Ep. 65 Extinguishing Caregiver Burnout with Dr. Susan Landers

[00:00:03] I'm Michele Simms and this is The Beauty in the Mess, a community where people who crave a shift in mindset, personal growth, and connection to like-minded people come together to start rewriting their stories. Through engaging, honest, and insightful conversations, the show will help you embrace

[00:00:22] the mess to recognize the meanings and the lessons it holds and discover its hidden treasures to help you start making a mindset shift. Let's listen, learn, and reclaim who we were meant to be. Hi friend, welcome to The Beauty in the Mess.

[00:00:37] For this episode I am welcoming Dr. Susan Landers to the show. Susan is a retired neo-natologist who worked full time in the NICU for over 30 years while she also raised three children. She achieved many professional accomplishments and encountered challenges along the way, both

[00:00:55] in her career and being a mom. Susan suffered through one difficult period in her midlife when she developed major depression and this prompted her to start making better choices in a career change. She supports younger working mothers who are struggling to manage career and family with

[00:01:13] her social media posts, her sub-stack newsletter called Mom's Matter, and her blog. Her new book is So Many Babies, My Life Balancing a Busy Medical Career and Motherhood. In this episode she discusses the impact of work-life balance, the struggles of

[00:01:29] burnout, and the importance of self-care for working mothers. Dr. Landers offers practical advice on managing emotional exhaustion and emphasizes the necessity of human connection and prioritizing one's well-being. You will gain insights into dealing with parental guilt, setting boundaries, and finding empowerment and sharing your experiences with others.

[00:01:50] So join me for episode 65 of The Beauty in the Mess called Extinguishing Caregiver Burnout with Dr. Susan Landers. So without further ado, let's dive right into today's conversation. Hi, Dr. Landers. Welcome to The Beauty in the Mess. I'm so excited to have you with me today. Thank you.

[00:02:11] It's lovely to be your guest. I look forward to our conversation. Thank you. I do too. Now, I know you're a neonatologist. Am I saying that correctly? Yes, neonatology. It's a pediatrician who takes care of sick babies and premature babies in the neonatal ICU.

[00:02:29] Yeah, it's a pretty fascinating career really. Yeah. You're also an author of so many babies, the book. Yes. I wrote a book after I retired. I went back and chronicled all those NICU stories. Oh, that's awesome.

[00:02:46] Before we start diving into some of that, I was wondering if you would tell us some of your journey, like what's led you down this path to write your book and to speak on burnout and especially in the medical professions, but burnout for anyone really. Yeah.

[00:03:00] So what led you down this path? What's your personal story? My personal story is I did all of my training when I was single, residency, fellowship and became a neonatologist and loved my work, but I always wanted to get married and have a family.

[00:03:19] Growing up in the deep South, that was just ingrained in me. I finally met the perfect husband. I'm pretty high strung and he's pretty laid back, so we were a great match. I had three kids in the first seven years of our marriage.

[00:03:35] We lived in Houston, Texas, and we both worked at Texas Children's Hospital. And that was a really rude awakening as a working mom, as a doctor mom having to figure out how much time at the hospital, how much time at home, who took care of my

[00:03:50] kids, what you do when the kids are sick, what preschools they go to, all of the normal things that working mothers have to deal with. And I had to learn really hard to ask my husband for the help that I needed because

[00:04:05] like lots of working mothers today, he just assumed I would take care of everything. And I did for the first 10 years or so. We moved to Little Rock, Arkansas because he had a great job offer and my job was just okay.

[00:04:19] But it taught me a lot of things about being a working mom because the kids were in different schools. We didn't have such a good luck with a nanny. My job was a lot harder, a lot more hours in the hospital.

[00:04:35] And so I had to really fall apart in my early 40s. I developed clinical depression. Wow. It might have been working mom burnout, I'm not sure. But definitely it was depression. I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating, I had trouble focusing at work.

[00:04:54] I just was so unhappy crying the whole bit. So a friend of mine referred me to a good psychiatrist and on an antidepressant and with therapy I got started to get better. I remember distinctly describing my life to my psychiatrist as if I was the guy on the

[00:05:15] stage spinning sticks and twirling spinning plates on top of the sticks and running around the stage trying to keep all my plates spinning and everything in the air. And that all the parts of my life were all spinning plates.

[00:05:33] And I was just madly running around trying to take care of everything. And this man laughed and I said, why are you laughing? That is not funny. That's a bad way to be. And he said, but why don't you just take down some of the plates?

[00:05:48] And so what we did over the next year or two was work through what my priorities were for my children, for my career, for my marriage. And we lived in Little Rock, Arkansas for about six years. And I decided that job really wasn't right for me.

[00:06:06] The last two years we were there, I worked for an HMO as a medical director, which was a great experience. We decided to move to Austin, Texas, where we found jobs that were right for both of us.

[00:06:21] And we lived in an area where our kids could go to public school, which was important to both my husband and myself. And I joined a group of neonatologists who I had known since I was a fellow, since I was in my early 30s. And I worked less.

[00:06:40] I was able to undergo some professional development and kind of get into breastfeeding medicine and donor human milk banking. And I began to work for the American Academy of Pediatrics. And so my academic hat was off because I wasn't working for a medical school anymore.

[00:06:58] But I did keep my fingers in academic pursuits. And I did a lot of things that were productive. My children were thriving. We had some ups and downs. My son had some difficulties with social immaturity, which Boy Scouts helped a lot.

[00:07:20] My daughter, older daughter, developed an eating disorder when she was 16. That's a whole other story that I like to talk about. But she's fine now. And my younger daughter was a teenager from hell. So here I am, 55 years old, and she is awful.

[00:07:37] Wrecking cars, skipping school, getting tattoos. Just you name it, she got in trouble. She did everything but get pregnant. It was just an awful time. And again, I got back into therapy because I thought I was just the worst mother in the whole world.

[00:07:55] I was still working a fair amount, three fourths time, not full time. But enough that my kids said you still work too much. That's been a thing in my whole life. And so as we sort of helped Laura, our youngest, get through those troublesome teenage years

[00:08:13] and center off to college, things got a bit better as we were becoming empty nesters. Then at the very last stages of my career in my early 60s, I had a lot of difficult cases, some ethical issues, babies that had birth defects that were essentially non-viable, terminal.

[00:08:34] And even though the surgeons tried to palliate them, the babies weren't going to survive. And parents who didn't want to stop therapy, small premies who had severe brain injury, but parents wanted to go ahead at all costs. And there were some cases that really bothered me.

[00:08:52] And there were some conflicts between doctors and parents. It's not uncommon in an ICU those kind of things come up. But it seemed like it all piled on at once when I was in my early 60s. And I couldn't sleep, started drinking more alcohol, a lot more wine,

[00:09:13] felt disassociated from my patients at work. I used to go talk to parents and talk to nurses and have a good time after the work was done in the ICU. And I noticed that I was sort of hiding out in the call room

[00:09:28] and trying to distance myself from my patients. And finally, I didn't feel like I was making a difference. I felt like I was just going through the motions, like I wasn't offering anything to anybody. And those are classic symptoms of physician burnout when you're physically and emotionally exhausted,

[00:09:49] when you dissociate yourself from your patients and your colleagues and when you don't feel like you're making a difference. And so I was lucky enough to work for a practice that allowed me to change my practice location.

[00:10:04] And so I left the NICU to go to a low risk labor and delivery center where they just delivered normal mothers and babies. And I stayed there for two years while I recovered from my burnout. And it was really lovely, healthy babies, talking about breastfeeding,

[00:10:22] safe sleep, the whole bit. And so I recovered from my burnout over a two year period. And then I retired at 64. I was ready to retire, but in retrospect, I wish I had gone back to work because I found the rest of my 60s a little bit boring.

[00:10:40] I didn't feel like I was making a difference. So somebody said, why don't you write up all these NICU stories that you're always telling us? One of my book club friends, in fact. And I did. I started writing up all the NICU stories.

[00:10:54] And I got in touch with all the parents of my most special patients or special families and got permission to tell their stories in my book. And so the memoir started out as just kind of a this is how life in the NICU is.

[00:11:10] And then my friend said, well, go ahead, put your own stories in there. Talk about being a mom, being a working mom and added in as you became a seasoned neonatologist. Let us know how you became a seasoned mother, working mother.

[00:11:26] And so that turned into my memoir, So Many Babies. That's awesome. And that was published in 2021. And as a result of talking about that book, I started to visit with folks on podcast and in meetings about working moms

[00:11:48] and all of the struggles that modern working mothers are going through. And I said to myself and to people I talk to, it's the same. It has always been the same. We're always trying to do too much. We're always trying to be perfect mothers.

[00:12:07] We feel guilty when we're at work, if we're not at home. We feel guilty not working when we're at home with our kids. We always do way more than our husbands or partners do. We have a hard time asking for the help that we need.

[00:12:21] It's really a classic set of behaviors that working mothers typically have. We don't take care of ourselves. We don't exercise enough. Maybe we don't eat right. Maybe we drink too much wine. And so I had been through so much of that throughout the phases of my life

[00:12:43] that I started to write about it and talk about it more because people were responding to that experience. And so I started a blog on my website and got lots of positive feedback. Now I have a sub stack newsletter. Wow.

[00:13:03] And I write about anything I want that is about motherhood. I've developed some resources that are available for free on my website, things that help working mothers identify whether or not they're burned out. Some tips about how to take care of themselves.

[00:13:22] And I've really had, Michelle, a good time focusing on helping other working mothers because I'm old enough now that I have a fair amount of wisdom about mistakes that I've made. And I can recognize what younger women I think are doing.

[00:13:42] Some of the same things that I did. And so what I'm doing now is focusing on supporting working mothers. And my main efforts are in that effort. I've written a couple of ebooks that are available on Amazon.

[00:13:58] And I have a plan for another one, but haven't started yet. So that's my long story of how I got here, going from being a doctor to being a newsletter writer. That's pretty awesome. I wanted to ask you as I'm listening, I was thinking

[00:14:16] what the medical profession and moms have in common for those of us that aren't in the medical profession is just that we're all caregivers, right? Right. And so as part of the problem with caregivers having burnout, is that because we don't set boundaries?

[00:14:32] Because we kind of give it our all. We want to help our kids in every way. Right. And I'm sure, you know, being in the NICU, I can't imagine trying to establish that boundary of OK, now it's time to go home

[00:14:45] when there's a right one that needs you. I mean, I just can't even imagine. Yeah, it is very much true that women physicians get burnout more than men physicians do. That's not to say that men physicians can't be caregivers, but mothers and women physicians

[00:15:05] push themselves to the limit of giving to everybody but themselves. And our culture, I think, gives us this notion of the perfect mother takes care of everybody else first before herself. Right. I was raised that way. You were probably raised that way.

[00:15:24] And it takes some time for caregivers, whether you're a doctor or nurse, an accountant, a banker, a teacher to recognize that if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of anybody else. And I think that our culture does not talk enough about how mothers thrive.

[00:15:48] And I enjoy talking about that because we're caregivers and we do put our children and our families, sometimes our spouses before us. I did put my patients before my children. Lots of times I did that. There were other times when I shut off the pager and the phone

[00:16:06] and have a whole weekend with my family. But I was always wondering how that patient was doing. It's the same thing when I went to work in the NICU and I had a sick kid at home. I might be taking care of a sick baby,

[00:16:19] but I was wondering how my own child was doing. Every mother does that. We all take our family issues to work with us. And I think we all bring home a little bit of our work and that's what mom guilt is all about.

[00:16:36] I mean, you really can't do two jobs at once perfectly. You have to juggle them. You have to do one and put it down and then do the other. So women are more naturally caregiving. They tend to not take care of themselves.

[00:16:56] And I think modern women are so attached to social media that maybe they have lost this knack of talking to their friends and their colleagues. When I was a young mother, it helped me so much to have lunch in the hospital cafeteria and chat with other women physicians

[00:17:19] that were doing the same thing as me. How are you dealing with this? What are you doing about this when your kid does this? And it was so supportive to hear what other mothers were going through. I don't think we get that on social media.

[00:17:34] I think we get that through human personal contact and connection, whether it's having lunch with a friend, whether it's having coffee with a friend, whether it's sitting down with your neighbor. I don't think we're doing enough of that to take care of ourselves.

[00:17:54] I know we're not exercising enough to take care of ourselves. Right. I mean, you talk to any group of women, they're just not doing enough. We probably all eat junk food when we're stressed. I know I do. I did at the hospital and I am positive

[00:18:11] we're all drinking more alcohol than we used to. I was giving a talk to a bunch of nurses, I think in November and I took a little survey and I said, how many of y'all are going home

[00:18:22] and having a glass of wine when you have a stressful day? Forty percent of them said they were. And I said, well, that's a little better than I imagined because I did it all the time. And so we're using things to control our stress

[00:18:39] that are not good for us. If you drink a glass or two of wine at night, that's not good for you. That's going to mess with your sleep. That's going to maybe give you a hangover the next day.

[00:18:51] You might have been better off calling up your best friend and saying, God, I just had a shit day at work. Let's talk about it. So I don't think women today are giving themselves permission to do what they need to do to take care of themselves.

[00:19:06] We know we're caregivers. We know we take care of others before ourselves. We've got to learn how to take care of ourselves because nobody else is going to do it for us. I can't say that anybody set me down and ever said this to me.

[00:19:20] And I don't know exactly where I picked it up. I guess is what I'm saying. But I grew up with the notion of when you take care of yourself, when you do something for yourself, you're being selfish and you should be worried about your kids.

[00:19:33] You should be worried about your husband. That shouldn't be happening. And so I always feel guilty if I do something that's just for me. Right. I know. And we have to change that notion. I'm not sure where it came from, whether Victorian England. I don't know.

[00:19:50] In the deep South, it was the same thing. It was if you take care of yourself, you're being selfish. But I don't think self care is selfish. I think self care is filling up your cup, replenishing your energy, charging your batteries.

[00:20:06] And I guess I had to deplete myself so many times throughout my professional life, professional and mom life that it finally occurred to me that the only way to do all the things I wanted to do was to take care of me.

[00:20:24] Now, I wasn't always great at exercise. I was pretty good at taking a bubble bath when I came home after a 24 hour shift. I was really good about talking to my husband because he understood frustrations from medical practice. And I loved playing with children.

[00:20:43] And so I was really good at getting energy from my kids. And we all like to play outside, and we all were outside as much as possible. So I did some things that were good for me. I did not use my friends as much as I might have.

[00:21:01] In retrospect, I got so busy and I thought, well, they're busy too. I'm not going to bother them. We'll talk later at work. And so I didn't call up a friend and say, God, I've just had it. I just don't know what to do about this.

[00:21:15] What do you think? And so as I made all those mistakes through my career, I finally figured out it was in my late 40s and 50s that if I didn't take care of myself, I was going to flame out. I was going to burn out again.

[00:21:35] I was going to get depressed or whatever it was when I was in my 40s. So I think my physician burnout at the end of my career was about my patients and about ethics and about night call and about physician stuff.

[00:21:51] But what happened in the middle of my career was mom stuff and working mom stuff. And how do I set my priorities and how do I know what makes me happy? As I was listening to you talk, I was thinking because I have four kids

[00:22:11] and one of our children, she's had more than her fair share of medical problems her whole life. And as my kids are growing up, you're so busy with all the normal kids stuff, especially with four going different directions.

[00:22:25] But then to have one that had all these medical problems. And I realized it was as much me as anybody else, but I kind of isolated myself. Because you tell yourself stuff like, well nobody wants to hear about this. Nobody else wants to deal with this stuff.

[00:22:40] And you feel like you're burdening them. So you kind of distance yourself, but maybe it was kind of burnout. Maybe it was a form of burnout because having a special needs child is really hard. And I would talk to some of the moms

[00:22:55] who would take home premies that would undoubtedly be special needs and say, this is going to be harder than a normal kid, normal infant and toddler. And we would talk about it over the months, how hard it would be on their marriage,

[00:23:10] how hard it would be on siblings. There are studies that show how difficult it is on other family members and partners and husbands when moms are caregivers for special needs children. And I think again, rather than burdening other people with all of the weight you were carrying,

[00:23:35] carrying for three normal kids and one with special needs, you probably were not taking care of yourself during that time. Oh, I know. Yeah, when it was so busy and you were just trying to get from one appointment to the next and one baseball game

[00:23:50] or soccer game to the next. And do whatever job you were doing. And so you told yourself, this is something I have to do, true. I want to be a mom. I love all these kids. But you probably felt your energy being drained

[00:24:10] and your enthusiasm for being a mother being drained. That's what having a teenager from hell does to you. That's what having a special need child does to you. It makes you feel like you're a bad mom. It does.

[00:24:25] It makes us feel like, God, I can't even do this. What's wrong with me? What's wrong with us is that it's difficult. What you are doing is difficult. Now, she's had a lot to put up with, of course. But you have too for 18 years,

[00:24:42] you've been doing all this extra stuff to keep her on track with all her medical needs and be a mom to your other three and not taking care of yourself. That means you're running around on half a battery most of the time. And I do.

[00:25:01] So again, self-care is not selfish. I think we need to say it so much to convince each other, again, that we've got to connect and share and support. Oh, I agree. Because we forget how important it is to take care of ourselves.

[00:25:24] And don't you think the pandemic made all that worse as far as isolating people? It did. You lose that one-on-one connection? Yes. And then it's like it never really got reestablished, right? Because everybody's on Zoom these days or on social media, like you said. Right. Right.

[00:25:45] Yeah, working from home, being on Zoom, the social media takeoff. We're all now on our phones instead of, hey, I'll meet you at Starbucks at five or I'll pick up the kids from school and then we'll meet at the park. Or we don't do that anymore.

[00:26:02] We're all on social media. We're texting and we're Instagramming. And that's not the same. It is just not quality human connection. And my daughter's always roll their eyes. Mom, it's the way it is. I go, honey, it's not healthy.

[00:26:18] And so she had a couple of her friends come to her three-year-old's birthday party and they were chatting and having a good time. And I said, I love seeing you guys together doing this because you're both moms together, finding your way. And my daughter said, you're right.

[00:26:36] It feels better. It feels a lot better than texting. I mean, they're just standing there talking and laughing and comparing notes. And I could tell in 30 minutes that it made them both feel better. So I think we've forgotten how important for women,

[00:26:56] I don't know if it's this important for men, but I know it's important for women to feel connected, to feel the support and to feel, what is it? It's similar stories. When you know somebody else has a similar story, when you go, oh my God, they get it.

[00:27:16] They know how hard this is, then you feel a little better. You don't feel so alone. Very true. I think connection isn't stressed as much as it should be for anyone really. But I just think we've lost a lot of that ability to connect. Yes.

[00:27:35] Sometimes I don't know if people know how anymore. I mean, on a basic level, they know how. But you know what I'm saying? Right. Even remote work works against that. So it might be bad to have to drive an hour

[00:27:48] to get to the office, but when you were in the office or at the school or wherever you work, you had friends that did what you did or at the neighborhood, playscape or whatever. You could run into friends, but in the pandemic, we all pulled back.

[00:28:05] We learned how to be on our own isolated for two years. And I don't think we've sort of left that isolation behind yet. I don't either. So what are your thoughts on work-life balance? Do you, I hear a lot of people talk about that. Yeah.

[00:28:26] Well, work-life balance is different for everybody. It depends on what you do for a living, how many hours you work, how many children you have. Are you single or married? I don't know how single women raise children on their own. They're saints. They are.

[00:28:43] I just had to lean on my husband so much and lean on caregivers. So work-life balance is what makes you feel the best? Is it your job? Is it being a mom? Is it your children?

[00:29:02] And how much time are you going to give to the things that make those feel the best? If I work 80 hours a week, and I've done that before when somebody's on vacation, my kids are suffering. If I am on vacation and I'm worried about a patient,

[00:29:23] my kids are suffering. And so work-life balance goes with us everywhere we go. I think it's choices. I've really decided over all the years it is if I'm going to go to a yoga class or an exercise class on Saturday, that's really important to me.

[00:29:42] It makes me feel so much better for three or four days. Or if I'm going to go watch my daughter swimming at her swim meet or swim practice even and sit there for two hours and chat with the other moms

[00:29:56] on the swim team who have kids on the swim team, that made me feel better. And I left the hospital early and so what? Somebody else was watching my patients. And so I got to where I was making choices. Boundary, the psychologists all talk about boundaries.

[00:30:16] That when work-life balance is about boundaries. And it is but it boils down even further to choices. Are you choosing to keep working or are you choosing to meet your friend for the exercise class? Are you choosing to go out on a date with your husband?

[00:30:35] Are you choosing to call your friend and talk to them about what's going on in your life? And so it's the choices of how you use your time that makes your work-life balance. And I'll admit there were decades where I did way more work and way less family.

[00:30:58] And then as I got older, I did way more family and less work. And I still burned out. I mean so no matter how you balance your life, how you make those choices, there will be times that it doesn't work.

[00:31:14] I'm old enough now that I can tell listeners that life is just kind of making your way through it and doing the best you can and recognizing that what you're doing is hard. Raising children is difficult. Being married is difficult.

[00:31:32] And if you work full-time and raise kids and you're married, that's really a lot. That is a lot to do every day, day in and day out. And we don't give ourselves enough credit for how hard that is.

[00:31:47] And again, how much energy that takes and that it is necessary to replenish our energy. Yeah, I agree. We were talking about how men seem to fare a little bit better than women and a lot of this stuff. Do you think that's partly because they can compartmentalize things?

[00:32:07] They can say this is work, this is home, this is... Or do you think they just don't show it? Maybe some of them don't show it. I'll tell you a funny anecdote. When I first joined my Austin practice, they were starting rounds at seven in the morning,

[00:32:23] which meant I had to leave my house at six thirty, which meant I missed breakfast and getting the kids to the bus. And so I did that for about six months. And I finally, in a meeting, said, could we consider maybe starting at eight instead of seven?

[00:32:39] Because I really want to see my kids at breakfast and put them on the bus. And they looked at me like I was an alien. And I said, it's really important for moms to kind of send their kids off in the morning. And so we tried it.

[00:32:55] They squabbled and we decided to try it. Within two or three months, several of them came up to me and said, I really like seeing my kids go to school in the morning. Oh, wow. I really like having breakfast with my children.

[00:33:11] I'm going, oh my God, I can't believe I waited six months to bring it up. But so that's just a funny anecdote. Men don't carry the emotional labor that we do. Men do not worry about the febrile child. My husband would just walk out the front door.

[00:33:33] He's a doctor. He's a pediatrician. He would walk out the front door and I would say, wait, David has a fever. I've got to schedule the pediatrician appointment and I've got to be in the hospital in an hour. And he said, well, you're going to handle it.

[00:33:46] And I'm going, well, aren't you going to help? He said, you don't need my help. You always handle it. So we take on so much emotional labor. We don't give it to them. Somebody told me somewhere along the line,

[00:34:04] your husband does not know what you want him to do because he cannot read your mind. And I'm going, you're right. I was always like, God, I wish he would do this or why didn't he do this? And they said, ask your husband to do what you want.

[00:34:18] Like tell him you want him to start a load of clothes or whatever. And I would do that. I would tell him or write it down and he would do it. He would help me.

[00:34:30] And it was, I had to ask him for the help or make a to-do list. Like he would say, how do you want me to help you for this party? The 10 year old birthday party. I said, hang on, I made a list. Get this, get this, get that.

[00:34:45] I gave him the list. He did everything on the list. I had never done that before. He hit their helpful when we asked them to help. I don't think most men are going to say, screw you, wife, you have to do it all.

[00:34:59] I think they really want us to be okay. I think they want us to be happy in all of our roles. And so when we tell them what we need, when we ask for help, when we share that emotional labor, they respond to that. The men really do.

[00:35:22] They're just not like us. They don't think like women. I guess I'll have to try that. Yeah, try it. Make a list. My husband's always like, you can take care of it. Same thing. If any of the kids were sick, it was on me.

[00:35:38] That's because she did such a good job of taking care of everything. That's what he says, but I feel like it's just an out for him. Yeah, it may be. I mean, he's a good guy. You need to go to the hospital overnight and say, okay, dear, manage.

[00:35:55] I'm not here. Or take a trip. Go see your sister. Take a weekend trip away. Yeah, I don't have a sister, unfortunately. Well, then you have to make an argument. I'm the one orchestrating the whole house. All the kids, you are life, everything.

[00:36:12] And I need this to replenish my batteries, to replenish my energy, to give me what I need to keep moving forward and hope that that convinces him. Yeah. Or you and a friend together. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, guys don't like to do that kind of thing.

[00:36:29] And he's like, why? Oh, because it's so supportive. It's so comforting. We love that. And no, men don't do that. No, I don't think he even understands the desire to want to do it. So it's interesting. Yeah. What do you think burnout looks like for the average person,

[00:36:49] not just a medical professional? I think burnout for the average working mom. Are your listeners mostly mothers? Yeah, I believe a lot of them. Most of them are. Okay. So the average working mom burnout would be physical exhaustion, feeling emotionally overwhelmed,

[00:37:11] feeling actually kind of distanced from your most difficult child, most difficult manager at work, whatever it is, it's tipping you over the edge, whether it's a child or a job or a bad manager or taking care of your 70-year-old mother. So you're distancing yourself from that

[00:37:33] because you just don't want to deal with it. And then you finally, the third one is, you don't think you're doing a good job. You don't think you're good at anything. That's what burnout is. You have to have those three components, physical and emotional exhaustion,

[00:37:50] distancing yourself from whatever it is that's triggered you and tipped you over the edge. And then finally, lack of agency. You no longer feel good about yourself. You no longer feel fulfilled. That's classic burnout. And I do think a lot of working moms are there

[00:38:13] because we pushed ourselves so hard without breaks, without support that we just are out of energy. So how do you recommend to women especially? But how do you recommend that they start recovering from that? Like what are the steps to turn all that around?

[00:38:35] Well, you have to take some sort of break. Now if it's your family that's tipping you over the edge, you can't do that. If it's a job, you can maybe take a leave of absence for a week or two weeks or whatever. Burnout is now a medical diagnosis

[00:38:54] and some companies are covering for leaves of absences. Some companies are providing 12 visits with a therapist for people who think they're burned out. So you can talk online to a social worker or a psychologist, a therapist who will help you go over your priorities

[00:39:19] and look at what's bothering you and look at your hours and look at your relationships with your colleagues at work and try to figure out what it is that's the catalyst. And so 12 visits, you can get a lot done with 12 visits.

[00:39:35] So I encourage moms who are burned out to talk to their HR rep and find out if they've got any kind of employee assistance program coverage. Usually 12 visits is kind of a stock. So you have to have someone help you sort through what tipped you over the edge.

[00:39:54] It could be a mentor, it could be somebody at work that you really trust if you don't want to talk to a therapist. It could be your best friend. But you've got to start with admitting that you're fried and you've got to somehow separate yourself

[00:40:10] from whatever got you fried, whether it was the job or the family or whatever. Now you can't leave your family, so you have to do that while you're still being a mom. And then you figure out how to take better care of yourself,

[00:40:25] whether it is exercise, taking walks outside in nature, writing in a journal, keeping a list of gratitudes, talking to a friend on the phone every day. I had no idea that journaling was so effective. One of my psychiatrists said, the things you write down in your journal

[00:40:47] really allow your feelings to come out. And they really help you and they turn off your left brain, which is all focused on getting things done. And they allow your creative, thoughtful feeling right brain to think and express itself. And I said, oh, that's ridiculous. I don't know.

[00:41:07] That's not going to work. And I tried it and it actually works. You can be furious about something and write and write and write and write and write. And after 15 to 20 minutes, you're not as furious. And so things like journaling, things like walking outside in nature,

[00:41:26] which have been shown to decrease depression. There's a study from a big city where half of the workers, I don't know if it was depression or burnout. I think it was burnout. Half of the workers were told to go outside in this courtyard,

[00:41:42] which was kind of a concrete courtyard during lunch. The other half were told to go to a park and eat their lunch in the park. And it was a park with trees and green spaces. And after 12 weeks of this, they compared the two groups.

[00:41:59] And the group that had been out in nature felt so much better. So for me, that's just walking around the block, walking in my neighborhood, getting outside and watching kids play, watching dogs run around. And so we forget the simple human things that make us feel better,

[00:42:22] like being around trees and flowers and birdsong and all that. So journaling is a good way to take care of yourself, walking outside in nature. You need to take walks or exercise. So walking in nature, walk around your neighborhood, is a great way to do it.

[00:42:38] Call that friend. Talk to that friend at least once a week. Go have coffee. Stop on your way to work. Meet for something, lunch and talk it out. When I was burned out, when I was burned out at age 62, I started having lunch with my nurse practitioner friends.

[00:43:02] And I had distanced myself from them for a couple of years. And when I was recovering, I said, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm going to call everybody up and we're going to go talk and sit and have lunch or coffee or whatever.

[00:43:15] And we were laughing and we were telling stories. And it felt so uplifting to... And it was just stuff we had been through in the past, just patience or parents or whatever. And just laughing and reminiscing and telling stories with a friend made me feel so much better.

[00:43:36] It was almost as good as getting outside and walking. Almost as good as better than journaling. I went out on date nights with my husband. That made a huge difference. We're not just at home. It's not just the kids.

[00:43:52] We're going to go out and do something special just for us. And so I think the various ways that we connect to other humans, the ways that we examine our priorities and our choices with a helper, if it's not a therapist, if it's not a mentor,

[00:44:12] maybe it's your best friend. I sat down with a young doctor a month ago. She said, I'm all burned out. I don't know what to do. We sat down. Her mother is a good friend of mine. And she was in town visiting her mother.

[00:44:26] And we sat down for lunch. And in a two-hour conversation, we had kind of dissected her problems. She didn't like this part of her job. She didn't like this. She didn't like that. She was resentful of this and that. And she was thinking about this and that.

[00:44:44] And in two hours, she kind of had an action plan. She kind of said, oh, now I get it. Now if she had done other things, she had taken a leave of absence. She had seen a therapist. She had changed her anti-anxiety meds.

[00:44:59] And she was trying really hard to take care of herself. But she needed somebody to help her with her work priorities. And so I guess the message is we need somebody who knows us and also knows what we want to do with work or with our family.

[00:45:18] It depends on which one is making us exhausted and burned out. Which one is sapping our strength? So those are the ways that I used to recover, connecting with my friends, journaling, exercise, walking outside in nature. A lot of walking, like an hour, 45 minutes or an hour.

[00:45:40] Some people like yoga. I never did get much out of yoga. But a lot of people like it. Online therapy, even if you could just afford five, six, eight visits, would be helpful if somebody feels so burned out that they just don't know what to do.

[00:45:58] They just don't know where to turn. I think it would be helpful. But I encourage people to talk to their HR rep about what's available. Does any of that sound like things you could do if you felt burned out? Oh, absolutely. Good. I love being outside.

[00:46:15] I love being outside. I can't wait till the weather gets better. That's my favorite thing to do. And we usually get a group of the family whoever can come and we all walk together, walk dogs. Good. Yeah. I mean, people measure dopamine. They measure neurotransmitters

[00:46:32] after people have been outside in nature. And it's beneficial. That is the simplest thing to do to make us feel better is to get outside and walk. So do you think if someone experiences burnout and they recover from it,

[00:46:46] that self-care is what keeps them from having burnout again? Or do you think it's the awareness of the symptoms? Like they see it coming and they're like, whoa, I don't want this again. I think it's both. You summed it up beautifully. Well, for me, it was both.

[00:47:01] I mean, you have to have an awareness of what tipped you over the edge. Right. And make choices around that issue. And you also have to know how to take care of yourself. And again, self-care is not selfish. It caregivers need to take care of themselves.

[00:47:19] And until we as women learn how to support each other and say, maybe we should start saying, not how are you doing, but what have you done for yourself this week? Because we all ask each other, how are you doing? And we all say, fine, fine, fine.

[00:47:36] And we're not. I'm going to start saying, what have you done for yourself this week? I think that's great. Yeah. And I think the caregivers that need the self-care more than anyone, because it's like you're pouring yourself into these other people constantly.

[00:47:52] And I think that's what leaves you feeling empty. Right. You give and give and then you're never, like to your point, filling your cup back up. So I do need it more than anyone. Yes. Now having a cup, there was a Methodist preacher

[00:48:09] who was also a psychiatrist who had a group of adults who were all healthcare professionals when we lived in Houston. And he said to me, do you ever think of yourself as a cup? And I said, no, not a cup. I'm a doctor.

[00:48:22] He said, now think of yourself as a cup. Then you're full of talent and energy and skills and caring and compassion. And every day in the hospital, you're pouring little pieces out of yourself. And I said, yeah, OK, that makes sense. That's a good analogy.

[00:48:38] And he said, and at the end of the day, how do you feel? And I said, empty. And he said, what do you do to fill up your cup? And I said, well, drink a glass of wine. He said, and so it's that kind of realization.

[00:48:56] When you think of yourself as a cup and everything you do that pours out your own energy and enthusiasm and caregiving, you've got to have some left in there for you. And that's why self-care is so important. I agree.

[00:49:11] And I wanted to ask you something before we wrap up here in a bit, but I know that you've talked about being a good enough mother. And I was wondering if you could explain that to our listeners. What does that mean?

[00:49:24] I think being a good enough mother is a mom who is not around her children all the time. The pediatrician who used that, who brought that phrase to the forefront, I think back in the 50s, said a good enough mother

[00:49:41] is there when she needs to be for the important things for the milestones mostly. I missed a lot of milestones, who loves her kids, but she also loves to do something else. And she's really good at this other thing that she does.

[00:50:01] So you can't be perfect because you can't be a perfect mom if you're not there all the time and you can't be a perfect worker if you're worrying about your kids. So to be a good enough mother, you do the best that you can where you are.

[00:50:14] And you let your children grow a little more independently. You lean on other caregivers with your kids and you're fulfilled in your work life. So a good enough mother, I wasn't there. I missed a lot. I can't be in the hospital 60 hours a week

[00:50:33] and say I was with my kids every time they needed me. I wasn't. Their dad was there. The nanny was there. But I feel like over the years that I was there for the most important things and I have struggled to feel like a good enough mother

[00:50:53] to convince myself that I was there for the important things. That I didn't miss a major event. I didn't miss a play. I didn't miss a swim meet. I didn't miss a volleyball tournament. I did not miss taking prom pictures.

[00:51:08] I mean, I was there for all the big stuff. Every teacher conference, I had to work really hard to get to all those things. But I was gone a lot and they still say, you were never here when we got home from work. Okay, I wasn't.

[00:51:23] I showed up for dinner. But I was a good enough mother, I think. That's my definition of good enough mother. You do both. So you feel like working moms should give themselves grace and that you can't be... There is no such thing as a perfect mom.

[00:51:43] I don't know. I mean, a lot of people say I have the perfect mom, but I don't know. But I don't think a perfect person exists these days. So yeah, I think you have to give yourself some grace and you only have one life.

[00:52:01] So you have to do something that makes you happy. Right. Yeah, I agree. I think giving ourselves grace to admit what we're doing is difficult. To admit that we're good enough, that we're doing the very best job we can, keeping lots of balls in the air,

[00:52:20] lots of plates spinning. And we have to accept that our children are going to grow to be independent and still know that we love them and think that for the most part we were there for them when they needed us. You do have to say...

[00:52:37] My husband used to say it all the time. I would say, oh no, I'm not doing a good enough job. And he would say, stop, you are a good enough mother. I'd say, how do you know? I'm sort of here observing how you act with our children

[00:52:52] and you're a good enough mother. And he would say it like he was my cheerleader. So maybe we need to ask our husbands to remind us that we're good enough mothers. I think you're right. That's great. Yeah, because your husband probably thinks that. Ask him tonight.

[00:53:09] Honey, do you think I've been a good enough mother? See what he says. I'll ask him. You know what he says. So as we kind of wind down, I want you to talk a little bit more about your book if you want to.

[00:53:26] And I was curious, like, do you go to workplaces and speak to employees for businesses on burnout? I do, I do. I get hired to speak on this topic a lot and I love it. My book is a memoir. It's my life in the NICU with favorite patients

[00:53:46] and favorite parents. And it's telling stories of all my motherhood trials and challenges and telling stories about my kids. They all gave me permission. And I don't think the book is for every single mother. It's not for new parents, for certain,

[00:54:04] because the NICU stories can be a little scary sometimes. But my book should be reassuring to working mothers who think they're screwing up. I had so many patients, moms tell me, oh my god, you're a pediatrician. You just do everything perfectly. Your children must act perfect.

[00:54:25] I'm going, are you kidding? Are you kidding? We don't know how to do this parent thing any better than you do. We're all just flying by the seat of our pants. I mean, yeah, I read child development books. And I was trained as a pediatrician.

[00:54:40] But I had kids that hit and bit and threw pencils and all the bad things, you know? And a daughter with an eating disorder. And so, and a daughter with dyslexia. I mean, so I tell all these stories in the book and tell how I struggled through them.

[00:55:01] Because I want other mothers to know that what we do is really difficult. And we get through it. My life has been long enough now. I'm 70 that I can say there's beauty in the mess. We get through it all. We, everything that we are challenged with,

[00:55:20] we somehow manage to make it okay. We love our kids. We love our partner or spouse. We love our family. Hopefully we like our jobs. And we're just doing the best we can do. And so if a working mom can read my story and go,

[00:55:40] wow, she turned out feeling pretty good about everything, even though her kids were pretty screwed up too. They're going to feel better about their struggles. So I wanted the book to be honest. Right. I wanted it to be an honest rendition

[00:55:58] of how hard it is to be a working mom. And you can buy it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, any place where eBooks are sold. It's called So Many Babies. I encourage your listeners, if you have working moms listening to... Oh, there's a lot of working moms.

[00:56:17] To check it out. It's gotten real good reviews, but... That's awesome. That sounds great. I'm no celebrity, so I don't sell a thousand books. I was wondering though, as we're speaking, I have to ask you like the good enough mother,

[00:56:30] do you feel like there's kind of a pandemic with people? I use that word sparingly, but as far as people feeling unworthy just as a person, and I don't know if it's the social media comparisons, but I'm in different groups around different people.

[00:56:48] That it just seems like everybody's battling that I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough as a person. Do you see that? It's got to be the social isolation. Yeah, I think it is. It's... And I'm not a fan of social media.

[00:57:04] I remain unconvinced that it's helping the human race. Again, I think we're destroying our notion of human connection, and that's probably why we don't feel good enough, because we're not sitting and talking with peers who... And you go, God, I'm dealing with exactly the same thing.

[00:57:25] You feel so much better when someone else shares... The load shares what you're going through. And so perhaps that's why we're all feeling like we're not good enough, or we're doing too much. We really are working too much. I mean, Americans work a lot,

[00:57:44] and we probably should not work as much as we do without taking care of ourselves. So if people are listening and they're like, man, I love what Dr. Landers is talking about. She's awesome. And besides your book, where can they follow you or find you? Or...

[00:58:04] I know you said you have a sub-stack newsletter. Yeah, I have a sub-stack newsletter called Moms Matter. And you can get in touch with me on my website, susanlandersmd.com. You can contact me there. There's a place to send an email. There are free resources for parents.

[00:58:24] There are... My eBooks are there. My blog is there. Subscribe to my newsletter. Everything is there. It's kind of a one-stop shop. So susanlandersmd.com. And I even have a place where people can contact me about speaking if they're interested in that. So... Oh, that's great. Yeah.

[00:58:46] Yeah, you seem like a natural born speaker. Thanks. So I thought maybe you were talking at businesses or something. So... Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I've enjoyed talking to you today. And I appreciate you bringing all your wisdom and experience to us so that we can learn from it.

[00:59:02] Thank you so much, Michelle. That means a lot. Yeah, it's been great talking to you. Thank you. Thanks, you too. As we wrap up today's episode, I hope Susan sharing her knowledge, experience, and wisdom has helped you in some way.

[00:59:16] One thing that stood out to me is just how common burnout really is whether you're a mom, a teacher, a caregiver, or even a doctor. It doesn't matter. I guess it's something we all kind of know in a way, but it's something that's very easy to tell yourself

[00:59:31] that you're the only one feeling this way when really there's a lot of people feeling this way. I think the main takeaway for me was the importance of self-care and how much most of us neglect it, whether it's our sleep or peace or just time to think.

[00:59:47] I think we need to start protecting this time instead of neglecting it. And I also love how she mentioned the importance of in-person connection. I think we tend to think that our Zoom calls or watching others talk on social media is the same thing, and it really isn't.

[01:00:02] And we need to make every effort to start meeting with others in person. After all, we are social creatures. So what stood out to you? I'd love to hear from you. As always, I hope this episode helps at least one person.

[01:00:16] And with that, I hope you have a blessed week, my friend. Thank you for listening to The Beauty and the Mess. If you enjoyed what you heard, please share it with a friend. And if you haven't already, please subscribe, rate,

[01:00:31] and review this podcast on your favorite pod player. If you have any questions or comments, any topic ideas you would like to hear about, or you think you would be a great guest on the show, you can reach me directly at thebeautyandthemess.com. Thanks for listening.