How Stress Becomes Burnout Via The Nervous System

Many people recognise times when it becomes harder to switch off. We may feel constantly under pressure, more emotionally reactive or as though we are just about keeping up. But sometimes ongoing stress can begin to shift into something else – where we feel more exhausted, detached and less able to think clearly or recover.

In this episode of The Choice Space, Dr Lee David speaks with Dr Claire Plumbly, clinical psychologist and author, about how stress can sometimes progress into burnout through its impact on the nervous system.

The conversation explores the difference between stress and burnout and how burnout may develop when the nervous system stays under pressure for too long. Lee and Claire discuss the green, amber and red states of the nervous system and how understanding these can help make sense of why coping may suddenly feel harder – or why we may feel more disconnected, overwhelmed or shut down.

They also reflect on why burnout is often about more than work alone. Caring responsibilities, parenting, menopause, challenging relationships and the pressure to keep going can all add to the load we are carrying. The discussion explores why feeling heard matters when life feels overwhelming, and practical ways to support recovery – including building small pauses and transition points into busy days.

This is a thoughtful conversation about stress, burnout and recovery, offering a more compassionate and realistic way to understand why coping can sometimes start to feel harder.

Key moments

00:00 The tennis ball machine analogy
02:46 Stress versus burnout
05:47 The tipping point into burnout
08:01 Burnout beyond paid work
10:47 Burnout and the nervous system
16:37 Green, amber and red zones
18:33 Why we need green to think
22:13 Burnout and trauma parallels
27:07 Relationships and nervous system safety
35:08 “Wow, that’s a lot”
40:02 Transition points and reset

About the guest

Dr Claire Plumbly is a clinical psychologist, author of the Amazon bestseller Burnout: How to Manage Your Nervous System Before It Manages You, and founder of Plum Psychology – a psychology practice for overcoming trauma, burnout, anxiety and low self-esteem. Claire and her team are trauma-trained psychologists offering therapy, workplace workshops and EMDR intensives. She is based online and in Taunton, Somerset.

 You can connect with Claire via her website, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn 

About the host

Dr Lee David is a GP, CBT therapist and author specialising in mental health and wellbeing. Lee has written many books on CBT, mindfulness and teen wellbeing, and speaks regularly at conferences and in the media. Away from work she enjoys running, hiking, singing in a choir and spending time outdoors with her family. You can find Lee through her website and on Instagram, TikTok (@dr.lee.david), Facebook and LinkedIn.  You can find more about her books, wellbeing courses and therapy here:  https://linktr.ee/dr.lee.david 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Imagine you're playing tennis against a tennis ball machine. And when you've got one tennis ball machine, you can return the shots. That's manageable and feels good. But now a second tennis ball rolls in. So maybe the first one was a new procedure at work. Now the second tennis ball rolls in, and that's maybe a problem at home where you've got a child who needs a neurodiversity assessment and you're not sure where to proceed. And then your ball machine's rolled out, and you know, it's another change at work. And if you're stuck trying to respond to all of these balls and you're getting pummeled by them, there's only so long that you're going to feel able to respond to that before you then drop into a ball yourself on the court so that you're not going to get hit so badly.

Dr Lee David 0:47

Many people recognise times when it's harder to switch off. We may be feeling constantly on edge or under pressure. And for some, this can build into burnout, which may show up with exhaustion, feeling more detached or withdrawn from work or daily life, and finding it harder to think clearly and stay on top of things. Burnout is often linked to workplace demands, but that doesn't always explain why it can feel so hard to slow down or recover. In this episode, we'll be exploring what burnout is, how it shows up in and beyond work, what's happening in the nervous system, and our response to pressure and to recovery. I'm delighted to be joined today by Dr. Claire Plumley, clinical psychologist and author of Burnout, How to Manage Your Nervous System Before It Manages You. Claire, huge welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Could you start by telling us a little about your work and what drew you into this area? Hi, thanks for the intro. I'm a clinical psychologist, as you say, and I used to work in the NHS up until 2017. So I previously worked in an IAP service, so alongside GPs, and then in a sexual assault service, and then moved to Somerset, where I changed into seeing private practice clients, found that I was seeing a lot more people, such as doctors, nurses, veterinary staff, teachers, all coming with things that related to work. And I started to investigate burnout a little bit more and realized that I was drawing a lot on my trauma training. And I felt that that was really helpful for my clients who were presenting with burnout. And that led me to write my own book because I felt that actually this could be really helpful for other people to understand as well.

Dr Lee David 2:30

Yeah, and I think that's so interesting because we don't always think about those links between burnout and trauma. Let's start with some of the basics, what we really mean by burnout, and how it's different to stress. And what's your working definition of burnout? How would you consider it?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

So, burnout for me is it's different to stress, in that stress is about over-engagement. You've got all the stresses coming in, and we're really engaged and trying to fix and get to the end and sort it out. The problem is quite often in everyday life is that there aren't any endpoints. You know, there's such a short feedback loop when you do something, you send it off, and then suddenly it's back in your inbox. And that's the same for lots of different parts of our life because we have an always-on culture now, that we quite often end up never getting to the point we feel able to retreat and and rest. So burnout comes then when you become trapped in stress and when there's an uneven balance between the stresses coming in and the amount of resources you have access to. Stress is about over-engagement then, burnout is about disengagement. We start to close down and go into that kind of place of retreat in ourselves, not through choice. And I don't think people always realize how much they've disconnected from their own body, from the people around them, from the joy that they used to get from work. They just know that things aren't right, and maybe they recognise that they're snapping or dropping some of those spinning plates, you know, missing things, forgetting things. You know, I've had people worry that they got early onset dementia because they don't feel like they're cognitively sharp anymore. But this is what this disconnection and disengagement can look like. So I think that's maybe a helpful distinction and how I look at it. Stress is over engagement, disengagement is more the burnout, shutdown part.

Dr Lee David 4:15

That's really helpful. Some element of stress can be healthy and it helps motivate us. And we respond by increasing our activity and maybe getting stuff done as a response. But then when we're struggling to get more done, when we're reaching a ceiling perhaps, and actually we almost do less because we feel like this is way too much. I can't, I can't handle this, or our brain starts dropping bits, as you say, then it's moving beyond stress. And I think stress is a continuum in its own right, isn't it? This the early part can be positive. I think at the top end it's often quite damaging. And then burnout's that kind of final place where really the system's starting to break down.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Absolutely. There's a famous bell curve which I include in my book, The Yerkes-Dodson Bell Curve, which is all about optimal stresses for optimal functioning. And in and of itself, stress is coming in, can motivate us, they feel engaging, and it feels pleasing to move towards and be motivated by outcomes and goals. But if we have too many, we don't have enough resources or stress buffers, then we do tip out the other side of that stress curve. And I think unfortunately, you know, where where people are at the top of their curve, ideally trying to like stay just before the top of that curve. Often people are on the cusp of tipping into burnout and overwhelm quite a lot of the time, partly because our systems are set up like that, and partly because people have kind of got used to living on the edge like that. And yeah, so unfortunately, it is quite a common problem that people are describing.

Dr Lee David 5:47

Yes, a lot of people I see are really walking at that top end where they're perhaps not quite burnt out, but they are definitely at risk of tipping in, and it might only take a few additional pressures or a few things going wrong before they hit overwhelms. There's just very little room in the system for challenge or unexpected problems. And then when they happen, there's just very little capacity to be able to cope. And I think it's the culture we're in at the moment, it's that kind of do more, be better, achieve more. And I think more is not always better. Like you say, there's that there's that curve where increasing some sense of pressure and achievement is really positive, but it's not a continual. We can't then keep ramping that up and think that's going to be a positive because in the end it'll just dip off again.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Yeah, and I think a lot of people really struggle with thinking about what do I need to stop or remove in order to say yes to things. There's research that shows that even with well-being tools, we'll quite often be drawn to adding more in rather than thinking about ones that involve like less. I think it's really tricky because we need these boundaries and we need to be able to make space for things. Less is often more, but I think it can feel like we're missing out or failing or letting others down. So it can be complex. And I think in what certain workplaces where your identities become very enmeshed and fused with your identity and work are kind of one and the same, just trying to think about workload and doing less becomes a threat in of itself because then who am I if I start to do less?

Dr Lee David 7:16

You mentioned in the book how burnout is defined as an occupational phenomena. It's linked to work. And so obviously the environment at work, the pressures, the expectations, how work is structured, our relationships with our team members, how many emails we get, how much is on our to-do list, all of that is likely to impact just as much as our own personal responses. But I'm also just thinking about people that I've seen where they might have burnout for other reasons that are not just work-related. And I've certainly seen people who may have pressures at home, perhaps they're caring for an unwell relative, they've got a child who has a lot of additional needs, for example, and people can also have a pattern that feels to me very similar to burnout. And I wondered if that's been your experience as well. Absolutely, yes.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Because the official definition talks about unmanaged chronic occupational stress as being like essential to kind of being able to call it burnout. But I'm arguing in the book that actually we tend to understand occupational as meaning paid occupation, but actually there's lots of places in our life where we are doing unpaid labour. Parenting, caring for relatives, studying. And these these are often places that aren't really acknowledged as being work. And so that adds to it because it's invisible work, and we kind of think everyone else is managing and carrying all these like different loads, but are they? So, yes, there's more going into research being in parental burnout, and there is now an inventory on that, and there's a carer's inventory. So if you kind of want to have a kind of little self-assessment, a lot of them are freely available and can be really helpful to see the items laid out. There is an item on the parental burnout that's something like, I love my children, but I don't want to be near them. These are the kind of things that people will be saying, and that's that disengagement, that disconnect that we see in burnout, which is hard if you're wanting to be a good parent and it doesn't gel with your values and what you want for yourself and your family life. And I think there are certain times in your life where you might have some of these like dual pressures, like that sandwich generation where you've got elderly parents and dependents, which will put you at higher risk as well.

Dr Lee David 9:19

Yes, and often also carrying responsibilities at work and all kinds of complexity. And so I remember I didn't we did an episode with an occupational therapist who was talking about the fact that actually anything we engage in can be considered an occupation. So even hobbies can be considered occupations. And on that definition, then we could look perhaps at the balance of all the different pressures that may cover different aspects of life. And so it feels very much like how do I understand the pattern of my life and how I'm living and all the things I need to do and that are important to me and that I want to be resourced to do. And that feels more helpful than being very specific about it's all all related to work as in a paid occupation.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

So in clinical psychology, we would always look at the whole areas of life. We would always think holistically about the different areas of your work and map that out and see what the different external pressures are for you.

Dr Lee David 10:12

It's often the straw that broke the camel's back in that something small can happen and then people can tip into really feeling overwhelmed. It might be that there's just that one email that feels too much, and but actually it's the all the other things cumulatively that really need to be taken into account. So can you talk to us a little bit about what is happening in the body and in the nervous system when people are starting to develop burnout that can help us understand what's happening in burnout and also start to make sense of why trauma may well be important?

SPEAKER_00 10:47

So the way I talk to my clients about the autonomic nervous system, which is the part of the nervous system that's responsible for keeping us safe, it's the part of us that's always on, always attuned to our environment, the faces around us, the facial expressions of people and the body language of the people around us, the other senses and cues from the environment, so sounds, the smells in the air and everything around us. And the beautiful thing about the autonomic nervous system is that we don't need to consciously be aware of that. It's always on and always looking after us. What that means is that we should spend a lot of our time in the part of our autonomic nervous system that allows us to be attuned to our environment and think clearly. So I refer to this as the green, it's the ventral vagal part of the parasympathetic nervous system, if you want all the technical words, which I'm sure your audience enjoy. And when we're in this part of our autonomic nervous system, we're able to accurately read the facial expressions of those around us. We're able to use all our frontal lobes and executive functioning that's housed there, which means we can problem solve, we can think about abstract things, we can eloquently find our language and comprehend what people are saying to us. And then down in the body, we've got everything happening business as usual, in terms of our heart rate, our resting kind of digestive system is able to be on. And so we need to be coming back to that state regularly as well to kind of reset ourselves and to replenish. And that's the only place really where we can switch down our gears into green. When we're here, we can sleep and we can rest properly. When stress has come in, like emails or like rushing around and having our to-do list, autonomic nervous system's first line of defense is to switch into the amber sympathetic nervous system. And this is the fight or flight place where everything kind of revs up again and the stress hormones that are released are designed to get us into action quickly. So we have a surge of motivation and energy to help us do that. This can feel urgent. So we can feel like we don't have time to stop and have our cup of coffee. I'm always saying to my clients, you know, that's a s that's a sign. If you don't think you've got time to do any of the things we've talked about, it's a sign that you need it even more. Because when we're in that place, it's not just our body that's switched gear, you know, our heart rate has gone up a little bit, digestive system has kind of switched over and lent out all its resources to the large skeletal muscles for the fight or flight responses. And that's why slowing down feels so hard. It almost feels like a threat because the body wants to be moving and it's got all this energy to plow into something. So a dropping into a mindfulness exercise or slowing the body down can feel really tricky for us. And if we don't understand why, we can end up thinking it's not working, it's pointless. So obviously, we're only designed to be in that for a short period of time in order to get through the stresses because it puts a stress on our bodies. And if you don't come back to a reset, this can start to have wear and tear on our organs. That also does mean you're not you're gonna struggle to fall asleep because you've got so much energy in your system that's got to go somewhere. So that's that tired but wired kind of experience that people often describe in burnout. And then the final pace of the autonomic nervous system is this kind of shutdown place that we see. And if you think about the animal kingdom, when you see this, if the prey is being chased by the predator, you'll have seen, I'm sure, some David Attenborough, where the uh animal that being chased will play its final kind of get out of jail free card by just flopping and playing dead, and it can even stop its breathing. And that might seem like a strange strategy to immobilize for safety, but the reason it works is because the predator then thinks, well, this isn't fun anymore, and it wanders off. And so the the the prey has managed to kind of stay alive one more day. And so we might not flop like that, although I have seen people do that. People have said they haven't been able to get out of bed one day, for example, and people can get kind of very physically heavy, but also just on a cognitive level, what that can look like is that you're kind of going through the motions without really connecting to what's going on around you. This is the masking that can happen from why people can find they don't really realize that they are in this place, because even when we're there, if we're managing to kind of operate on some level, we're relying on procedural memory. Procedural memory is the part of our memory that allows us to do quite complex sets of actions through rote learning. Like, for example, I can make a cup of tea without needing to think, oh now I'm boiling the kettle, now I'm putting the tea bag in the cup. I can drive. That's a really complex set of actions. I'm not thinking, now my foot's going on the gas, now I'm moving the clutch. And so we can sometimes get through large chunks of the day without having to really rely on our frontal lobes all that much, all that lovely executive function that I'm talking about. The only time then we might realize things aren't good is when, you know, someone says, Well, can you recall that new procedure that we learned yesterday at work? No. Can you remember the new person's name? No. And you're driving home and there's a blockage and you have to think of a new route and you can't do it. Like decision making as well is a good marker that you're here because decisions which you need that cognitive capacity for just feel completely overwhelmed and we can't do it. These are good examples, I think, that people can be looking out for as red flags. And I like to think of it like gears on a car. You want to be getting the fluidity up and down the gears. And I think in burnout, people have got stuck oscillating between that amber and that red shutdown place, and they're not getting any look in with green really at all. And the positive emotions, the content emotions that you get there.

Dr Lee David 16:37

So, what I'm hearing is we've got three states of the autonomic nervous system. There's green, there's amber, and there's red. And proportionately we want to be spending more of our time in green, which is where we're more regulated, where we can think flexibly, we're doing the things that matter to us, and our body is not under pressure, so we're healing and our body's got time to recharge physically as well as emotionally, and think about all the complex stuff that we're dealing with in day-to-day life and make decisions and deal with situations which might be complex and need lots of thinking about. So, most of life, we probably need that to be able to do our jobs, to be able to decide how to manage our kids when they want to push the boundaries and we're not sure how to parent them. We we really need green for that, don't we? Just as a starting point.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Yeah, and and playfulness. Like, you know, playful parenting involves you needing to be in green. You need creative thought. Your creative thought is housed in the green frontal lobes. And this is part of the difficulty, I think, with some of the techniques we're taught for stress management and supporting ourselves. They can rely too much on green mode already being online. Because the thing with the autonomic nervous system, you know, is very much the brain stem talking to the body, because the way all the nerves are connecting through the body, talking to each other, passing messages up and down, 80% of the direction of travel goes from the body to the brain. So only 20% goes brain to body, which means that those purely cognitive tech techniques, you might struggle to start with those. So, for example, like a thought balancing or problem solving technique or journaling, you might need to do something to kind of work the energy out, slow, regular breathing to kind of bring the body down, somatic exercises that kind of movement and stretches when you're feeling very dysregulated before you can access those sitting and working things out with a pen and paper type exercises.

Dr Lee David 18:33

Right. So that would fit with what I would often say to people, which is when you're very dysregulated, if you're very stressed, very anxious, high intense any emotion really, then we're not in green. And so trying to think at that point is really a mismatch because we need to get to green before we can think, so we have to find a way to get to green and then we can think about it. This is the choice pause, a short tool you'll hear in every episode drawn from my books and therapy practice, each time with something different to help you pause, notice, and choose your next step. Today is a pause for stepping out of overdrive when we hit amber and we're feeling overactivated and stressed, and back down to green. Take a slow breath in and a longer breath out. Let your shoulders be heavy and let go of any tension in your face or jaw. At times you may notice that things are starting to feel urgent. Your thoughts are moving quickly, you're planning ahead, trying to stay on top of everything, and it's all starting to feel a little overwhelming. This might show up as you're working through the tasks on your to-do list, replying to messages, or trying to juggle everything that you need to get done today and feeling a pressure to keep going. When this happens, it can feel difficult to pause. We may feel that we just need to keep pressing on. And yet a brief pause can start to ease some of that pressure just enough to give you a little more choice and find a little more space. Let your attention come to your breathing. Take a breath in and another slow exhale. Notice if you're holding tension anywhere in your body, just let it go. Notice any sense of tightness or drive or an urge to keep going. Maybe say to yourself, I can feel this pressure right now, and I can meet this with a bit of understanding. Maybe you could give yourself permission to slow the pace just a little. What would it look like to take the next step with just a little less urgency or pressure? To pause for a few seconds before continuing. To step back briefly before moving on to the next task. As you continue with your day, start to notice any moments of pressure or tension. And allow yourself a small pause to step out of them when you can. So just to sort of summarise, we go from green when we've got lots on our to-do list or some pressures and stresses, we go up to amber. And it sounds like that would be helpful in the short term. It energizes us to start dealing with them. So it's it's important to have the capacity to go into amber. But if we get stuck there, then that feels quite unhelpful and a chronic stress where our body and brain is really struggling. And then when that persists for a long time or gets more extreme, then we go up into red, which is this shutdown zone. And you you talked about the fight, flight, and then the freeze response. And that does sound quite similar to trauma, where sometimes we do go into freeze when we're facing something that feels I'm powerless. This is a threat which is outside my power to deal with. So the body's response is I'm just gonna check out because I need to just distance myself from something quite horrific that's happening that I can't stop. I'm wondering if there's parallel to that when we're just feeling so overwhelmed by the chronic stresses in our work. The brain is like, look, this is just too much. So I'm out for a while. I just need to sort of step back. And then we're obviously disconnected.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

Yeah, absolutely. And this is why I use the the word trauma. Actually, the US version of my book is called the trauma of burnout, because I think it's the same processes. And if you look at the definitions of trauma, they include things like constant violation of boundaries. You know, in in say sexual trauma, that'll be a physical boundary. In emotional trauma, that's violation of your personal boundaries and wishes. It's kind of like the stresses have come in and there aren't any boundaries and there's no escape. A good metaphor is that imagine you're playing tennis against a tennis ball machine. And when you've got one tennis ball machine, you can return the shots. That's manageable and feels good. But now a second tennis ball rolls in. So maybe the first one was a new procedure at work. Now the second tennis ball rolls in, and that's maybe a problem at home where you've got, you know, a child who needs a neurodiversity assessment and you're not sure where to proceed, and then your ball machine's rolled out, and you know, it's another change at work. And if you're stuck trying to respond to all of these balls and you're getting pummeled by them, there's only so long that you're going to feel able to respond to that before you then drop into a ball yourself on the court so that you're not going to get hit so badly.

Dr Lee David 23:25

Such a helpful analogy. And I I think you can just imagine they're coming faster and faster and faster, and then we end up thinking, I just can't do this. I give up, and our brain just shuts down and stops trying. And there's a point at which we're desperately trying to hit them all back and to keep those plates juggling, and and that's maybe the amber zone where we're really trying to push hard and get everything done. And sometimes I see people go between the two and they they might spend a lot of time, as you you say, going from amber to red, and then they sort of manage to get it back down again, but only as far as amber, and then they're back up to red again, but and very rarely down to green.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

I think the thing with burnout is that you know it's a slippery slope. If you think about stress, moving into chronic stress, moving into functional burnout, and then clinical burnout. The functional burnout for me is when people are oscillating between their amber, the red zones. Whereas clinical burnout, if someone can't get up and go to work, their body's forced to stop for them. Um, you know, maybe they've had a really scary cardiac issue or another physical health issue because the two are very linked, and sometimes that's the thing that stopped them. Um, you know, I've had people who couldn't talk one day. I've had a couple of people who just couldn't find words and they're normally able to completely function, high functioning. Um, that for me is when they've dropped into red and they they're frozen, they're dissociative, or unable to use their body and their brain in the way that they would like to.

Dr Lee David 24:55

I've done quite a lot of work with women entering the menopause, and and often the menopause itself can be that extra tennis ball machine that suddenly starts firing a whole load of balls. There might be physical balls to deal with. So there's all the physical effects of menopause and then the the changes in, you know, having the brain fog, and all of a sudden, all the coping strategies we are managing to hit back that ball just about, who are maybe in amber, but then it just feels like this is too fast. But and often actually that's a group who do have the sandwich generation issues going on as well.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

I totally agree. I think with that age group, it's really hard to untangle it all and it's all having an impact. And I think it's good to have those conversations to see all the different things because often you can't see the wood for the trees when you're in it. And that age group are also more likely to be more senior at work. You've got to a point in your career where you're holding a lot of responsibility, and again, you're sandwiched at work with the people you're responsible for and caring for, wanting to support them, and then the top-down projects and things being told from up above that you have to achieve. And then, yeah, the hormones, I know that that puts a stress on the body. If your estrogen starts to drop off, that's going to kind of start triggering a bit of the threat response, which has the impact on us that we've been talking about, where you're switching into that more negative thinking style where we feel more catastrophic or anxious. It's coming from within at that point, which can be hard to put your finger on then.

Dr Lee David 26:16

Yeah, absolutely. It's just that intersection between the hormonal impact, the life stressors, our thinking patterns. Often we also have coping strategies throughout life, like maybe wanting to be people pleasers and rescuers, and so we've got the collision of all of those different factors that I think can then make it a really challenging period of life. And I think it's really interesting to think about burnout as one of the ways to make sense of some of that. I'm I'm thinking about the type of pressures and whether all pressures are the same or whether certain types of stress are more significant for some people. So sometimes, in my experience, challenging relationships at work can have a particularly triggering impact, or struggling with maintaining boundaries can also make people more likely to go up to amber and then quite more quickly up to red. I wondered if you could talk to us a little bit about how relationships might impact on progression between the zones.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Absolutely. I mean, relationships, we are social creatures. Our physiology was designed to help us stay in the social group because we need to feel belonging, we need to know that you know our group have got our back and that we're going to be safe. We see that from birth when babies come out and they're designed to look for faces and to move their head towards the voices that are familiar, and then they feel good, they feel safe. And we carry that into adulthood, we don't ever lose that. And, you know, this is all about attachment, and we know how painful it is if an attachment is ruptured in any way. So part of that autonomic nervous system picking up cues of safety is all about am I still belonging in this group? And also not just that, but where's my social order rank here? Because if we're at the very bottom of that social group, there's a risk we could fall out of it and be ostracised or left behind by the pack. And so we can get very focused on where we are in the social rank, which is another risk for burnout because of that insecure striving to make sure we're not seen as lower or less than by our peers, by the people whose opinions we care about. So I think that could be triggering even if there's not really a toxic relationship at work, if we perceive there to be an issue that we've let other ourselves down or others down or are being poorly thought of, that will trigger a threat, a feeling of rejection. And so, yeah, it's good to recognize that because it is important to us as humans. It is tricky being in a human body because we have that physiology that we'll just get fired up, even if we, you know, recognize and know it. It's good to know that that has happened so we can take that step back and breathe through it and like take a moment before responding to the email or or whatever the conversation needs to be. And it is hard learning those skills to maintain a working relationship because you have to be able to tolerate a little bit of challenge sometimes to kind of maintain that place in the social group at work. But the other thing I just want to highlight is the term co-regulation, which is that when we we talk a lot about self-regulation in an in often in therapy, and we think about that, don't we? Because it's it's easy, we can focus on ourselves, we just self-regulate through breathing and whatnot. But co-regulation is when we settle our nervous systems by vibing off someone else's calm and regulated nervous system, like a young child would do if they were dysregulated and a parent they're there and hugging them. This is co-regulation happening, and you start to model that and learn that. But there isn't ever a point in our life where we let go of needing that. That's always going to be really helpful to us. Seeking that out and having a sense that the people around us have got our back is really important for that psychological safety. The the opposite of it is co-escalation, you know, when people come in and they're anxious and they're setting each other off, and we all know what kind of terrible workplace that is to work in, because you know, everyone's arguing and unpleasant and like competitive.

Dr Lee David 30:07

It's really interesting to think about that impact of being in a workplace or perhaps even a home life where there's a lot of challenge and threat and challenging relationships, and how important actually to try and get working relationships that that feel supportive, that feel safe for everybody, and then enable that co-regulation. And it's interesting to think about the idea of wanting to support others and build connections being a positive thing versus the people-pleasing side, which is much more that threat-based, where we're doing it in amber because it's a threat response, but and when it doesn't work, we might go into Red, we then disengage completely and think I can't please this person, so I'm gonna check out. And then we might come back to trying really hard when we're in amber to make sure that everybody likes us and we're pushing ourselves really hard to do that, versus the co-regulation where we're focusing on positive relationships, connection, supporting one another, and how on the outside it might not look that different, but on the inside it's a hugely different internal response.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Yes, because people pleasing in that way that you've just framed it would be fawning, you know, if we were to use the trauma language for it. It's safer just to push my own needs down. And I'm reading that facial expression, like, is this okay? This is what they're looking for. And yeah, that absolutely this just reinforces any vicious cycles that we're we're stuck in. I do think it's really important the workspaces and workplaces are creating space where people can have conversations that aren't just work-related. When I worked in the NHS, when I first started in 2008, we had a really lovely staff room with a big picture window looking out. And then we moved and we got given like a tiny internal room which was like the size of a small desk for one person at a time with one microwave, nowhere to sit, nowhere to look out into the natural light. You know, and the these are important. They're not just nice to have because you can't have a water cooler moment if there's no water cooler. And this is the kind of social lubricant, I guess, that makes work feel safer.

Dr Lee David 32:10

There's a lot of people homeworking now, and it's very positive in a lot of ways. It might help us connect more with families or be more present, but there's also a risk that we become quite disconnected if we're not physically seeing our colleagues and having that water cooler moment because we're actually very disconnected physically or geographically, and I think there are ways to try to get across that divide. It's one of those things that we can support one another across a space, across the the internet, but I just feel like it's really healthy to have some face-to-face interaction as part of that. It's getting that balance, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 32:48

Yeah, I think it's a tough gig if you just work solely at home and there's no hybrid working. And I do think finding a way to have some face-to-face contact with someone as a regular way of keeping connected with yourself and your team is really important.

Dr Lee David 33:03

So if we start to think about how to create a sense of balancing the nervous system, and I know there's lots of information in your book. For today, we'll we'll just focus on some of the practical tools that people can use, perhaps before they've reached really significant burnout, but they may be spending too much time in amber and they're occasionally going up into red. And so it's trying to think, okay, how do I shift everything down a gear like you described, so that I'm spending more time in green than in amber, and I'm hardly ever going into the red zone. What kind of practical changes could we start to do that might help us to achieve that?

SPEAKER_00 33:41

I think it's helpful to start recognizing it and by listening to this is a is a first point. So I think just want to acknowledge that you can't do anything unless you start to recognize it. I think there's a lot of value in trying to have a conversation with someone you feel like you could have a chat to to try and work out what all the external stresses are that you're dealing with. In therapy, when I see people, we're just having a conversation early on and trying to get them all out. And quite often people will see from my reaction that that's a lot and they hadn't realized how much they were carrying. But this also then offers an opportunity to begin to think, you know, where's the wiggle room here for putting one of these plates, spinning plates, down, even if it's just temporarily? And that's sometimes just easier to do with another human being who can kind of help you, who can kind of lend out their frontal lobes whilst yours are a little bit offline, because it's really hard to have that type of thought and process and conversation on your own. Obviously, that's where professional conversation might be easier if you feel too vulnerable to have it with someone, but there might be someone already in your network. Or just starting to get a piece of paper out and just starting to write things down, because compassion for oneself can start with allowing support in. If you think about a wounded animal, they'll often hide and they do that because they're worried about being outcast from the pack or picked off by a predator. And we do have that in us too. So I think acknowledging that and naming that, fear of being vulnerable, but you saying actually there's a lot here can be really validating and be the start of the next step.

Dr Lee David 35:08

I've done a lot of work with people where we just do an initial conversation and we're starting to list, okay, what's going on, just start by trying to understand. And then this list is really long, and there's so many complex aspects to it. And oh, yes, but also I'm dealing with this, and oh, yeah, and actually there's that, and then I I lost my dad last year, and then there's this other pressure at work, and then my kids are and it goes on and on and on. There might be a physical health aspect, and it is so therapeutic. Often people will come back and say, you know what, just listing that and having someone say, Wow, that's a lot, was so helpful. And I think we can, if we find someone supportive, that doesn't have to necessarily be a therapist, it doesn't have to be a doctor. Somebody, as you say, somebody supportive. We're already working in a lot in the amber zone. So we want someone relatively safe, is what I would say, because if someone's prone to being a bit critical.

SPEAKER_00 36:03

Yeah. Or a worry war, or like can't cope with you feeling a little bit um dysregulated. So someone who's kind of we're asking for a lot here. No, we're not. But sometimes it can help to set up the conversation.

Dr Lee David 36:15

I would encourage people to say, don't worry, I'm not expecting you to fix all this, but it would be really helpful just to have a space where I can tell you about it and just for you to say that you've heard it, and that's all I'm really after. So you're not responsible for it and I'm not expecting you to deal with it. It would just be really helpful to have a safe space to be able to just say it out loud.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

That's so beautiful because I feel like a big barrier for people is the fear of being a burden and um actually allowing someone in. Most people don't experience it as being burdened. They might have a concern and check up on you. But if you think about how it feels when you felt strong and someone's come to you, you've often actually felt good that you can offer something. Humans were designed to be interdependent, not independent. But somehow that message has got lost along the way. And we've absorbed this idea that we should be solving our own problems, doing our own self-care, and then presenting ourselves to the world with the finished polished product. But friendships are deeper when we offer a little bit of vulnerability and allow people in. Those are really authentic relationships.

Dr Lee David 37:24

Yeah, uh completely. And I think if people are very worried about that sense of being a burden, you can also say, I'm very happy to listen to you. If you have anything you'd like to share to me, I'm more than happy to listen to. It's not a one-way thing. And so you can actually name that if it makes it feel easier, but also as we do share, it also does give that other per person permission to be able to share back. So, because you're demonstrating some vulnerability that they may then think, actually, this is a safe person, I can share with them. So it's creating a culture where actually there's a little bit more willingness to express some of the things we find hard rather than showing up looking all shiny and social media positive and everything looking good on the surface, but underneath there's all kinds of chaos going on that nobody's talking about.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

And the intervention there isn't to go in and jump in with a solution because often someone's not at that point. They just want to be heard and validated that this is actually a lot and it's too much. And the image that always comes up to my mind is inside out. Have you seen that film where sadness is overwhelmed with sadness and joy comes along and tries to kind of pep her up with all the solutions and things she should be thinking about. But actually, what she needs is someone to sit alongside her, which the imaginary friend comes and does very effectively and just says that sounds rubbish. You don't need to be a therapist to provide that for someone.

Dr Lee David 38:53

And and what's coming to mind there is that some of the healing, and I think that does come through in the movie Inside Out as well, is that when we're facing change and stress and problems, then part of what we're needing to do is mourn. There's a mourning about something is hard, and maybe I have a little bit of grief around this change. And being able to express that is really powerful and really healing. And that's why sadness was so key to recovery in the movie Inside Out, because some of that was about change and needing to acknowledge that I just feel sad about this, and then there'll be space for me to find all the happy stuff and move forward and engage in the positive parts of life. But you can't just push out the sadness and ignore it. We do need to make space for it, hear it. And I think it's much less problematic once it's been heard. It kind of creates space then for us to then move on.

SPEAKER_00 39:46

Yeah, I love that. Thank you for bringing it back to that because that's so important.

Dr Lee David 39:51

Let's finish with our choice space takeaway. So for someone who recognises some early stages of burnout, what might be some small steps that they could take this week?

SPEAKER_00 40:02

My favourite practical tip is to think about the transition points in your day. So, for example, we're about to transition out of this podcast into something else. I'm gonna go and do the school run. So I've been in my thinking work mode, and I'm gonna be transitioning into needing to be more attuned to my youngster and uh his needs from the day. I don't know what he's gonna bring out of school. And at that point, the transition, I've also got to travel um in the car. So thinking about those transition points in your day as an opportunity, and how you can lean into those to really notice what where your body is, what gear is it in, what do you need right now in order to meet the need, and to think about then what you're going into the next moment of the day with. A little bit like how you might look out of the window, and if it's snowing outside, you wouldn't just rush out, you would stop and put a coat on. I feel like we are so conditioned to crashing from one thing to another without thinking about the pause that that could be there, and you know, resetting ourselves and also thinking about what is about to happen and what kind of cognition, like social level, capacity, energy level we need. That, you know, we we end up crashing from one thing to another to the end of the day, and then we're wrung out and we can't fall asleep. So after this, I've been sat still for a while and I'm noticing kind of a bit of tension around the top of my shoulders and back. So I'm getting an urge to really stretch that out. Park round the corner, so I've got a few extra minutes just walking, walking it all out, so that when I reach the school gate, I can feel like I can be more present for him. Otherwise, I'll have this conversation in my head. I'll be thinking, oh, I forgot to say this. So it just gives my body and brain a little bit longer to reset.

Dr Lee David 41:45

I love that. And I'm gonna, I think, build on that, which is to put these pauses in through the day so that we're not just rushing from activity to activity, that we are creating these transition points that are not instantaneous, and that it might be just a one-minute pause or a five-minute pause where we allow time to go back to green before we then move on to the next pressure, and then we're we're doing these micro-regulations throughout the day where which stop us having this cumulative impact where it's just going up and up and up. It's like a pressure cooker, otherwise, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 42:16

Yeah. Exactly. I've had this conversation with people before, and somebody once said, But I haven't got any transition points in my day. And when we looked at her day, she was kind of right because they were back-to-back meetings with no compassionate moments. So we talked about which of the meetings she had control over and scheduling them five or ten minutes past the hour. You know, it's really tricky to put a boundary in like that, but there will be transition points even if you can't see them, if you're moving from online meeting to online meeting. When that meeting ends and you start another one, there's the pause. So do, like as you said, stand up, move your body, go to the toilet, splash cold water in your face, whatever it is, take a few deep breaths.

Dr Lee David 42:52

If you really can't find the space, that's a bit of a red flag in its own right, I think. That's likely to be a risky lifestyle that would that means that your body's under pressure already. So I think it might be about really looking and just listing all the things that we're dealing with, like you were talking about, and then starting to just get a framework of okay, what is this stuff that I'm having to carry right now? And where are the spaces? Where could these spaces be? Like you say, finishing meeting five, ten minutes early, setting that as your regular, getting up and walking for a minute in between, just having that as a normal. These things I think they can be done, but we need to be quite forceful of ourselves. It's I think it's our own internal boundaries we often need to manage to make that happen. Thanks for listening to the Choice Space podcast. I hope this conversation has offered a little space for you to pause and find your next step. You'll find ways to connect with Claire, along with links to her book and website in the show notes. If this episode has been helpful, you can download it, follow the podcast, and please share with anyone else who might value the conversation as well. Please also leave a rating or review on whatever platform you're listening on. It really does help people find the show.