's a challenge you feel equipped to meet you have the training you did the preparation you know your stuff you feel confident you're going to go in there to crush it that kind of mentality let's go crush it that puts you in a very specific mindset that has consequences in terms of your physiology that are dramatic in terms of your heart rate and your hormones zero transmitters and and the physiological and mental state that you will be in will be very conducive to you doing well see the situation not as a challenge you feel equipped to meet but as a threat one that you hope you can do well but it feels a little bit threatening you're not going in to crush it you're going in to not lose heading into the field i hope you don't lose this game as opposed to i hope you crush it that that's a nuance you want to win in both situations you want to do well in both situations but one is a defensive posture one is not confident one is in which you don't feel fully in control one is in that you don't feel as prepared as you might.

42:03And that mindset, no matter how motivated you are to succeed, has a very different suite of psychological and physiological responses and in our mind and our body that will make us second guess, will make us tentative, will make us hesitate and will predispose us to failure much more. And so it's not even the training that matters. It's the mindset that you bring to the situation. Because if you have all the training in the world, but you're still hesitant, you're going to see the situation as a threat rather than a challenge. And so mindset becomes extremely important. And feeling in control of a situation becomes very important.

42:43And feeling prepared for that is very important. And in the workplace, you need to understand the difference between these mindsets because success depends on it in many cases. So this past week, I was on a trip across the country and ended up having a mechanical delay on my flight, which caused a lot of issues because I missed the next flight, then had to get booked into a hotel. And of course, they schedule you out on the first flight in the morning. So I've got three hours of sleep at night. But the thing I have always had a disdain for about flying is that I'm not in control and I hate it from that standpoint.

43:23And going back to Tony, you talk about him working in a very chaotic environment, which I found much of my career, especially in Fortune 500 companies, was in extremely chaotic environments, constantly changing, constantly reprioritizing. And oftentimes we're not in control, but we're striving to feel like we're in control or trying to get some type of control because if not, just feel completely out of it. How do you suggest to people that they can create a sense of control in a chaotic environment like that? Well, first of all, you said it exactly. We strive that you should strive to feel in control.

44:10The sense of control, much like stress, is very psychological it's illusory it's not about how much control you have it's how much control you can feel in a certain situation so you don't need to have a lot of control to feel that you have some control in a chaotic work environment you can take time and this is part of the message of the book that intentionality as as you as your first book was it's about being intentional which means okay i have a very difficult day i have this very difficult meeting then this client who always throws a monkey wrench into the works at the last minute. And then my boss who always have some unexpected thing.

44:47And so I have no idea what's coming down the pike, but what, so I don't feel a sense of control, but what, how you then try and give yourself a sense of control is, okay, let me sit down and figure out what the possibilities were. What did this client do the last time? What if they do that again? Let me just be a little bit prepared. Let me think a couple of steps ahead. Let me try and regain a sense of control by anticipating. Or, for example, by after this meeting, which I know is going to be difficult, let me schedule time to meet up quickly with a colleague so I can debrief and re-regulate myself so I don't go into the next one, all activated because things were chaotic.

45:23The self-regulation, the emotional intelligence of being able to do that matters as well. Let me make a list of four things I can do that if my boss does the A, B, or C. I can give him arguments or her arguments about why it might be a better idea to do something else. B, anticipate, think ahead, make some lists. Those things might or might not prove to be useful, but the doing of them, the making of them will calm you and will make you feel more in control. Because instead of something that's unexpected, one or two or three things might happen. I thought through each of them and how I might respond to them.

45:59So again, you're not controlling anything that's happening, but you have a better sense of how you would manage it. And that gives you a sense of control, which will calm you, make you less anxious, make you less reactive, make you less emotional, and make you respond much more from the head than impulsively or spontaneously, which can go wrong. Guy, another character in the book who you follow is Carlos. And I wanted to use Carlos to talk about boundaries. In the book, you lay out four steps and an overarching principle for boundary setting. You say clarity, explanation, consequence, and then maintaining the boundary enforcement are all key.

46:38But why is respect also part of that equation? Anyone knows who's experienced boundaries from the other end. In other words, anyone who's had a friend, a colleague, a loved one say to them, hey, you violated my boundary in some kind of way i'd like you to not do this again especially if they did so inadvertently knows that that's a really uncomfortable message to receive we don't like to think of ourselves as somebody who's violating somebody's boundaries making somebody feel uncomfortable very small percentage of people don't mind that most of us mind it quite a lot so it's actually quite a difficult message to receive and usually boundaries are set after multiple violations not the first time and so now you're thinking, oh, I've been upsetting this person over and over again for like months or years, and I'm just finding out about it.

47:27That's also a different thing. Our natural response is going to be defensive, is going to want to like an argue with it and push back on it or tell them, well, fine, but you violated mine. So it's a very difficult thing for the other person to accept, especially if they're close, especially if it was not intentional. Doing so respectfully is the spoonful of sugar that will help that message go down. Because if you're being respectful and you don't have a tone about it, you're not like ascribing malintent or this, you're saying, hey, I know nothing was intended here, but you should know that I'm really sensitive to being called that word.

48:04For me, I get very discombobulated when someone comes at me with five things to do at once. So if you could actually just come at me, whatever the thing is, But if you explain it and you do it in a very respectful way, and then you explain why respectfully this is difficult for me, so I'm asking you if that would be okay that from here on going forward we do things differently. And then even when you maintain the boundary, which is the key element that most people don't, boundaries, it's 10 % of the effort is in setting, 90 % is in maintaining. So if you think you're going to give the message once and you're done, absolutely not.

48:38You're going to have to repeat it. You're going to have to maintain. You're going to have to remind. But then again, do it very respectfully. Oh, I'm so sorry, but remember I asked you if we could do this differently. Do you mind if we do it differently from here on, et cetera? The more respectfully you do it, the more you're helping the person hear it. You're helping the person adhere to it. You're helping them have less of an agenda around it. And so it behooves you to do it in a way that will be more effective. So Guy, throughout the book, you're pretty clear that this book won't help you change your workplace.

49:09It helps you survive it. Why did you think that was the more honest and more empowering approach to take? The workplace today is very difficult in many places. I've seen many people try and set limits, try set limits with their bursal, set boundaries, or try and push back on expectations or try and push back on after-hour emails or how things are being done. And suffer real consequences for that. Oh, we have cuts coming. And so let's look at the complainers. and let's put them on the list. You're not a team player. If you're not staying here till 10.30 at night and showing the face time, then maybe you're not dedicated to the job.

49:48And there's a lot of research, for example, that shows that somebody who does the job as effectively but in less time, exact same work product, but they do it more efficiently, will be judged more poorly than those who seem to take longer because they're more dedicated, they're spending more time. Surely that means commitment. They're less efficient. Doesn't matter. People, managers misjudge that all the time, especially when it's women who are efficient. They get misjudged most, unfortunately. So there are all these consequences. And pushing back can be dangerous in many industries. It's just not acceptable in many companies.

50:22It's dangerous in many industries. I don't know the reader. I don't know what company they're in, the industry they're in. I don't know their boss and their proclivities. So I don't want to set them up to advocate for themselves as nicely as well as they might do it in a way that's going to be harmful. And that's also not the point of my book. My point of the book is that you can reduce stress and pressure and improve your quality of life at home and improve your quality of work life in the office by managing yourself differently, more effectively, more thoughtfully. There is a huge delta to be had there.

50:56So start there. then if you've done everything you can to minimize the grind to use all these tools that I gave to manage all these situations better to recover more effectively from the workday to improve your relationships to rest and find opportunities for breaks and recharge during the workday if you do all these different things to minimize rumination etc there are many and then you should be in a better place then you want to be in a more objective place to judge but if this still feels intolerable for me, then maybe a move might be warranted. But first, take care of the part that you can take care of.

51:31So Guy, final question for you about the book. If someone really applied it, how would they feel different about their life six months from now? So first of all, the characters in the book apply it. And over the years that I've been working with people and with companies, many dozens and hundreds of people have actually applied it. But apply it, you need to apply it. This is not a, oh, I'll do a little bit here, a little bit there. It's like if you're training for a marathon, for example, or for a big race, you need to train in all the ways you need to train the muscles, you need to train endurance, you need to eat correctly, you need to sleep correctly, you need to do it comprehensively.

52:05When people do this, the first thing they feel is a real reduction in stress. They feel like they're getting back in touch with themselves and their lives. They feel this oxygen come in to these aspects of their personalities and their identities and their home lives that they feel reinvigorated by, enthused by, and rejuvenated by. And work feels more manageable and for some more compelling. You can rediscover the joy in what you do, the meaning in what you do, and it will improve your work product. You will be sharper because you're not exhausting yourself unnecessarily and you're really finding ways to maximize your abilities your mental skill set your creativity all those different things it should be for many people it's a general tonic they just feel so much better and so much more aware like they go through the work day and it feels oh i'm aware of what's happening now i'm aware that i need to take a break after this and before i would just keep going to the next thing i'm aware that i need to plan my evening so that even if I plan to do nothing but veg out, it's an intentional vegging rather than the default one, a mindless one, because I'm giving myself that evening to veg out because the next day I'll do something that's more active and recharging, et cetera.

53:19It's just leading a more mindful life and a much more rewarding one for that. And last question for you, what does it mean for you to live a passion struck life? For me, it means to be able to stoke. I'm a kind of person, I'm very fortunate, I think, in certain ways, because I have passions about many things. Some people, there's just one thing they're interested. There are many things that excite me. There are many things that interest me. There are many things that spark my curiosity. There are many goals like I'd like to have. For me, a passion-struck life is being able to pursue these things as much as possible and as many of them as possible.

53:56And I'm very thoughtful in how I curate the things I take on at work, the stuff that I do in my personal time, in my family life, I am very thoughtful because I want to, passion to me is a driving force. It's what it's about. That's what gives you meaning. It's the engine, right? It's where you get everything from. So stoking that and being aware of that and cultivating that and addressing that and discovering that in new places, that's what that means to me. I love it. Guy, where's the best place people can learn more about you and everything that you do? Dot com. That's G-U-Y-W-I-N-C-H dot com.

54:38Do you forget that? Just remember Guy and put in Guy, psychologist, and there's just not a ton. My name will pop up at some point. They can see I have three TED Talks. They can see my TED Talks. This is my fourth book. They're in 30 languages. You can find them, links to them through my website. You can link to my social media. I have a sub-stack newsletter that comes out every couple of weeks. You can find that. So that's the best portal to find out more about me. Love it. Guy, it was such an honor to have you today. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. That brings us to the end of today's conversation with Dr.

55:12Guy Winch. And what stayed with me most is this. Burnout doesn't usually arrive as a dramatic collapse. More often, it happens quietly. You slowly disconnect from your relationships, from your energy, from your presence, and eventually from yourself. What I appreciated so much about Guy's perspective is that he reminds us that work stress isn't just logistical, it's emotional. It affects how we think, how we show up at home, how we connect with the people we love, and whether we feel truly alive in our own lives. And honestly, I think many people normalize these patterns for far too long because achievement and exhaustion have become so intertwined in modern culture.

55:53But maybe success was never supposed to cost us ourselves. Maybe the goal isn't just productivity. Maybe it's learning how to pursue meaningful work without abandoning the parts of ourselves that make life meaningful in the first place. And next up in our Forged in Adversity series, we continue week three with Paralympian bestselling author and inspirational force Amy Purdy. In our conversation about her brand new book, Bounce Forward, we explore what it means not just to survive life-changing adversity, but to rebuild after it. Because recovery isn't about returning to who you were before hardship.

56:31Sometimes it's about discovering new strength, new perspective, and new possibilities because of it. When I first lost my legs, everybody told me what I couldn't do, that I wouldn't be able to snowboard again, that they didn't know what my life would look like either. They didn't know if I could go back to work as a massage therapist, or I'd be able to wear the things I want to wear my high heels or, and people would actually say, I'm so sorry. Really, you lost your like nurses would say that I am so sorry. It was just such a sad thing. And I didn't want this kind of story to be created for me, like this identity that I'm supposed to now take on, because now I have a disability and that, and it looks a certain way.

57:14I didn't want that to define what my life was going to look like. I wanted to figure out what my life was going to look like. If today's episode resonated with you, share it with someone who might need it. Leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and explore more at theignitedlife.net. Until next time, remember, a meaningful life isn't built only through achievement. It's built through presence, connection, and remembering who you are beyond the grind. I'm John Miles, and you've been PassionStruck.

57:46Thank you.