Michaela O'Donnell: Hi, everybody, Michaela, here, executive director, the depre center. And today I want to talk about Burnout, what it is, why, it seems increasingly prevalent and how we might respond.
Michaela O'Donnell: Let's start with what it is. Burnout is a term. It's it's largely a psychological term, and it started popping up in the literature in the late sixties. And there's and then from there people started putting some framework and definitions around it and then doing different studies. Most of those initial studies were in the context of the workplace, which is why.
Michaela O'Donnell: I think, is one of the big reasons why Burnout continues to be largely a workplace conversation, though not exclusively so. There's a psychologist called Herbert Rudenberger.
Michaela O'Donnell: and he he talked about Burnout as a state of fatigue or frustration that resulted from professional relationships that failed to produce expected results or rewards. So he was really zeroing in on the professional relationship.
Michaela O'Donnell: Then, sort of stacked on top of that was a psychologist named Christina Maslick. And she started to kind of like, do some more studies that helped described. Okay, but what is it? What? What are the different components? And how do we can point to somebody and say, Yeah, they're experiencing burnout. And she had these 3 different components, emotional exhaustion.
Michaela O'Donnell: depersonalization.
Michaela O'Donnell: and a diminished sense of personal accomplishment that occurs in among professionals, particularly in relation to those other people they work with and challenging or stressful situations. So again, now, we're introducing
Michaela O'Donnell: this sort of stressful work environment in addition to the potentially stressful interpersonal relationships.
Michaela O'Donnell: And then there's been just the last 15 years or so. Just a proliferation of studies and resources and commentary and frameworks on burnout largely cause there's been, I think, a proliferation of burnout.
Michaela O'Donnell: So these there's a pair of sisters. They're called the Emily and Amelia
Michaela O'Donnell: Ngoski, Emily and Amelia Nagoski, and they wrote a book Burnout with the secret to unlocking the stress cycle. And they actually went on, that. That book is largely geared toward women who are it's professional women. But the the principles are, geared more widely, and are are certainly things to look at more generally.
Michaela O'Donnell: They give just a little bit of more terminology to these 3 components that Maslak, get with us.
Michaela O'Donnell: so they say. So. This emotional exhaustion.
Michaela O'Donnell: You might be burned out if you're feeling emotionally exhausted, which is the fatigue that comes from caring
Michaela O'Donnell: for too much
Michaela O'Donnell: for too long
Michaela O'Donnell: without being cared for in return. Right? So when we've given and our care doesn't match what we feel on the other side, whether that's real or perceive whether it's in those interpersonal relationships, or, more largely, in our business or organization or workplace. And I I think this is, I'm not a psychologist, but I think this is where we start to talk about other domains, or this can happen as well. Church the family. Certain kinds of friendships. Right?
Michaela O'Donnell: You might know that you're feeling burned out. If you have a sense of depersonalization, what does that mean?
Michaela O'Donnell: It's this depletion of empathy, care, and compassion. You notice in yourself that when you think about
Michaela O'Donnell: the people in your workplace, the people that your work is serving, the system in which you work, you just. You don't care as much. You feel emotionally distant, and in a way that feels like it's the result of the stressors that you've experienced.
Michaela O'Donnell: And then the 3rd aspect that they talk about is a decreased sense of accomplishment.
Michaela O'Donnell: So this is the, I mean the worst case scenarios. The sisters talk about this as the unconquerable sense of futility.
Michaela O'Donnell: feeling like nothing we do can make a difference. This is where my theological hat starts to go up and think about. Okay, this is sort of the opposite of the hope we talk about in Christ. This is the like a sense of despondentness like, I don't have hope that this is going to get better.
Michaela O'Donnell: Okay? So that is sort of a picture of burnout
Michaela O'Donnell: and we could add stories there, and and oh, my goodness! Like the stories that we hear at the depree center of folks who are experiencing burnout, it's very real but so I'm not gonna go into those stories right now, but just sort of maybe picture in your mind. If you've ever felt this way or somebody that you worked alongside or know personally outside of work of their work context, if if this tracks
Michaela O'Donnell: so I think some of the some of the
Michaela O'Donnell: common
Michaela O'Donnell: conceptions, some of them, I think, maybe misconceptions about how we get here. I think we people think we get burned out when we just work too hard when we give too much. We don't have good personal boundaries. We, just, you know, show up early and leave late answer emails all the time.
Michaela O'Donnell: and that that's cert. That certainly can be true, and I don't want to diminish that. But again, by and large, when I think about the stories of people that we hear from a depree center. It's a lot less that.
Michaela O'Donnell: And it's a lot more than next 2 things. This. So the 1st one is just kind of like working too hard, not having the best sense of our own personal boundaries, which is very real and can happen.
Michaela O'Donnell: But the second is that our job, whatever is being asked from us is actually too much.
Michaela O'Donnell: and requires more than a human can give
Michaela O'Donnell: potentially in the timeframe that we've been asked to give it. So we've been given too much, and that too muchness starts to communicate on some level that lack of care we're asked to care for and to give without necessarily with feeling like the the expectations aren't necessarily caring expectations on the other side.
Michaela O'Donnell: And then the 3rd thing, that sort of comes out of that second one, but I think is is distinct enough to name it as a 3rd thing is.
Michaela O'Donnell: burn out
Michaela O'Donnell: more and more when I'm thinking I'm thinking about a nurse who I was talking to the other day. She's like, I just gotta go. I just gotta go. It's too much. I've been doing this for too long. I've been caring for too many things right? That's kind of like the work is too big. It's too it's too much. But also
Michaela O'Donnell: when she talked to me, I just got this sense that
Michaela O'Donnell: the system that
Michaela O'Donnell: she works in
Michaela O'Donnell: was not actually designed for her employee, flourishing.
Michaela O'Donnell: It wasn't designed to seek the very best for her. It's designed around patient outcomes things that are so critical and important, but not necessarily for the mental health and wellbeing of an individual worker or employee in a system. So more and more, this 3rd thing feels like burnout is an individual response to a systemic issue.
Michaela O'Donnell: So working too hard, that can certainly be the case. Are, the expectations are really just too much, and then the system is not designed to seek the flourishing of its employees. And that's not necessarily because the people who are in leadership in those systems are bad. People are not wanting to seek the flourishing, but the way that the pieces move move together are not seeking the best for everyone.
Michaela O'Donnell: And again we I I hear a lot of stories from people at the Depree Center that have to do with, not them not feeling cared for by their workplaces, and where that usually comes to a point is not feeling cared for by their leaders, their supervisors, their managers.
Michaela O'Donnell: In my most gracious interpretation of that, it's not because those leaders are bad people, and they don't care about the you know family or the wellbeing, or the emotional
Michaela O'Donnell: safety of the people who
Michaela O'Donnell: are entrusted to their care, but because the larger system actually isn't designed to seek that leaders flourishing either. And in all of that
Michaela O'Donnell: it feels like there's a whole problem to unravel
Michaela O'Donnell: and to collectively put our shoulders to here at the depre center.
Michaela O'Donnell: We do really imagine a world in which leaders are flourishing.
Michaela O'Donnell: and they're seeking the very best for the systems and people entrusted to their care. And increasingly, we realize just how complex of issue an issue that is. We think that
Michaela O'Donnell: now I think that this has a lot to do with a lot of things, but that the piece of it that depre center can really speak into as a part of a seminary as a part of a institution, who cares deeply about and wants to
Michaela O'Donnell: bolster all the goodness of the Church is the role of spiritual formation. What does it mean to be
Michaela O'Donnell: spiritually formed
Michaela O'Donnell: for this kind of world in which burnout seems to be on the rise because our systems are not necessarily designed for our individual flourishing.
Michaela O'Donnell: I I've I have a book called Life Influx, that I co-wrote with Lisa Pratt Slayton, and one of the authors that she kind of exposed me to while we were writing. That
Michaela O'Donnell: was a philosopher named Bianchule Han, and he wrote a book called Small, one of those like small, really good books here like this is like 80 pages, but I just want to keep reading it. It's called the Burnout Society.
Michaela O'Donnell: and in that he gets into the levels of
Michaela O'Donnell: what our society, what Western society values, and how that shapes all of this, and he talks about the values of positivity and self improvement. So this is kinda like, how do we get here? Right? This is in the how did we get here? Section he talks about these values of
Michaela O'Donnell: positivity and self improvement, and that those are the values that are being sort of idealized in Western culture, which means that it becomes a pressure cooker for individuals striving to do more, to sort of make it all happen. When those expectations that are too much come on us, our response is inculturated to
Michaela O'Donnell: give more and to yes, like absolutely like, we'll go in there like we'll do that when
Michaela O'Donnell: the systemic response is not necessarily calibrated. To give us more, but but simply to ask more. That that's certainly like you can see how a lot of that over time has gotten us here. I think the other big. Why, in terms of how we've gotten here is that while we've been.
Michaela O'Donnell: all culture has been building toward this sense of individual individualism, taking on more individual individual individualism, individuals, role in systemic situations and sort of putting the onus there. I think we've also had any number of
Michaela O'Donnell: patterns and habits that have moved us away from each other as just culture. And Kurt Thompson, who's a really wonderful psycho psychiatrist. That works on these kind of issues. He had an article come out in the New York Times with Tish Harrison Warren, who is an Anglican priest. They're both sort of popular writers. They're writing in the New York Times, and they talked about that we th. This was the line that really caught my attention, that we had any number of practices.
Michaela O'Donnell: they have us moving further and further away from each other.
Michaela O'Donnell: We are. And and I would add, we're less known by our neighbors. We make a little room for spontaneity and our schedules.
Michaela O'Donnell: I think we might be less known by our coworkers. We think we might be less known by the people who lead us, into whose care we're entrusted. We've lost the art of building that connected tissue that communicates that kind of care to us. And so if we're not getting that care in our workplaces, and we're not getting that care
Michaela O'Donnell: in other relational pockets in our lives.
Michaela O'Donnell: then we're alone.
Michaela O'Donnell: and we're that talk about emotional exhaustion and a sense of depersonalization. And no wonder we have kind of that despondent nature that is, is the picture of burnout. So that's that's just that's
Michaela O'Donnell: I think that's that's kind of where we are. And I think it's important to name that. And again, so okay, what is burnout? That last section kind of jumped into there to like? Why, what's behind this?
Michaela O'Donnell: so where do we go from? Here again? I think the depre center. One of the things that we care
Michaela O'Donnell: deeply about is this spiritual formation of leaders across industries and seasons of life, so that they can flourish
Michaela O'Donnell: and seek the very best for the people and systems that are entrusted to their care.
Michaela O'Donnell: And there's a lot that is here, and I'm not gonna go into all of this in this, in this recorded session. But I wanna name one thing, and it comes from Parker Palmer, who is
Michaela O'Donnell: a writer. He's a Christian writer, he writes, I think, one of the most foundational books on vocation. This idea of what is God calling me to in the last 50 to 75 years in the United States, and the book is called, Let your Life Speak.
Michaela O'Donnell: and in this, in this here's his quote and read. This, he says, though usually regarded as the result of trying to give too much
Michaela O'Donnell: burnout in my experience, results from trying to give what I did not possess. The ultimate in giving too little.
Michaela O'Donnell: Burnout is a state of emptiness, to be sure.
Michaela O'Donnell: but it does not result from giving all I have.
Michaela O'Donnell: It merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the 1st place.
Michaela O'Donnell: and I think one of the markers of what it means to live and work and
Michaela O'Donnell: lead in a distinctively Christian way
Michaela O'Donnell: is to do so
Michaela O'Donnell: from a state of dependence on God that is captured in what Palmer just said here.
Michaela O'Donnell: So when we try to give
Michaela O'Donnell: beyond what God has asked us to do, or has put in us, or
Michaela O'Donnell: as Lisa, my and my co-author, and I would say, is outside of our headlights.
Michaela O'Donnell: I think that is just a recipe to find ourselves in more and more places that are asking more and more of us without giving that kind of care and return, and
Michaela O'Donnell: I think that one of the places to be able to calibrate
Michaela O'Donnell: that which we have to give
Michaela O'Donnell: is the deep understanding of who God has made us to be.
Michaela O'Donnell: who we are.
Michaela O'Donnell: who we aren't.
Michaela O'Donnell: and therefore what is ours to do.
Michaela O'Donnell: and that that isn't something we can do alone.
Michaela O'Donnell: And so it returns us back to Kurt Thompson's words in conversation with Tish Harrison Warren. That says, Okay, how do we recover the act of moving toward each other
Michaela O'Donnell: in the very daily? Very simple, very neighborly kinds of ways, right? This is thinking neighborly, and my mind goes to the Good Samaritan, how do we move toward each other and need so that others might move toward us, and our need depending on sort of where we find ourselves in that story.
Michaela O'Donnell: So
Michaela O'Donnell: burnout is complex, largely leaving it to the psychologist to define that. How did we get here? I think that there's just a lot.
Michaela O'Donnell: And I do think the where we go from here, I think we we have. There's a Christian response here. And that response is ultimately quite helpful. You can see sort of what might be with a lot of folks saying, you know, I'm gonna kinda anchor myself, and the people who know me best, who love me
Michaela O'Donnell: can help me decide what is mine to do, to stay in my headlights, to not to resist the pressure to give from that which I do not have to possess in the 1st place, and then let that inform how I'm going to engage with.
Michaela O'Donnell: but my shoulder to
Michaela O'Donnell: in some cases remake and redeem the systems that I'm part of. So
Michaela O'Donnell: there's a bit on burnout. Let me know what questions you have. Let us know what comes up for you. There's lots out there. We want to know what you're learning. We want to know what's been helpful to you.
Michaela O'Donnell: Thanks for listening.