Issue #42: "You can't deny burnout" and other things my therapist told me (Part 1/n)

Are you feeling constantly tired, unmotivated, irritated, and unable to sleep? You must be a Product Manager!

Hola friends! 👋

It’s been a while! I’ve missed writing here and you too! :)

A lot has happened since my last issue (the newsletter kind)! More notably:

1. I got forced to go on medical leave by my doctor in March for burnout.

2. I got laid off from my job as HoP for my organization in Adevinta in April.

I’ve been going back and forth about whether or not I should write about these. While I’ve never shied away from talking about the bad and the ugly of product leadership, career development, and personal growth - these two have been tough to go through (and I guess, in a way, I’m still going through them).

But like attracts like and in the last 3 months, I found myself talking to many other people who were or have been in the same boat as me.

One of the things I’ve always talked about with my (ex) team and my clients and have also written about quite some times here in my newsletter is that:

Career and Personal Growth are never linear.

Especially for us, Product People! Even how we “do Product Management” can vary greatly whenever we change teams, companies, and even leadership. And this kind of uncertainty, level of pressure, and frequency of change, can greatly impact our confidence, motivation, and eventually, health.

So let me share with you what I’ve learned (and am still learning) from the many things my therapist and I talked about so I would stop feeling bad for being sick and even start feeling relieved about getting fired.

This story will come in multiple parts.

💙
Kax

You can also find me on Instagram where I would soon be sharing more insights about leadership, sustainable career development, and building a startup (😱)

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01 In The Beginning, There Were Signs

I went on medical leave in March of this year; but if I look back, signs of my anxiety and burnout have been showing up since 2023.

I ignored them because, in the beginning, they didn’t seem so serious.

• Barely sleeping.

• Stress Eating 24/7.

• Constant headaches.

I ignored them because they also felt contextual and therefore I thought temporary.

• In my day job, my organization has been in non-stop reorg since 2022. These brought on multiple and frequent waves of changes with a side of high-impact + high-pressure projects — my role and scope have been highly impacted by these changes.

• In my side projects, I was getting more coaching clients, and doing more talks, and I started getting podcast guesting invites (😱). I was also writing more frequently for this newsletter and other publications. 

• In my personal life, some tough conversations were happening with my family.

I ignored them because I thought they’d go away on their own. There were weekends and holidays after all - opportunities to recover. But Easter break became Summer which eventually became Christmas. And yet, the rest and recovery never happened. There was always SOMETHING THAT NEEDED TO GET DONE ASAP.

Then the symptoms that weren’t so serious in the beginning became symptoms that were impossible to ignore.

• I was losing hair.

• My hormones were all over the place.

• I was waking up in the middle of the night in a panic because I thought I was late for a meeting.

• I was constantly exhausted and I had zero energy to do anything… not even to see my friends.

• And I didn’t feel like myself anymore. I felt like a different human being. And not in a good way.

At this point, I was getting fearful of the physical manifestations of my (then, still unidentified) anxiety. So I finally went to see doctors, who all told me that my tests were coming out normal so they recommended that I see a therapist instead.

So I did. Who then asked me,

“When was the last time you did something for yourself?”

02 In The Middle, There Was Denial… With a Side of Shame.

In March, my therapist finally gave me my diagnosis. And his prescription? Medication and medical leave for AT LEAST 2 months.

To which I replied, “Surely, that’s too much!” 😂

My rationale was that I have seen other people who have the same diagnosis as I do and their anxiety manifested much more strongly than mine — So in my head, what I had couldn’t be real anxiety. Or at least it wasn’t THAT bad that I needed to go on medical leave for a minimum of 2 months.

Other people were having frequent panic attacks with a side of physical and emotional breakdowns.

Meanwhile, before getting the diagnosis, I was still coaching people, organizing workshops, and reviewing strategies and roadmaps. I was still doing performance evaluations with my team! And I was not closing my laptop in tears after a long day of back-to-back meetings, arguing with people about why putting more developers in a project does not make things go faster.

This was my argument for why what I had could NOT BE real and proper anxiety.

After all, I was only… losing half of my hair.

I got some scolding from my doctor though about how I am not my friends and sickness manifests differently from person to person. And about how my body was already screaming at me that it was not well and it would be best for me not to deny that.

And while all those made sense - what he asked me next was what finally flipped the switch for me, in my brain.

What are you really concerned about? What is it about going on medical leave that’s triggering this reaction?

In hindsight, getting wound up about going on medical leave seems so ridiculous. Because who doesn’t want to go on a break? I was physically functional so I would even get to enjoy this mandated time off!

But I didn’t need to dig so much to realize what I was really concerned about.

I equated my burnout and anxiety to incompetence. I was just not good enough to manage the pressure and the demands of my role.

• I obviously cannot manage myself. So what business did I have managing people or helping my team and my clients with their day-to-day issues, much less their careers?

• I broke down from pressure. Obviously, that meant I could not handle leading diverse and sizable organizations, high-stakes projects, and complex accountabilities.

And I was afraid that once other people found out that I was sick, they would see this as incompetence too.

by @worry_lines

And if I agreed with my therapist that I did need a break, this would be an admission of my incompetence.

Did it make sense? In my brain, the math mathed.

03 In The Middle, There Was Also Understanding

“How did I get here?”

A combination of many things brought me here.

Practically speaking, I neglected to take care of myself. I was having 12-14 hour work days. I barely had time to have proper meals much less do anything else.

But I was getting really good feedback at work and I was consistently getting recognition and reward. My clients were happy. I was building a name for myself.

Clearly, I’m on the right path?

Spoiler alert: I wasn’t.

But this neglect was brought on by internal factors:

1. I doubled down on being a people pleaser - My 14-hour workdays were a result of me not protecting my boundaries. So I said yes. To the meetings. To the calls. To the delegation and escalations. People pleasing has always been a bad habit I’ve been working hard to get rid of. But in the last year, I have been 2 steps forward, 1 step back with it. But it’s hard. I was taught growing up that focusing on myself was selfish and wrong. I went to a university whose pride and motto is “Men and Women for Others”. We were taught to serve. Which is good on one hand, but when you pair this with good old Filipino version of resilience and accommodation (which is x 10 the recommended value lol) - it’s a recipe for disaster. I’ve learned to manage this bad habit over the years, but it’s still work in progress. And being deeply exhausted has made it harder for me to recognize when this bad habit takes control of my day-to-day.
   

2. I pursued external validation - I was addicted to the reward and recognition. I liked being a high achiever and I liked being recognized as one. It made me feel important and valuable. But they were rewards and recognition that I got from pursuing a strategy that was meant for a less complicated context. But in the last 2 years, my context has changed (multiple times, in fact). But I never revisited my strategy. Truth be told, I was afraid that if I did something different, I wouldn’t be getting the same positive results that I used to. And while obviously, the strategy was broken, attaching my value to the rewards I was getting was the bigger problem. I treated “being a high-achiever” as if it was part of my identity.
   

3. I was overcompensating because I was misaligned with my purpose/values - The changes over the years in my day job + constant running after external validation has created a huge gap between me and my values. On top of that, the last waves of changes that I went through has shaped my role into something else that I wasn’t really happy with. But I held on because I thought that when things have calmed down a bit, I would find this alignment again. In the meantime, I leaned in hard on my side hustles to get twice the satisfaction to make up for what I was missing in my day job. Cue 14+ hour work days.

And while there were certainly external factors that triggered the anxiety: the non-stop and high-complexity organizational changes, societal pressure to be a high-performer, the volume of work, the weather — my patterns and limiting beliefs have been the biggest contributor to the severity of my situation.

My people pleasing tendencies made it hard for me to focus on my own needs. My need for external validation made me work beyond my limits to keep an identity that didn’t serve me. Much less serve my purpose and values.

04 Why Product People Are At Risk of Burning out

As Product People, our entire training, and in a way, our reason for existing (as a role), is to be of “service” to other people.

• For the users, so that we may solve their problems

• For the business, so that we may create value for the company

• For the cross-functional team, so that we may help to protect their time and capacity

Because of this, the mindset that has been encouraged by many influential people in the industry has been quite problematic.

link to thread

I’ll zoom in on 3 & 4 because this comment thread from Afonso Malo Franco sums up my thoughts on 1 & 2 quite well.

We’re normalizing a dangerous mindset that to be a high performer, we need to ignore our boundaries, let work eat up our personal time, and take on the weight of the world on our shoulders.

We’re taught to prioritize work for our cross-functional team to have a bigger impact. But to do that, this mindset perpetuates neglecting to prioritize OUR own work and our own needs. Other people first. Maybe ourselves second. Unless something urgent comes up - then that’s more important.

And to be honest, I think this kind of mindset also has double the negative impact for women. Women in Product who are also caregivers/homemakers will have an impossible time doing this many hours of work. And when we’re normalizing the expectation and correlation that people need to give 60 hours a week to be a high performer - we’re setting up women for failure just by holding us to an unreasonable standard that isn’t even a real measure of success.

On the other hand, I’m glad that there are more and more people these days speaking up about the realities of burning out and the ever-increasing importance of taking care of ourselves. This episode of

Leah Tharin

‘s podcast hits home.

I read this book a few months ago about a woman who was so burned out from following the rules of career development and society’s definition of success. She got the promised reward and the recognition. But she was also depressed and constantly exhausted. So she rage quit her job and opened a bookstore. I laughed. I cried. I felt seen. ❤️

buy on Amazon

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In the next part(s) of this dramatic saga, I’ll share the recovery strategy that my therapist designed with me, the ups and downs of recovery, and probably the more exciting part - the how and why of my getting laid off, and what’s next for me. :)

In the meantime:

If you've been burned out or got anxiety because of work (or you’re going through it right now) - I’d love to read your story too! (Share in the comment or hit respond to this newsletter if you’re getting this via email)

If you’re a product person feeling overwhelmed by the demands of your day-to-day and you want to have a more sustainable approach to your work and career, I’d love to help you!

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See you again in 2 weeks! I’m slowly recovering my regular writing cadence but too early to commit to a weekly one.

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