Issue #43: "You can't deny burnout" and other things my therapist told me (Part 2)

Are you feeling constantly tired, unmotivated, irritated, and unable to sleep? You must be a Product Manager (or working in tech!)

Hola friends! 👋

It’s been a few days since I published the first part of my burnout telenovela and I’ve been so blown away by the responses I’ve gotten from all of you! 😱

Thank you!

I’ve gotten messages from people who told me that they felt seen and understood. Some people shared their own burnout stories — what happened, how they’ve recovered for some, and how they’re recovering or at least trying to for others.

And honestly, I have 2 minds about this.

On one hand, I was glad that my words offered comfort to people. And grateful for the stories that have been shared. I recognize that it’s not always easy to share personal struggles, especially with a stranger on the internet.

But on the other hand, I’m also a bit angry at the situation a lot of us seem to be finding ourselves in: Exhausted, sick, unhappy.

And with that in mind… let’s get on with part 2!

💙
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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05 Then There Was The Recovery…

Going to a therapist, in the beginning, didn’t sit right with me.

Not because I didn’t think therapy was effective or important, but because, even up until my 3rd session, I was still not entirely convinced that I needed it.

After week 1 of my medical leave, I remember going to my therapist to tell him:

“So I’m finally sleeping straight through the night again. I haven’t woken up in cold in sweat all week. I’ve been working out 2x a week and going for walks everyday. I’m feeling great! I think I can go back to work now.”

My therapist laughed and said “Nice try”.

My recovery strategy was simple. To Live.

Or the less dramatic and more practical - Build healthy routines and habits that have nothing to do with work.

This pretty much meant:

• Exercise regularly

• Improve my sleep hygiene

• Do fun things and see friends

Simple right?

So I told my therapist, “Watch me ace this!” (and THAT, my friends, is why I’m on therapy).

I didn’t understand the strategy at first. For me, they were just tasks that I needed to go through. And I’m good at getting tasks done.

But I struggled in between.

1. When my workout was done and I did not know what to do next, I would take a peek at my work email or work Slack messages.

   “I’m just curious!” was my excuse. But curiosity brought in its frenemy - FOMO. Seeing what I thought I was missing out on at work, the excitement, and the opportunities, sent me into a spiral.
   

2. Sometimes I would hang out with friends from work, including my team. And whenever people shared their work frustration and stress, I somehow concluded that it was my fault. It was my fault because I didn’t prepare or mentor them well enough to have the right tools to manage their context like any good leader should.

   
   And while they were up to their eyeballs in stress, I was going out for brunch on Tuesdays after my Pilates class. I felt that I should have been suffering alongside them.
   

3. And at night? I was feeling antsy. I was cooking more. I was finally going through my to-read pile. I was exercising more than I ever did in the last 2 years. I was going on walks and even on hikes. And I was seeing friends.
   
   But since I wasn’t working, I wasn’t being productive. Or at least, I wasn’t being productive in the way I knew how; which made me feel very very very useless.

If I followed my recovery strategy literally, I was doing things right. But the things that happened in between showed how much I was missing the point.

The point of my recovery strategy was not just to get through the checklist that my therapist gave me. The strategy was there so I can:

• Rediscover life outside of my work context. Reconnect with the things that don’t come with a job title and a salary (i.e. strings attached), which can also give me joy and fulfillment.

• Redefine my relationship with productivity. Specifically: productivity doesn’t have to mean earning money. And that it should not get in the way of REST.

• Redesign my day-to-day to have a healthy routine that is sustainable and can provide me with happy hormones vs the dopamine rush I got so used to.

• Remind myself that not everything that happens in this world is my fault or my accountability. Especially things that are not within my control - and that includes other people’s feelings.

• Release myself from the things I held on to because I was afraid of rejection, failure, and not meeting external expectations.

When I finally understood this, things clicked. And I knew what I needed to do (or not to do). But old habits and tendencies die hard. Especially habits that have been part of my life since… ever!

I said “NO” more than ever. And while my head knew it was right, even necessary, there was still a heavy feeling in my heart and my stomach that weighed me down.

I fought the urge to look at work things and reminded myself that getting a mani after my yoga class was productive and valuable too. But the fear of being left behind still didn’t disappear.

I knew these things take time. However because I opted to not take any medication, I needed to help myself in other ways. So I supplemented my normal therapy with hypnotherapy.

I needed help to reframe the tendencies that I found difficult to reframe on my own. Something that could reconnect dots in my subconscious so I can make better choices for myself without feeling like I’m being pulled in 10 different directions by my limbs because I was feeling guilty for having made the choices that were good for me (making the right choice was still tough to make but they no longer felt impossible and I was actually compelled to make them. And the resulting feelings were still there, they were just no longer debilitating).

06 The Aftermath

In my previous post, I mentioned that I am now unemployed. I got laid off from my job recently.

Long story short: there was a reorg that would make my role disappear as a result. However, while some roles were disappearing (like mine), there were also new opportunities.

But I decided to not apply for any of them because I didn’t think the new open roles were a good fit for my personal goals and ambitions. In hindsight, while there’s truth to the reasoning I had a few months ago, I’ve realized that my burnout also greatly influenced this decision.

I was so burned out I had zero motivation for anything. A new role didn’t motivate me because very little did, at that time. And my burnout was also making me question whether my ambition and goals still made sense.

So as a consequence, because I had no role and no scope, there was no more space for me in my old job.

I am who I am. And I had about 5 million different feelings when I received the letter terminating my contract — mostly revolving around:

1. Anger - because how dare my company get rid of me after my many years of service and impact. 😂

2. Fear - because holy crap! I don’t have a job! How will I pay for rent, feed myself, and pay for my yoga and pilates classes that’s supposed to make me healthy?! 😂

3. Relief - underneath it all there was this. And it took some digging to get it out. Because while I didn’t realize it at first, I was dreading the end of my medical leave. I was dreading having to go back to old routines and contexts that could easily set me back from my mental health progress. Because “not being a fit” anymore was very much true. But it was true in much bigger and broader ways than I originally thought.

So what now?

Anything. Everything!

Old me would probably be having a panic attack at the lack of certainty my life is having right now. But the healing-in-progress me is excited!

@peopleiveloved

I’m taking the rest of the year off from corporate life. So that I can focus more on:

1. Building my own product in a more sustainable pace (MagicalAudios)

2. Leaning into my strength and passion (Coaching Women in Product)

3. Turning “my perfect day” dream into reality - a few years ago I asked Valerie Coulton for help to figure out what my next steps could be. I was already starting to feel the beginnings of a misalignment between my dreams/values and my job back then. And one of the exercises we did was for me to imagine what my perfect day and week looked like. I did. But I never took action to make it real. And now, I would like to.

There’s a shit ton of uncertainty in this choice. And one would think that as a person recovering from anxiety, diving headfirst into even more uncertainty would be a bad idea. But actually, it’s not (I checked with my therapist!).

While it’s true that there is uncertainty in this path that I am taking, there is also hope for the potential alignment with my dreams and my intended mission. And that makes this path a more positive choice for me right now.

I’m not going to lie and say that everything has been sunshine and rainbows since then.

I sometimes still feel lost on Monday mornings because I have a pretty empty calendar and I still associate productivity with meetings. And when I’m worried about my businesses, I sometimes find myself going to the job boards to look for roles I could apply for now, before my skills and experience become obsolete.

But I no longer feel constantly overwhelmed. My days are more balanced. I am out of survival mode and finally in “I’m enjoying things again” mode. I no longer associate going to my therapist and doing hypnotherapy with weakness. Instead, I see them as tools to become my favorite self.

@indigocait

I feel a lot less guilty these days for wanting to take care of myself and do more things that bring me joy.

And I no longer think of healing and recovery as blockers of my ambition. But as a continuous work, I need to prioritize as much as I do the items on my to-do list.

For now, those are my definition of success. And I think I’m killing it. ❤️

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In other news…

I have a startup! 🎉 And it’s called Magical Audios.

Kath, Andrea, and I met a few months ago and have constantly talked about building a product that not only supported women’s health but also something that tied us back to our indigenous roots.

We explored and validated many ideas, but they never felt quite right even though we were getting feedback from people that we were going in the right direction.

Until both Kath and I went through burnout early this year and we both became Andrea’s hypnotherapy patients ourselves.

An anecdote: Personally, the combination of therapy and hypnotherapy has helped my recovery by a thousandfold. With my therapist, we designed the actions that I needed to take. While hypnotherapy helped me address if not completely remove my internal barriers that prevented me from taking those actions.

Case in point: Having a difficult conversation with my family about boundaries would have been impossible (or at the very least delayed until 2025). It was an important action for me to take, according to my therapist, but I was super afraid to do so. At least until I did hypnotherapy.

And then an AHA moment happened. And we found an idea that felt right to build.

Our vision is to create an ecosystem that provides both the right tools and relevant support for women to recover from and build resilience against their challenges. And from that moment on, that’s what we’ve set out to do. Starting with hypnotherapy and burnout.

I recognize that this might feel a little too woo-woo for some of you. Or that hypnotherapy might feel scary. So we’re giving away FREE self-hypnosis audios for you to try!

We’re still in very early stages of our product and we still have a million iterations and improvements ahead of us. So I would love to hear your feedback after you’ve tried our audios!

I will be sharing more about our startup journey in this newsletter in the coming issues. ❤️

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