Show Notes
"Burnout" has become a buzzword since the start of the pandemic, for good reason. Many of us are feeling burnt out, in many areas of life, and could benefit from using DBT skills to cope.
In this episode, Molly and Liza start by defining burnout (i.e. chronic depletion, apathy, a feeling of ineffectiveness no matter how hard you work). We then identify factors that typically lead to burnout, like feeling that your day-to-day lacks meaning or that you lack control over your daily decisions. We explain how to tell the difference between burnout, depression, and stress, and why these distinctions matter.
We respond to an email from a listener who wants to know how seriously to take feelings of burnout, and when to consider making a change. Pulling from Emily and Amelia Nagoski's work, we describe the science behind what burnout does to our bodies and how we can effectively complete the body's stress response cycle. We outline various DBT skills to apply both during extreme moments of burnout (i.e. intense exercise, mindfulness, urge surfing, self-validation, vacation), and when making larger life decisions in response to burnout (i.e. taking an inventory using mindfulness skills, problem-solving, and focusing on values). We hope you enjoy!
We will be taking next month off and, in the meantime, will be re-releasing an old episode on March 1. We look forward to being back on April 1 for our final episode of the season!
*Check out our website at therapistsinthewild.com. And follow us on Instagram and Facebook @TherapistsInTheWild, and Twitter @TherapistsWild. If you'd like to support TITW, we would be very grateful for donations of any amount you feel comfortable via Venmo @MollyStDenis. If a donation is not possible at this time, you can still support our work by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you!
More from Therapists In The Wild
In our last episode of the Therapists in the Wild podcast, we're coming full circle: dialectics was the topic of our first ever episode, and now we're wrapping it up two years later by letting our listeners in on how we have used a dialectical frame to face this ending head on. We review the DBT skills we used to lean into our discomfort, to have difficult conversations that have deepened our relationship, and ultimately, to radically accept this change in a way that felt true to ourselves, our friendship, and, we hope, to our listeners. We try, more so than ever, to practice radical genuineness and vulnerability in this emotion-filled episode. We are more grateful to you, our listeners, than we can possibly express. We hope that you will continue to share the podcast, stay subscribed, and follow us on social media to stay involved in our future projects.
This month's episode is a re-release of an episode introducing one of our favorite DBT skills: Radical Acceptance (Episode 23). We hope you enjoy and look forward to being back next month for the final episode of Season 2!
Happy New Year, TITW listeners! As we head into the new year, we're reflecting on the values we want to prioritize and how we can commit to moving toward those values. Since deepening relationships and creating new ones has been on our minds lately, we decided to do an episode on vulnerability. Vulnerability can be defined as "the practice of taking emotional risks even when the outcome is uncertain." We start out by discussing certain forms of anxiety that interfere with opening up even to trusted people in our lives. We then explore what we miss out on when we act on this anxiety (i.e. missing opportunities for closer relationships, as well as feedback, support, and validation). We end by suggesting a few DBT and other skills to use in the moment when anxiety is holding you back from being vulnerable with someone you trust.
This month on TITW, we're practicing self-compassion. Liza and Molly have been studying the work of Dr. Kristin Neff, a psychologist and researcher who breaks down the practice of self-compassion into concrete steps. We've noticed a lot of overlap between Dr. Neff's work and DBT skills, and we discuss the similarities in this episode.
This month on TITW, Molly teaches Liza and our listeners concepts from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), another "third wave" cognitive behavioral treatment that both overlaps with and differs from DBT.